Harrah's cutting back on invitations

Live Money

The Stardust became very paranoid about counters. Many members of this site were not allowed to play there. The last several tourneys they had were funny money.
Their famous live events of not many years ago were $375 entry ($350 early bird) $600 chip buy in at start of each round. $5 min. bet, $300 max bet.
1st place paid $100,000.00, second $30,000.00, third $18,000.00 and on down through 7th. All real money (no promo chips, etc.)
Most of the better players figured the incentive was there to double down hard 17's, etc. on last hand (if that's your only way to advance). Maybe not in the first round because of rebuy possibilities but from second round on, it could make good sense. First time I made the finals there I was fortunate enough to draw a 3 to my hard 17 with max bet and double down ($600 total) but it's all about incentive at that point.
After that event, you could walk next door to the Frontier and play another live money event ($30k first place) and then across the street to the Riviera for yet one more. The Riv's later ones were funny money but if you go way back, I think they had live money, too.
Oh, for the good old days when you could piggyback these 3 on a trip to LV!

Billy C

 

Getting back to the main purpose for this thread, I've noticed a decrease in the value of the Harrah's Group "invitations" in recent months. I'm not just talking about tournament invites, I mean free rooms offers and most everything else. My play there has actually increased over recent times so that's not the reason for a decrease in offers.

The norm used to be for 3 free nights in Las Vegas. Now it's 2 nights. Most businesses in these hard times offer more for your money to induce your patronage. But it looks like Harrah's takes the opposite view - offer less. Makes sense to me.

 

Billy C, I also remember and played in many of those Stardust tournys. Those were the dayz for sure. However a reference to the other poster, I never saw anything less than a full table at those tournys.

When is the new Stardust going to be finished?

Lets hope they have some tournys

TLR

 

TLR,
You could be right as I don't remember short tables either, in that tourney format. Those were immensely popular tourneys. Seems like they had over 600 entries sometimes (that number might include rebuys).
The Monday night welcome banquets were great!
Echelon Place (new Stardust) has been put on hold til 2010 or beyond.

Billy C

 

I was not playing tournaments during the "good old days" of having 600 players, with 3 tournaments going on at the same time, and without enough time for side action at any of the 3 which probably had a lot to do with killing the events.

My reference to "short" tables referred to the last couple of years of the Stardust tournaments. Those "short" tables usually occurred in the 2nd round when they needed X number of players for the 3rd round but not enough players were present in the 2nd round to fill all the tables. As a matter of fact, I specifically remember one table I was at that had only 4 players and the rest of the tables had 5. My friends were jealous!

The Stardust is gone forever. As you said, the property will be named "Echelon Place". It will be a high end hotel/casino complex as all the new construction in Las Vegas is going high end. Nothing even resembling the Stardust so those type of tournaments are a part of history.

 

I see what you mean. Sort of like somebody beating the "side action" drum relentlessly? :laugh:

 

Touché. I guess both sides are guilty.
Half dozen from one side and one from the other.