Quote:
Originally Posted by brianr
Interesting. Why do you think that happened?
The problem with The Lodge is that they are too focused on the high stakes market and catering to high stakes players, to the detriment of their overall bottom line AND the poker economy.
At the end of the day, these businesses make money by putting butts in seats and KEEPING them in seats.
A 100/200 player pays the same fee to the house as a 1/2 player, BUT they are significantly higher maintenance, they want hosts, free food, etc.
They're a smaller pool of players and harder to attract and keep.
Plus, the games are designed to cater to those deep pocketed players.
So the entry-level 1/2/5 PLO game allows unlimited restraddles (I've seen it get to $320) plus match the stack.
I've seen dudes sitting 20-30k deep in those games. So the guy who just got off work and has 400-600 in his pocket comes in, sees he has no ****ing chance against someone with that much money and turns around and leaves.
So the deep-pocketed players scare off the recreationals, they make the games play too big for entry level stakes and people go broke.
Now the room suffers because there's less butts in the seats because players were ran off or busted, and the overall poker economy suffers for it too.
They need to protect those entry level games by not letting them get out of hand, stop catering to the vocal minority of deep-pocketed players who are destroying the games and your business.
Likewise they need promotions that will draw people in and keep their butts in the seats paying time fees.
Another issue is that they heavily advertise their once a month series, OUTSIDE the local market.
All that does is attract all the traveling grinders who come into town, chew up the locals and leave with all the $$$.
They need to focus on advertising LOCAL and build a strong core of returning players while protecting the entry level games from playing too big AND the higher games and degenerates from themselves so they don't go broke.
That's my perspective from the outside looking-in. I'm not privy to their internal decisions or operations, this is just my observations from the player side.
In addition, when we first moved out here 9-10 months ago the dealers I met at The Lodge were the happiest I've ever seen, and they sang the rooms praises and said they had never worked in a room that treated dealers so well.
Well that culture appears to have changed significantly, with massive amounts of people getting time cut or let go outright. It's pretty crazy for the 180 degree change to have occurred in such a short time-span.