ClubUBlackjackT -- overall analysis

This post has all my thoughts on ClubUBT. It's long. And it's in sections with headers. Comment on all or just various headers.
Bottom-line:I don't think the Club will survive through next April (cruise anyone?) unless it makes some huge overhauls to the Tournament Point system, BJ vs Poker, prizes, and marketing/PR. If anyone directly involved with ClubUBT wants to sit down with me to explore some new ideas, promotions, tournaments, etc., I’d be glad to share my thoughts. And since Joe Pane no longer posts here, I'll place this post on the Las Vegas Advisor forum as well.
Topics covered below:

• What works
• Joe Pane
• Tournament Points (TPs)
• Negative TP EV for almost all BJ tournaments (if you read only one section--this should be it)
• Poker vs Blackjack
• Cruise
• Funding, # of players, growth
• LVA/All-In
• Prizes
• Marketing
• Feedback/Focus Groups

What works:
What they do have going for themselves and have done right are the free trial periods for new players, and their customer service (from what I’ve heard).

Joe Pane:
I’ve met Joe and he’s a really nice guy. And other than Ken Smith, I’ve learned more strategies and tips from Joe than anyone else. So I thank him for that. But I’ve got to say, if Joe is the main public rep of clubUBT, he needs to present a more professional attitude towards players, customers and potential customers. If he’s got a gripe with someone who is posting something negative about the club or him, he should ignore it or make a professional post. Don’t stoop to the other person’s level. Does Apple’s or Google’s PR reps attack people publicly?

And, how is it that an employee of the Club can play in tournaments & win prizes? If he can’t cash in the prizes, then he shouldn’t take up a spot (and sometimes a paying position).

Tournament Points (TPs):
Unless something changes drastically with how players get TPs, this will be the biggest downfall for the club. If you take the poker side away -- and with this being clubUBlackjackT, why shouldn’t you -- it’s almost impossible to accumulate enough points to enter the cruise and $5,000 tournaments. Sure, there are satellites, but if you want a straight entry, good luck. Players who came on board in the first few weeks, and those lucky enough to win the big tournaments, will be the only ones who can accumulate thousands of points. In the early weeks, those few players were able to accumulate points without much competition or risk. But how can one do that now? Here are the opportunities in blackjack over a recent 24-hour perod:

• 12am 200 TPs buy-in, win a fireplace, top 6 players get 350 – 500 pts, semi-finalists get 250
• 2am 10 TPs buy-in, win $10, top 6 get 125-250; semis 75 – There are 6 like these per day.
• 1pm 100TPs buy-in, 1st = $50 +350 TPs; top 6 players get 200 – 350 TPs; semis get 150
• 8pm 20TPs buy-in, 1st = $20+250; top 6 get 125-250; semis get 75

How can someone accumulate 750 TPs playing the above? Even winning TWO of the 100TP-buy-ins will only net 500 TPs! If you win the 200TP-buy-in, you net 300 TPs! And you can only play a 200TP tournament if you can get your account to grow from 100 to 200TPs by playing and placing in some of the smaller tournaments.

Negative TP EV for almost all BJ tournaments:
In the last cruise tny, there were 87 players buying in for 750TPs (except for a few who won satellites – were there any btw?). That’s a total of 65,250 TPs. Guess how many TPs were available to the winners? About 24,000! Sure, a cruise package was given away, but 86 players lost a total of 40,000 points! Do you know how long it takes to get those darn points? Not a good value for the clubUBT BJ player.

Take the $5,000 tournament: If 200 players buy in at 1500 TPs each, that’s 300,000 TPs.
14 quarter finalists at 1500 = 21000
6 semi finalists at 1600 = 9600
6 = 1700
5 = 1800
4 = 1800
3 =1900
2 = 1900 (so coming in 2nd out of 200 yields a 400 TP win?!?!)
1 = 2000
Total = 41700
So over 250,000 TPs disappear. There’s something wrong here, especially when it’s so darned hard to get TPs. One finish out of the money in a $5,000 tournament and all that hard work for days and nights to creep up to 1,500 TPs is gone. Poof. And now you have to start all over again.

Even in a simple 20TP tournament with a first place prize of $20 + 250TPs:
100 club members may buy in for 20TPs each for a total of 2,000 TPs.
Amount of returned TPs to top 6 finishers and those eliminated in semi-final is much less the 2,000. So there’s a net loss of TPs in each of these tournaments.

Poker vs Blackjack:
In the large poker tournaments, 100-150 places get paid. In large bj tnys, usually about 20-40 get paid. Why is that? For example, in the POKER 400TP buy-in for a first-place Scooba prize, 100 places get paid. With a maximum of 200 players, that’s 50%. If the tournament gets 125 players, then 80% get paid.

In the larger bj tnys, only 20-40 players get paid. That’s about 10-20%. If a 100 players pay, it’s a whopping 20-40%. Why is that? Why should there be such a huge discrepancy?

A big part of the club’s plan of growing their player base is to advertise big time during season 2 of the UBT on CBS. Well, players watching blackjack on tv will expect to play blackjack on clubUBlackjackT. How many of these newly acquired players will be disappointed to discover that it’s really more like clubUPokert?
Online poker is boring. I’ve had to play it since it’s the best, or almost only, way to accumulate points on the club. The game is boring. You can play for hours and not get anywhere.

Cruise:
If clubUBT goes belly-up, and the cruise takes place in April, will those who won cruises still be going through their clubUBT win? Does clubUBT guarantee payment when someone wins this prize package? Or will it all come down to a month prior to the cruise, at which point the club will pay up, if they're around? I’d be concerned about this if I had won a cruise.

Okay, so 200 people sign up to play for a chance at the one prize, a cruise valued at $2,000. That means the value per player is $10. Okay, if you’re a really good player, maybe the value is $20. These cruise tnys can take over 2 hours. So the average player is making $5 per hour, and the really good player is making $10 per hour. There will be about 50 cruise packages given away to blackjack players. So if a player has enough points (ha!) to play in all 50 tournaments, that’s an investment of over 100 hours in the cruise tournaments alone – you’d have to throw in 100s more hours of playing time just to get the TPs to be able to enter these tournaments -- with still no guarantee of winning a cruise. It may make more sense for many players to skip all this clubUBT playing time and simply pay for the cruise – something I’m considering.

Funding, # of players, growth:
So after my post a few months ago about whether there was a future for the club, I learned they’re well funded and have at least $500,000 worth of backing and funds to get them through the first few months. Still, if players are going to pay $20 per month, the club needs 5,000 players just to pay for their monthly prizes. Well, really 3,500 players since the prizes are more likely valued at $70,000. But numerous players only pay $10 or $15 per month. So let’s say 6,000 players is break even. Will they get there? I seriously doubt it. Even if they get there for a month, most players will realize the prizes suck, tournament points are hard to come by, there is little blackjack, and they get shut out of many tournaments they’d like to be in due to the limit of the first 200 players. Oh, and what about the bad PR when players from those dozen states find out they can’t even play? Will the ads state that “some restrictions apply” or “residents of certain states may not be eligible to join”?

Given that the $100,000 in monthly prizes can’t grow until there’s at least 6,000 players, the current prize/tournament structure will probably stay the same. That should be fun, having the maximum 100 or 200 players in every BJ tournament vying for a few measly points or that coveted fireplace. And, as I said above, with the top tournaments being limited to 200 players, those 6,000 players will have to be quick on the draw to enter within the first few minutes of the tournament opening up.

LVA/All-In:
The only reason I joined the club was that I got a six-month deal for $9.95 per month. So for $60 I got a subscription to Las Vegas Advisor (LVA) and All-In magazine. This was a no-brainer since my subscription to LVA was about to expire. A new one would have cost me $50, so this was pretty much a breakeven proposition for me. I already subscribe to All In, so we’ll see if the customer service people there can get it right and extend my subscription instead of sending me two copies every month.

Coming from the publishing industry, I cannot understand why Anthony Curtis would give away free subscriptions to anyone (including current subscribers) who signs up with the club. Of course, LVA will get new players to sample LVA, and then hopefully renew their subscription when it expires. Or maybe they’ll buy some books or software from them. But there have to be numerous club members who were already paying for LVA, who will no longer have to do so. If Anthony cut a deal with the club, where the club pays him to give away these subscriptions, then it’s the club that will have to make up this money – another big monetary expense for them – and a better deal for Anthony.

Prizes:
Why offer crappy prizes that half the players could never use. A fireplace? A watch valued at $5,000 that you can buy for less than half that amount? Why not offer all prizes in cash? Oh, I know why! Because then the club would have to truly give away $100,000 per month. With overvalued prizes, they can get away with giving away stuff and cash that costs them, say, $70,000. I think the Club would better serve its members and have better PR if they switched to all cash and true big prizes (like the cruise), and gave away $77,777 worth of cash and prizes. We all joke around about the fireplace, watch, headphones, radio, etc…Guess what future players will be doing? It’s just bad press and PR.

Marketing:
What marketing is being done other than Joe Pane mentioning the club in some of his posts and the full page advertisements in All In and Casino Player magazines? Is it all riding on season 2 of the UBT on CBS? Interestingly, in a state that DOES allow its residents to sign up for the club (Florida), much of the state, including my area, doesn’t get to see most of the UBT shows since our local affiliate stations choose to air a live sports event in that time slot. Go figure.

Feedback/Focus Groups:
As I said earlier, if anyone directly involved with ClubUBT wants to sit down to explore some new ideas, promotions, tournaments, etc., I’d be glad to share my thoughts. In fact, I think they should hold two focus groups -- one with players who play consistently and often, and one with players like myself who have tried a few tournaments and have then all but disappeared and are not likely to renew. In the publishing arena, it takes about 10 times as much money/time/effort to acquire a new customer than it does to hold onto existing customers. I don’t think anything has been done to satisfy customers like myself who, not only will probably not renew, but will tell others that the Club sucks in its current format.

 

Wow

Ted,

Great post - great feedback.

The only thing I can add is this - ditto!

I HOPE that those involved with Club UBT read this, type it out, forward it to the owners and investors then decided to call you for one of their focus groups.

In fact I would volunteer as well as LeftNut.

 

I agree, awesome post, very well thought out and delivered. Ted gets a big honkin' ATTABOY! for that one.

Sure, I'd be glad to volunteer, but do you really think they'd let me in the Club's office door after the slamming I've given them? :laugh:

 

Ted

I agree - a great post - very good and considered and right on analysis -

 

Counter-productive aim

ClubUbt's wants to build a strong base of EBT players by enticing the poker players on the site and making it easy for them to gain points and enter all the best BJT without crippling their BR. So far so good, but the set up is counter-productive. Here's why :

1 - The poker players joining this site want a taste of the new EBJ game to see if it's to their liking. They don't join this site to play poker. When they really want to play poker, they go to much better sites, far more rewarding.

2 - Once they try EBJ and like it, they find themselves in the same quagmire that the regular EBJ players find themselves in : they have to spend hours playing poker to accumulate points and not cripple their limited BR in a good EBJ game.

3 - Once you've qualified for the October monstrous tournament where one lucky dude will go on t.v, both poker players en BJ players find themselves playing mostly poker ont Club Ultimate Blackjack

Conclusion : When poker players who want to play EBJ and regular BJT players only interested in EBJ find themselves spending hours playing boring (your word Ted) poker, something is fundamentally flawed and needs correction. IMO, the future of ClubUBT depends on such a correction being made soon.

I join my voice to the others, Ted. This is a great, well articulated post, that tells all that need to be said about ClubUBT, which success we all have at heart.

 

rationale

So far I have not heard a compelling reason why I would want to join ClubUBT. Can anybody convince me because I miss playing TBJ/EBJ?

Cheers

Reachy

 

Well Reach, here's a least one good reason : doesn't cost much (.32 cents a day, Joe says on the other site) and the entertainment value is undeniable. If you are recreationally oriented, you can play good EBJ and chat with a lot of people you know.


The point of my previous post comes down to this : I love EBJ, I joined to play EBJ and I find myself playing poker most of the time. That's my beef. I would like the EBJ games to be as enticing as the poker games with a more equitable possibility of accumulating points or, in a negative sense, not risking crippling your BR everytime you enter a good game and have to start the accumulation all over again. In poker, you can choose to sit and save you buy-in, something you can't do in EBJ.

It's in the points accumulation process (takes a lot of time when you start with a 100) that I find myself playing more poker than EBJ.

 

Entertainment value only! Just something to do to pass idle time.

 

I disagee with your analysis of TPs. They should not be that easy to get.

Think of ClubUBT as a micro-economy. TPs come into the economy in several ways:

1. Everyone below 100 points gets topped off at 100.
2. Freerolls that give away 6x100 points at a time.
3. Satellites that covert a 25 point win to the equivalent of 1500 points.

However, to prevent TP inflation, you need to have the major events take TPs out of the economy. As you pointed out, the big prize money tournaments tend to pay out less than wht they bring in in TP. But they also convert TP to actual cash value through the real money and prizes.

Think of it this way: the point of TPs is that every event is not a "freeroll". If it was, noone would care if they got knocked out right away, and they would enter every tournament and go all in right away, so as to minimize their time spent. If you just keep adding TP into the economy, then everyone would always have enough to enter every event and there wouldn't be any point to the TP. This way, you not only need to plan for which big events you want to try for, but you have to work on strategies to earn the TP to play for them.

Now, I agree that they have a problem in that the old way of allocating TP was much more generous, which means that many people generated a lot of TP before the change. But I think the solution will solve itself. If anyone wants my strategies to earn TP, feel free to PM me, but I'd rather not post them all.

Oh, and BTW, it's not that much easier to win TP on the poker side. It's true that often over 50% of the players earn their buy-in back. But often only the top 10% or so that get much more than the buy-in.

------------

Oh, and beyond that, I think Club UBT has value beyond entertainment value. I am paying the $12.95 plan for 12 months. It is likely that is you play at least somewhat regularly that you will win more than $13 in cash and prizes over a month. As well as a shot at the big events. As well as a free subscription to LVA and All In Magazine. My onlt issue is if you are currently winning consistently at Bet21, then you aren't going to win nearly that much at ClubUBT. But on ClubUBT, your risk is next to nothing.

 

ClubUBT Value for Money

I agree mostly with Scott (toonces) but still can't see how any reasonably good ebj player can't get points easily.

I have over 8000 and is almost impossible to loose points only to get more.

The Sats to get in both the BJ and Poker $5k events i have always won first attempt,

The Bj One you usually have to get through 2 levels as everyone on the final table gets an entry, It is important to do research as obviously if you want to win the first Sat you enter you should find the one which has lowest entries,
If you look at the completed ones you will see the one at 1am EST has only 25-35 entries.
Now Ted says the club is reducing amount of points, I disagree, This sat entries take (30 x 25 points= 750 points) that working on an average number of entries of the 1am of 30 so that is 750 points in and then they pay (6x1500 entry) 9000 out.
As almost everyone in the $5k tournament gets in via the sat, Thus in fact the 140 entries generates over 1000% in points.
So once you have spent 25 points getting into the $5k tournament, You may need some luck and skill to get to Semi’s and win cash but to change you 25 point investment into 1500 tp’s is to make it through 1 round which should be pretty straight forward for anyone on this site who plays ebj.

Most of the Major blackjack Tournaments are same sort of format you get through first level and you have your entry cost back, There are always clueless donks about in round 1 so barring extreme bad luck you can’t loose points.

Now entering regular tournaments 10,20,50 etc are not going to effect you win or lose when you start getting thousands of points using above, Whilst i have been writing this, I have been on the $20 final table and got 150 points and the points freeroll and got another 100 points, don’t believe me have a look at completed tournaments, they are the only 2 i have layed so far today.

Now the poker $5k is same story, I will point out that until Clububt started you could count the number of poker games i'd played on a hand, so I just know roughly hand ranks and thats it, Poker is even dafter, again find the Sat with least entry’s then sign up for 25 points sit out and you’ve won a 1500 point seat go into the $5k Poker game worst way you need to play one or two good hands to be in top 150 and again you have 1500 points.

Now as far as Ted’s saying BJ vs Poker amount of games, We would all love to be at postion where EBJ was as popular as Poker, Clearly it is not, People have PM’d me and say why do you push the BJ Cruise tournaments, you should not post then there will be less players, This may be good for the members who enter in the short term but then when the club says lets do 2 poker ones for every 1 ebj one as the poker ones are selling out and the EBJ ones are not who will be first to moan?, At the moment with all the updating i have done to remind people still only 1/3 + ½ turn outs compared to the poker our for cruise show poker is more popular, Gradually people who sign up for Poker are coming across to ebj. But Poker has millions of online player lead in the world so patience is needed.

As far as member growth goes From the 1000 that joined in the first week or so of launch, Now is closer to 4000, Remembering that this is still in soft launch stage, with only Low level of advertising, Full launch is 3 weeks away to tie in with Season 2
Of UBT on CBS. Prizes, points etc will grow as the player base does. This is not just the club being promoted through the CBS program but across Poker publications sites etc.

I will also copy below a part of Joe’s reply to above from LVA as it covers an excting new part of what is coming on Clububt:

There is a major ClubUBT announcement coming soon, where every week members will be able to play against the selected pro of the week in games of Elimination Blackjack and No Limit Holdem for no points, by the way, and if you beat the Pro at their game you will walk away with $500 in cash. If the pro wins, the money will go the charity that the pro has designated. This is all included in the one low monthly fee that is offered,

Back to my comments:
Playing the pro undoubtly works, I was playing poker last Sunday when someone who recognised my name said what was a pro like me doing playing on the site for only $100 prize, when i commented that Hollywood Dave was playing in the current $20 EBJ game and was on the waiting list for the next, After a few sarcastic ‘Yea Right’ someone said it’s true ive signed, well within seconds everyone on our table had signed for the EBJ game and the next $20 game with HD was one of the most popular i had seen!

Ted’s main problem seems to be he expects too much for his $10 a month, Put $10 into UB and it would be gone in an hour in most cases, put it into the Club you get a month of matches and in my case about 3000% return whilst having fun. Add to this a free Subscription to LVA and All in Mag i would challange anyone to come up with any other product in the world that is of better value to us players (this could open up a whole can of worms or pictures from Fred)

I see a great future for it and more importantly will introduce EBJ to thousands who have not played before, this will bring forth new players which does not matter what format they prefer in the end is only good for all in Tournament Blackjack, including the TBJPA and UBT, With new blood everyone can go forward without the childish nonsense that seems to be Rampant at the moment.

 

For those who haven't read this - I thought it might provide some "insight" from Club UBT's perspective:

 

Man, I wish I could get some of this 'not-extremely-bad' luck. I just bombed out of another 400-pointer in the first round because I won exactly three of 15 hands. Which has been fairly typical as of late.

Again...it's worth noting that the poker satellites pay out 10 seats while the blackjack ones pay out 6. Plus, like you said, if you know what you're doing, your odds of cashing in poker are at least 70% while in blackjack, you'd have to be lucky to even approach 50%. (And I'm personally in the under-20 range right now, I'd guess.) So, that means a poker satellite averages, oh...10,500 TP's worth, while a blackjack satellite is only worth 4,500 or so.

 

Another data point from tonight that stuck me as particularly anomalous...

The 1am $100 poker tourney had 141 entrants and gave out TPs to 100 places.
The 11pm $100 blackjack tourney had 125 entrants and gave out TPs to TWELVE places.

That's less than 10%. Think about it.

 

1st Sept

You are of course right freeloader we can all hit bad beats and bad runs of variance, Joe has said over at LVA that come 1st sept there are going to be some major changes on clububt some are certainly to make points better on ebj, A clue is that some EBJ tournamnets will hand out twice as many points as they take, they are very cleverly not listing any of the new tournaments until sept 1st so
everyone log onto club tomorrow to see what's changing

 

Thanks. I will be looking forward to that.

 

I like your anology about The Club as a micro-economy. Unlike other sites because this is a subscription service and not a pay as you play, it takes some “out of the box thinking”

With the newer changes to the TP economy you are correct in that there is a risk to TP inflation. The easiest way to overcome that is to remove TP’s from the economy at an approximate rate as they are added.

While there are many ways to accomplish this I feel that increasing the TP’s for the big events like the cruise and end of month events will help to offset TPI (TP inflation). While Ted accurately pointed out that there is a discrepancy between the BJT and PT I feel that with the influx of TP into the system they poker events need to be “tightened” to correlate with the BJT TP outlay.

Another possible solution to the TP inflation would be if Club UBT allowed players to used TP’s to purchase prizes or even to use say 10,000 TP to pay for a month subscription.

Anyone else have any ideas? Do you like the TP system? Is it too easy – too hard – or just right?

 

The poker situation is interesting. While it's true that it seems to be easy to blind off a lot of your stack and limp into winning TPs, you are likely going to be in very bad shape to finish in the money. If you instead play aggressively to build a stack and have a chance to win the tournament, you are likely to bust out and not get your TPs back.

I think that is intrinsic on what the goals of the tournaments should be. If you are playing for good prizes, you should be likely to lose lots of your TPs. If you are playing for some of the crappier prizes, you should have a chance to win a lot of TP as well. And if you are playing for no prizes at all, like the SnGs, the game should definitely be +EV for TPs, like they did it.

Fred, as for your ideas about using TPs to purchase prizes or additional months, it would be a good idea for us, but probably not fit into ClubUBTs business model. Their model likely involves increasing revenue with a fixed amount of prizes that they give away. For the same reason that they don't increase the prizes if more people enter the tournaments, if they were to allow people to sell TPs for prizes or other value, then they would be at risk fot adding to expenses or cutting revenue. Also, as it stands, TP inflation doesn't hurt ClubUBT, just the other players. However, under your plan, they would have to be a lot more concerned about giving away TPs.

 

Yes and no - let me explain.

If one were allowed to utilize TP's to purchase, say a keyboard holder, valued at $50 - this is how is could be a win-win

The value of a TP = .25 to .5 dollars. So to redeem TP's for a keyboard holder one would need anywhere from 100 to 200 TP's. Once redeemed, shipping and handling charges would be the responsibility of the purchaser (similar to e-Bay). The cost to Club UBT is usually 1/2 to 1/3 the advertised value.

How many people who take advantage of this? Probably not many but it's a carrot - kinda like a players card and the casino's.

The problem with TP inflation is that the whole concept involves too many TP's competing for too few prizes. When a poker tourney (PT) has 300 members competing over 2 hours for a top prize of $10 many people will grow weary and simply "give up". While that is good for Club UBT if said person has a yearly membership I highly doubt many new members will opt for said purchases. Rather a monthly membership will be the majority of new members. Initial impressions only happen once - then...

I personally would like to see The Club offer TP's for quarter-final, semi-final and final tables for all EBJ - just lesser amounts. It's the same principle as the slot machines. You wager a max bet on a .01 machine (300 coins) and you get winners 80% of the time. The problem is that most winners are for 150, 100, 75 etc., Therefore while you "feel" like you're winning you are in fact losing $ over time. It's all about the "impression".

With the poker aspect I fear that a limit for the number of missed hands will need to be implemented if and when they get the number of new members they expect. Imagine if 300 people sign up for a PT and only 1/2 of them actually play? As slow as the blinds and ante's rise a simple PT would extend over 2.5 hours. As we all know with EBJ you get booted after missing 4 hands (personally I like that). Coming soon to a poker table near you!

 

But that's the point. To ClubUBT, tournament points have no value, even if they have value to the players. Think of them like drawing tickets during a casino promotion. The casino can design a promotion that gives people a drawing ticket for free each day, another ticket for each blackjack they get or 11 they roll, etc. To the players each ticket is the equivalent of an extra chance to win the prize. But from the casino's perspective, they already committed to give away the prizes, so they can give away as many or as few tickets as they wish. Ideally, they find a mix that best pleases their best customers. But the point is that if they give away too many tickets, they are at no further risk.

However, if they told customers that they could either enter the drawing or use 10 drawing tickets for a free buffet or 100 tickets for $20 in cash, now the casino may be on the hook for a lot in losses, especially if they accidentally gave away too many points than they were expecting to. They would have to severely crack down on giving TPs or else people would come up with methods to beat the system.

I agree that there should be a number of points you win for advancing 1 round, regardless of how many enter the tournament. It wouldn't be that hard to implement.

I think that may be necessary as well. It would probably be something like missing 2 set of blinds in a row. The problem is that it would have to be well-publicized as people are used to entering tournaments afer the first couple rounds are over.

 

I agree with you with the exception that to certain members, not AP's like yourself or me, being able to accumulate those points will become a goal and therefore an incentive to continue renewing their monthly subscription.

I'll give you an example that I witnessed first hand. On the ships casino slots they use a system whereby you use your sail and sign card so that you don't have to carry cash from machine to machine. They also award you "points" for playing and offer a $10 cash back for every 1,000 in points.

My sister-in-law - God bless her - wanted to get her $10 soooo badly that she played 2 or 3 times MORE than she normally would have. I warned her, several times, not to do it. However she wanted to be a "winner". That $10 rebate cost her over $50. My whole point about the points/prizes was an in incentive for the "unwarey" - basically a way to get the uneducated to help supplement those who know better.

But you're dead on about how it could be a real drag to their bottom line in done improperly. Nice example with the raffle tickets!