Bravo shows a 50-100 NLHE table running tonight (with 6 on the waiting list!), 10k minimum buy-in. Was just curious if that was a Bravo error. If not, was curious if the high rollers were nationally-known "names" in town for some reason, or just locals stretching out their bankrolls on a holiday weekend.

It’s incredibly unethical to use promo money that comes primarily from cash games this way, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was illegal.

We're in Year 3 and still dealing with 10-15 empty tables with long lists on holidays with very predictable increased traffic in the room. If dealers calling out is the common variable can we please start factoring that into the scheduling equation and start to compensate for it?

I have not read the specific language of Promo Fund at MGM, but I have read it at other casinos. The places that I can say that I do know about have a very broad description of what a Promo Fund may cover.

Please Don't think every dollar dropped in Promo Fund/Bad Beat Box is 100% given back to players because that is not the case.

I do not know this to be the true, but I suspect that MGM has one of the higher give back percentages then most casinos that run a similar fund.
I suspect that all well run rooms with high customer loyalty have high return on Promo Fund giveback.

This has been approved by MLGCA. I have posted about this before, and the amount of funds collected from tournaments is typically within $500-$1,000 either way. If you wish, please look earlier ITT and you will see a breakdown.

We return 100% of funds collected to the players. There is no admin fee, and we do not use any funds collected for any other purpose than promotions, guarantees, or the tournament leader board.

For sake of argument, how many people are actually standing in the poker room?

It’s still unethical, even if 100% of the funds come from the tournament players. MGM wants all the benefits of a guarantee tournament without having to shoulder any of the risk of a potential overlay.

It's 5:06 pm. There are dozens of people standing around. I've been on the 5/10 nlhe list for a bit over three hours now. The list is 25 deep. No table has been opened and it seems like one won't be opened today.

The problem doesn't seem to be too few dealers---instead it seems like a lot of the tables have lost their automatic shufflers.

Without guessing about how many other people were standing around waiting, when I got in today, I was about 40th on 1/3 and 20th on 2/5 with a bare minimum of 10 unoccupied tables.

When I finally got a seat, I had to fish my cards out from under the rail every other hand because of the way the shot clocks raise the rail.

We can agree to disagree. Guarantees, more than anything, serve to give players an indication of the estimated field size of a tournament.

We are aware of the shot clock issue and have a meeting with the vendor on Thursday to fix or replace.

Couldn’t be the shufflers. If they aren’t working, they are left in place and we hand shuffle. We did have multiple call outs today...

That's a total cop out. Guarantees, more than anything, are used to get plenty of people to play the tournament knowing what the minimum prize pool will be no matter how many people show up to play. As the previous poster said, the poker room wants to guarantee certain payouts to get as many people to play as possible while taking zero risk if not enough people enter.....and the cash game players shouldnt be the ones paying the piper when the tourney falls short of the guarantee.

Im sure its not illegal, but its certainly unethical and I bet if you took a poll of all your cash game players, they would agree. My guess is that 99% of them have no idea you do that.

Your guess would be dead wrong. I wont dig this up for you, but the breakdown is earlier in this thread.

This question from earlier in this thread has still not been answered:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...postcount=5369

So your cash game players mostly know about this policy and they are fine with it? I seriously doubt they are OK with it. The manager of my poker room did the same thing recently and every cash game player I told about it was incensed.

About 99% cash 1% tournament.

So is that money going into the promo fund?

How about coming out of the promo fund?

How often do you miss your tournament guarantees?

In that case it seems there weren't nearly enough dealers. That happens.

What is a little confusing is why the 5/10 list never got called today. I left after four hours. It is now 8 hours later and every other list has been cleared. Bravo says 5/10 is 34 deep. This is bigger than all other lists combined (at 9:15). Tables have been broken down over the last hour or so, but no 5/10. Kind of strange.

Yes they do. They understand that about 30-40% of the tourney players play at least an hour of cash before or after a tourney, which certainly makes the games better. I am open and up front about this. Your opinion that this is unethical is noted, but I don’t think it’s shared by people in this market.

It does go into the promo fund. Tournament leaderboard comes out of the promo fund. Missed guarantees come out of the promo fund. We miss about 2 guarantees a week on average, and have to make up between $600-$1K. We have a tournament leaderboard that pays between 10k-15K per month, depending on the upcoming tournament series. We take in between $9K-$14K per month, depending on the field sizes. On average we probably run in the negative around 1K-$1500 per month. There are enough regs ITT that are aware, and if I felt there was anything to hide, I would not be so transparent.

Any other questions?

The list was likely a dead list with most players in other games. It now has 14 players on it. Most times when the list gets that long, it’s full of our regs, who won’t event play unless there is someone on the list they don’t know. Kinda shameful if you ask me...

Sure. Does it make sense that people who play cash games exclusively are frustrated that you give their promo money to tournament players because some of your tournaments are unable to meet their guarantees?

I'm sorry Johnny, but you are wrong and it's horrible for the game for you to be posting this here. I play the 5/10 most days. Some days we open with just regs, other times with regs and new players, sometimes with mostly new players. We've had days where it's all regs playing each other all day, but most of the time it's a mix.

Most importantly, there are no 5/10 regs who avoid the game if they see only familiar names and faces. Those people you're thinking of are not 5/10 regs.

I'm not sure who is giving you information about this, but they are wrong. And I am putting it in these terms because if you were there to see the game yourself you would know that what you stated is not true.

As for the list today being dead---yes, if you wait eight hours to call a game the names at the top of the list have probably gone home.