Poll: Intested?
 

Greetings again,

Here's the basics:

A heads-up tournament begins March 8th in Calgary. $250,000 CND goes to the winner, $125,000 2nd place (on down to 17th place if I remember correctly). 128 entrants max at $5K per seat.

To enter, you have 3 choices:

1) Buy your seat at Ticketmaster.
2) Play a qualifier at 6 B&M casinos in Canada
3) Play online at a custom-built site who's only purpose is to service this event, and then go dark after the last seat is given away.

I've asked parts of this before, so if this seems familiar, forgive me. As the designer for this site, I'm doing my best to address any issues of credibility while also making sure we're offering a good deal for everyone.

The online details:
Our site is going to guarantee the winner of each tournament a $7,500K package deal (including flight, hotel and tournament entry). To enter, it's $50 + $0 on the site and 128 players max per tournament as well. (we might even run a few $100 + $0 tournaments if folks are interested for 64 players max). We need at least 16 people to start each tournament, so it's first come, first serve when the tournaments are announced. You may only have to beat 4 people with your $50 fee in order to get a $7,500 prize.

As I mentioned, this site is a custom-built site only for this tournament, so will be no ring games for play or cash on this site. It's strickly for heads-up play (there are head's up S&G's so you can test the game if you wish).

I'd be happy to give more details if anyone has questions before answering the polls below. Sorry for the long post, just trying to give you as much detail as I can to get some informed poll replies.

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

[ QUOTE ]
$50 bucks for a shot at $250,000? I'll give your site a shot

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Oh heck yeah man!

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

[ QUOTE ]
$250,000 CND goes to the winner,

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No thanks, thats only like 200 bucks US. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
$250,000 CND goes to the winner,

[/ QUOTE ]

No thanks, thats only like 200 bucks US. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]
lol

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

look at this


Prize Payouts: (based on Sellout of 128 players)
Total money $640,000
Less: 7% admin fee 44,800
Less: 10% Charity (Alberta Gaming Reg's) 59,520
Prize Pool: $535,680
Payout:
Champion (Guaranteed) $250,000
2nd Place (Guaranteed) 125,000
3rd ($25,000 x 2) 50,000
5th ($15,000 x 4) 60,000
9th ($6,335 x 8) 50,680
Total Payout: $535,680




17% juice!!!!!!!

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

17% entry fee/rake. kinda high. i wouldnt play in a $100+17 SNG or MTT.

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

Since this event has the blessing of Alberta Lottery and Gaming, they want their cut I guess. I'm not the one setting up the Canadian Open Poker, so the facts about the payout structure and fees are coming from the folks running that show.

Having never played a tournament live at a B&M, what's the norm you find for admin fees % outside of the WSOP/ WPT?

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

Agreed when you write it like that and compare to online tournaments, that would be high. Since this tournament has to have the blessings of the Alberta commision, my guess is that 10% to charity has zero wiggle room. I can inquire about this issue from the event coordinators if you request it and get an offical word about it.

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

wait can you explain this to me again? each seat is worth 7.5k before juice and charity and traveling expenses are factored in right? to qualify for the seat i need to enter a $50+0 tournament on some random site and each tournament is guaranteed to give out a 7.5k package? so there is going to be alot of overlay in these tournaments? if so ill play in them, otherwise no. how can you offer overlay tournaments when 10% of the prize purse is going to charity?

either way, if there is going to be overlay in these qualifiers feel free to pm me the site name and ill check it out.

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

Hi TStoneMBD,

The seat at the tournament is $5k CAD if you pay directly. However, for our online tournaments, we're giving a $7.5K CAD prize package to the event (includes flight, hotel stay, spending cash and tournament entry).

As the poker game designer, I'm not the person pulling together the details on this tournament, but I can certainly get the details you feel are missing into your hands ASAP.

Something to note: The $50 tournament fee is in USD, which works out to be $6400US (or close to $7,333 CAD at today's rates) if all 128 seats per tournament are filled (which of course we'd love, but I'm skeptical it will happen to be honest). Still, we have seats to give out, so as long as we have 16 people in a tournament, it runs and the winner gets the prize package. We're also discussing what to give people in 2nd-8th place as well.

As our site will carry the brand and be named from this very event, I hope that goes a ways towards dispelling fears of a new site with folks. And to be clear, we're letting everyone know that the site's only going to be live until the last seat is given out. At that point, our job is done and we return back to building our true site. If anyone has funds in an account (missed an event, we had to cancel a tournament, etc) on that date, we'll be contacting them and finding out how they'd like to receive their funds back in full.

Thanks for the question and the chance to clarify. Love the avatar, btw. =)

Doug

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

when your site runs and these tournaments are going pls pm me a link

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

I shall. If there's anything else I can answer, don't hesitate to PM me as well.

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

What guarantee do players have that they will be receiving a satellite seat from a site that will no longer exist at the time of the main event??

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

Hi Sniper,

Honest question. Upon winning the satellite seat, you will be contacted the next day by the tournament operators themselves to verify your information and details. We're aware that some people may want to compete and win multiple seats for this event and sell off tickets (especially if we're at low capacity for our online tournaments). That too will be handled by the event coordinators themselves. We're simply going to pass along your information as soon as you win to their people so they can book you flights, hotels, register for the tournament, etc.

Remember, our site is named for the tournament and the official site for this tournament will be directing traffic to us exclusivly. Yes, it's an odd set-up, but frankly our team wasn't willing to launch a half-finished poker site in order to be live in time to fill seats. So we compromised and are custom branding this one site just for the expressed purpose of handing out tournament packages.

I've never seen anything like what we're attempting to do, which is why I'm asking folks to tear the idea apart. We want to avoid as much head-scratching as we can when the audience comes to figure out what's up. =)

Doug

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

this seems very intersting all of a sudden.

i'd like to get more info when these tourneys will be going down.

is there an ETA?

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

Don't hold me to it, but we're hoping to hold the first online qualifier first week of Feb.

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Don't hold me to it, but we're hoping to hold the first online qualifier first week of Feb.

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could you get a listserv going so you can keep the interested people up to date with things easily?

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

Certainly.

Anyone who'd like a quick PM from me when the site is about to launch, please PM me here and I'll ping you with the details when we get close.

The event coordinators are going to be throwing out adverts in the regular channels to also aim people to this site. I'd love to say that's going to cause the registration lists to fill up quick, but this is such a strange situation that who can say?

If we actually find that we're loading these up regularly, I'm talking with my folks about how to make sure we allow all the 2+2er's a way to pre-register for at least one of the events.

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
$250,000 CND goes to the winner,

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No thanks, thats only like 200 bucks US. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

1998 called. They'd like their joke and their strong dollar back.

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
$250,000 CND goes to the winner,

[/ QUOTE ]

No thanks, thats only like 200 bucks US. [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

1998 called. They'd like their joke and their strong dollar back.

[/ QUOTE ]

buuuuuurrrrrrrrn [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

Hmm...I'm skeptical of how succesful this tournament is going to be. I suspect there will be a lot of overlay. Furthermore, I suspect that via satelites with uber overlay is the only way people are going to be able to be willling to enter a "random" tournament. But I'm game. I hope 20 year olds can play at this casino in Canada.

Re: Poll: Intested?
 

You mentioned a random tournament? Might I ask what you mean by that?