The Bellagio is in the midst of its premiere event the WPT Championship series.

Event number one the $1500 buyin nl event drew just over 100 people. In past years this event had a line stretching as far as you could see at the buyin window, had overflow tables in the main poker room, and had a list of alternates waiting to get in.

Todays 5K nl event drew a whopping 27 players a total of 3 tables were in play in the entire Fontana room.

Right now, the only tourney competition is coming from the Venetian, yet the Caesars Palace circuit event starts in a few days as well...

What can the Bellagio do to get its players back?

Mike matusow said that people are simply sick of nl tourneys and that Bellagio should go back to its old format of offering tourneys in all the games.

I wouldnt mind that idea or possibly having a 5 pm tourney every day like the wsop does with an alternative game.

Other ideas include scaling back the buyins to accomodate more players in this bad economic situation, giving more chips to compete with the deep stack events at venetian and caesars, or adding more levels.

Any thoughts, suggestions, comments?

give all the retired folks in vegas the 50k+ that each of them lost in the last year?

More like how can 2+2 get this Chainsaw guy to stop making new threads.

I think the recession might have something to do with this. It does have far reaching tentacles.

but this is actually a good thread

I hate the B, to damn TRENDY!,

stop having whats-his-name run the tournaments with his ******ed rules and structures?

The Bellagio should hire Greenspan and try to figure out this economic crisis. Or perhaps create a stimulus/bailout package for all the busto pros. Or make online poker illegal to play in the 50 states. Just a few ideas.

Offer 10 time as many chips and start the blinds at 300-600 and they'll come back. In all seriousness, offering other games, better hotel rates for tourney players. I like the buy-in levels instead of all these other tourneys that only have a few events of 1K or greater. Kinda of a bitch to be spending $200 plus a day on food and lodging to play a bunch of $300-500 events. If they have a badugi/TD mix event it will draw at least a few of the higher limit pros that play in the upper section. I guarantee I'll be there for it. I actually appreciate the smaller starting stacks at Bellagio as if you win a signifigant pot during the first level or too it actually matter and affect you tournament equity positively unlike these event that start you with 1000 BB's when you can win a hug pot and it hardly matter. They only add to add in about 3 more levels to make the tourneys signifigantly better 500-1000 being the most vital. 150-300 second. I mean they could add only those two and it would be a major improvement in the smoothness of the level jumps. Free massages would be nice too. They offered that at the WSOP Circuit at Harrah's AC for chrissake's. A ****in' C has it. I mean isn;t Bellagio supposed to be the epitome of luxury, then give us some free massages

stop raping the players. they've taken millions out of the poker economy. they charge an arm and a leg for a bottle of water in the gift shop. rooms overpriced. no real comps to speak of. etc. etc. so much better value for the money in tournament fields too, a venetian $500 is so much more +EV than a 27-player $3k at bellagio. lower your buyins jack, it's ridiculous to think that you're lowest buyin is $1500. this isn't the WSOP where you can wave $1500 buyins in the air and attract 4,000 players. it's just the bellagio. maybe if they had a schedule of tournaments with other games, various buyin amounts, and scheduled their events to not directly conflict with everything else (you're no longer the center of the poker world!) then they'd draw bigger fields again.

and quit having a $15k+ buyin every 4 months

Finally sketchy and I agree on something!

+1 for Sketchy

plz don't cut me chainsaw. and yeah, it seems pretty obv the recession isn't helping, but bellagio is just shooting themselves in the foot with all that crap i mentioned.

spread something other than NLHE , lower buyins, better structures... duh

pay Stars so they don't have their spring tourney series coincide with bellagio tourney series?

I dunno I think all of these series are too long and there is no reason for anyone to actually travel to these places to play.

They should also try slapping guarantees on main events.

Just do what Borgata does, they seem to be the only one getting it right.

Live poker is so 2 years ago

how about instead of like 10-15 tournaments per series, they just run like 6 tournaments... $500, $1,500, $2,000, $2,500, $3,000, $5,000, and then supers & main event. maybe put guarantees on them like people said... $500 250k gtd. would ALWAYS hit 500 players, they just have to advertise it and they will come (for sure).

then, what they need to do is schedule their tournaments like no more than 2 months in advance so they know what tournaments will be when and they can make sure they aren't conflicting with other major events.

and yeah, they need to add a 500-1,000 and maybe a 5,000-10,000 level too, at the very least. maybe one more early level before the antes, 75-150 or even better add in an extra level after the antes kick in maybe 150-300

If you have smaller buyin events at the beginning, smaller rolled players will show up, cash in events, and use that money/confidence to buy into later events.

When you only run high buyin events, those people either buy into one, or don't show up at all.

When I was at the LAPC, I met so so many people who cashed in that first 325, and spend every freaking penny buying into events afterward.

Buy pokerstars

To summarize what has been said above and what I agree with:

1- Reduce buy-ins significantly...

2- Make it a deeper stack tourney, not necessarily as deep as Venetian or Borgata, but deeper than current Bellagio tourneys

3- Add levels..2+3 = better structure

4- Reduce room-rates for the tournaments...they still charge $149 for weekdays, but they are offering special rates to NON-PLAYING GENERAL PUBLIC at $99 to fill-up the rooms

5- Reduce the length of the tournament...3 week long tourneys with buy-ins that high can't be sustained in this economy...and this will be true for at least the next couple of years as EVERYONE's assets, cash or otherwise, has significantly declined and bankrolls are depleted...

6- Add guarantees to ALL events

7- Add other events..PLO, Stud, etc....Bellagio has become the home of the No-Limit tourneys only....

8- Add a second tourney every day at 6ish for those who get knocked out, but this should also be a low buy-in event...their daily $1K drains your roll quickly after a few days

8- Reduce the number of MAJOR events they have each year...and add a few smaller events lasting just a few days in between...similar to what Borgata does with their deep stack tourneys...these smaller tourneys can be very creative, as they cater to a very LARGE local population of pros...for example, a $2000 buy-in deep stack tourney that runs for 2- days, with a prize package of: 1 buy-in to WSOP ME, 1 buy-in to WPT ME, 1 buy-in to another Bellagio ME + 10K in cash ...

P.S. most of these suggestions can be followed by many TDs...Tab at Borgata has done a superb job in this front, negotiating lower rates for rooms, improving the structures, and adding various limit, Stud, PLO games...and it showed in the very strong numbers for their January tournament

Comp each entrant one of the girls that hang around the bar. Sex sells imo.

i laughed a solid 4 minutes, ty

sklansky joke suppressed FTW

Just wait til the Circuit event gets going next door . . .

Yeah, guarantees are the obvious answer. People not wanting to show up spreads like a virus, a bunch of people say they're not showing up, then people think not enough people are going to show up, and then no one shows up. Only thing to change that is a guarantee.

Tab drew over 900 people at the Borgata for a $1500+150 deep stack a few weeks ago. It had a $500K guarantee (which wasn't at all ambitious, but it was enough to insure that everyone would show up) and the best structure for a $1500 event in history.

Edit: Something like guarantees on the first and last events and at least 1 event in the middle would probably do the trick.