You said a lot of things here, but none of it addresses the problem I raised. By Mike's own words, a couple of players were allowed to register for the tournament today earlier than everyone else. These couple of players now have an unfair advantage on the field. Let's examine the problem that Mike (or his team) created.

Players A and B come in Saturday evening and register for a noon Sunday tournament. Player C wants to play in the noon Sunday tournament as well, but is refused registration. Players A, B, and C all sit at a 1/2 table for the rest of Saturday evening.

Problem 1: Player C has an hour drive home so must stop playing about 9:30 pm go get home to get a nights sleep for the following day's tournament, no matter how far up or down he is at the current game. Players A and B continue playing until 12:30 am or whenever they are significantly up for the night within those three hours.

Problem 2: Player C has to get up at 7am on Sunday morning. This gives him an hour and a half for bathroom rituals, breakfast, and time with family before leaving the house at 8:30 to get to the casino to be in line a half hour before registration opens. He waits in line and gets registered, generously let's say by 10:20. Now he has to wait over an hour and a half for the tournament to start. If he gets lucky he gets to play cash for about an hour, hoping to be up after a limited amount of time at the cash game.

Players A and B, however, wake up at 9:30, an hour and a half for morning stuff, and off to the casino. As soon as they arrive, they sit at their table fresh and ready to go. No lines to deal with, no dead time between registration and the game starting.

Then they all play for the next ~6 hours. As the tournament goes on, who is going to be most able to keep going and pushing at the end?

The above scenarios don't even take into account Players A and B leaving at the same time as player C. Assuming that, they get to spend a few hours relaxing with their family in the morning. Something that Player C does not have the option to do due to Mike's decision to allow some people to register early.

The above scenarios also do not take into account Players A and B being friends with whoever registered them early. The potential the Players A and B made a deal with whoever registered them that if they cash a percentage of the win goes to the employee who registered them.

We've already seen in this thread just since i posted last night a player report seeing someone come up to a table, grab $200 in chips, and the sitting player was removed from the game (for going south I would guess is the reason given if pressed). The staff apparently didn't do anything about the theft bit of the story. We've also seen a player report obvious collusion at the 2/2 PLO game that went on for at least an orbit and the dealer/floor didn't do anything to stop it.

All of these situations and others reported makes people wonder just how much the staff is doing to keep games fair and the players safe.

I'm confused as well. This is straight out theft and the casino allowed it to occur. This does not make me think this is a safe place to be. If this is the policy on how such events are handled, what happens when some random stranger walks up behind you, grabs your chips saying 'He owes me money' and walks off?

You Cannot run it twice in raked games. Only time raked.

Cash doesn't play. What we are trying to train the dealers to do, is either get someone at the table to exchange it while waiting for a runner, or get the runner to take and allow the player to play behind. Not an exact science but we're working on it. Thanks for the headsup.

A soon as our TD gets in today, I'll fire him for trying to provide excellent guest service. IF you want to quote me, I've also said we hope to be able to take registration for any tournament at any time, but I don't think we're there yet. However, our TD was in last night and let 2 people purchase seats. My apologies.

Because a player bets the pot every bet, that's called collusion?
We'll have to get rid of everyone that plays PLO crazy.

And we'll take care of the other situation as well.

Thanks for your input


Mike

Since this the first week and also a busy holiday week and therefore, mistakes do happen and I say give them a couple weeks to get it to together.

Mike,

Perhaps your staff need con't training so they can act and adjust accordingly. You also said in Oct. that you plan to switch the Sunday tourney to Sat. and I think that'd be a big mistake as you can see how busy the poker room was in the last few days. You're going to back up the traffic 20 miles long and I think it's best not to run any tourney on the weekend at all unless you can host the tourney in a ballroom or something.

Also, any collusion players should be banned permanently.

Agree. Having cash play would smooth out the game a lot.

I agree with banning people we know are colluding, but the same player betting the pot in PLO every hand is not collusion. He shouldn't be too tough to bust.


Thanks


Mike

Firing him for giving an advantage to some players would be a good start and be excellent customer service in my book. You can hope to allow tournament registrations at any time, but until that is done you can only allow registrations at the same time for everyone. Not allow it for those that happen to know the TD or knows what his price might be, if that is the case. Now today's tournament is considered rigged.

So you consider giving advantages to some players 'excellent guest service'? So if I come up to you at noon to purchase a seat immediately in the tournament you'll do that to try to provide excellent guest service? If i show up when the wait list is 100 deep you'll give me a seat immediately to try to provide excellent guest service? You and your staff will do these things for every player to try to provide excellent guest service?

Read the story about the 2/2 game again. Every hand was pot by one player and at least one of his buddies. They were shuffling chips between each other. I'm not sure there's a better representation of collusion than that short of admission by the colluders.

Taking care of the other situation being your staff allowing theft to occur in front of them, making them accomplices? Gee, that's excellent guest service in my book!

You could be right about Saturdays, we'll have to wait and see. I don't like to cancel tournaments we've committed to and we have to schedule a couple months out, but again we'll have to see how it shakes out.

We have added 2 more tables into today's tournament.



Thanks



Mike

While I don't agree with you about "no tourneys on weekends" (why should tournament players have any less access to the facilities?), it's going to be difficult no matter how it's handled. If today's 10-table cap becomes the standard, you're going to have a lot of unhappy tournament fans. Given ML!'s position as THE poker room in the country's 4th-largest metropolitan area, 100 seats just ain't gonna cut it. Demand for seats at $150 tourneys may outstrip supply by 10-1. OTOH, devote half the place to tournaments (even if it's only for a few hours a couple of times a week) and cash players will revolt.

Not sure if I see an easy way out. As a tournament junkie, I know which direction I'd go, but that's irrelevant. If 100 seats becomes the max, they really need to institute a lottery for seats. That's the only fair way.

Because the casino makes more money from cash games and because you can come and go as you please for cash games which is a more efficient use of the tables

Good point, the best way of solving this is probably to have higher buy in tournaments.

Mike,

All I'm saying is look at the video of table 52 around midnight. It's obvious colluding was taking place. You can choose to use this information or ignore it.. I'm just trying to help other players

Mike,

While I think cf is being a little over the top regarding the tournament, I think that a lot of frustration is coming from inconsistent applications of your guidelines.

You have been absolutely fantastic at telling the 2+2 community about the guidelines you are going to follow, and the rules for the room, etc....

When we are in the room, we are seeing a LOT of the same inconsistency in floor decisions, dealer actions, etc... that frustrated us at the poker room that shall not be named. For example, at my table we had three times where someone sat with more than the table max. In no case did the dealer say anything, and in one of the three the dealer told one of my tablemates that the player was allowed to bring more than the table max if they were switching, which is different from what we have been told here.

Obviously you have communicated to the dealers and floor the procedures that you want them to follow, but they aren't necessarily doing it, and that inconsistency is frustrating, especially SINCE you have been so forthcoming about room policies. I know it's the first week, so I am sure that a lot of this will be ironed out, but I think that is where some of the frustration comes from, since 2+2ers seemed to think that a perfect flawless poker room was going to spring forth from the first day (largely because you have been so forthcoming).

I am not sure that 2+2 is always going to be the most constructive when coming to criticism, but at least we can point you to the areas where you might need to reinforce the training you give to your staff.

That's a valid point-of-view, but it would also apply to slots vs table games, one table game vs another, one slot machine vs another. There are benefits to mixing things up, diversity of customer base, etc.

The "theft" story sounds fishy to me. The story is so similar to something much more plausible that it is hard to ignore. Suppose the guy who came up to the table was actually owed some money and the player was willing to give it to him at the time. If this were the case then the staff acted exactly as you would want them to by not allowing the player in the game to go south. The reason i think this version of the story is more likely is the fact that the player didnt put up much of a fight when the drunk guy "stole" his chips.

hello all,

This is my first post here and I am not as regular a poker player as most of you, but I have been reading the forum and played a marathon session on Saturday (table 49 which is upstairs), so I will try to offer some observations that I may not have seen in the discussion thus far.

First, the poker room looks and feels great, the seats are excellent, the USB chargers are a nice bonus, and the tables are big enough that I didn't fell cramped. Great job, Mike.

Knowing what Saturday would be like, I came up early. Parked at 10:15, got in line a few minutes later, and was seated by 11. No complaints there. I know it got worse later in the day - a guy sat down around 6 who had arrived around 3.

The rule is that you can leave for up to an hour and come back, correct? Knowing this I went for 50 minutes to eat dinner, watching the clock, and when I came back I was told my chips were almost taken away. The dealer did not seem to know the rule. I do realize that it is hard to know exactly when a player leaves unless Bravo is updated immediately (more on Bravo later). Btw, I did not plan to take 50 minutes for dinner, but the noodle place took 1/2 hour to get me my food...something to be aware of.


Regarding Bravo, there were a few times where the table device, would show an incorrect status for a player when I'm pretty sure it had been correct before. When I came back from dinner I had to specifically ask to be changed back to active (that was our weakest dealer by far) so I know it was set correctly, but a few minutes later it showed the seat unoccupied. Perhaps the device was just glitchy on table 49 - it did not look like it would be easy for a dealer to hit a button by accident.

I did not have any issues with the noise, however I was on the second floor, so I wonder if there is a big difference between the two. I actually found the ambient noise on the 2nd floor to be minimal and I didn't even notice it. If there really is a big difference, I might end up requesting the second floor because I loved it up there.

The timeliness of the waitresses seemed to be inconsistent, but I chalked that up to the ratio of waitresses to players not always being good enough. One of them did forget my drink order.

One suggestion I do have for the waitresses is to make sure when they take an order from someone at a table, check if anyone else at the table needs something. Too many times a waitress would walk away before I could grab her.

Another player had a situation where the dealer accidentally mucked his cards after the preflop betting. The floor was called and it was deemed that nothing could be done. I fee like he could at least have gotten his bet back, plus maybe been comped some points or something.

All in all, it was a great experience and I will definitely be back. And I have no doubt that the inefficiencies in seating people will be addressed - it was only day 3, and how many of us were as good at we ever were going to be at our jobs on day 3?

TL;DR:

Summary:
1. Great experience, no doubt inefficiencies will be addressed, will be back.
2. Ambient noise level in upstairs room very low.

Constructive criticism:
1. Train dealers on the one hour rule and implement a way to keep track of it (my chips almost got taken despite me returning in 50 minutes).
2. Waitresses should check rest of table for orders after taking one order at the table.

I will be interested in how the tournament goes today.

We get it, you're upset that two players got to register and you weren't one of them. But seriously, calling the whole tournament rigged? Calling for the tournament directors job? Seems extreme to say the least to me. There are other reasons for wanting to register a few players early besides bribes, maybe the staff wanted a chance to familiarize themselves with the computer system and make sure everything works before the first day.

In general, when a player in a live low stakes game thinks other people are colluding, he is probably just being paranoid. They shouldn't be allowed to transfer chips back and forth though, and that is something so obvious to everyone that it makes me doubt it happened.

We obviously didn't expect the turnouts we've had the first couple days and we'll have to see how the tournament situation shakes out. I hate capping tournaments and hope that's not the norm. If it is, we won't be able to sell seats until the day of tournaments. We'll keep an eye on it

Thanks, but they have been through training and made aware of the policies. It will be a process and we'll continue to reinforce our policies

I will 100% use it, I just don't want to jump the gun on accusing people of collusion. As you said yourself, most hands were explainable. Collusion is something we take seriously and we'll keep an eye out.


Thanks


Mike

Players wanting to play in games with empty seats and no waitlist should not have to wait in the line to get into the room - it makes no sense.

It isn't an exact science because it is hard to know exactly when people leave, usually casinos just take your chips after two dealers, so if you left towards the end of one dealers down you will have less than an hour to eat. You can always order food at the table. I can certainly understand why they wouldn't want to have an empty seat while other players are waiting.

This will happen frequently until people get used to playing without a betting line. It is even more important than usual to protect your own hand because it will be less clear if you intend to fold or not. Just be careful and this wont happen to you.

I am definitely disappointed to see this happening after the first day. I hope they get this straightend out soon, to me, it is the biggest problem with the room right now.

Registered for the tournanent. It was a pretty smooth exercise. Ill be shocked if they don't hit their cap by noon tho.

First time actually being in the room. Its super nice.

Oh, I know that it's hard to track. I was a little more bothered that the dealer didn't know the rule. Plus, earlier in the day we had a few players leave for probably longer than an hour. And I know you can eat at the table, I just wanted a little break after playing for 7 hours. I only expected to be gone 30 minutes tops, I didn't know the food itself would take 30 minutes . Lesson learned.



In this case it wasn't a betting line issue. The player was in seat one and his cards were right by the dealer (who was struggling a bit) and she just reached out and grabbed them, probably instinctively, like he had folded. But that is what they told him, his responsibility to protect his had. I still think on an obvious dealer mistake he should at least have gotten his bet back - I think it was only the blinds. Is it worth pissing off a potential customer over $2?

But there is a clear lesson - if you are sitting next to a dealer, put a chip on top of your cards. Probably a good thing to do in any case.

Can someone who plays in this let us all know how the structure is, like what is an average stack after 2 hours, 4 hours and at the final table? I am very curious and would greatly appreciate it.

I totally get what you are saying, but I do not think that was the case this time. Drunk guy did not want to give up his chips, but did not put up much of a fight because thug guy was very large and was giving the impression that he was going to hurt him. After drunk guy got up he was cussing and mutter to himself "your going to lose it anyway you m-fer..." but not loud enough for the other guy to hear. It would have taken several security guys to take out thug guy if they wanted to.

There is a little more to the story but not much, after drunk guy leaves, thug guy sits down with his chips and says "I guess I'm free rolling now". But before he even played one hand he got up and left. I'm really glad he left, I did not want this guy at our table.

It just seems like this man should have at the very minimum, been questioned by security.

Did the guy ever directly complain to Staff "This guy stole my chips"?