"Lack of participation" is their own fault. They keep scheduling these during the same weekends as the LV Nugget's BJT's. Now that could be a stroke of genius if they ran 'em on Sunday because they'd have a chance to snag traveling players who had already bombed out at the Nugget. But they keep setting 'em up for Saturdays. No out-of-towners for them, and the locals who are willing to pay $220 to Cowboy Bob are most likely going to give $100 or $500 to the Nugget for a guaranteed (and much fatter) prize pool.
Pioneer schedule all of their tournaments the year before. When you look at the web page they are all listed-I dont know if the GN plans that far ahead. Pioneer has had conflicts with the Laughlin GN before and get pounded by the GN because the prize pool is greater and the buy in lower. Funny, the Tourney director once told me the only thing they would never do is cancel because thats what pisses people off. BTW, sometimes the participation isnt that good when the calendar is clear. During snowbird season they can get up to 60 or so. Don Laughlin runs a lot of flights from mid west to Laughlin. You can check those at www.riversideresort.com
Guess I was going by the fact that I always hear of the LV Nugget tournaments before I hear about these. No matter, they still should consider taking steps to insure that they don't clash with the Nugget tournaments - other than perhaps running them on Sunday of the same weekends when they could catch many folks who were already bounced from the Nugget's early rounds on Saturday.
Ive mentioned this before- Another problem Pioneer has is the entry price is too high. In Laughlin there are about 50 every week mini players playing 2-3 times at the Avi. Of that group there are about 10 solid players and a few in betweens. I see very few and I mean very few play the Pioneer. Of the 10 who have solid ability maybe 2 at most. But at the GN Laughlin about half the total group plays maybe more. The GN has a $49buy $49 rebuy while the Pioneer is $220 buy $100 rebuy. Im not sure exactly how the Pioneer would handle a big crowd tho the casino has few BJ tables and runs only 2 during qualifying rounds. The Pioneer is a fun tourney tho, it offers a good single deck game and lots of full pay video poker to boot.
