Question for poker room managers, floormen, and dealers

[slamdunkpro]

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Don't put words in my mouth. I never intended to imply that I thought tourney players were scum, nor free-loaders.

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Lighten up! - You know - humor [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[Cohiba Al]

Foxwoods still does tournaments 4 days a week, during the weekdays. Since last year the entry prices have gone significantly up ($100 buy-in is the minimum). I'm confident that these are profit tournaments for the casino. Additionally, the higher buy-ins haven't discouraged attendence and not just because Foxwoods is the only poker house around; higher buy-ins lead to higher prize-pools which leads to higher attendence which leads to higher prize-pools... ad naseum. The last Thursday morning No-Limit w/o rebuys tournament was SOLD OUT twenty minutes before the official end of registration. That's including seating 11 players at each table to start.

Being a regular at the poker room there, I personally have seen and counted all the strange faces sitting at the ring games before, during, and after the tournaments. The Foxwoods tournaments do, in my opinion, feed the ring games during those days.

Therefore, instead of raising the price of a tournament to $20+20 and making the fee a full imposing %50 of the buy-in, instead raise the price to something like $40+10. Note that the fee is larger but also the prize-pool will be much larger too. The higher prize pool will attract the customers enough to counter the higher pricing.

Another tip: re-examine what is being provided for free: both food and drinks. Are these people coming to play poker or to eat and drink? The casino should prefer to attract those wanting to play poker - they are more likely to sit down at a raked game instead of get up and leave when the freebies are all consumed. Foxwoods provides free drinks only, food is available but costs the player money.

[orbie]

I'm a dealer at a cardroom, were we have nights with tournaments and nights without. Tournaments have helped our buissness in the long run. We do get several players who are tournament only players. They come to play, eat, drink and run.

Two things we have done to help counter this is offer lower limit NL hold'em live action games. And offer a $5 pre tip to the dealers in exchange for $1000 tournament chip. I haven't seen anyone not buy a chip yet. As far as I can tell it hasn't affected the winners 3-5% tip at the end either.

As a tournament player,I would try to avoid a 20+20 tourney.

[Gator]

I think Foxwood's situation is very different from typical card rooms. Foxwoods has zero poker competition. They don't have to worry about poker players comparing tourneys, deals, comps, etc.

[gabyyyyy]

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Why provide dealers, floormen, tourney directors, chips, tables, surviellance, security, and FREE DRINKS for $5 per head?


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Um, because that is their job, they will be getting paid and working regardless if there is a tournament or not.

[gabyyyyy]

No one in their right mind would hire a person like you to run their poker room. In gaming, it is all about drawing the crowd. The odds say a certain percentage of those people walking through the door, will play.

It is all about numbers, and historical data. Vegas has been thriving for as long as it has for a reason.

No need to change a working system.

[Cohiba Al]

Yes, that's true. But the underlying business decisions here are the same: If you lose too much money giving away free drinks and food, and it isn't producing more ring game players... then this is not a good business model.

Think about it: What is the first place prize in one of these small buy-in tournaments? A couple hundred dollars at most? A good poker player can shun a tournament like this because they know they can make this in a couple hours at a $10-20 or $20-40 table. Instead, these low buy-in tournaments attract a very specific crowd, those that have very little poker experience and don't want to risk larger money and/or those with very little money to gamble with anyhow. Only the former of this group is a good target to attract to the ring games; the latter will take the free food and drink and then run.

By raising the buy-in a small amount AND advertising the larger payout (Joe Schmoe just won $2,500 dollars in last week's limit tournament!) you will get 1) more juice to break even or profit for running it, 2) more players attracted to the dream of taking down a big win. BOTH results improve the casino's bottom line.

You need a little forward thinking. It's very common to assume that with a large crowd of competition you must lower your prices to survive. In this particular case you really should do the opposite. Raise the price and thus the prize pool, advertize it as the best prize tournaments around, and steal those young new wannabe rounders from your competition. Honestly, $40 is a small amount of money and not much larger than $20 or $10. But for the casino it is a %100 percent juice increase and the difference of breaking even or losing overall. And if you think that a new player will be turned off by the $40+10 dollar price over the old $10+2 or $20+5 dollars... remember that to play even a $2-4 ring game you ought to buy-in for over $100.

Afraid that the new tournaments won't get off the ground? Take a lesson from internet poker and promise a minimum payout of $1,000 or something until word gets around and enough people start to register.