Three different times over the last couple of weeks I didn't end up playing here b/c of the new dining issues (i.e., OH's refusal to accept poker comps for carry out orders) when I would have otherwise.

Sorry for the late replies on some of this stuff but I'm on vacation

So I'll give some insight into some of the last few posts. First of all, thanks for the feedback! Speaking to the structure of the Black Friday tournament, I certainly understand that there are a few levels missing, and there is a purpose to that. I think the structure will still be a "B+" structure with a fairly linear elimination scale, slightly skewed to potentially more play than need be in the beginning and by skipping a few levels in the meat of the structure, might speed up a bit, however it is still a deep stacked tournament (20K chips) with 30 minute levels, so it accomplishes what I'm hoping for I believe. I certainly could have added those levels in there (500-1000,1200-2400, etc) however, what we have to consider is that this is a Friday, which means that our tournament has to be in the latter stages (down to 4-6 tables) by the time our peak cash games begin. We need to be able to give our best effort to open cash games with tables/dealers on our busiest night of the week, and probably above the norm with folks in from out of town and off work, etc. So while we could have given the A+ structure, we opted for the B+ structure with the hopes that we can run a good structure and still be able to meet our cash game demand later in the afternoon and early evening. Our A+ structures will be coming with the OPC when we are dedicating the entire 10 days to making tournaments a complete priority.

Yes, the guarantee includes the bounties, however, we are preparing for and projecting for us to get pretty close to 150-200 entries for this one.

Registration opens at 10AM, hope to see you then!

Hey Charlie, thanks for the note! I'll try to respond the best way I can.

I shared a PM with donniccolo recently about this very thing. We are in the process of introducing some new items for our tournament program. Without too many details, it will include a monthly double buy-in on one of the Sundays of the month with a longer structure, it will also include a quarterly tournament with somewhere in the neighborhood of a $400-$500 buy-in with a great structure, and we also will be including a tournament leaderboard which will payout our top points earners throughout the quarter (likely free entries into the quarterly tournament, etc) Details will be coming soon on these changes.

On your concerns of the Sunday structure, you bring up some very valid points and will definitely be considered. As a player, I certainly agree with most of your points, and completely can differentiate a "great" structure from a "good" structure to a completely "awful" structure. The thing I have learned from being a player to creating the structures to these daily events is that the mass majority of people think that giving them a bunch of chips = great structure. We both know that's not true, and the mass majority of folks in this forum know thats not true, but when running a room, we have to play to the majority of people. For instance, we introduced a new Thursday tournament with a $70 buy-in and 25K in chips with 15 minute levels. It is missing quite a few key levels, but we got 121 entries for our first tournament and it's a huge success.

I guess what I'm saying is that I recognize that our lack of tournaments for the "informed" player are lacking right now, and we are definitely going to attack that here coming up in 2016. You should have a real nice monthly and quarterly tournament coming up real soon, and our OPC should be incredible. But as far as our recurring dailies, we strategically structure those to give lots of play in the beginning because thats what the mass majority of people look for. But again, we are definitely going to be introducing some variations to those that will be pleasing for our seasoned players.

Hope that answers some of your questions!

And as always guys, I'm easy to find if you ever want to speak one on one. Ship me a PM here...and I'll even gladly give you my email on those PM's.

Dave,

Thanks for your thoughtful reply and for your honesty about why some of the tournaments are structured the way they are. It's been frustrating in the past several years to deal with some changes that aren't player-friendly (or at least that aren't friendly to competent players), and to not feel like there was any productive way of voicing those concerns. I'm glad you seem interested in changing that. I can certainly live with the smaller-buyin weekly tournaments not always being structured in an ideal way if there will, as you say, also be higher-buyin tournaments with better structures. I look forward to the improved monthly and quarterly events (and can I request that the monthly one not be on the last Sunday of the month? That's when Cleveland has theirs), and I'll see you for the OPC.

No problem Charlie, look forward to seeing you soon!

On your question about when we plan on having our monthly and quarterly events, we are not quite sure yet, but you shouldn't have to worry as we have no intentions of "stealing" from any of the other Ohio properties. We will find our own week where we can run good events without worrying about interference from any other properties

That is an example of short-term thinking instead of thinking of the overall health of the room and the customers.

Dave,

Any chance Penn National will circle back to the bigger problem of not allowing tournaments to be held in the event space? It seems like that would solve a lot of the problems we are discussing recently as well as allow for more dealers to work more hours and make more money. A win win win.

I'm actually peeved at this exact moment as I'm sitting in the room and I am unable to play anything. There are only eight cash games going while six tournament games are going and dozens of people are forced to wait on the list due to a lack of dealers.

I do not think that it is unreasonable to expect more than eight cash games at 1 o'clock on a Friday afternoon in the fall.

Best,

Nick

Is the structure for the PLO Tournament on Dec11 available anywhere? Also, how many runners do we think this event will get?

Thanks

I'm trying to get the structure sheets on here for Ohio Poker Championships, but not having much success in the forum.

I do however have them posted to Facebook for your reference, and they should be available in the room.

GL this weekend, Dave and company. I am out of town helping my father after a knee replacement and won't be back in time for tomorrow's event. Hoping to play next week!

-Nick

Anyone know how many runners today? Thanks.

Over 200. Guarantee going to get smashed.

As well as the big tournaments have been going for Hollywood, I'm surprised they don't try to do at least one big guranteed tournament every month. Big money maker for the casino and it brings in a lot of people who don't play regularly in Columbus.

Anybody else frustrated that they don't have any sort of food menu for the poker room? OH seems to be shying away from players too by no longer doing carry out. I would think that the casino and poker managers would have something figured out by now. It is definitely not the right way to treat loyal patrons......but I guess if people are dumb enough to keep going back, its part their problem too.

Pending OCCC approval (which is typically just a formality that simply takes a bit of time), we are tentatively scheduled to begin a monthly $300 buy-in, 25K Guarantee on the 3rd Sunday of each month. We also are going to be running a quarterly $550 buy-in, $50K Guarantee. Again, this is tentatively scheduled for 2016 and we are simply awaiting final approval. A tourney leaderboard is also scheduled for 2016 where top point earners will win seats into the quarterly.

As far as food service goes, we are actively exploring options for our players and completely understand the frustrations. Unfortunately, property mandates on carryout and using comp dollars is currently trumping any requests on our part to accomodate our players. There have been proposals and meetings to attempt to come up with some sort of solution which will be acceptable to property management as well as acceptable to our players. Changes will be made, unfortunately those changes will need to be approved by several levels and management prior to being implemented. But rest assured that it is something that is being worked on, just takes a little time.

We certainly appreciate the feedback and hopefully we can continue to improve with all of your information.

Awesome news re: monthly $25k and quarterly $50k! Have you thought about structures for those? Re-entry? Length of level, # of chips, 250/500 and 500/1k added? Thanks again!

I was able to play both the PLO MTT this past Tuesday and yesterday's $20k guarantee, which smashed. Both were run very well and fun to play. I still do not understand how there can be "alternates" at any point, let alone during the first few levels. And I heard numerous complaints re: posting. One player kept going on about how the TDA and any other rules no longer make players post or be blinded off, etc. Just something to consider.

Hey Nick,

Yes, the structures have been submitted with all the tourney details. I don't have it in front of me, however I know all three Sunday tourneys will carry 30K stacks. The normal Sunday Mega will now have a 10K guarantee with 20 minute blinds, the Monthly will have 30 minute blinds, and the quarterly has 30 minute blinds with I believe 40 mins after dinner break. The structure is the same across all three. The original blinds from our Sunday Mega were slightly tweaked and were used. I believe it starts at 50-100 instead of 25-50, and there was some fluidity added toward the middle of the tournament to make up for it.

As far as the alternates question goes, when we plan for a tournament we have to choose how many tables to sell in the Bravo system before registration period begins. We make our best guess at that, then when all other seats are sold, they are "alternates" whether there are seats available or not. At least that is what the ticket says. If we get an overflow of alternates (enough for close to a table), then we have to do some staffing diligence to get another table started. Sometimes that takes a handful of minutes to get ready, which results in a small wait time. As far as I know, our staffing levels were adequate over the series and it was never a matter of having a dealer or not, it was simply the prep time to open a new table. I believe a small handful of folks had to wait 15-20 minutes to begin dealing cards as alternates, but that was all I knew about.

The alternative way to handle that situation is to open more tables at the start, but then you have to "lock up" more seats at the tables which means that players start play with less players at their tables to begin an event. It's a Catch 22, and we typically opt for full tables to begin an event as a service for those who actually show up on time.

Regarding this: This is something that to my knowledge has never been addressed in TDA. This was an adjustment we made long ago to cater to the number of players who voiced their opinions that they did not believe it fair to have players enter an event late with an un-blinded off stack. The solution we came up with was to have the new player have the option to post or simply wait for the big blind.

TDA doesn't say it is right nor wrong and never has to my knowledge. I certainly see both sides to it, and is probably one of those things that no matter how you handle it, players will voice their opinions on what they view as "right".

I am a member of the TDA and attended the 2015 TDA Summit. As the goal of the TDA is to standardize poker tournament rules across venues, I would like to chime in here. Excerpt from the 2015 TDA rule set available on the TDA website:

As outlined above, alternates, late registrants, and re-entries should receive full stacks and should be dealt in immediately. This includes on the button (dead button situation) and in the small blind. Players do not have to post per TDA rules.

Is that new from this year's Summit?

The bold part below was added in 2015 after this year's summit:
Alternates, players registering late, and re-entries will be sold full stacks, randomly seated at any position, and dealt in except between SB and button.

The current set of rules can be found at: http://www.pokertda.com/poker-tda-rules/

The version with changes in red is quite helpful for seeing what changes were made in 2015.

Very glad that bigger regular tournaments are tentatively on the way. There's a huge demand for it.

Also, kudos to Dave and the rest of the staff for a pretty smooth OPC series so far. Hoping the Main prizepool hits over $150k.

Thanks, Dave! I am looking forward to playing many of this larger, better MTTs!

Thanks straightflush, for the TDA info!

Agreed, things are great. I hope to see you tonight around 22:00 when I'm bagging 250k chips :-)

excited about the monthly tournaments. it seems that the only time my hometown casino runs big tournaments is when i'm completely unable to compete.

How did the main go?