Wow sooooooo much to comment on....
Regarding the tournament this weekend (7/12/08).
1) You can register anytime (until maybe an hour before the tournament or so) at the cashiers cage next to the poker room. If you are standing at the front podium and facing into the casino..the cage is about 50 feet around to your right....on the right of the spirit bar, right next to the bathrooms.
(as for when they are going to transfer the registration from the cage to the ballroom, just give the room a call and they should be able to give you that info...if you are their at 7am on saturday, just go to the cage and you will be able to register).
2) I was speaking to the PR manager this weekend and if I remember correctly he said they have room for 45-50 tables in the ball room, plus there is room for 7 - 8 tables right outside the poker room(though I doubt they will use those as its all the way on the otherend of the casino). The last tournament in March'08 had 474 people (45 tables - 450 + 24 alternates). I believe they are selling 500 seats and then going to an alternate list, so if it is a complete sellout, with alternates (of course depending on how many people bust out early) I would estimate the top number at about 550, but who knows...
3) I will not repeat the complete stucture as xxrodxx did that in earlier post, but the basics are $225+25, $10,000 chips, 25 minute levels, 25-50 starting blinds, ante's start 4th level.
4) The Tourney is $50K guarnteed Prize pool...regular payout structure...if it hits 500 players that's $112,500 in the pool, with first place at around $30,000 (i would guess) and probably paying 45 spots.
5)
THER WILL BE SEXY WOMEN IS SOME FORM OF MINIMUM TYPE CLOTHING (BIKINIS?) CARRYING THE ROUND CARDS
Regarding future bigger, deeper, longer tournaments. I was speaking with the PR manager this weekend and actually asked him about this. The big problem he has is that he has to share the "ballroom space" with the other things that the showboat does. They do not have a "conference center area" like Borgata, Ceasars & Harrahs do, so they are somewhat limited in that way.
This is why the structure is not a little more generous...they do have to finish the tournament in one day. The PR Manager wants to do bigger events and is constantly working to get the casinos management to free up the space for him...
If the tournaments like this weekend's keep doing better and better (which they have been) then there is a greater and greater chance that we'll see some bigger, deeper-stacked events...
Speaking about the games spread:
This weekend I tried to get a SHO game going and a 1/2 PLO going on Friday evening....we had 3 people on the list and I had the floor calling it out for about 2 hours before we just bagged it...
We did get a $5-$10 NLHE ($800 min/$2000 max) going on Saturday, full table from 2p-8p before it finally broke up when the daytime players left for the day, the remainder (4 People) moved down to $5/$5 and we had 2 5/5 games going for most of the night and into the early (3am) morning, what happend after that I don't know as I went to bed.
On the weekends the normal mix of games is:
4-7 - 1/2 NLHE tables
2-5 - 2/4 LHE
1-2 - 3/6 LHE
1-2 - 2/5 NLHE
1 - 5/5 NLHE (sometimes 2 or sometimes 1 5/5 and 1 5/10 on really big weekends)
There are usually 3 to 4 people on a list for some form of Omaha or Stud, so if you are interested show up and push for the game....
Going to end this post here...will post a separate post about the dealers....