Venetian $500,000 Freeroll (For poker players or casino high rollers)

[nation]

I can see letting in the regular who's very close...but I think letting the high rollers in is really unfair to the players who did put the hours in at the expense of other better games.

[Joe O]

Complaining about this does not make you a nit. It means you actually have some backbone. Are people confused because this is being called a freeroll? It's anything but free. 150 hours in the poker room equals a lot of money paid in rake or time charges. The Venetian is not a charity. They are running this promotional event to get people to pay more money to play poker. Obviously they expect to generate more than 500k in extra rake by running this promotion.

They certainly should not mislead the players contributing that money about the value of the promotion. If they turned the 500k into 5k, would people have a right to be upset then? Obviously, letting in high limit players with 125+ hours doesn't change things much. Neither would letting in 5 or 6 high rollers. But if they let in 50 people who aren't regulars, there is a significant change in the value of the promotion.

Of course the Venetian can do pretty much whatever they want. No one is arguing they do not have the right to do that. People are arguing that it is a bad idea for them to do this, because lying to customers doesn't usually work well long term. If they piss off the players working towards this freeroll, they won't get the extra money the promotion was designed to bring in in the first place. It's customer service 101.

[DayTripping]

[ QUOTE ]
Complaining about this does not make you a nit. It means you actually have some backbone. Are people confused because this is being called a freeroll? It's anything but free. 150 hours in the poker room equals a lot of money paid in rake or time charges.

[/ QUOTE ]

You're wrong. It is completely free. The money you pay in rake during those 150 hours provides you with a clean, safe, comfortable place to play poker and professional dealers to run the games for you. They are throwing a $500,000 freeroll on top of that completely free of any additional charge. I'm going to laugh if one of you guys who is bitching ends up winning this thing.

[Photoc]

[ QUOTE ]
I can see letting in the regular who's very close...but I think letting the high rollers in is really unfair to the players who did put the hours in at the expense of other better games.

[/ QUOTE ]

IMO, if they are a regular and are close, that player is going to make sure they have the req'd number of hours anyways. They aren't going to take the chance of being short a few hours and wasting that chance at some good $ besides what they might have made by playing the live games.

[bav]

This is all a fairly academic debate until someone finds out fersure whether Venetian is doing this. What the debate tells us, though, is that there is a large collection of players who would feel cheated if this happened. Which wouldn't be good for the Venetian. They can weigh the pros and cons of pissing off some subset of the poker players they were trying to attract vs the benefit they get from schmoozing the highrollers.

[52s]

[ QUOTE ]
They can weigh the pros and cons of pissing off some subset of the poker players they were trying to attract vs the benefit they get from schmoozing the highrollers.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wouldn't be the first time for the Venetian...

[ QUOTE ]
venetian casino to pay $1m over rigged contest

The Venetian is paying $1m in fines after the gaming board found that executives rigged a 2002 contest to compensate a high roller who had lost a lot of money.

The complaint and settlement show a casino executive hid the winning ticket for the SUV in his shirt sleeve and pretended to draw it randomly. Casino officials reported the incident to gambling regulators shortly after receiving information about the phony drawing.

Link

2 other prizes in the contest were rigged too. Moral of the story: don't buy a new SUV, just high roll at the Venetian?

[/ QUOTE ]

Found the quote above while doing a search and landing here. The original story (which was on sfgate.com) is long vanished.

I'm sure the board would like answers, but I heard through the grapevine just yesterday that Lee Vinocur was removed from the position as poker room manager at the Venetian a couple days ago.

[PokerFink]

Ugh. Didn't we do this like two weeks ago in the other thread? It's a HALF A MILLION DOLLAR [censored] FREEROLL. Who cares if they lower our equity from $1000 to $900. It's free money. It's a lot of free money. Go away.

For the record, I'm logging 200 hours in eight weeks to qualify for this thing, and I coulden't care less if they invite a hundred highrollers. It's a HALF A MILLION DOLLAR [censored] FREEROLL. Plus it's encouraging other casinos (Wynn) to set up simiar promotions.

[Howard Burroughs]

"I was impressed with Lee's appearance on these forums the past few weeks and stated that it will actually make a difference in me playing at the Venetian on my next trip to Vegas. This doesn't really mean a lot since I don't get to Vegas often anyway. But he's trying to attract customers and it was working on me...and I'm sure on several others reading those threads."

Lee is no longer with the Venetian poker room. Not sure what that means (in terms of the promo), but I've already got my hours in.




Happy pokering,

Howard

[Howard Burroughs]

"I'm sure the board would like answers, but I heard through the grapevine just yesterday that Lee Vinocur was removed from the position as poker room manager at the Venetian a couple days ago."

True. Two days ago.


Howard

[Photoc]

[ QUOTE ]
"I'm sure the board would like answers, but I heard through the grapevine just yesterday that Lee Vinocur was removed from the position as poker room manager at the Venetian a couple days ago."

True. Two days ago.


[/ QUOTE ]

These guys are running through directors, shift managers, floor people, and dealers since before opening like crazy. At this rate, there won't be any qualified people to run this place.