killing the tournaments

I agree we need to start off small, but with multiple events and one of them need to offer at least a $20,000 1st place prize. Without we wouldn't pull in the needed entries to fill the events, even if double entries were allowed.

Again I agree (and thanks for the kind words Noman), but I really want to get away from the term "SKILLED". Really seasoned tournament players (STP) are just using common sense and playing percentages.

To say it has been an up hill battle to try and get casinos to allow these events would be an understatement. In part I feel it is because of the terms used such as "Pros", and "Skilled" that scare away most casinos. The sad part is the only control STP's have in these tournaments is what I mentioned above, knowing and playing percentages and betting to our advantage which is nothing more then the strategy of playing the situation.

About 5 years ago I was was in the middle of a big controversy over the Luck Factor vs. Skill, I had players ripping me for saying how much luck was involved in these tournaments (even with good format and rules). Years later most of those players have contacted me one way or another and told me they now understand what I was saying and have seen first hand how much the luck factor has to play in the success of blackjack tournaments.

Now if we can get the casinos to understand this and get over the misconception that STP's just come in and dominate the tournaments when actually the "Ploppies" or unknown players win over 80% or more of the time. Don't believe me, just go look at all the tournaments offered and see how many BJT.com members have won those events.

I do agree that STP's will have a slight advantage in certain situations, but honestly how often do we get those situations? Even if we find ourselves with that advantage, how many times have we still managed to get beat because of the luck factor?

What we need from both the casinos and players are long term solutions to help make blackjack tournaments profitable for the casinos and worth travel and entering for the players.

My suggestion have been posted and discussed, what suggestion do you have? Be realistic please and think what would benefit the casinos because without them we won't have tournaments.

 

CPR for 20 minutes. Is it worth it?

TX. You're correct. Convince the casinos. But the Toolman Rule, Rules.

And we'll get an example out of Four Winds. If they stop after December, either they didn't get what they wanted, or they got the extra returns and don't want to bother with the extra effort. Not one, so far "filled up" Mostly good turn out though. They have made announcements something to the effect "We have opened $25 table in our high roller room for tournament players."

But they deleted 10 dedicated BJ tables and on the main floor, mixed into the 3-card poker, caribean and other carnival games have maybe four or five open bj tables. It maybe they like other casinos are just dumping BJ in favor of the exotic. After all, a casual player just wants to scratch the itch.

LONDON: Good question. I'm 99.9 percent sure about the tourneys. Cause I remember the discusion about playing. Can't say for sure on sit n gos, but.....I do believe they dropped that from 10 as well.

Hate to carry on, but the 10 was always acceptable in poker. Not favorable in BJ, especially to AP's. Just ask Tx about his 10 per cent uproar in the matching the names, where players objected to his getting the accepted cut, just for brokering the event.

Some poker tournies(Four Winds) are less than 10. 5.xx

AP's won't accept 10 in BJ. Everyone else, given an interest, doesn't care. But because they don't care, the casinos don't have to offer them anything other than what they already do. Or offer them nothing at all, cause people just keep a comin. As I posted earlier. Four Winds in two years of operation has taken $1 mil a day on average from SLOT play.

 

Still Ranting

My understanding (from info I found on the internet, may be trustyworthy, may not be); is that cash poker games (low stakes) rake 10% up to $3 or $4 a pot; and play about 30 hands per hour. Since not all pots reach the max rake, it works out to about 25 full rakes per hour per table. So that would be $75 to $100 gross rake per poker table. Casinos evidently find that to be acceptable, as they run lots of poker tables. The same site also said that poker tournaments earn about as much money per table per hour as the cash games do. So no wonder casinos are willing to put on poker tournaments.

So, what we need to do, is to have tournaments that rake a minimum of $100 per hour per table from entry fees for the casino, with 100% of the buyins going into the prize pool. Casinos should have no problem putting on such tournaments, as they will make just as much money as they make from poker cash games and poker tournaments. Make sense?

With TBJ, figure one hour per 'flight', since the set up is different from poker. Also, your entry fee would need to cover the second round, etc. tables cost of operation and profit. My best estimate, with 6 players per table, 2 advance each round, is that requires an entry fee of $25 per player for the casino to rake $100 per hour per table. Players would need to pay another $25 entry fee for each rebuy, as that just adds another player to the tournament, no different than if there were more initial entries.

Small poker tournaments can rake up to 18% of the buyin, very large ones much less, I think the WSOP rakes 6%. TBJ could do the same.

Every tournament has a minimum $25 entry fee, added to each buyin and rebuy. For a $150 buyin tourney, that's less than 18%, for a $250 buyin, only 10%, and we can use a sliding scale, giving the casino more money and still lowering the percentage rake, for larger tourneys, just as works with poker tournaments. As long as the casino pays out only the buyin, they shouldn't really care how many players show up, how skilled they may be, or if they give side action or not; the TBJ will pay them the same as a similar sized poker tourney or cash game per table. In fact they will do better (per table used rake) if the tourneys are smaller, as they won't have to run as many flights.

If they wanted to comp in highrollers, they would need to add the buyin to the pot, don't see a problem with that. If a player gave a lot of side action, they could comp him/her based on past play, if no side action, no comps, that's fair.

So, why not a series of tourneys, starting with $150 buyin and $25 entry fee, working up to maybe a $500 buyin and a $40 entry fee, or $1,000 buyin $70 entry fee, no money added, just pay out the buyins, over say 4 days, and the casino makes money and we get decent tourneys with TBJPA rules and format.

 

RKuczek

Get on the road and pitch it to casinos, like the "new game "guys do. If you copywrite and trademark it, you'll get a cut from every table in play at every casino that plays it.

Problem is......none of the casinos care about BJ anymore.

 

That in a nutshell, my friend, is the real world. BJTs had their day in the sun and now the sun is setting.

 

My suggestion would be host 3 $50 entry mini/satellite events, one each day leading up to the main event with multi entry levels, $250, $400, or $1,000. It would offer multiple events, plus the one big event making them worth the travel expense. Offer prizes to top three point winners for the weeks (4 tournaments), this will also help draw some players in early which should make the casino more money.

I do agree that any and all comp players would be funded by the casino to make the prize pool correct.

This has been a pretty decent thread with some good feedback, I was hoping to get more players involved, but thanks to all that did offer their feedback.

I'm surprised no reply from Fredguy, Monkeysystem, and Leftnut I hope all is okay. I was hoping to get their input as well. S.Yama is currently out of the country or I'm sure he would give us some of his excellent insight.

 

High dollar buy ins remind me of the Stardust tourny dayz gone by.......LOL. I"m not in the mood for those to return. IMO

I'm wondering how high the Winstar places the entry fee to be next year?

I liked the Meskwaki tourny, AND they just sent me a letter thanking me, etc and giving me a heads up on the next tourny date.

On a fun note, I played in the (past week) weekly Seneca Allegeny NY BJ Tourny, and came in 1st. which was a little under $900. A total of 77 players showed up, most I did see giving a nice amount of play before the tourny. This was good for me as I had not placed in the top 6 in a tourny since march of this yr.

TLR

 

I miss the Stardust

The Stardust week was the time when most every player would come out to Vegas and play tournaments. They normally offered 7 to 11 days of major tournaments back to back over that time span. Even had the evening Riviera event as well on Wednesday night, normally started about the time the Stardust final table was just getting underway. Then everyone would be at the New Frontier tournament (the best pure Bj tournament there ever was).

Both the Stardust and New Frontier tournaments had $300 entry fees with cash but-in's (Stardust $600 & NF $300) with re-buys for half price.

The nice thing about the NF event was you started with $300 live chips and could bet $5 to $100, but it didn't have to be in $5 increments. They had $1.00 & $2.50 chips as well (the $1.00 chips you could bet for $6.00 an over). Players now days hate to count chips...lol you would have hated trying to count here and remember no stack limits back then either.

Damn I miss those days and tournaments, big money and lots of tournament friends. For those that didn't know Chris Ferguson (Jesus) the big poker player, he won the Stardust Bj tournament before FYI.

 

What really killed the Vegas Bj tournaments

Lets face facts, Nevada and Atlantic City use to be the only places to go in the country to play Bj tournaments. Now look at all the states that offer casino gambling and tournaments and you really wonder why players don't still show up to all these events like they use to?

In the past we use to gamble every few months when the Vegas tournaments were offered, now days we can go gamble every few days within a few hours or less of our house.

Sure there are other issues as well that helped in the decline of both tournaments offered and players which have been well discussed on this site.

Bottom line is other then the LV Hilton's suited Bj promotion tournaments the days of 600 players or more showing up to a Bj tournaments is slim and none and Slim was seen boarding the bus.

The best we are going to have now days is around 250 entries and for that many they better be offering something special no matter where the Bj tournament is held. I'd say the norm is closer to 115 entries for most major tournaments.

Now understanding that we're only going to have maybe 115 entries and needing to make this profitable to the casinos even knowing several of the players won't give any side action but needing them all anyway to build the prize pool high enough to draw players to travel to this event.

This is the problem we face trying not to kill off Bj tournaments, So what suggestion do you have to offer to fix these issues?

 

TBJ Dead, or Thriving?

Looking over the past year/month on the Tournament Calendar, I found 64 major ($25,000+) tournaments in the last year; and more than 900 TBJ events of all sizes in the last month. Even allowing very generously for duplications, errors, etc. there had to be at least 750 TBJ events last month, and the 64 majors in the past year. I looked at open events only. So, if you wanted to do some traveling, you could play 5 majors a month, on average. Or enjoy the action in the hundreds of smaller tournaments being offered all over the country.

Now, I know that a $25,000 tournament is probably not worth traveling across country for, given the equity when you take travel expenses into account, and maybe, like me, you live in a town where there aren't convenient tournaments any longer (maybe never were); but, TBJ is not dead, just ill.

The problem would seem to be not so much getting tournaments, as getting a better geographic spread, fairer formats and rules, and larger open tournaments worth traveling for.

If casinos had a good model to follow, of how to put on TBJ events that would make them money and be attractive to patrons, and given good advice as to how to attract patrons to the events, and to build up a clientele to make TBJ an effective profit center, that's what we need.

We also need to stop supporting poorly run high roller promotions that simply take advantage of the low rolling/skilled/paying players. I have always enjoyed the Golden Nugget-Las Vegas tournaments, but they have started comping their highrollers directly into the second round, when they can't advance from the first round. I am not talking free rebuys here, but direct second round entries. This puts extra people at the table, and lowers the odds of advancing for the players who won their way into the second round. And doesn't increase the prize pool. A nice tournament gone bad, because the GN can see only the promo use of the tournament.

 

Not getting into it

I'm not getting into this argument - again - and that's why you saw no posts from here.

A thread that started out in a different direction but became somewhat appropriate to the subject:
http://www.blackjacktournaments.com/bb/showthread.php?t=5464

As far as the Nugget comping high rollers into the second round, didn't they just get their little patties smacked by Gaming for those sort of shenanigans? I seem to remember another thread about that here a few months back.

 

WSOBJ, dare we dream....

Come on Leftnut, this isn't an argument we're just discussing here...lol.

I do agree with RKuczek that there are several tournaments offered throughout the country, but not many BIG ones worth cross country travel and most with horrible rules and formats.

Just think if we could actually get casinos to listen to us and work together the way they do for poker the size blackjack tournaments they could host. Kind of like my TBJPA idea... Just think get a standard set of rules to play tournaments by like poker so no matter where we play the rules would be the same.

Think about all the satellite events around the country even the world that casinos regardless of their size could hold to send players to a series of major tournaments like a smaller version of the WSOP. Think about hosting 5 or 6 big tournaments with smaller single and three table satellites running for the entire week to 10 days all leading to one major tournament, the blackjack version of the WSOP main event.

Have each casino's weekly tournament's putting $25 towards the main event and maybe $100 from their bigger tournaments, then think about all the players we could get from these feeder satellite events. Example: 400 players winning their $2,500 to $5,000 entry into the main event.

Entries for the satellites could be as low as $10 - $50 at local casinos to win their way into bigger events until they win their $2,500 to $5,000 entry fee for the blackjack main event. Now throw in TV coverage and some major sponsorships for added money and we could have something.

Funny thing is the casinos would jump on board in a heart beat once it was started and saw how well it worked, problem is getting it started because most of the casinos personnel don't have the vision to see past next week.

 

Golden Nugget

Last tournament I played at Golden Nugget-Las Vegas, my second round table had a comped highroller placed at it, who had not been able to advance from the first round. She commented that she was happy they had comped her into the second round, because she hadn't been able to advance either her first round or rebuy tables. When another player at the table griped about having the extra person added to our table, they quickly moved her to another table. This tournament was several months after the complaints, etc. about the first tourney they did this at.

I think the key is that the casinos MUST make a profit off of the TBJ events, as they do on poker tourneys. They may choose to offer small events, SnGs, etc. as 'loss leaders' or satellites, but they must start seeing TBJ as a profit center, and that means a sizable rake, at least $25 per player per entry or reentry. For an SnG they could do ok with a $15 entry fee; for a two table tourney (or SnG), they would need to charge a $20 fee; for anything beyond that, it would need to be $25. Then they could see TBJ as a profit center comparable to poker, and would be able to put on competitive events, and not run them as promos.

But, we need to be willing to play TBJ under the same circumstances that the poker players play tourneys, sizable rakes, prize pool is the buyins, no money added. Tournament equity will depend on your skill level, if your edge is greater than the rake, it is positive equity, if not, thanks for the donation.

 

Comped or Wildcarded ?

A few months ago some players from the Phoenix AZ area played at a Vegas Golden Nugget tournament and I was told that high rollers (semi-high rollers?) get comped into the 1st round but had to pay the $500 for a 1st round rebuy. They also had to have 2 1st round buy ins (or advance on the 1st buy in) to have a chance for a wild card in later rounds. If players are getting comped at my expense by me having a smaller chance of getting a wild card then the EV for the GN's tournaments goes below 1.00 by a significant amount.

Are there really wild cards in those tournaments or are some high rollers getting "special" (comped) wildcards to later rounds?



...................................BlueLight

 

Rakes and Entry Fees

Just gathering some information on poker rakes and entry fees to poker tournaments recently. If you want to know why casinos run poker tourneys and not TBJ, consider the following:

Typical poker rakes (cash games), per pot, are 10% up to $3 or $4 or $5 (depending on the room and game. NoLimitHold'Em can run off 35 hands per hour, and, from what I found, the casino can figure on collecting the equivalent of 25 full rakes per hour. That is $75 to $125 per table per hour of activity.

For poker tourneys, I found the following buyins/entry fees:

Mandalay Bay $50/$15

Mirage $330/$30 $540/$40

Caesars Palace $70/$20 $160/$30 $85/$15 $235/$40

Harrah's $150/$30 $60/$20 $40/$8

For very big tourneys, the rakes can go much lower, such as 6% for the WSOP.

How many TBJ players would pay a 30% rake to play a tourney? Or even a 10%, as some of the larger tourneys figure out. 15% or 20%?

Notice that about $15 or $20 per player is where the casinos set their minimum rake for tourneys, even if that means they are raking 20% to 30%. That's what they need to make money, and the poker players pay it.

You'll also notice that these rakes are MORE per table (with a full table of 9 or 10 players) than the rake from a cash game is per hour. That's because the play goes on, and, while the number of tables and players is reduced steadily, they need to allow for the longer playing time (tourneys do last more than an hour).

And casinos do not make a lot from poker, every other table game is more profitable for them.

I do truely believe we will not get good, fair, skillful TBJ until TBJ players are willing to pay a reasonable rake to the casinos for putting on the tournaments so the casinos can make money off of them. The above tells us what those rakes are. Figure $20 per player on up, regardless of the buyin, and 10% of buyin (for buyins over $200) at least, except for very, very large tourneys. And the rakes will need to be assessed on rebuys, as well as buyins, since a rebuy is the same as adding another player to the tournament.

How many of us will pay those rakes to get decent TBJ?

 

A Comment on Poker Tourney Rakes

From my limited experience, poker tournament rakes are on the increase, and it is being done somewhat surreptitiously. In some tournaments, there is an additional amount of chips available IF you are willing to pay a small extra fee that supposedly goes to the dealers. In some tournaments, they automatically take out an extra few % from the entry fee to go to the dealers. At the same time this has been happening, the quality of the dealers seems to have decreased. I played in a WSOP circuit event in AC earlier this year (I think it was a $500/60), and was appalled at how inept some of the dealers were. With one dealer, even dealing the cards so that none were exposed was a real chore.

 

Raked Tourneys

I agree with you 100% Monkeysystem.

That would be the whole purpose of supporting raked tournaments, making it profitable for the casinos to offer decent tournaments that are skill based rather than luck based. That is why poker tournaments have consistent rules and formats, and allow skilled players, because the casino makes money off of them; if they ran poker as a promotion, it would quickly turn into a carnival game, with rules changes to enhance the luck factor, and the casinos banning the pros.

I also believe that the casinos have been upping the rake. The rakes/entry fees I found do seem higher than I saw in the past, though I am not a poker player, so aren't really that knowledgeable. I have seen some comments similar to Kelly's recently on the net, so think that is most likely what is happening. Since people like poker, raise the rake, to go along with the 6-5 BJs, etc.

With tournaments which would be more skill based, and multiple-advance tables, and more rounds to accumulate edge over, a moderately skilled TBJ player should be able to overcome a 20% or even 30% edge in the long run, as far as the tournament EV goes. Add in travel costs and that would be different for many events, except for the very large tournaments, but that is the same now. Actually, more skill based tournaments should increase existing edges for skilled players, and work against the unskilled, by reducing the possibility of winning through sheer luck.

 

Agree-----BUT

This means a house full of skilled players that scare the Hell out of casinos.
They would much rather have a house full of ploppies that will throw unlimited cash at them, unlike a flat "rake" that cannot be parlayed by them!

Billy C

 

Fees?

I believe $5 per player during the first round and re-buys to go to wards the dealers is a first step. Several casinos are already doing this. This assures the dealers of making money for those occasions where winners forget, don't know, or just plan don't tip out the dealers. The $5 per player is not to replace the tips, only assure the dealers are taken care of. Trust me part of the problem with casinos not wanting to host these tournaments are listening to unhappy dealers and unhappy dealers are the ones that screw up, mis-deal and make for an unpleasant event for some players.

Next I believe that offering multiple events will bring more players and have those players staying longer which will make the casinos more money as well. The casino/hotel will make money from room rentals and food sales and most important they will have the players on location and the majority of players on location will give some type of action on side play.
I think if we start raking the Bj tournaments we'll be going back wards for both the casinos and players. There are to many other ways for the casinos to make money or re-coup the tournament expense other then a rake. For one thing Bj tournament players give a lot more side action then poker players. Poker players are normally at the poker tables 10-12 hours and come in weeks before the main event and normally play nothing but poker tournaments or regular poker.

If you think back before the WPT and the weekly TV shows, most casinos had already taken out their poker rooms because they didn't make them the money for the space they took up. Now it a little different, they need a poker room as a draw and as pointed out the rake has gotten huge, still I'd bet a 200 player poker tournament vs 200 player Bj tournament and the casino would make a bigger profit from hosting the Bj tournament 9 out of 10 times. Just the fact the casinos get more side action from the Bj tournament players.

Now we do have some players the casino may not want to play their regular tables, FINE, just let them and us know and they won't play or if they do kick them out, ban them do what you want and no one will say a word. I for one won't let someone thats been told not to play ruin tournaments for the rest of us. I can promise both the casinos and players that even players that have been asked no to play the regular tables will still come and play their tournaments if allowed and I'd be willing to bet that those players would still play the machines or other games (if allowed) while they were there, (not all but most).

The whole idea about tournament play is to be used as a draw to pull in players for the casino. The biggest problem is most of the marketing managers don't have a clue what they are doing, (I'm really not trying to be mean, just a fact). After all if you're trying to pull in players why offer a Saturday one day tournament where players come in and leave the same day? Then they wonder why it wasn't a success. Or the one that offer a tournament over two days (register on Friday, play Saturday and Sunday) then ruin it by using some asinine format that amounts to a coin toss on the last hand? they also handicap players by only advancing one player from each table, why because they can't figure out how to advance any more and make it workout correctly.

It's not rakes we need to start charging it is the mind set of the both the casinos and the players. Dear casinos some players are not going to give you that much action bottom line, either because they just don't like the game, just don't feel like playing, they may not be feeling well, and or the casino may not want their action, but by attending the tournaments they will still help build your prize pool which will draw in the players who do give you side action. As long as your getting room, food, and entry fees paid by these players you'll be coming out ahead, just stop giving away so many freebies such as rooms, food, ect... at the first and make them earn those comps. This seems to be the best way to increase casino profits to me not by charging the players more up front or out of the prize pool.

Addressing the skilled players, simple if the casino dosen't want them to play simply tell those players you request they not play there regular Bj tables, but the rest of the games feel free to play, but don't tell them they can't play the tournaments anymore or you'll be shoting yourself in the foot. The Stardust did that and dropped from 500-600 players to less then 250 withing a matter of years.