Oh come on now, stop in the new CAZ room, take a look around, make sure you are well within ear shot of a floor and say "Wow I expected so much more, real TVs and some real action. This place is dead! Oh well, Vegas here I come!" and walk out.

And there's the fact that the Indians rake the game to death. That reduces the number of winning sessions which cuts the number of fish eager to come back.

I don't see how the fort's promos are only rewarding the loyal players at the expense of other players. They have one promo where you get extra cash for playing lots of hours within a 2 week period and the other where if you play cash games for up to 3 hrs before the daily bounty tourney you get bonus bounties (not extra chips).

What else could they do to attract more people? They have the best promos of any casino in the area. The rake is "only" 2+3. They only spread 3-6 and have a bad location. They used to have high limit games years ago? Wow, I can hardly believe that.

The one thing that I don't get about the promotional funds at these casinos is why they get so big. For example the fort's fund is at $380k, and the hold'em jackpot is at about $8.5k and the omaha one at about $4.5k. That leaves about $375k. They have aces insured, high hand spins, monte carlo stuff, the daily bounty bonuses and the football promos. All this stuff can't be more than $50-75k at the most. So what are they doing with the remaining $300k? I think the promo fund at CAZ is something like $500k and they hardly have any promos at all. The BBJ is usually around $10-20k and the football promos don't take too much out of it. So what are they doing with the remaining $400k+? Does management just take all the extra money and give it to the owners?

Didn't somebody around here mention that The Fort announced a tourney and when ppl showed up it turned out that all/most of the seats had already been assigned to regs?

Meh, the last time I ever played a tourney there when we got to the final table everybody yelled 'yay!' and it got chopped. So I said 'What chop?' and got told that's what they do there, they chop the final table. Do they still do that? I almost had a head assplosion.

We could maybe get some info from Fort regs if there were any who post/read here which I doubt.

As far as getting more traffic they ought to do some advertising beyond the generic TV adds (which I haven't seen any come to think of it) that include poker as an aside.

Those drink tickets rarely end up in our hands either, unless a redbird is given in exchange for 2. Try it sometime.

That's my point exactly. The floor people don't expect a tip for them from the 4-8 players and they do from the higher limit players. I wonder what happens if the low limit players ask for a drink ticket? Maybe get told 'I'm out of them?' lol.

I've been a reg at the fort recently since about 2 weeks ago. I'm not sure what tourney they had that they turned away people. They don't have anything like that now. In the tourneys that I've seen and played in, they don't let you chop until you play down to the money and then usually the players alter the pay structure but still play it out.

I mean I'm not trying to go out of my way to defend the fort, it's just an ok poker room with bad game selection and good promos.

REPOSTED FROM ANOTHER FORUM


A request to the managment
« on: September 08, 2010, 01:37:43 PM »
I would really like to hear a clear statement of intent by someone from the Casino regarding what is going on in the poker room.

We as players have been hearing, since prior to the opening of the new room, that the increase in the jackpot drop drop was to fund a series of "newer" and "bigger" promotions for the players when the new room opened.
I have seen no such increase in promotions and as we all know the promotions have been substantially reduced, YET the increased drop continues.

What is going on? You can no longer expect the players to sit idly by and accept these weak and patronizing excuses about where this money is going. Your presumption that we will continue to accept these ambiguous excuses is insulting.

We have seen where it goes, apparently 100K added to the state championship prize pool was a prudent use of the jackpot funds that were 100% funded by NON tournament methods.
Its time to rethink, do you really think that being able to advertise a 1 Million Dollar prize pool for the state championship ( by adding the 100K from the jackpot fund) was effective in ANY way whatsoever from a marketing perspective? Did you get a 100K worth of value? You got 975 players, how many do you think wouldn't have shown up if the 1 M prize pool hadn't been advertised? Ill bet the Return On Investment from a marketing perspective was well below even a poor rating.

You have to be able to justify expenditures by being able to reconcile how it has benefited the room ( and live play where you make your money).

You wasted that $100,000 that belonged to the live action players.
Good thing the ladies state championship wont sell out, because that would be another 50K taken out, and wasted. The tournament players get 70K a month( every month) in FREE money funded by the live players as it is.

You (meaning whoever is making these decisions) BETTER get a grip on the affect you are having on your bottom line.

Part of the issue is we get NO answers other than, "we are working on it" or " i don't know" if you ask the dealers, that is sad, the dealers don't know because apparently they are not told anything.

Casino Arizona USED to be a great fun place to play, everyone from the players to the staff had smiles on their face it was an atmosphere where everyone was having a good time.
NOT anymore, look around the room, what do you see?
Nobody is having fun.

Where do you think the blame lies?

For a long time Casino Arizona was the place to play in the valley, its becoming clear now that it happened that way in spite of itself. NOW is the time for the management to prove their ability to actually Manage the room well rather that just let it run well one its own because they have the location, that is no longer enough, the players are smarter than that.

Stop looking at the short term and start being proactive about the long term health of the room make the players feel like they are wanted and needed.

It wont hurt to let us in on the "plan". let us help, ask for ideas, ask us what we want

DO SOME THING for the regular low and mid range rake paying players and stop pandering to the high limit (by the way hows the high limit area been recently?) and tournament players.
I am really surprised you haven't recognized who the players are that keeps that room afloat, and if you don't fix it quickly, you will lose that core ( more of it or all of it).
Then where will you be?

Casino Arizona will become the new Fort McDowell. Remember how The Fort used to be? How about now?

History repeats itself and Casino Arizona is well on its way to cutting its own throat.




Logged that_pope
Posts: 272





Re: A request to the managment
« Reply #1 on: September 08, 2010, 02:22:50 PM »
Cosign.

A note on the tourneys...do you think anyone would really play the morning $60 tourney if it was really the $45+15 it is. The only reason that tourney survives with such high juice is because:

-They add $750 from the Jackpot fund into the tourney. For example, lets say there are 100 entrants just to keep the math simple. The prize pool without the $750 added would be $4500. But instead it is $5250. So basically they are simply moving Jackpot money into their own pocket by charging a higher rake but "adding" money to offset it. Talk about bull****.

Every amount of prize money "added" to a tourney should be seen as money they are taking out of the player pool and putting directly into their pocket via higher rake in a tourney.
Logged pokr1222
Posts: 16



Re: A request to the managment
« Reply #2 on: September 09, 2010, 01:25:45 AM »
Thank you for this very well written summary of the current state of poker at CAZ.

It is bad, very bad. Moral among poker room employees is clearly at an all time low. The grumbling and disdain for management is clearly evident. Either they don't care, don't know or there is something else in play. I have heard from several employees that it is IRS related. I really have no idea. The economy has clearly hurt the poker room but, it is the management that is killing it.

I feel personally insulted and tricked by the player reward program that was advertised with ZERO implementation to this point. I was also told directly that the temporary rake increase (jackpot increase, whatever) was to fund a huge amount of promotions when the move occurred. Another insult.

One of my favorite shift managers (wait, she is my only favorite) told me that she could spread a game in a barn and players would still come. That may be true and, my coming to this room is evidence of that but, little by little we will come less often and stay for shorter periods.


FROM ANOTHER FORUM, This is a REPOST

It used to be extra chips. This is not any better though. Instead of getting extra chips which is a big advantage over anyone that did not have the extra chips, now if you don't play 3 hours beforehand you miss out on extra profit from normal play. This is not something that is going to encourage new players, or players that might want to come back and play.

When the MTT starts at what 7pm or did they change that too? That means you have to be in a cash game no later than 4pm. Which is too early for the average player that does not get off from his day job until 5pm or 6pm plus drive time.

This is a perfect example of what is wrong. This promotion rather correctly or not appears to disadvantage casual players or new to the room players. Yes you want people to come play the cash games and not just the MTT. But imposing a "requirement" that is all but impossible for the average player, you are just rewarding their leather ass regulars.

They had one of the biggest LE games spread in the world at the time. There was a regular black chip game that ran more or less every day, typically at the 400/800 level, but would play as low as 100/200 and about once a month it would go as a 4000/8000 game, i.e. why Mr Chan bought a house near the casino.

Sounds like they have gone down hill too. They used to have a healthy 4/8 group of players and a decent (if the right people were there) SL game that ran pretty regular around the MTT times (before and after).

What they or any room for that can do, is start doing promotions specifically targeting new players, players that are never going to go sit in that room all day, everyday.

Some examples off the top of my head...

• Give every new player, a player signing up for a rewards card $10 to $25 in cash they can spend. Tie it to the added drive, something like "We will pay for you to come here in gas! $10 - $25 for your gas tank!". Giving them cash on the card that they can not spend is nearly worthless. Give them cold hard cash, hand it to them when the runner comes back with their DL and new rewards card.
• Instead of tying any promotion to MTTs to cash play before the MTT, tie it to play after the MTT. So if you come and play the MTT and bust out before the final table and stay and play cash games for 3 hour after the same day we will give bounties or bonus chips or whatever they are doing the MTT these days.
• How about trying to get them to keep coming or coming back by... "If you are new or have not played at the Fort in over a year, we will tripple your hourly rewards for the next 30 days if you book at least 10 hours of cash game play during the next 30 days, book 20 and we will 4x you rewards dollars.

Bottom line any promotion that does not interfere with the average players daily life. You want the average working Joe to stop by for a couple hours after work, you want "Joe" to want to come to the room on Friday after work and stay around. You can't expect "Joe" to take time off from work to go play poker every week.

They put that money in a account that pays them money to have it in there. I am sure they get better rates than the average Joe does too.

That was me. When they did the first deep stack series, they got the word out and did a good job of it too. The problem was if you were a regular you also knew about the promo's for the MTT. They did not advertise that part...

If I remember right it was something like... If you played in either the morning MTT or the nightly MTT and finished in the top 20 you got a free or discounted seat to the deep stack event. Now remember they can only seat about 200 people in that room. So if you assume that they held 10 MTT during the week and at least 20 people entered each then the whole thing gets sold out before anyone can actually buy in.

The MTT was scheduled to start at like 11am on a Saturday. I showed up a little after 8am and found myself in line with about 30 other people, only to hear they were just taking alternates that the MTT had sold out the night before. By 10am'ish the line of people waiting to buy in was out the back door, at least 150 people wanting to play there, many faces I have never seen before, many faces I had not seen at the Fort in a long time. It was sad to watch, someone would come into the room, ask if that was the line for the tournament, get told yes, and "oh BTW they are sold out, that line is for alternates", most would just roll their eyes and turn around and walk back out the door.

No one in management would admit that they gave away all the seats, but several of the regulars I knew in the room told me, no one actually paid to enter and the last seats where given away to the Friday night MTT players.

I had four friends drive out there on a Saturday and get turned around because they hadn't played live before-hand.

So they ended up playing free at a bar.

I agree that the bonus bounty system does disadvantage non-regs. In terms of an EV perspective I don't think those tourneys are even worth playing without the bonus bounties. But they are only $30 ($?? + $??) and have a reasonable structure for such a cheap tourney (it usually takes 3+ hrs to finish).

I don't believe they give away seats to tourneys anymore.

If you're saying they used to have a regular 4-8 crew then it wouldn't surprise me if eventually their 3-6 crew starts to dwindle. They do get decent turnout for the tourneys though, especially the Sat night $10 buyin, $10 addon, $2500 guaranteed tourney.

Whoa, thats a big picture of my avatar...

Did you say "Howard don't chop"?

He said "I'll take first place money and you can all chop the rest. Punks."

No, I lost it, which is something that almost never happens. Why? I was in the top 3 in chips and TRIED to explain to the TD that I would've played much, much differently if I'd known that I only had to make the final 10. And the guy just kept telling me 'everybody knows we chop the final table' and I wanted to strangle him.

I suppose they don't do that anymore.

They have/had another rule for cash games that I'm wondering if they still have and it was another occasion that set me off:

If somebody has to post a kill that player gets last action. Not 'last action' as in last in the round or last after the BB acts or last anything except absolute last action which means that 2 players can get AI between them and THEN the kill poster acts which means he can be sitting there w/ AA and the other players have no idea of the strength of his hand. Do they still have that ridiculous rule?

What a complete joke.

WHEN YOU ASK YOUR QUESTIONS TO MANAGEMENT -- YOU CANNOT ASK IT OF THE "CARDROOM MANAGER" HE'S BEEN STEALING FROM THE CASINO AND THE TRIBE FOR YEARS.. HE DOESN'T CARE ONE BIT ABOUT THE QUALITY OF THE ROOM EVERY TIME YOU FILL OUT A 'COMMENT CARD' HE PROMPTLY THROWS IT AWAY.. IF YOU WANT YOUR SUGGESTIONS, COMPLAINTS, OR GENERAL COMMENTS KNOWN YOU MUST TURN THEM IN TO THE PLAYERS CLUB OR MAYBE EVEN THE CONCIERGE[

wow

BUT IT'S ALL IN CAPS!

Is that at the Fort or CAZ? And what's the name of this card room manager?

That is a can of worms that should not be opened on the Internet...

I'm all for opening up cans of worms

What can of worms? His assertion is absurd.

So I was told today that the comps for checking in with your players card are up and running. I have no idea how it works exactly though, because I'm not sure how they know when I left. Was I supposed to check out? I dunno.

Mark

Didn't you guys know? First posts by strangers all in caps flinging around baseless accusations are true 100% of the time.