$350,000 Blackjack Tournament 01/01/2007 - 02/03/2007 Don't miss WinStar Casinos' $350,000 Blackjack Tournament, January 1 to February 3. With $250,000 in cash prizes and $100,000 in hot seat cash giveaways, it's the one blackjack tournament you'll want to hit. Sounds good anyway! I called up to find out more about these tournaments. You have to be at the casino between 1:00 pm - 3:00 pm on certain days and can only play "IF" your name is drawn! One plus is you win $100 if your name is call, but you must be playing. What a deal lets all head up there now with a chance to get our name drawn and enjoy the $.50 - $1.00 ante per hand not even knowing if we can play in their BJ tournament. Now I can handle locations that charge an ante, such as Tulsa Cherokee, Durant Choctaw, and Comanche Red River, because they at least offer players some tournaments that you know you can play in when you go to them, but Winstar is a joke! Locations like this that cater to their locals and then wonder why they don't draw in new business just drive me crazy. With all the money the Oklahoma casinos have to give away if they offered "Open" events with a good format and rules they could draw in more players than the Las Vegas tournaments. I truly believe the local players, as a whole, are not as well rounded as the tournament players, and the attraction from seasoned players would be HUGE from around the country! They could and should be charging $300 plus for entry fees with $150 re-buys and they would be able to put on quarterly events in the neighborhood of $200,000 + and probably would all be sold out! Eric Woods up at Tulsa is getting his feet wet next month with a week's worth of "Open" events, but I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. I think if he only offered three major tournament over 4/5 days (and over the weekend) it would be more attractive to the out of town players. He could also offer satellite events in the weeks prior to the events to help make the higher entries affordable for his local players and possibly draw in players from 2 to 3 hours away as well. I think he will see the attendance for the week vs. the weekend and pick up on what I am saying. I for one applaud Eric in his efforts to try to increase his attendance in their tournaments and try new formats. However I’d prefer playing all the tournaments in just the good old fashioned “traditional” elimination format, where all the players feel they have some type of control over the game.
