Maybe 20% of players understand that, maybe 10% think it's that big of a deal, maybe 5% think it is a big deal but I think that only 1% are willing to lobby.

Promotions are not for tourists. They know there is virtually no chance they will win anything.

What I meant by that is the player who walks in and is not a regular may like that they can win other stuff by having a card with the correct numbers on it etc. It makes the room feel more "festive" IMO and often they don't even realize that they could drop less or give out more.

In general, I realize that the fund drop is part of the cost of playing but I was making a point to say that the promotions could be done differently to benefit more of the players who pay for the fund day in and day out. If there's not much objection than I guess my beef will stop here.

Correction: I meant to say that maybe 10% thinks it's a small deal.

Also: I greatly prefer the wheel to the football pools. The wheel was available every time I play but I don't play every time there's a football pool. W/ the wheel the JP fund hovered at $500K, now it's grown ~$350K in a month or so.

Plus, as pope gleefully points out, the time charge players are getting a freeroll.

First, it's not a "cost", since it gets recycled back into the player pool. Now it might not be the type of gamble you or I would take if given the choice, and typically your EV is less than your contributions to the drop (based on games/playing style), but I'd be surprised if any Reg's EV is less than 50-75% of their contributions, so the theoretical cost is relatively minor. And you'll get far more than that minor loss back from fishy players chasing every hand and have better chances at the jackpot, because they play every hand and chase every jackpot. And when they win a JP, they often recycle the money fairly quickly (but back through the time games

The JP fund is a marketing fund with the sole purpose of bringing in more live players, so winning players shouldn't bitch too much about it's negligible long term cost. There are two points that should concern the the reg.

1) Is the JP fund being spent on the best promotions to fill the room?

2) What effect does the double drop have on low limit pool during the slow summer months?

#1 is of little to no concern to me. The same people have been running this room for a long time, and while I doubt their promotional strategy is 100% optimal, I'd bet very strongly that it's effective and far more optimal than what the average player thinks.

The wheel actually seemed to be very successful, as annoying as it was to the time game players. And the football promotions seem to be working now as well as they ever have.

#2 is more worrisome to me. Taking an extra $350k out of the low limit regs in the slowest few months is a little scary. I wonder why they have to pre-load the fund, and can't pay for the football promotions by doing a double drop during the fall, when the room is naturally busier and it can be directly paid for in part by the participants.

My guess is that corporate doesn't ever want to have to front money to the JP pool if they get hit by a string of extra jackpots and some expensive football games, so they direct poker room management to always make sure they have a healthy surplus for inevitable contingencies. Even poker rooms can run bad for a few months.

But they continue to reset the jackpot fund when it gets hit to $7500 (at least that is what it was back in the day), and the football pool has a ceiling of how much they should pay out each game (assuming the tickets are evenly distributed).

If the tickets aren't evenly distributed, IE more 8-2 tickets than 0-7 tickets, then well, that wouldn't surprise me.

perhaps the JP should reset higher, not that it makes any sense that the fund would ever drop that far down. The double drop is concerning for me as well,...things seem to be picking up as football starts and the fall/winter season begins so there shouldn't be too much of a concern on the part of the management.

I know...I mean't more towards asking for a 2+2 Liaison..

Not sure what you mean by laison but shoot me a pm if you want to meet and we can talk about it when we're both there. I'm in the room 20 days/mo.

The problem with the JP drop is that it reduces the amount of winning sessions any player can have. That nullifies whatever advertisement that it brings to the poker room.

Also they are diverting some of it to tournaments, and no one can tell whether they withhold any of it as a 'fee.' That makes it worse.

Are you sure? They hold nothing out for "administration"?

As a player, why should I pay for CAZ advertising? They are the ones that benefit. AT BEST I am breaking even.

He said marketing fund not advertising fund. It's clear to me that it brings in more players. They talk about the JP all of the time. Most of them don't realize what the rake is doing to them. They don't realize what over-tipping is doing to them, they don't care about the JP drop but best of all they don't care what playing bad does to them. The BBJ brings them in, makes them happy? If it didn't do it I'd hate it more than anybody. As it is I hate it but I know that it's not all bad.

The variance of all of the games is hundreds of dollars per hour, the $20 or so a player loses to the extra $1 in jackpot drop over a 6 or 7 hour session isnt noticeable. of course over time it's a different story.

But when the jackpot reaches a high amount, the room is considerably busier, and whenever one is hit players jump up and run over to see, I have zero doubts it's a compelling marketing program for bringing in players, esp. the type I most enjoy playing

And tournaments bring a lot of players to the room. I started playing here because of them. And the cash game are almost always better tourney nights.

I meant the increased jp drop. 4+1 is barely manageable with the small pots snatching but anything above is bad.

Also the tournaments bring people but I suspect the aggregate increase from pouring promo money into the prize pool is negligble.

Call ADoG? How can it possibly be "legal" to abscond with player's monies to that extent and hold it indefinitely until the casino decides on some ******ed scheme to "give it back" a couple of hundred at a time?

LOL casinos, and lol at the tards who play cash/ring despite having upwards of $5 stolen from every pot they win... oops, make that $6 with an obligatory tip for your automaton dealer...

I'm not the casino so I really don't care if the other players are happy. Without the drop there would still be enough players to make a game.

Maybe not to you, but you're not paying the drop anyway. To the 6/12 and 8/16 players, you know, the ones actually paying the drop, 20 bucks is significant.

You want to reduce the player pool? C'mon.

Exactly

I believe ADOG has no jurisdiction over the money once it is dropped. IT becomes the casino's money. They might have a vague claim if the casino made blatantly false promises about what they do with it.

I'm all for the jackpot. It brings bad players who don't know what they are doing. With that said, the jackpot in the mid 500k figures during the wheel spins were extremely cheap. You can't have a 500k jackpot and only be paying out 7500 to 15k bbj's....Oh wait.. It is players money, NOT casino money. It is NOT their profit, so WHY do they pool so much of it and take almost 1MM from players money to keep in a "fund" that never pays out, and increases every day. There should be two jackpots. The current "bitch" jackpot paying 10k or whatever, and the super big degen jackpot that starts at 200k and qualifies quads over quads or something both cards used.

Howard, by Liaison I mean a Casino Arizona card room staff, management, floor, something to register on 2+2 as an official spokesperson to the room, to answer questions like these and others. The PPF is way, way, way too big and I really think something bad is going on with the room. I might be overly concerner / suspicious, but I think the floor is downright stealing from the players by not explaining why the jackpot fund is so inflated, and without giving any plan for ever returning our money fairly.

Something like what Ubintook has been doing, but officially, and qualified to discuss backroom operations such as the PPF fund and why CAZ feels the need to dick every single player that plays in their room.

They dick every single player that plays in the room because they can. The poker room is always busy. It's the busiest poker room in the state. The rest of the casino is also always busy. From their perspective, why should they do anything to lower their profit?

You really think there wouldn't be plenty of games anyway? C'mon.

Do you have any access to facts that without a jackpot drop that their traffic would be unreasonably low?

Because eventually it will dry up.

It's indisputable that traffic would be less, the busiest times for the room is when the BBJ is high during these promotions. Whether that would be "unreasonable" is in the eye of the beholder.

But even if traffic wouldn't decline too dramatically, think about the other consequence. Who wants to play only with nitty players who count every bet and try to play well? If you prefer playing with bad players, but dont want to pay jackpot drop, do you also fish without baiting your hook?

Management has a lot of discretion in how they use this promotional fund, but they can't directly pocket it. They obviously feel this set of promotions is the most effective use of it to increase traffic, and given their experience I can't argue with their choices.

Customers always pay marketing costs in every business and would do so at CAZ even if no JP drop.

I realize that you're frustrated but I think you've gone too far and hope that we can tone things down a bit. I do not think that any suggestion that they are stealing in any sense of the word is warranted. I do not like the promo fund being overly large, I lobbied hard against the $2BBJ drop, but the fund has fluctuated between ~300K and 900K or so since the room opened. Further, I once suggested a super JP as you've laid out and another player pointed out what is wrong w/ that scheme: Make a JP that big and we will end up w/ a room full of 3-6 games w/ ppl trying to hit it for cheap. That would clearly be detrimental.

I suggested long ago that management might want to have a rep on here ala the Aria and even helped one of the floors get an account set up but that person doesn't post. I have been told that they are aware of this thread and who it is that reads it regularly () and it is a person w/ authority. They are aware that our discussion is taking place and that w/e they say to any of us will likely end up here and must therefor be truthful in all respects.

I can suggest this however: I know for a fact that management is willing to discuss any aspect of the room's procedures at length. I've done it often enough and I've seen the managers spend what I considered an inordinate amount of time talking to customers about rather trivial matters that they brought up and they are definitely open to discussing matters of import. I suggest that you approach any of the senior managers w/ w/e concerns you have and I'd be astounded if you did not come away thinking that you were not given proper consideration.

But, here is something that you may like: The BBJ fund came up during table talk tonight and I was told that they are going to start a new promotion. I'm attaching the flyer at the end of this post. They are going to start adding $20K on Tues and Wed mornings and this amount will STAY in the BBJ amount until it's hit. To be clear, $20K will be added on Tues, if it gets hit it will reset down and $20K will be added on Wed night whether or not it gets hit. I'm not sure if they will still add the regular daily increase in the BBJ amount or not. Again, this money will stay. If it doesn't get hit they will add those sums the next week as well. The BBJ has the potential to grow very large if it doesn't get hit for a couple of weeks and the room will be jammed.

Here's the flyer. You can check to see if I've got it right (I closely questioned the very good dealer who explained it to me) which I think I have: