The Hangar Poker House in Humble, Texas is a small poker room with a family atmosphere (the grown-ups table part of the family). It was my first poker room after poker was made more-or-less legal in Texas and it has a fond place in my heart.
The dealers are skilled, the floor managing is fair, professional and strict. The players are friendly, but not so talkative that it will distract from your game. Many couples come to play, particularly on Sunday.
You may notice that “family” is literal for some of the staff. Three of the dealers are a brother and two sisters, and an older man they call “Dad” is a frequent player. They are Asian so they may be kidding that the Asian man is their dad, but they are definitely siblings. Perhaps someone asked one of the Asian dealers if the Asian man was their dad and the nickname stuck.
Tournaments
Tournaments run nearly every day, with cash games every day, often beginning as players bust out of the tournament. Cash games are 1/3 and sometimes 2/5. Rarely do they have more than two tables of cash games. It’s a small house.
There are “freeroll” tournaments every Sunday, which you pay nothing into the prize pool, but pay $11 for a daily “membership.” For that you get 10K in starting chips, which is fifty big blinds at the first level of 100/200.
Most players also pay the $4 dealer special for 5k in chips another $10 for an extra 20K chips. So for $25 total, you start with 35K which is 175BB.
You can re-buy for $20 up to the first break and you can plus up your stack at the first break for $20. The house guarantees $500 to $1,000 dollars, but that is usually exceeded by the re-buys and add ons.
Mondays and Wednesday, there are cheaper tournaments, with $10 rebuys but only $500 and $750 are guaranteed by the house.
A handful of regulars push all-in with almost anything playable before break and re-buy multiple times.
On other nights tournaments range from $40 buy-ins to $100 buy-ins. This is not big-time high-dollar poker, but it’s a relatively cheap way to spend an evening or weekend afternoon playing live poker while limiting your losses.
Some of the dealers sometimes play in the tournaments, which may raise suspicions. I notice no collusion nor cheating in their favor, and I’m the suspicious type who watches closely for those shenanigans.
The brother, once when in a hand against me as a player, announced, “I know you got the ace, you can take it.” At first I thought he was using information he gained on me while dealing, and that seemed to violate some kind of dealer ethics. I have never read the Dealer’s Oath, so I couldn’t verify it.
Anyway, it turned out he was actually trying to get me to muck since he did not say “fold” or muck his own cards. An angle shoot, but nothing to do with him being a dealer in other games. I didn’t fall for it, I bet a handful of chips and he was forced to call or fold.
Speaking of angle shoots, they do happen with some frequency. Recently, I was fortunately out of the hand when the three remaining players went to showdown. One of them said, as if embarrassed, “I got a little straight.”
The other players mucked as he was showing. The dealer said, “You don’t have a straight, Dude.” in a tone more disgusted than angry. The angle-shooter claimed he really thought he had the goods with the guiltiest gigle I ever heard. Only his mask kept us from seeing the guilty smile he must have been wearing since first announcing his “little straight.”
The other players took it in stride, no doubt blaming themselves for falling for it.
Always run out your pop flies in poker.
There is money to be made at the Hangar
That is especially true for a player who has completed Level V of the Thousand Hand Challenge and is looking to move to live cash game play. The Thousand Hand Challenge is explained in the book, Poker Beginner to Poker Wiinner in One Thousand Hands, available on Amazon.
You can also buy it at a discounted price here.
The cash games are reasonably soft. As usual for a Texas card room, many players are averse to folding, so you would want to decrease your bluff frequency and push harder with your value hands. I played dozens of tournaments there before I tried my hand at their cash games.
More than once, I had heard a tournament regular lament that he had cashed in the previous night’s tournament, but lost it all at the cash game. One of them told of losing $300, in one of his first few hands and then quickly losing his remaining $200 in a hand shortly after. He then realized that he had forgotten to buy his time tokens and went to the front desk. The floor manager told him that he did not have to buy time since he had only been at the table a few minutes.
My mouth watered at the thought of playing in those cash games, but I had not built up my bankroll for live cash tables yet.
Food and Drink
The food selection at the Hangar is sparse, but well worth the price, which is zero, by which I mean they are included in the membership price.. There is a cold display box stocked with soft drinks. There’s a make-it-yourself Keurig machine and some small bags of chips and a little Halloween-sized candy also included. I will admit that when I lose a tournament, I take a Coke and some Cheetohs on the way out to reduce my losses for the night.
If you like to drink while you play, there is a display case in which you can keep a bottle after checking it in with the front desk. Or you can keep beer in the cold case.
On no particular schedule, but with decent frequency, someone will bring food and set up an impromptu buffet table. There are at least three regulars who own Italian restaurants or pizza franchises. They donate the food and it is usually served by a young lady with a tip jar.
The very first night that I played, there was a “game girl” to bring drinks and snacks for tips and massages for a set price. Maybe that was a one time thing, because I never saw her or a counterpart again.
COVID SUPPLEMENT
In compliance with orders from the Harris County Judge, masks are required. That is the only change the Hangar has made. There is no plexi, no bottles of hand sanitizer and no distancing at all. You can still wash your hands in the bathroom, though. Update: as of governor abbott’s order lifting the state mask mandate, the Hangar no longer requires masks of players. staff still wears them.
During the first break of the tournaments, some players borrow a deck of cards from the house and play a version of Sweat that I don’t quite get and that appears to be pretty random. One of the sisters mentioned above sometimes plays connect four for a few bucks a game. As you might guess, she rarely loses.
It’s just that kind of place, poker for the small budget played with a good mix of seriousness and humor.
The Hangar is highly recommended for beginners and people who enjoy playing poker with beginners.