Card rooms

A card room is a front like any other — you own it, it cannot be taken off you, and the only thing anybody can steal is the cash sitting in the cage. What makes it different is where the money comes from.

You take a cut of the house

Every bet placed at the casino is placed in a city. When the house comes out ahead there, a share of those winnings is split between the card rooms standing in that city — and the rest is destroyed, exactly as it always was.

So a card room does not earn because it exists. It earns because other people are playing.

The share is split, and that is the whole game

The city's house winnings are a fixed pool. Every room open in that city takes a slice of it, sized by how big its floor is — tier plus the floor track plus the dealers you have signed.

Which means opening a room somewhere is a decision about where, not only about whether:

• A busy city pays more, and attracts rivals who will take part of it off you.
• A quiet city pays less, and you keep all of it.
• A second room opening next to yours costs you money the day it opens. Nothing was taken from you; the same pool is simply cut a different way.

There is no way to shut a rival down, and none is coming. You out-build them or you go somewhere else.

The standing rate

A room also earns a small amount per hour on its own, whatever the tables did. It is deliberately less than other fronts make, and it exists so that a room in a dead city still pays for itself. It is not where the money is.

A quiet week costs you nothing

If the punters come out ahead, you are paid nothing that night. You are never billed. A card room can have a bad week; it cannot have a negative one.

The cage fills

Like every front, what it earns piles up and then stops. A card room holds about a day's worth — and on a busy night it fills faster than that, so the tables' money is the money you lose by not turning up.

If it is full, what spills first is the hourly rate. What you keep is the cut off the tables.