Six Deep on the Waitlist, Zero Tables Open at KoJack's Poker Club

Phantom Demand in the Permian Basin

Six names are sitting on the $1/$2 NLH waitlist at KoJack's Poker Club in Midland, Texas, and the room has zero tables running.

As of the evening of May 19, Bravo shows KoJack's with a waitlist ratio of 6:0 — six players waiting, no open game. The room's median waitlist sits at one. That means demand spiked to six times the norm with nothing to show for it.

Six players waiting, zero tables open, and a waitlist ratio six times KoJack's own median — Midland's poker demand has no supply.

What KoJack's Tells Us About Texas Poker

Midland isn't Austin. It isn't Houston. It's a West Texas oil town where the population hovers around 140,000 and the money comes from drilling, not tech. KoJack's Poker Club is one of the card rooms operating under Texas's social-club model, where players pay membership fees and seat charges rather than traditional rake.

A six-name waitlist for $1/$2 NLH at a room this size is notable precisely because it has nowhere to go. Larger Texas clubs — the Lodge in Round Rock, Shuffle 512 in Austin — can flex capacity. A single-room operation in the Permian Basin doesn't have that runway.

The 6:0 ratio means every one of those players showed up, got on the list, and sat. Whether the room was short-staffed, waiting for a critical mass to open a table, or simply caught between shifts, the signal is the same: demand existed and supply didn't.

The Numbers in Context

KoJack's median waitlist of one suggests that on a typical session, the room runs lean — a name or two in the queue, maybe a single table going. A spike to six is an outlier by the room's own standards.

For comparison, major Vegas rooms regularly post waitlists in the teens for $1/$3 NLH, but they also have 20 or 30 tables to absorb that demand. KoJack's posted a ratio that, on a per-table basis, is infinite — you can't divide by zero.

Why It Matters

Texas card rooms live and die on utilization. A waitlist with no open table is lost revenue and lost goodwill. Players who drive across Midland after a 12-hour shift and find no seat don't always come back.

The signal is small — one room, one game, one snapshot. But it captures something real about poker outside the major metros: demand can materialize fast, and supply doesn't always keep up.