For instance, let's say you need some number of players to make the guarantee. The house advertises that if they get some number higher than the guarantee (like 75% over), they'll take 3.5% for the staff instead of 3.0%. Would you be ok with this?

No.

More players, more dealer downs but bigger prize pool to take 3% of.

What would be the logic behind your suggestion?

Let's say you go grocery shopping and buy a bottle of milk for $1. Now if you buy 3 they tell you it costs $3.50, would you be ok with this?

It actually should be opposite, i.e. More customers, average price per person should go down.

Not a very helpful suggestion for poker players.

Why?
The "costs" of running the tournament are not fixed.
More players means more tables and dealers tied up for a longer time.

But the fixed costs are now spread over a larger customer base.

No, that's absurd. The marginal cost for running a tournament should be decreasing, not increasing. But more importantly, I would like to know the cost of entering the tournament before I am actually required to pay for entry.

There is standard 'price breaks' in almost all of industry .. when you buy more, the price goes down. Why do you think Mom and Pop stores go broke first? The only industry that I can think of that 'punishes' 'more' business is the restaurant business when they force a minimum gratuity on large parties that inconvenience the 'normal' flow of table turnover.

The venue should figure out the employee cost to them per player and any 'residual' effects that an abundance of wait list players will have on their operations. There is a portion of the rake that is set up to cover 'overhead'/administration and set up of the event and once that threshold is met then that is pure extra profit. The portion of the rake that is set up to cover employee costs is a flat rate and continues to be covered with each entry fee.

Are you also suggesting that they charge less when they don't meet the guarantee?

I do think this is an interesting conversation when you compare a venue with a fixed capacity with a venue that may try to accommodate all the registered players at the start of Level 1. OP is probably also considering that the tournament will last longer (in theory) the more players you have involved. I still say that this 'cost' should be considered only in the 'employee cost' component of the rake breakdown.

Another interesting conversation would be ... Do you give players a discount to show up on Day 1A or 1B as opposed to 1C. Typical regional events (MSPT, HPT, WSOPc) get more players on 1C than 1A/1B combined. Why no incentive to play in the smaller field? I've even seen this in WPT events, but not to the degree of the other tours. Some events offer 'biggest stack forward' as an incentive to play multiple Day 1s.

OP, interesting thought but I'm not so sure which direction you are stirring the pot here? GL

Actually that is exactly what a guarantee is.

AndI have seen tournaments where the vig increased with the player pool. But not structured as OP puts forward. Rather there was a set prize pool. So effectively there is no vig until the breakeven number of players enter the tournament. Thereafter every entry is 100% vig.

I wouldn't mind if the first x players paid less to enter the tournament than later players. As long as you know what the cost will be to you at the time of entry (as well as your effective equity in the prize pool).

Costs don't necessarily go down with more entrants. If they exceed the capacity of their dealers, they may have to offer overtime to extra dealers.

But the simple solution is to cap the entrants. Increasing the rake mid-registration is going to be ... unpopular.

On reality it would not be terribly unpopular as few people actually pay attention to tournament rake.

I get the motivation that would make them do something like this. If you have an edge over the field you get a bigger ROI with more players and so you make more money. The house is like "hey wait a minute so our regs earn more money while our vig is flat? wtf is that" and raise it with bigger fields. What makes it ******ed is that losing recs are now going to have to pay more vig to lose more money to the regs which is insane.

Nobody in the industry thinks this way. Nobody cares about how much a player is winning or their return on investment.

The sole consideration is the casino's return. And pricing for casino tournaments or anything involves a balance between charging as much as you can for your product and service and not driving away your customers to competitors or out of the market.


If I was going to construct an argument in favor of this form of pricing it would be this. Players are generally ambivalent to the rake or rake structure of a tournament and focus instead on what they on the payout structure. As a tournament field gets bigger the payouts get bigger and most guests like to see bugger payouts. So by taking less rake for smaller turnouts the you goose up the smaller payouts making guests happy and more likely to return. Once the prize pool gets to a certain size the players are going to be happy because they see a big number and the marginal utility of increases to the prize pool is decreased. If they look up at the board and see first place pays $100,000k and they feel that is a big number .... most players wouldn't be significantly influenced by the the payout that had the spot making an extra half percentage. $100,500 isn't making a difference to them,

But when the turnout is low and the prize pool is low adding even small amounts helps the perception of value.

Similarly if I were running a progressive BBJ I would have a higher percentage of the Jackpot drop go to the main jackpot while it is low, as it increased I would decrease the amount of the drop going to the main jackpot and increase the amount going into backup jackpot(s).

Well said.

Players enter tournaments all the time without knowing how much they'll get paid for first, second, etc.

...

I do like the idea that the first X players pay a certain percentage into the prize pool and the next Y players pay a slightly higher percentage into the prize pool.

When you say you like this idea are you saying it as a player or the entity running the tournament.

Are you envisioning this operating as the first x players get a discount or as the OP was talking about ... players pay the same the only difference is how much goes to the house and how much goes to the prizepool.

I can't imagine why a player would prefer what op is talking about.

That was the OP.

I think he just doesn't like late entries.

I think I misspoke and I can't edit it. Entries past a certain point would pay a higher vig.

Running the tournament.


All players pay the same amount but players after a certain point add a lesser percentage of their buy in to the prize pool. So for a $50 tournament, the first group of people would have their $50 split $48.50 to the prize pool and $1.50 to the staff. The 21st person and everyone after would also pay $50, but $48.00 would go to the prize pool and $2.00 would go to the staff.

There's really no benefit to the players other than the staff would be incentivized to get more players into the tournament.

Dislike low down rates. The EO list starts to look more and more tempting when you can see that you'll do more tournament downs instead of cash downs for the day. Some places will pay tournament downs into the paycheck, so not only do you not get the money right away, it will be less than the money you could have made from cash tables.

So you are not talking about House vig.

You are talking about more money for the dealers.

Im not ceratin what he is talking about. I thought now he was trying to discourage late entries because he doesn;t want to deal tournament.

While this approach may make sense to a dealer in a room where all table will be in use and they would rather see the table opened as a cash game than a tournament game.... if that is not the case here he seems to think dealers do better off not having any games to deal than having a bunch of tournaments. IF having a bunch of tournaments makes dealers sign the eo list .... what does having up downs and dead spreads do?

No, it would be the percentage taken out of the prize pool for the staff.

No, I just want to increase the down rate.

why just raise it for later entries?

That's unfair. I want the staff to get paid a little more without much harm to the players.

I've seen a lot of players who don't want to play a tournament then decide to play it once the prize pool has gotten high enough. They don't care much about tournament fees or how much they are contributing to the prize pool, they care about that juicy first place payout. I figured maybe at that point, you take a higher percentage of their buyin and give it to the staff.

Or maybe I'm not understanding your question. If you tell early entries that the house is only taking 3%, then you shouldn't spring it on them 2 hours into the tournament that we're not taking 3.5% because we've exceeded the guarantee by 25%. Instead, tell any new players past 25% over the guarantee that the vig is 4%, so their buyin is contributing 1% less to the prize pool than the early entries. Everyone pays the same buy in though.