Bondix Shaping Bay
The floor

Five tables under the racks

How seating works, what the resin chips do, and what happens at the teaching table if you have never been dealt a proper hand.

Seating

How a table fills

Three tables are open seating: turn up, find a gap, sit in it. Two can be held on the phone for groups of up to six.

Every table gets a fresh deck each week and a score card that is torn up at close. Chips go back in the tin behind the bar and the tin is counted, because resin discs walk otherwise.

Ash will explain a rule, deal a round to get a table moving, and settle a disagreement about a rule. Ash will not rule on a hand — tables sort their own hands out and always have.

A hand being dealt beneath the board racks

Social games

Five hundred, euchre, cribbage, friendly poker — points, never money.

Six to a table

Five is the comfortable number and the crew will say so.

Cards wiped at close

Scores end at 11:30pm and nothing carries over.

At the table

Five things that hold at every seat

  1. Chips are the bay's property, count points and are worth nothing in money at any moment.
  2. No stake, no pot, no buy-in and no side bet, at a table or anywhere else in the building.
  3. House decks only. Personal cards stay in the bag.
  4. If a table is short, the crew may ask you to move so that nobody plays three-handed.
  5. Anyone who cannot play without an argument gets one warning and then their night ends.