Will B&M rake go up again?

[SellingtheDrama]

If the room is good enough, games will move. Atlantic City is an example with the advent of the Borgata over the last few years.

[LuckyTxGuy]

Also I think something that has been totally over looked in that article and in this thread is...... While the poker player may not be making the house rich he is very often bringing along a wife, girlfriend or other friends who do not play poker but instead plays slots and table games. How many times have you been at the poker table and seen the wife come up to the husband, obviously ready to leave but hubby is having too good of a time playing poker, so he peels off a few $20's or even a $100 and tells the wife to go play some more slots. She disappears for about an hour and shows back up with her hand out. He gives her some more money; repeat.

I know that not every poker player brings along a slot player every time they come to the casino but it does happen alot of the time and usually it's the slot player who is forced to stay longer than they wish and dump more money into the house's back pocket. That's got to be worth considering.

[*TT*]

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It would centralize the games, and because of economies of scale, it would help sustain and support games that currently have tepid or infrequent support (not Holdem, limits over 5/10L or 1/2NL).

These games are much easier to get going from a large congregated player base. Nowadays if you want to play a midlimit game such as say 15/30, you have to check 3-4 casinos to find the one spreading it today. That's alot of work for a donator to go through, and he may skip poker this trip.

Create a destination for him to go knowing he can play the 15/30 or 20/40 game he wants, and he'll happily go there.

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I'm not coninvced this would happen even if such a room were built. Is everybody playing midlimit (limit and NL) from the Bellagio suddenly going to move to the new gigantic room? What's their motivation? Venetian is trying (or has tried) to get these games and they just don't go. Why would they go in a brand-new gigantic room? If you closed all the individual rooms in town and opened up this mega-room, I think you'd get this effect for sure but I don't see why people would leave the room(s) that already spread the games they want to go to a new one just because it's large and centrally located.

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Bellagio is expected to lose it's poker crown in two years when City Center opens. Obviously the ideal solution is to have City Center open this mega poker room. But realistically if someone like Chip if Doyal put their name on the room as a competitor to Bellagio - and they took someone of Doug Dalton's caliber it could happen. It wouldn't be easy and timing would be critical, but it is possible.

[SellingtheDrama]

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Also I think something that has been totally over looked in that article and in this thread is...... While the poker player may not be making the house rich he is very often bringing along a wife, girlfriend or other friends who do not play poker but instead plays slots and table games. How many times have you been at the poker table and seen the wife come up to the husband, obviously ready to leave but hubby is having too good of a time playing poker, so he peels off a few $20's or even a $100 and tells the wife to go play some more slots. She disappears for about an hour and shows back up with her hand out. He gives her some more money; repeat.

I know that not every poker player brings along a slot player every time they come to the casino but it does happen alot of the time and usually it's the slot player who is forced to stay longer than they wish and dump more money into the house's back pocket. That's got to be worth considering.

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Not to mention a casino loves the concept of this: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showfl...=1#Post10528755

[redfisher]

Given that MGM/Mirage owns Bellagio and Mirage and numerous small rooms, this would be very easy to achieve. Close all your other rooms and move the employees to City Center.

I'm not convinced that MGM cares to do this. My obviously not very informed opinion is that the large California card rooms exist essentially because poker is one of the few forms of non-Indian gaming allowed there. Given that all the major Vegas operators have licenses for almost any kind of gambling game, I think they would rather concentrate on the games they like.

[magoo]

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From gamingtoday.com

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"I’ll be visiting some poker rooms in Oklahoma, Canada and elsewhere," he said. "It’s refreshing to see operators who are open to new ideas.

"These are the operators who will survive and prosper into the 21st century and beyond."

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With the inevitable decline in poker room popularity and the closing of rooms in the near future, I can definately see this happening.

http://www.gamingtoday.com/index.cfm...amp;AIN=781956

edited to change title for clarity

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I noticed Mr Awada's somewhat bizarre, omission of electronic poker tables. Perhaps, because he's not connected to the money end of the e-table business.

[KipBond]

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You're paying the house something in the vicinity of $10/hr to sit at a poker table. Awada's claim is there is nothing else you can do in the casino for that kinda price, and therefore they need to jack up the prices. That's blatantly false. Pure fabrication. A lie.

I stand by my math and my statement that Awada is FOS. There are other forms of gambling you can engage in that cost you less than poker.

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Definitely. For example, BlackJack (standard 6/8-deck rules; 3:2 payout on BJ); House has a 0.5% edge. At $10/bet, 40 hands/hr, that's $2/hr the house makes from you. I guess they can make a lot more than that from people who aren't playing correctly, though.

Anyway, like bav said, there are a lot of other games where the house doesn't have that big of an edge to pull in more than $10/hr per person.

[redfisher]

A) Current BJ is not a 0.5% HA game.

B) No table game in Vegas holds less than 5-10%. Just like in poker, most players play badly.

[bav]

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B) No table game in Vegas holds less than 5-10%. Just like in poker, most players play badly.

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I think we can all agree that in general table games do pretty well for the house. And if Awada just said the profit from poker is anemic compared to what equivalent utilized table games in that space would bring in, there'd be less controversy. We'd still be arguing over whether there'd actually be more or less incremental profit for the casino (when they have 50 tables and never have more than 30 going outside of major holidays anyway, replacing the poker room with another 10 BJ games isn't going to help).

But could we make the same argument about restaurants? Do they bring as much per square foot as table games? And the curio shops? And whatever else is in and around the casino that isn't gaming? Replace all that with gaming space! Well, no, that isn't how it works. You NEED those other things.

I'm a bit curious... does a poker room bring in more $ than a restaurant would for the casino if placed in that space? People keep comparing poker to other table games and slots. But I see poker as the something of the equivalent of restaurants and shopping--one of those ancillary things the casinos have to have to get a certain set of people to visit.

I just took particular umbrage at Awada's statement that poker players are undercharged. *I* am not undercharged. I pay more per hour to play poker than I do to put my $3 passline bets down at Casino Royale.

[Clarkmeister]

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B) No table game in Vegas holds less than 5-10%. Just like in poker, most players play badly.

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I think we can all agree that in general table games do pretty well for the house. And if Awada just said the profit from poker is anemic compared to what equivalent utilized table games in that space would bring in, there'd be less controversy. We'd still be arguing over whether there'd actually be more or less incremental profit for the casino (when they have 50 tables and never have more than 30 going outside of major holidays anyway, replacing the poker room with another 10 BJ games isn't going to help).

But could we make the same argument about restaurants? Do they bring as much per square foot as table games? And the curio shops? And whatever else is in and around the casino that isn't gaming? Replace all that with gaming space! Well, no, that isn't how it works. You NEED those other things.

I'm a bit curious... does a poker room bring in more $ than a restaurant would for the casino if placed in that space? People keep comparing poker to other table games and slots. But I see poker as the something of the equivalent of restaurants and shopping--one of those ancillary things the casinos have to have to get a certain set of people to visit.

I just took particular umbrage at Awada's statement that poker players are undercharged. *I* am not undercharged. I pay more per hour to play poker than I do to put my $3 passline bets down at Casino Royale.

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Good post. It's hard to do apples to apples, but Poker makes more than most restaurants in most places. It makes more than retail, in most places. There are obviously exceptions in some of the Vegas high-end casinos, but that's the rule is my guess.

Poker is virtually impossible to compare to anything in this discussion though. Yes, there are ancillary revenue streams. Poker is really difficult to run well though. The customer base is extraordinarily difficult. Margins are usually very low, and this is in Vegas where there's a low tax rate. Margins are anemic outside of AC, LV and Mississippi.

When people talk about pricing, it's not the same as, say, craps. In craps, in the long run, the house is the only one "taking money off the table". Not the case in poker obviously. I've always thought that a good 30-60 or higher pro in Vegas basically got one of the all-time great deals in any business. Overhead of $16/hr including tips for an earn of say $50/hr plus free food and drinks. That's a gross profit margin of almost 75% with side benefits. There isn't a small business owner in the country that wouldn't be thrilled with that. I've always been thrilled at how cheap midlimit is in Vegas.