Getting rid of Poker rooms to boost Casino Profits

Hey everyone,

I am going to make some comments about the profitability of casinos doing away with their poker rooms, to add more profitable gaming venues.

First of all I am a poker player. I enjoy the game, but cannot ignore that the casino may be losing money by having a poker room. A casino poker room with rougly 40 full tables , will generally bring in about 3500.00 an hour in gross. Less dealer salaries you are looking at about a 2700.00 profit per hour. While this may seem like a lot of money it in no way can compare with the profits that slot machines yield.

On the flipside one can say that the casino actually benefits by having a poker room. Now not all but some poker players manily tourists will play poker as well as other table games. The poker room can attract these tourists, and they will eventually play the slots and other table games as well.

So the main question is: Will poker rooms at the main L.V Strip hotels soon become obsolete, to slot machines and hopes of higher profits by management?

I'd like to know what you guys think about this.
**Rick

[brad]

this question can be answered, and if i were in casino management, this is what i would do.

the gist of it is i would find another area (not poker because the business might not come back; maybe some kind of food thing, restaurant, deli, i dont know) and convert it to slots and see what happens.

get the smart guys to tell me how to set up the experiment to get highly reliable results, and then see what happens.

of course, (intra)politically the results may not be able to be ended up anything but a mandate for someone with an agenda, but i guess in a perfect world it would work.

brad

[Noo Yawk]

The profits from poker also come from the attraction of the game, must like a show or any other attraction. I only go to casinos with poker rooms and so do my non-playing friends and girfriend. They dump their money on slots, blackjack and craps while I play for 6 or so hours. The casino's without poker rooms are missing all kinds of action.

[ripdog]

If I were in charge of the bottom line in a casino, the first thing I'd do is take a long hard look at the poker room. I like brad's idea on doing some experimenting. I know how I think, and I think that table games are for chumps. The result is that I steadfastly refuse to play games where I know I'm bucking the house edge. My moment of clarity came 5 years ago at a Carribean Stud table at one of our Indian casino's. All of my friends had lost their money and I was putting on my coat as the dealer dealt me my final hand. I picked the cards up and slowly fanned them out A-A-A-A-who cares. I had paid the $1 progressive and went ahead and doubled my bet to $10. The dealer didn't qualify and I was paid 50-1 for my quads. I was happy, but something seemed wrong. I went home and looked into the possibility of being dealt four of a kind. 4,165:1 Next I figured how much I was underpaid for my good luck. The multiplier on my $500 win was 83.3 I thought about how cheesy $500 seemed next to a figure like $41,650. I also figured that they could have paid me $10,000 for my hand and still be raking in money hand over fist on this game. I never played a pit game again. As a casino manager, I would not want to encourage customers like me to come in and not spend money. Maybe my thought process is flawed because I expect serious poker players to think the same way. By the way, the cardroom that I go to gives out these cards that are good for a $5 matching bet at any table in the casino. I always look at it like someone has handed me a piece of used toilet paper. Then I give it away.

[CORed]

With the casino putting up half the money, you have a substabtial advantage at any table game. Walk over to the blackjack table (usually the smallest house edge, if you know Basic Strategy), place one bet with the match play coupon, and walk away, win lose or push. If you want a low risk strategy, with two coupons and a partner, go to the craps table. You bet Pass, your partner bets Don't pass. You split the net. If a twelve hits on the comeout, you break even, otherwise, you net the value of the matchplay. You can also work this on Baccarat, one taking Player, the other taking Banker. Of course, the casino is hoping you will stay at the table and lose lots of money. Don't.

[ripdog]

Thanks for your reply. One guy that I regularly (ha!) give these to usually comes back and tells me that that coupon I gave him cost him $200. It did dawn on me that I should at least keep the coupons and not lay out a chum trail to the pit games for them to lose their(my) money at blackjack or pai gow, or whatever they play over there. It never really crossed my mind that I should play the coupons. One of my many faults exposed--failure to adjust my strategy. Just when I was feeling so smug...