Sure it does. I didn’t say they didn’t have a valid argument. My years in the industry tell me that tournaments exist only to provide traffic for live games, as they do not turn much of a profit at all. They do, however, bring in about 100-125 players per day, 40-50 of whom play in those cash games. They also contribute promo drop, and typically make the games better. With our player base there has been no issue, outside of 2-3 players on 2+2, some of whom
dont even play poker in our room.

I like to play PLO when there aren't any decent promotions going and jackpot-eligible games during the big promos.

Agree heavily with this, especially the first sentence. I also play cash games exclusively and am not happy that the promo fund takes more than $1,000 per month from cash game players and gives it directly to tournament players. Being open about it is better than hiding it, but it's a very unethical practice either way.

Hi Johnny. I hope you're not going to punish is for playing 2/5 while we are waiting for 5/10 to start. That kind of thing gets ugly quick, I've seen it happen. You don't want to risk breaking a 2/5 game to start 5/10, but this will often end with players that want to play 5/10 just organizing a sit out, and end up breaking a game anyway. This obviously makes it harder for staff to manage dealer rotations and whatnot, as well as breed enmity between 5/10 players and floors. Lastly, shaming your customers probably isn't a good idea. I hope we can all work together, even when our many different incentives don't align.

-Chase Bianchi

I agree with this.

Lets do some math. Complaining about 1k/month coming out of your bbj money is an argument over literally pennies to you. Like, if we figure... average of 250 players per hr maybe 180k hours of total play, and you are a pro that play 40 hours a week, you represent less than 1/1000th of the player base, so you are crying about ~$1 per month going from you to fund tournaments..

As far as “guarantees should be covered by the casino”, this is basically a semantics argument. If a tournament is (im just making up numers here) $100+20+5(towards promo fund) with the 5 (pretty much) covering the costs to the promo fund, this is nearly exactly the same as $100+25 (with the extra $5 going to the casino) and the casino covering the cost. The only difference is that in the case of the latter situation, Johnny would probably have a dumb executive who halfway up his ass about why the casino misses guarantees from time to time, which would just lead to lower guarantees and thus effectively more rake.

If its only pennies, then why cant the poker room cover it when they miss the guarantee? After all, THEY are the one who "guaranteed" the payouts and THEY are the ones who missed the guarantee for whatever reason. The cash game players had ZERO to do with it and they are the ones having money taken from their promo fund.

Reread his post. The answer to your question is there.

Also, people saying it's a "highly unethical" practice are being way too dramatic. Johnny is making a business decision based on his control of market share. The only way to change things is change his market share. In other words, if you don't like it, go elsewhere.

He is probably getting his information from the same floors who take 45 mins to call names for open seats. But they will also yell at regulars who sit down when it says open seating and is 3 handed without checking in with the back brush. I understand the rules about jumping the lists but when you cant sit in open seating, it seems like an issue.


Also the 5/t had 34 on the list before a table was opened.

Hi Johnny! Just wanted to say I hope your child is doing well and congratulations again!


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I’ve asked a few other MGM cash regs about this and they’re unanimously opposed. It’s nice that some of the tournament players also play cash, but they’re already rewarded by being eligible for the cash game promos during that time.

You’re missing 2 things

1) the tournaments also have promos where they’ll randomly select a few players and give them back their entry fee. This also comes out of the promo drop.

2) it’s not about the money, it’s about the practice and the principle. Even if it’s $1/mo, it leaves a bad taste in your mouth when you’re on the wrong side of it. And if no one dissents now, there’s always the possibility that it’s a lot more money down the road.

Can we revisit in a couple of weeks? I have already dedicated far too much time to this yesterday. I am supposed to be “taking a break” and helping my wife with our newborn.

Thank you. Mom and Baby are great. Sleeping a scheduled is jacked up, and I had plenty of training dealing with Omaha Hi Lo players.... hahahah

Johnny is in the right here, and he understands cash game players best interests better than many of the cash game players (as evidenced by the people complaining about this issue).

The bolded is worth infinitely more than whatever pennies cash game players are putting into the tourney promo fund.

To be frank I support the people that say it is unethical. It is true. MDL as an organization used to fund the missed GTD’s before MGM made it an industry accepted practice. To be clear the fine print was not even listed on the structure sheet before the players raised a concern.

I would not term them as “being dramatic”. To indicate a solution to go elsewhere if you don’t like a practice is like not even providing a sane solution or understanding the term ethical/unethical.

If the organization is losing money as a whole or on the pokerroom I can at least understand. This location posts record profits every year, it is not too much to ask to fund the missed 1-2K per month.

The shotclock tournament lost their shot clocks. Some system issue with the clocks. I hope they would remove them totally, at least it would leave more space on the table.

MGM didn't make this practice an industry standard. The other local (non Maryland) poker room was doing this years ago. I suspect this is a common practice.

Right, $1/month is nothing... Just like how it was fine for cell phone providers to secretly tack on $1 fraudulent fees to their millions of customers. It's only $1, why are those cheap asses complaining over $1 and wasting time on class action lawsuits when they can spend $1000 on an iPhone? Where do you draw the line?

I'm one of those guys that just doesn't care about any of the promos personally. I care about keeping the soft games flowing. I love the action and if bringing in more tournament folks to stick around to play cash games requires funding, I'm 100% behind it.

Are you reading the thread? I have reposted Johnnys post below for you, but to sum, the full cost of tourney promos are 10-15k/month, no small amount. The overlay is 1k-1.5k/month. thats the cost of tourneys from the cash game promo fund.

You say “if its pennies”, it is, you arent questioning my comment or my math, you are just full steam ahead with your pithy pedentic argument, because you are reading my comment just to argue instead of trying to understand and chamge your perspective. Take your hand off the keyboard and turn your brain on.


Ok rasmussen, so did you make sure the question was asked in an unbiased way? Did you make sure to poll appropriately among all demographics? Did you make sure everyone who was polled was fully informed? What is your polling error?




1) i dont need to account for this, johnny gave the full cost of promo funds, and the overlay. See above. He did the math for us.

2) it is absolutely about the money, its just that nobody else bothered to do the math, and now everyone is dug into their stupid opinions over $12 a year ASSUMING YOU PLAY FULL TIME. This is even more obvious considering you instantly fell back on a classic slippery slope argument to try and justify your outrage by pointing to some hypothetical larger amount of moeny it COULD be.

Amazing just how many poorly thought out responses can come so quickly. It takes far less time to come up with BS than to explain why its wrong, so you figure out why a cell phone company fraudulently charging fees is different than a casino legally taking a promo drop which is redistributed to the players, but not in a way that makes sense to some cash game players, and they may not be identical just because both situations had the term “one dollar” in it.

Its been visited several times, i dont know why you are even on here, congratulations! go enjoy the kid, let us bicker amongst ourselves, we enjoy it.

I dont care what the full cost of tournament promos are. As far as Im concerned, tourneys and cash games are completely separate entities. I dont (and lots of people dont) play tournies...ever. Cash game players should not be subsidizing tourney players no matter how much the money is.

Its no different than a casino having a blackjack tournament but some of the prize pool going to the slot players because some slot promo lost money. There might be some blackjack players that also play slots but that's not going to matter to the people who only play blackjack.

Again, I would bet a large amount of money that if there was a way to take a vote of cash game players, the vote would be a landslide saying that it was a grossly unfair practice. I doubt that more than 1% of players know its going on.

This is a nonsensical example. Blackjack players and slot players don't win money from each other, they play against the house.

I would bet that if I were to point to a tourney player in a cash game and ask all the other cash game players if they would pay a dollar a month in order to have that guy at their table for a couple hours the vote would be a landslide saying yes. You frame it how you want, I frame it how I want, I'll always win that bet.

Hmmm.. what percentage of those players have been directly involved building a poker ecosystem on the scale of MGM NH? I respect your opinion and took some time to consider it. In the end, I trust the business decisions of a staff running one of the premier cash game environments as opposed to random poker player voting. My 00000010 cents.

You’re just over here upset and slinging insults, ignoring any data that goes against what you want to believe. Do you even play at MGM? Either way, I have no interest in continuing this conversation with you since you’re clearly incapable being rational instead of resorting to insults.

Since we heard both sides of the argument, let me try to break it down a little bit:

1. To the question whether it is ethical or unethical?
Do we all agree that it is unethical?

2. Is it acceptable?
We have different opinions, some say it is as it benefits cash games. Some say it is not as it was meant for cash games only and should be used for cash games only.

3. What is the motivation for a casino to run tournaments?
To fill the empty tables during the off time, to get people into the property who otherwise may not be interested in playing cash with the hope that they will play cash or other table games after busting out. Let me restate that this is the primary motivation for the casino.

4. Why do casino’s offer GTD’s on their tournaments?
Once again to draw more players than normally expected. They expect that some/most of these players would end up spending money on cash or table games later or at the property.

5. What do they do if they consistently miss their GTD’s?
Either reduce the GTD or become more aggressive in offering more options to get into the tournament to satisfy the guarantee. I remember one time when they had 300/500K GTD and had only three flights to qualify. This is gross underestimation on behalf of the property. Their motivation should be provide more opportunities to get into the event or balance the GTD’s.

6. Do Casino’s make any money if hypothetically all the players that play the tournament leave the property after busting out?
I am sure that they would make less than cash games but they won’t loose money.

7. Why did they create two jackpot pools one for cash and one for tournaments?
To separate the promotions for cash games and tournaments. A tournament player is not eligible for hot tables and other cash promotions unless he plays cash. A cash game player is not eligible for buy-in back promo or missed GTD’s.

If we are going to double dip into cash games jackpot for missed GTD’s then why create two separate pools. Also, why should a cash game player be motivated to help the casino reach their GTD’s when they don’t want to be aggressive or reduce their GTD amounts if they constantly miss them?

In all these points what is the casino doing to satisfy their end of the GTD?