That's the same problem they have in Columbus... starts off looking like a crazy big $ game, lots of action and money changing hands.... and over time it just dies. Took about a year to get to the sad point it's in at Hollywood Columbus.

it will take a lot less than a year to start showing the negative effect around Cleveland. Columbus actually has a booming economy to support bigger games, Cleveland not so much. 2.5/game that big will essentially ruin it in time

Chilie

I haven't been to Shoe in a bit due to unforeseen circumstances

If they are still getting only two 2/5 games at most then yes ecosystem will drain more quickly.

I've never understood why rooms are so anxious to run bigger games without market to support. the bigger games don't make much more than a medium stakes game.

They get about 4 on Fridays and 2 on average every other nite. Big games are not necessarily a bad thing alot of the seven star players will play the 2/5 and 5/10 PLO and the 5/10 no limit but nothing else since generally they are interested in action and bigger games.

Alot of the grinders want bigger buy-ins. The room actually should listen to the casual players though instead of the grinders for the long term health of the games. Like alot of the casual players hated must move on the 2/5 NL so they should have probably scrapped that idea quick.

I don't see a ton of downside, since 5/10 NL or bigger almost never goes anyway. The only worry is it becomes like columbus where more people choose 1/2. Will be bad in cle cause there are of nit grinders in the games already and they probably won't quit.

Just so the people running the room know there is currently no stop on the WSOPC that gives penalties for exposed cards in tournaments (Hammond used to now they at least give you a warning).

There is no poker room in America that gives any penalty for using a cell phone at the table while not in a hand. (The WSOP at the Rio does not allow electronics in the money but you are given a warning before any penalty would be issued. They run 10K events and don't restrict players from using a cell phone at the table while not in a hand until you reach the money)

So yeah keep putting in place stupid rules for 100 dollar tournaments, being belligerent to players and see why people don't like your room.

Hope the hard rock eventually gets poker and your room will have 1 table of 3-6 limit with the downtown homeless people.

I think it would be terrible for the game if they made the 2/5 NLHE game at $2k max. It totally killed Rivers' 2/5 NLHE game when they changed it to an uncapped game- thankfully they changed it back after like a year.

Cleveland still gets off plenty enough 2/5 NLHE tables regularly with enough random fish that a $2k max game would totally scare them away/filter them out. Just because they rarely/never get the 5/10 NLHE game to happen doesn't mean they should make the next biggest game a deep uncapped game when they can get multiple tables of it going. $1k max might not be as bad though.

That new 12 Days of Christmas promo is sickkk. You get a raffle ticket on every even hour (essentially, every 2 hours but you don't have to have been playing 2 hours), they're collecting them all the way up to December 13(?), and then for 12 days, they're drawing names every half hour for $500 up to Christmas, when they're giving away even more money (not sure how much). Great motivation for playing more hours both up to the drawing and during the drawing.

What I'm most curious about is how they're drawing the names. If they're collecting all these names for a month, and you have to be there within 5-10 minutes to claim the money, I feel like there's such a high chance that they're going to keep calling names over and over again until they finally happen to draw a name that happens to be in the room, especially at odd hours of the day. That also means if they're giving the person like 5 minutes to claim, they'll only be able to draw 6 names per half hour- is the $500 rolling over to the next half hour if none of those 6 names drawn are in the room (which I think is decently likely)?

Don't get screwed over with missed blinds- technically, if you've missed a blind when they give the raffle ticket on the hour mark, you're not supposed to get one even if you've been playing the rest of those two hours (nearly happened to someone at my table last night).

The upgrade on the high hand of the hour promo is nice too, especially for late night grinders- $400 literally every hour from 5am Monday-4am Saturday. Any full house qualifies now, not just Aces full (to prevent it constantly rolling over at those quirky hours/avoid taxes on promotional money).

The 12 days promotion is pretty cool but I feel like on really busy days in the poker room leading up to the drawing its going to be a disaster. The floors will spend more time handing out tickets than handling player issues etc

I was there yesterday, the first day they passed them out, and there were already "I have no pen - floor!" Not even the dealers knew what to do with the tickets... "FLOOR! - what do I do with these? Keep them? Do you come get them?"

I'm sure it'll even out and I don't want to complain too much because I like that they are doing something to give away some of this promo money - I just think that there had to be an easier way than paper tickets. I'd think the Bravo system could track it somehow

It ran smoother later in the day once the dealers/floor got the hang of it, but I agree there has to be a better way. They were able to track our hours for that freeroll tourney a while back... it would help with drawing random names for people actually logged into the Bravo system at that time too, rather than to keep drawing paper tickets until one of them happens to be in the room...

All I care about when it comes to promotions is if my dollar is bringing in new players. 400 a high hand defiantly creates more of a buzz in the room and the 12 days thing is fine too, but man they are terrible at promoting this stuff. The horseshoe website stills says 200 for high hand and there is no mention of the 12 days promo on the web site or bravo. Is it really that hard to update web sites?

Does anyone know the updated hrs. of the high hand? I know they increased hrs. but Sat. is still not included. Does aces cracked still run on Sundays?

Yes aces cracked still on Sunday.

High hand is every hour through 4am Saturday I believe

Monday 5:00 AM through Saturday 4:00 AM (4 hours after Friday midnight)

Sent from my SCH-I545 using 2+2 Forums

Even in the room they are slow to announce the high hand of the hour and really don't push it that much. Its as if they all just assume that all the players in the room are always there so there is no need to announce it. Silly.

I'm dreading the day when I'm not there and I get a text from a friend telling me they picked my ticket for the $500 drawing and ripped it up after waiting 5 minutes.

Lol, you pikers care about 500.

Prince I think if you ask 99% of 1/2 or 2/5 players if they went home with $500 more than they came with they'd be happy. Anyways you're missing the point which is keeping the recreational players coming back. This includes meaningless giveaways, them having a good time win or lose, and not having to deal with criticism over their play of hands. Cleveland amazes me with the amount of strat. talk that goes on at tables not only revealing your game but discouraging the rec. player feeling he has no chance. STOP IT! You don't have to constantly let everyone know how good you are. Nice hand sir and move on.

Yeah i mean if i can win 500 at the 2/5 game in CLE im happy. Agree with your assessment, compared to alot of other places the 2/5 here has way more grinders, or players who think they can win. And alot of the younger guys talk way too much strat at the table.

Granted, even fish like to talk about strategy, their strategies are just pretty bad. But yeah, if you are actually beating the game i don't see the point in discussing more advanced strategy with other grinders, talking about how much people win or lose, who is a bad player etc. anything that sort of turns off casual players to the game.

Granted it probably does not make much difference in the short run.

And yeah, its probably the first good promotion they have had. The poker rooms that have anyone good in management understand they can use the fund to get more rake from people.

Buy In structure for 2/5 NL changed to min 300 to max 2k. Will be interesting to see what happens

Are they going to raise the 1-2 buy in as well?

This is not an accurate comparison. In Columbus they choose 1/2 over 2/5 due to the average stacks at most 1/2 tables. The 100% buyin rule greatly increases the stacks at 1/2.

well you can also look at pittsburgh which allowed big buy ins to their 2/5 and the game almost never runs anymore.

i think a safer approach would have been upping the buy in to 800 or 1k.

i know alot of casual players don't like the fact that someone can sit 2k deep and stack them if they played many hrs to get the chips (its obv not entirely proper thinking but that is how some rec players tend to think)

not that 2/5 is a big game but some of the regs probably just would not play at all if 1/2 was the only thing going.

i suppose they could up the 1/2 buy in max to 300 but going to 500 probably kills off the 2/5.

the biggest downside of playing 1/2 is how much you pay relative to pot size which serious players should always consider.

if they upped the buy in at 1/2 and you table changed alot it could probably be fairly profitable but grinding 1/2 everyday probably still not much fun.

You might as well change the blinds to 5/10. A better option would be just raising it to a 1k max first before making the huge jump from 500 to 2000.

I think upping the limit to 2k is terrible for the 2/5 games. So bad.

You get rec guys who come in for 500 and they feel like they just have as much of a chance at winning as anyone else. Then you see most of the 'pro' regs buy in for 2k they will feel like they can't compete.

I think the game will be incredible for like 2-3 months then decline as the fish go broke faster and the rec players won't want to play if they feel like they can't 'really' play unless they have 2k in front of them.

I really do appreciate the min buyin being raised to 300 though.