Congratulations! You just became the manager of a Vegas poker room!

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi cpk:

The best $5-$10 blind games are probably at The Bellagio where they have a $1,000 buy-in restriction.

Best wishes,
mason

[PokrLikeItsProse]

I've come late to this thread and I have little experience with live poker and no experience with games at this stake. So, really, I'm just tossing out ideas with no idea of what is feasible or what the costs are, but sometimes a fresh, outside perspective is useful.

As I understand it, the main problem is that you believe that have a player base who would happily get on the wait list if a full game is going, but who are disinterested in starting off short-handed. Is this wrong? If you don't believe this, why would you bother to try and start a 30/60 game? The wrong approach is to try and bribe people. The correct approach is to ty to convince them that their views on short-handed play are wrong.

There probably exists a niche-market for short-handed games, but it sounds unprofitable for card rooms to be spreading short-handed games full time.

So, what about a "must-expand game." You cater to a short-handed niche and make short-handed play seem special. Something like steamboatin's "Game Starters Club," for instance. With 6max tournaments in the WSOP now, you establish your own 6max tournament as an advertising leader. Are there any short-handed touranments currently running regularly in Vegas? If not, you can run an ad in whatever are the appropriate places that says you have the only short-handed tournament in town. Perhaps you sign a marketing deal with an established player which includes him writing a book on short-handed play, if you can find a publisher to work with.

In your "must-expand" game, you promise to start a game at a set time (4pm? 6pm?)6-handed action for the first three hours or some other established time frame, during which you also have incentives such as reduced rake, perhaps. The table will not be allowed to go beyond six players. After three hours or whatever period is appropriate, you let the wait list on and move to a full table. Perhaps to avoid the shock of a game shift, you dribble the players in one by one, so that you add a new player each orbit.

Once you establish a full table running regularly so that the 6pm 6max guarantee time rolls around, you might keep that full table going and think about starting up another table as your "must-expand" game. If the 6max concept succeeds beyond your wildest dreams, you may even be having a couple of full 30/60 games that serve as feeders with people waiting to play in the only regular short-handed game in town. And if this works, you just lather, rinse, repeat at the next level you want to establish.

With the prevalence of short-handed games on the internet, you might get some young, egotistical punks stopping by on a trip to Vegas thinking that they can own this game.

You attract players who may not have bothered to come to your room before. You encourage locals comfortable with short-handed play to stop by and see if this game is attracting fish. You discourage local nits from playing this game because they're not going to come in for things such as reduced-rake just to play for 2-3 hours before moving on to their regular haunts.

And one possible marketing decision is that, if the U.S. political climate changes, you jump at working with an online poker room to offer a prize package, like a weekly or monthly short-handed tournament where the prize package is airfare, a hotel stay, meal money, entry into a tournament or two at your casino, and a stake at your 6max table (with a guaranteed jump to first on the wait list) where you have to play at least a set period of time before you are allowed to walk away and cash your chips (but you can break up your requirement over multiple days). The table stake would definitely come from the prize pool from entry fees, but you can offer the online poker room deals so that the prize package value is more than their actual cost. If you guarantee a steady drip of occasional potential fish who may have only played small stakes before satelliting into a tournament and, on top of that, are used to playing no limit instead of limit, might a local player not want to consider stopping by to see if a fish does? Of course, that's probably a pipe dream right now, but it's a contingency that you should consider.

One possible change that isn't related specifically to the topic at hand is to put a video monitor of the poker room waitlist by the pit games. Encourage your players to believe that if they have to wait an hour, the easiest place for them to do so is sitting down at blackjack, because they will be notified right away when their seat is ready. I just bring it up because one possible comp is a match play at blackjack or roulette or another table game. Actually, since they are there to play poker, maybe a play at specifically three-card poker is the best comp or a similar poker-ish table game. You promise to have the players notified when a seat opens by the staff there, but maybe they'll like it so much, they'll stay in there rather than play poker. Isn't it also a good idea for these same ideas to ensure that you have a bank of video poker games right by the poker room? I haven't been to Vegas very many times, so I don't know if that is something they regularly do to ensure that poker players don't wander too far off while waiting for a seat. Another possible comp is to promise that, if they get on the list for 6max and the table is full, they get a pass to the short line to the buffet. I suppose that is open to abuse by people who might get on the list just to avoid the line and not come back. But now I'm just rambling, so those are enough ideas for now.

P.S. Do I get anything if my idea is actually used?

[*TT*]

[ QUOTE ]
I've come late to this thread and I have little experience with live poker and no experience with games at this stake. So, really, I'm just tossing out ideas with no idea of what is feasible or what the costs are, but sometimes a fresh, outside perspective is useful.

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P.S. Do I get anything if my idea is actually used?

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Sadly, no - both because the room and the position is fictitious (but there are real poker rooms watching this thread carefully for our collective insight), and because you ideas unfortunately missed the mark. Its a very valiant attempt, but as you pointed out your experience is lacking in live play - they just wont work. Believe it or not, the prevalence of young internet punks who think they can own a short handed table does not exist like we would expect it to. Sad but true. Also your video monitor idea would get you fired if the upper level management heard about it, poker nets the average casino only 1/4 of what Blackjack does if not less. Thanks for trying though, there are no bad opinions... just unimplementable ones.

[PokrLikeItsProse]

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Also your video monitor idea would get you fired if the upper level management heard about it, poker nets the average casino only 1/4 of what Blackjack does if not less. Thanks for trying though, there are no bad opinions... just unimplementable ones.

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I thought that might get people to consider spending time waiting for their seat playing blackjack rather than playing at a smaller table in the poker room and possibly have them lose their money to the casino rather than other players, but then I've never understood the appeal of blackjack.

Is the general consensus that poker players usually only go to play poker and rarely play anything else? It reminds me of televised pro wrestling, which bring in less revenue than lower rated shows and rarely are enticed to watch the networks other show's. They're usually dependable for eking out a consistent profit and bolster a network's overall ratings.

[MicroBob]

For those of you interested in the NL discussion:

Out here in Tunica, Mississippi I'm pretty sure all the NL games are uncapped.
The 2/5 NL game at Horseshoe-Tunica it's not uncommon for multiple players to buy-in for $2k or $3k or more....with other players buying in for a more standard $500 and then others buying-in for the minimum $200.

1/2 NL at Gold Strike can also have some deepish stacks I believe.

I assume the fish are getting their money eaten at a pretty exponential rate much of the time, but the games still seem to be going pretty strong.
Still enough fish finding their way over to keep the games going I guess.

I see a lot of the same regulars there though. Not all are good players of course. Fairly tricky sometimes, but not necessarily good.
Live-straddling is really common in these games and in Tunica can be done from any position (outside the blinds).

So for the capped vs. uncapped debate I guess it will be interesting to see how the Tunica uncapped-NL games are doing 6-12-18 months down the road.

[Mason Malmuth]

Hi tourney guy:

I found your post quite interesting. Here are some comments, but please don't take my negative attitude as directed at you.

You wrote:

[ QUOTE ]
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.


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How do you know this? I'm sure this is just your speculation. It's my guess that Wynn and The Mirage do fairly well and that Ventian makes a little bit of money. I have no idea about Caesars since I never go there.

But the real question from the casino's point of view is not so much do they make money, but would something else in that location make more. (This has to be especially true at The Venetian since the poker room is located in prime real estate by being at the entrance of the casino.)

Also, some casino executives are starting to accept the idea that there is a spill over effect from poker in the sense that customers who are poker players first will also participate in some other games. So this makes poker rooms indirectly profitable.

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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.

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I don't believe either of these mean very much. First, very few players have been around for twenty years (like I have). Second, very few people really know Baldwin and I think he's now heading up the City Center Project and has very little to do with The Bellagio anymore.

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) 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.

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This is a very interesting point because in my opinion it shows a complete misunderstanding of how poker rooms operate, and unfortunately, much poker room management is thinking this way. Years ago, the $1-$5 stud games dropped the most rake, and these games are now all gone. Rooms that would have tried to stick with them would be gone with them (and many did close before the boom).

I believe that a poker room shouldn't be concerned with any particular limits. They should be concerned with building good games, and then the appropriate limits will come.

Here's an example of how not to do it. When The Venetian opened, they made an effort to get a $40-$80 limit hold 'em game going by essentially giving away the store. They made very little effort to make this game good probably because they had little understanding of how to make it good. So the game was filled with mostly tough players meaning it wasn't worth playing for no rake. Also, there was no $20-$40 underneath, and I'm not even sure if they had a $10-$20 under that. So the feeder games weren't there, and needless to say, it didn't last.

By the way, and I hope Venetian management reads this, I met with Kathy Raymond and part of her staff last summer and made many suggestions to them. This included many ways to make their games better such as better utilization of their rail, better location of their middle limit games, better thought our promotions -- I was especially critical of their three month freeroll promotion -- improving their brush system, ideas about how a host could be utilized (and my description of a host is very different from a glorified prop), and a number of other things. As far as I can tell, my conversation with them was a waste of time. Now they're paying the price.

Best wishes,
Mason

[bav]

Dunno how the rest of y'all do things, but I would donate a lot more playing -EV games in the casinos while I was waiting for a seat in the poker room if I could play until my poker seat was available. GVR used to (still does?) give out pagers if you ask so you can wander the casino and they'll beep you when your seat is ready. Palms pages the whole casino when your seat is available.

So...would Wynn/Venetian/etc rather I be hanging around in the poker room reading Cardplayer while I wait for a seat, or be out trying to hit a full house on video poker?

I'd believe The Palms gets more slot and table game action from poker players waiting for seats than the rooms that don't make an effort to let you play while you wait.

[Mason Malmuth]

[ QUOTE ]
If a pit player wants to go play poker for a bit they need to have a game that will keep their interest rather than having to leave the casino to play poker. If your only games are $2-$4 and $1-$2 NL you have nothing for a black chip pit player to play to you effectively do not have a poker room.

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I agree to a certain extent, but sometimes smaller limit poker games serve the purpose of keeping the spouse happy.

For as long as I can remember, and I won't mention a name because this player passed away recently, there was a very wealthy high limit stud player who played all the time. His wife also played a lot, and only felt comfortable in the smallest limits.

Best wishes,
mason

[Mason Malmuth]

[ QUOTE ]
Wynn, in 2006, gave out more comps than anyone. How do I know, I know Ms. McCall and other staff still employed there. I know what they gave out full buffets when you walked in the door, they had the 30/60 players ordering from the room service menu and that ain't cheap.

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Ms. McCall is no longer there and has been gone for quite sometime. The massive comps give away was stopped around the time she left.

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Wynn was not even close to meeting its financial goals because it gave way, way too much away. If you would like to know how I know, we can discuss that off line.

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I agree with this. It was clear to me from the beginning that they thought certain decisions, such as the hiring of Negreanu, and the fact that it was Wynn, would just fill this room. They found out the hard way that many of the players they needed to attract didn't care whether Negreanu played someone for huge stakes on a roped off table, and that they were looking for good games, not necessarily games in a new beautiful casino.

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2) Have staff who truly understanf rules and guest service

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This needs to be addressed too. Understanding rules and enforcing them strictly with no flexibility can damage a poker room. I have written about this in my book Poker Essays. The essay is called "The Collapse of Two Cardrooms."

Best wishes,
Mason

[RR]

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If a pit player wants to go play poker for a bit they need to have a game that will keep their interest rather than having to leave the casino to play poker. If your only games are $2-$4 and $1-$2 NL you have nothing for a black chip pit player to play to you effectively do not have a poker room.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree to a certain extent, but sometimes smaller limit poker games serve the purpose of keeping the spouse happy.

For as long as I can remember, and I won't mention a name because this player passed away recently, there was a very wealthy high limit stud player who played all the time. His wife also played a lot, and only felt comfortable in the smallest limits.

Best wishes,
mason

[/ QUOTE ]

This is true and the smaller games also provide players for the higher limit games, but the idea should be to spread games that work well with having higher limit games. I do think the 4-8 limit should be avoided (it was worked out at Bellagio), generally when 4-8 is spread it consumes all the limits around it making it harder for players to move up in limits. If 3-6 is spread the players can move up to 6-12 and then something around 10-20. The Bellagio 4-8 worked out because they wanted bigger jumps to 8-12 and 15-30.