[Fish R Friends]

TT, you're drivin' me nuts. All I can do is think about ideas, creativity, and solutions. Nice hand sir.

As discussed gimmicks and jackpots do not necessarily work for what we want. Comps, I still think do. But chips, jackets, hats, etc. are passé.

Marketing approach: We need visibility. Saturate the market. But, as a business, we may have a limited budget.

We can’t really change our room physically by blowing out walls, adding lounges, creating bars, etc.

This is a fascinatingly tough problem. My suggestion was going to be that of technology. It is a must. The all over paging system works. My employer uses it and they can simultaneously e-mail, phone w/ recorded message, text, and fax if necessary whomever and everyone they want to or need to for whatever purpose. We can’t expect our poker players to take on the added responsibility of carrying something else. Good call on this use of technology.

What about adding it to closed-circuit-tv? Dedicate a channel to the poker room. We could have a rolling list of names, games, etc. playing. NO added cost to the casino as you can connect it to the card system as well. Put TVs in well traveled areas of the casino: bars, lounges, pits, sports book, etc. Maybe even connect the jumbo-tron outside to scroll the list of games/players in the loop with the other casino advertisement. At first this might be negative, but once we reach our goal of having a full room, it would be great.

For some added expense, you could get rid of the pamphlet idea and produce some “commercials/PSAs” for our very own poker channel. Heck these commercials can even be aired during the WPT / WSOP nationally. This is down the road, unless the VP can send an extra comma the way of the marketing department. We could advertise our new angle in the magazines.

Since we want to keep players in the room to avoid problems with lists, why not make some money at the same time and get them accustomed to the short handed game. How? Set up a row of several speed tables in the room. Yes, like the PokerDome-style tables. But, no waiting list as – first come first serve just like the blackjack tables. Players would kill time and be there to wait. Poker room makes money from even a small/reduced rake. We could even run a variety of levels. Foot traffic sees a game that’s familiar and less intimidating that they can jump right on to play.

Create a comp system that is weighted more heavily for the games 30/60 and above. Plus allow players with a better rating (the e-bay style) to use or transfer comps. Not sure if casinos offer this or not but, as an example. Vegas visitors like to play higher limits, but BRs are not always huge so, PRRs help as VV can play the cash instead of paying for a room. Heck, staying with a Vegas buddy at his house helps but the wife gets mad when drunks come home from a late night at the casino. A win-win would be to allow the Vegas poker playing buddy to get poker playing friends in town to play at that casino. Local players would have more incentive for loyalty as they can be rewarded and ego stroked as their buddies get the high roller treatment if they play poker. A regular could be a great advertiser and even poker recruiter with word of mouth and bringing in a friend every couple of months. No out of town friends, they could their bonus comps throughout the casino. The higher-limit player we want playing in our room have a wife/girlfriend. Transfer comps to spa packages. Bah, standard, right?

Finally, develop a relationship with travel agencies, travel websites, and poker rooms throughout the nation to pump our poker room and our perks. Agents with the most poker trip bookings during various periods get a nice trip to Vegas and luxury stay in our casino on us.

Perhaps, create a poker tourney that is multi-table, 6-max, limit, run qualifiers with many poker rooms across the country and have them come to our poker room for the big tourney finals, preceded by several qualifier days, and a focus on short handed games only during a two week period. Maybe even do this tourney bracket style with the qualifiers using numerous SNGs short-handed. This could be huge. Heck, even get a production crew into film it and sell it to stations threw out the country; we all know poker on TV still sells.

I may have recycled some ideas and stolen others but, those are my thoughts.