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Pretty interesting thread....a few points here.

1) As the manager of a poker room, you have 3 goals:

A) Meet revenue projections
B) Comply with Gaming and internal rules
C) Meet revenue projections

All of the ideas sound great, but the problem if A) and C) are not met, you will be out like a trout.

Rooms like Wynn and Venetian used the 'give it all away to the players' approach, and while the rooms might be busy, they are not profitable......I can assure you of that!!!

(This is not a flame, so please do not be affended if you are a shill for W or V.....but fact is, those rooms make no money)

Or one can go the Caesars or Mirage room, give the players nothing.....those rooms are not very profitable either.

The key problem as I see it today is that Vice Presidents in these hotels all are chasing the Bellagio.

The want Bellagio revenue levels and they want Bellagio business levels.

Problem is they are not the Bellagio. They do not have carte blanche with the pros....the do not have 4 major poker tournaments a year that drive huge business...they do not have 20 year relationships with their clientele (dating back to Mirage) like the Bellagio does. They do not have a CEO who was a world champion like Bellagio does.

These factors make it almost impossible to succeed.

All I can tell you is that if you are a new Poker Room Manager, you need to try to do 3 things:

1) Get you annual goal set as low as possible, because all the hotel presidents want to beat the Bellagio in one year, and it ain't going to happen.

2) Make sure you hire floorpeople that know the rules and have a heart for service.

3) Sit the games that drop the money.....30/60 is a waste of time, and to get those level of players from the Bellagio, you are going to have to lose money, and trust me, you cannot afford that as a poker room manager.

Get thoughts like 'rakeback' and 'freerolls' out of your mind.

Finally - Hope you have a GM/VP who understands that beating the Bellagio is a pipe dream.

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You made a few errors in your post, lets discuss.

1) Wynn doesn't give a lot away in comps, you are mistaken about that. They probably give out comps on par with the ratio at Bellagio. Although I would venture to guess that based on what we know it takes to run and build the Venetian its not turning a profit, but where is the proof for your basis that the Wynn doesn't turn a profit? Or that the Mirage doesn't turn a profit? I think thats a bold statement that you made, please back it up with proof rather than assumptions. Profit is measured in many ways; yes its no secret that poker is not as profitable as the equivalent square footage of table games, but poker is a marketable draw and most rooms of the size discussed in your post do turn a yearly profit. Keep in mind that poker profits are not necessarily measured on the same scale as other game revenue generators, by your scale that means the movie theaters at GVR, Palms, and Red Rock should be shut down since they don't generate the revenue that the poker rooms do. And no more Keno either, because that doesn't bring in profits the size of blackjack. These games are apples and oranges, and casino management today commonly acknowledge that while poker profits are smaller than table games they are vital to the casino economy.

2) This thread is not about opinions, its only about solutions. It doesn't matter if you think the management's philosophy is wrong, you have a job to do and if you don't get it done you will be replaced, thats the premise of this thread - to really think like poker room management does as if their job depended on the directives given to them.

PS: Some friends of mine and I were chatting about this thread last night, there is truly some innovative thinking found here - it once again shows how the 2+2 think tank can often prove wiser than hardened pros.

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