Gold Strike Tunica is interested in your feedback!

Hello All,

My name is Richard Lyon and I am in charge of the table events here at Gold Strike. We have been brainstorming idea's on how to make the table events more popular. I have searched all over the internet and came across this site. I have seen some of the posts here talking about what they like / don't like and plan on addressing some of the issues that have been brought up.

Keep in mind not everything will change but we can at least work together to better these events and make sure you have a great time while you are here.

If you have any suggestions or comments about previous events please let me know!

 

The betting range can be improved

I played one tournament and I like it. I thought was well organized and friendly staff. The only thing i thought could be better is the betting range which was way too high, it made my head spin every time I tried to calculate a bet.

 

Glad you enjoyed it.

Glad you enjoyed yourself. If you do not mind me asking, where are you from. Is there a reason as to why you have only been to one of the events? The betting range to my knowledge is pretty standard. Do you have a suggestion that we could change it to in order to enhance your experience?

Typically we start at $25,000 with betting limits being from $500-$5,000 and all bets must be made in $100 increments. This of course is not the case for Insurance bets.

 

Betting range

The one I attended, the betting range was $500 to $10,000. I do not see $500 minimum or 10,000 max as standard in real life or in tournaments. More standard is minimum of 25-100 and max of 1000-5000.

 

I will bring up your post to the tournament director and see what she recommends. I have looked into it, and all casinos around here are using a similar structure. I will keep you updated if it changes.

 

Please consider the following: Tournament structure, betting limits need not be the norm just because that is what everybody else is doing. For tournament competitors, the competition is very important. A betting structure of $5 to $300 is the same as 500 to to $3000. It's just more difficult to keep the larger numbers in your head and since most blackjack tournament directors insist upon a "X" number of seconds to make your bet rule, the larger bet limits frustrate one ever more so.

I have always been vocal against a "you must make a bet in "x" seconds" rule when poker tournament players are given as much time as necessary to make a simple should I call or fold decision, when the analysis of how much to bet, hit, stand, split, double down, and insurance decisions against multiple players requires time. Two minutes maximum is plenty of time with a warning to make your bet now when time runs out. As a tournament director, I would never force a minimum bet on a player, but I would force the player to make a bet under pressure after his allotted time has expired.

A blackjack tournament should be decided by skill not luck. The larger the the bankroll, the less time allowed to calculate wagers pushes the skill factor down and the luck factor up.

If you want great competition, you need great competitors. To get great competitors to travel to your event your format needs to be tailored for competition and you need at least 3 three events over a 5 day period to make it worth out of state players to travel to your casino. Or coordinate with other casinos to have a tournament blackjack week. For about ten years or so Las Vegas had at least 3 times per year where you could play around 8 tournaments of various sizes over a ten day period. This was a great time for tournament players.

There are alot of great suggestions on this site in old threads and people willing to help guide you. I am sure I speak for everyone here.......we just want tournaments to play in that are fair and foster competition not blind luck. There are slot tournaments for that.

 

Hi Richard....
I used to play the Gold Strike tournaments but primarily because they essentially run from Friday until Sunday (too long), along with the promo instead of cash, and large size of promo chips awarded as prizes, I haven't in quite some time. I'm three hours away and I do play as many of the other cash payout events and some promo/cash mix events, as often as possible. I know everyone has their own idea of what makes a good Blackjack tournament and I'm not trying to run your business, but since you asked, I'm going to submit what I think is important, along with a few suggestions for your consideration. As I reviewed below it has become somewhat a wish list, but I think that's kinda what you were asking for, huh? Maybe others will throw their two cents worth in and give you a consensus. Even though a relatively small sampling if I was in your job I'd view it as helpful.
I appreciate you asking for opinions of the players. There are various size tournaments going on in Tunica regularly and three of the casinos (including Gold Strike), hold several annually that have large enough payouts to draw bigger entry numbers. I don't mean to do a commercial for the casinos who are your competitors but I think Tunica can become a Blackjack Tournament destination for folks from pretty far away if everyone in your position plans as well as you seem to be, to draw the players.
• Would be nice if this was a Friday night (with several rounds played on Friday), / Saturday event - No Sunday play.
• Or..... (and maybe better yet), a Saturday night/Sunday event. This would go a long way toward avoiding the conflicts with other events which are primarily Friday night/Saturday tournaments. The Beau has done a good job of tagging a tournament onto the end of weekend events at other casinos on the Gulf Coast - The Beau being on Sun/Mon/Tues, etc.. Your Saturday night/Sunday event would draw even more than the Beau does because it would be over on the weekend (Say 5:00-6:00 PM on Sunday), and therefore draw some who have to be at their job on Mon/Tues, etc.
• Room included in buy-in would be nice but it won't be worth a lot of extra buy-in cost because most have rooms elsewhere anyway. It seems the rooms would bring in more gambling action at your boat because most would stay on premises since they don't have to travel to their room.
• Hospitality rooms at sign up time are really nice, but not essential.
• Although another casino in Tunica has a four round tournament, a three round event (Qualification round, semi finals and final table), would be preferable in the opinion of most, I think.
• We all like the wild cards but personally I can do without huge amounts of them... some into semi finals and one into the final table will still draw folks to the event.
• The game - Just keep it simple.....
• 15 to 25 hand rounds are okay - Less hands may better facilitate the time required to have multiple rounds in a given period, say Friday night rounds or Saturday nights if a Sat/Sun event.
• In my opinion, $25k chips is too many. I think that, maybe it could somehow be correlated to number of hands per round, ....anywhere from $1500 to $2500 chips.
• Minimum bets of say $5-$10-$25 and max no more than the starting ship amount.
Thanks for asking ....

 

This would probably have been better sent as a PM but apparently your capability for that hasn't been activated.

I've got an Adobe file with the rules from the Meskwaki (Iowa) tournaments before they ruined 'em. These were generally regarded as the best mid-range BJT's in the country, drawing players from hundreds of miles away, and most of those brought a good sized bankroll for side action. However, I'd need your email addy to send it to you......

On another note, you've gotten some great feedback here but I'm sure you've noticed that not many have answered you. Blame those who have been here before you. Since this is the leading site for the best BJT players anywhere, we get quite a few tournament managers who post stuff just like you did. The vast majority of those managers take the volunteered information and simply vanish, never to be seen here again, and the BJT's that they represent don't change at all. Many of us are quite jaded to such pleas for advice.

 

I understand your skepticism, However now that I have found this site, I have no plans on leaving as it does not benefit myself or my events to do so. I will give you a basic background on myself, I am 25 years old with a family background in the casino industry. My father and mother have been as high up as VP's of casino operations all over the U.S ranging from Atlantic City to Vegas to both of them being in Mississippi now. I reach out to them for advice from time to time but to be honest, times have changed. Most places I have reached out to for advice as far as table events go have all told me that it is a dying game. As I mentioned previously, I can not guarantee that any suggestion will be made as to be frank, a lot of the decisions require approval. I will say that our executive team is really great here at Gold Strike and they allow us plenty of lead way to test things out as long as its for the better of the casino and the events. I will however guarantee that I will do my best to push along the ideas received here and other places to try and take all of the events to the next level to hopefully revive the tournament scene.

 

That would make it a single advance tournament, which I think at least 80% of us do NOT like.

 

It may be dying but it's the fault of tournament promoters who dumb down the playing rules to the point that skill has become a dinosaur. 2-1 and even 3-1 BJ's, no bet limits, and many other atrocities have been thrown in to help the non-savvy local players have a better chance to get lucky against a skilled player. In any competitive endeavor, you've got to have the core group of aficionados to keep the game alive. Alienate them and the game withers away, that's what has been happening in the world of BJT's.

A fairly decent rule of thumb for a tournament is - If you don't allow it on the casino floor, don't allow it in the tournament.

 

Totally agree

with Lefty's post!!!!! I'd just love to see a tourney venue revive the format (created by RR) that was used at the Frontier in Vegas. Best I've ever seen anywhere.

Billy C

 

Deltaduke and I talked at a tournament last night. I agree that many, including me, prefer multiple players advancing from as many rounds as possible. I also agree with him that it requires more rounds to accomplish that,.... To get enough players for a good pot, without the buy-ins having to be so big that they discourage players from entering. I'm fine with either. Anything to keep players coming so the casinos will not pull the events altogether. The cash payout events are far fewer than they were just a few years ago. My thanks to the casino management who do continue to make an effort to keep the tournaments available to us and to the players who support the tournaments,..... and who support the casinos that provide them.

 

Tourneys

With qualifications offer a gauranteed 10k or higher 1st place. And I underscore "qualifications."

 

Hi richard. My hat off to you for trying to improve your tournament in this fashion. More directors need to do this. I have played your tourn several times, even won one in 2011. I kind of like the $25,000 chip count. It's fun to play with a higher amount than other tournaments. I don't the extra round. I drive from st. Louis and don't like the increased diffulty of that round. It would be much better if you had rooms like the other tournaments do. We always have to stay at other casinos where we have comps or lower rates. At least have player discounts. As a suggestion. We play at fitz's every tourn, with free rooms, entry only $150/round(with 3 possible rounds instead of 2 also important if you drive 5 1/2 hrs to get there. Plus $20,000 first place guaranteed.
You might want to talk to them for ideas.

It seems that the casinos never talk with each other to coordinate tournaments so players can play more than one in a weekend.
Hope this helps

 

Thank you WLPerry for your feedback, I have been looking into doing multiple re-buy rounds like some of the other casinos around here. I have been getting mixed reviews from guests about this topic though. Some love the idea, others hate the idea. Casinos very rarely will talk with others due to multiple factors. I am planning on doing a crazy payout for our tournament in November.

This is the breakdown: (please give your thoughts on this idea)
Head to Head style tournament with the ability to re-buy on Saturday. Players that register on Saturday can re-buy only if there is space available. We will take highest of the each persons re-bought scores. The Top 20 Places get paid.

 

Hi Richard....I think we all appreciate your interest in getting input to improve Blackjack tournaments but.................Wow. What a surprise! Are you saying you are going to go away FROM Elimination TO High Score or Accumulation rules? High Score, better titled "Pure Luck" rules will keep many folks away. In my opinion you'll have more loyal, dependable returning players if you stay with Elimination rules. Luck plays a part of all tournaments but Elimination rules require some skill and most Blackjack tournament players that I know prefer to use the skills they've developed and are constantly working to improve on - Not to shove out as many chips as they can and hope they get lucky.

Re-Buys - Those who travel long distances to play a weekend tournament most prefer re-buys. The more offered, the better value event it is for them. Those who don't want to re-buy don't have to. What have they lost that they would have had with no re-buys available?

 

Head to Head

Pitchman,

I may be mistaken but head to head indicates to me a "Bracket" tournament where you play each round "Heads Up" against only one other tournament player.

6 players per table, player 1 vs. player 2, player 3 vs. player 4 ect. with 3 players per table advancing in an elimination tournament format.

Position is important but a skilled player can position himself if not BR1 and betting last, BR1 has to offer either the Hi or Low, if BR1 betting 1st, the Hi or Low choice is yours.

A skilled player should froth at the mouth for this tournament format.

 

Thanks Rookie. From Richard's statement "We will take highest of the each persons re-bought scores. The Top 20 Places get paid", that's not the way I read his post, but hopefully he will respond and clarify.