Quote:
Originally Posted by Mat the Gambler
However, a smaller jackpot that hits more regularly, or a promotion that runs on certain days of the week, is a lot more predictable and you can plan farther ahead for how many dealers you think you will need per day.
This is a good point, and more than that, it makes things more predictable for the players too.
Even a BBJ can be reasonable if the qualifier is set low enough so that it pays out more regularly. Most (all?) of the rooms in NH right now have a qualifier of quads or better getting beaten in hold'em, which is nuts. It's geared to create disproportionately massive prizes that bring in lots of jackpot chasers and skew demand for $1/$2.
I know it's an even-money bet, but because it pays out so infrequently, it sure doesn't feel like it. It just feels like accelerated rake that almost no one in the room is ever going to see again. And when it gets huge like the BBJ in Hampton just did, the payout is so big that most of that money may never see the poker economy again—especially not the third-ish of it that vanishes into the federal government. The taxes from the Hampton BBJ alone are about $100K getting sucked out of low-limit NLHE.
Compare that to a promo where people win, oh, I don't know, some amount up or down of $1,000, but it pays out much more often. Marketed properly, it will still entice people to play, but when they hit, that money's going to end up back on the tables pretty quickly.
The River in Milford has a BBJ promo that I don't mind as much. They have a normal quads-qualified BBJ that grows like the friggin' lotto , but a piece of that $1 drop also goes toward a more modest mini-BBJ that only requires jacks full (I believe) to be beat.