Has anyone ever been sent mailers to invitational black jack and poker tournaments. All prizes are paid out in promotional chips. Top prizes are ridiculous mid 5 figures to low 6 figures.

Auto entry is based on $xx,000 loss per trip or $xxx,000 loss per year at XYZ resort. Wondering if these are worth a trip out and if an invitation alone as an auto entry.

Thanks

These are given out as comps, right? So you have to lose a lot of money to get an invitation. I guess if the EV of the prize is greater than the cost of making the trip out there then it should be worth it. But then won't they expect you to gamble when you are there and thus lose more money?

The issue is these tournaments usually are rebuy/add-on, with horrible structure. So for example, a typical structure for a 200k tournament be might be:

Round 1: 40 entrants, 2 people advance. 2000 chips, 50/100 starting blinds, 15 min levels. Rebuys/add one are $2500 each, get you 5K in chips, max of 4 per entrant

Round 2: 2 tables, 2 players from round 1, rest auto advance based on how much they’ve lost in the casino. If you need an X k theo to get into round 1, you usually need a ~5x loss to get auto qualified into round 2. 3 players advance

Final round: 3 players from round 2, rest auto advanced based on how much they’ve lost in the casino (10-15x of the round 1 minimum theo)

Obviously will vary somewhat based on casino, prize level, whether multiple properties are involved, etc

If you have just a round 1 invite, and you’re not willing to spend a lot on rebuys/addons, your odds of winning are very very small.




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Thanks this makes so much more sense. It seems very similar to their slot tournaments where the first round is a total crapshoot but the more your theo is the more likely you enter the second / subsequent rounds.

The theos / actuals are quite eye opening. I can't imagine the offers real whales must be getting.

Played in an invitation poker tourney @ Wynn several years ago. Pretty much what therrinn describes above.... structure was god awful and the starting blinds were sky high relative to starting stack. You'd basically need to double-up every round (or very close to) or you'd be toast.

The prize money was pretty good all things considered, but you'd definitely have to get hit with the deck to build up enough stack to fade the structure.

I get these all the time, but the prize pool is usually smaller, usually around 50K total, with 10-20K going to first. I mostly play VP, low 6 figures coin-in monthly.

My next one this coming weekend is an exception, 100K for first. But it's a slot tournament, so no skill involved, unfortunately.

The most +EV tournament I've been in this year was actually a roulette tournament, because the payout was top-heavy, and few people had any idea how to bet anywhere close to optimal.

And I'll echo what's already been said about the poker tournaments, complete crapshoot, with some people rebuying 5-10x.