Sahara Tournament?

[slowsteps]

thank you everyone for your replies and feedback! you have given me a lot of food for thought.
when you say PH, you mean Planet Hollywood, right? i haven't read anything about their tournies.
thanks again, gang!
-t
"Harrington on Hold'em is all right, I guess." - Annette Obrestad

[PorkchopDJG]

I thought it was a decent Low Limit Tourney when I played the 11AM in October.
We had 60 runners and I ended up chopping it 5 ways for $380 at the final table. The dealers and floor did a pretty decent job. If you want to play a NL MTT for under $100 I would do either this Sahara one or Planet Hollywood as they are pretty similar.
If you can afford a little more the next step up would definitely be Caesars($200) or Venetian($180)

[bellatrix]

My thoughts on the Sahara tournament are that you get a lot of bang for your buck. However, you have to realize that when they take out like a third of the money out of the payout, that overall the tourney is not exactly a winning proposition. Still, the players are generally bad, so that it can be EV neutral. I have seen dealers having to explain the rules over and over again to players. But again, please look at the payout and the number of players entering and do the math: the poker room takes out a huge chunk of money out of the payouts.

From what I have seen, chopping is the rule and considering you have been playing poker for 4-5 hours and you are in a push or fold situation the last few rounds, it seems to be the most rational choice.

[psandman]

[ QUOTE ]
I thought it was a decent Low Limit Tourney when I played the 11AM in October.
We had 60 runners and I ended up chopping it 5 ways for $380 at the final table. The dealers and floor did a pretty decent job. If you want to play a NL MTT for under $100 I would do either this Sahara one or Planet Hollywood as they are pretty similar.
If you can afford a little more the next step up would definitely be Caesars($200) or Venetian($180)

[/ QUOTE ]

In fairness all my experience has been at the 7 PM tourney, perhaps the day shift staff is better.

[Photoc]

[ QUOTE ]
My thoughts on the Sahara tournament are that you get a lot of bang for your buck. However, you have to realize that when they take out like a third of the money out of the payout, that overall the tourney is not exactly a winning proposition. Still, the players are generally bad, so that it can be EV neutral. I have seen dealers having to explain the rules over and over again to players. But again, please look at the payout and the number of players entering and do the math: the poker room takes out a huge chunk of money out of the payouts.


[/ QUOTE ]

You guys keep harping on the "high rake". It's a low buy in tourney and overall the casino might make 25-40% in the rake from this tourney as they would if they had cash games going for the same amount of time/tables.

Basically, if a casino takes a rake of less than 10, they automatically lose money on every player that enters the tourney. Equipment costs, dealer costs, floor costs, drink costs, ect.. all factor into that $ amount. And not all of the so called "rake" is actually rake. You can ask how much of this the house actually takes and how much is a save for the staff.

[bav]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
My thoughts on the Sahara tournament are that you get a lot of bang for your buck. However, you have to realize that when they take out like a third of the money out of the payout, that overall the tourney is not exactly a winning proposition. Still, the players are generally bad, so that it can be EV neutral. I have seen dealers having to explain the rules over and over again to players. But again, please look at the payout and the number of players entering and do the math: the poker room takes out a huge chunk of money out of the payouts.


[/ QUOTE ]

You guys keep harping on the "high rake". It's a low buy in tourney and overall the casino might make 25-40% in the rake from this tourney as they would if they had cash games going for the same amount of time/tables.

[/ QUOTE ]
I hate the way AVP presents this info because it's misleading.

AVP shows the Sahara tourney is $42 with $14 taken out for a whopping 33% vig. 'cept 98% of player do the $20 rebuy, so it's $14 out of $62, which is 22.5%, and that includes the dealer toke.

Compare that to, say, Caesars 11pm tourney. $120, $30 vig for 25%. Or their 9am $65 tourney which takes $15 out for 23%.

Sahara is right in their pitching.

[Photoc]

Bav, you must have some ill will towards AVP. There is no where in my post did I mention anything about the way tourney details are listed on any site. I'm not sure why you'd bring it up as sort of an indirect attack against me or whatever your post was meant to do.

Onto the facts...


The thing is, it's not mine, or AVP's fault that some casinos give an "optional" add on that is basically a must take, or even a rebuy that is a may take. The information is streamlined as best as possible. But yet people keep coming down on AVP for listing it when it's the card rooms that word it and present it that way in reality. If it's not required, it is in fact listed as optional in the Details section of every tournament there.

[bav]

[ QUOTE ]
Bav, you must have some ill will towards AVP.

[/ QUOTE ]
Woawoawoa... back up a step.

I said I hate the way AVP displays the info.

That's it. That's all I said.

I LOVE AVP. It puts a lot of great info into an easy-to-access package. But I keep reading on 2+2, over and over, how Sahara has a 33% vig and how awful that is. When someone basically takes the list of tourneys and sorts by vig to weed out the really awful ones, Sahara gets unfairly punished.

I didn't instantly read something posted by Photoc and think "Ha! I'm gonna get that bastard." I read the post you were quoting and thought "ahah! I know where that misleading bit of info likely came from" and responded.

Mine was a post saying "Sahara's vig isn't so bad" not "AVP sucks".

And if it's true "people keep coming down on AVP", and "people" is "people in addition to bav", then accept it as constructive criticism. Fix it if you are convinced it should be fixed, ignore it if you wish but don't expect the commentary to stop.

Thicken thy skin, my friend. Running any service used by the public you're gonna get "feedback" you don't like. If you look for things to be pissed off about, you'll find 'em in everything you read. Sorry I tweaked a nerve.

[RR]

People need to realize that tournaments cost relatively the same no matter what the buy-in. If you want to play some small buy-in events you are going to pay a lot of juice. In the past tournaments existed to bring people into the room and the casino was willing to lose a little bit running them. With the growth of tournament poker (and the number of tournament only players) casinos have started trying to make money on their tournaments.