Cleveland Nautica Charity Poker Festivals

[juanez]

I just finished my second tour of duty working at the Nautica Charity Poker Festivals in Cleveland. There's only one week left, then the tent will be shut down for the winter. The last week will be Sept. 15th to Sept. 18th with a $500 buy in tourney on Saturday the 17th.

The powers that be are working on plans for next year. A couple of things they're working on are:

Better dealers: all dealers are volunteers and there's a new charity every week. Most have never dealt a hand in their lives and many have never even played poker, so the dealers aren't exactly professionals. They are investigating whether or not paid dealers can be utilized, but the law regarding charities and paying people is a pain in the butt. We'll see what happens.

Different games: this year we had a $2 game, 5/10 and 10/20 with a full kill. 1/2 no limit is being considered as well as some bigger tourneys. Maybe there will be two blinds in the cash games as well.

Longer season: the charities made great money this year (about $450K), we had no shortage of players and there were no serious problems or "criminal activity" that we found, so the experiment was a huge success. Next year the tent will probably be open from late April to October.

Obviously the room was not perfect, so we're looking for comments/ideas/suggestions for next year to make this thing better. Feel free to post or send a PM. Thanks!