They don't call them 'promotions' for no reason. This one definitely put the screws to some of the charity action. They can also work against them .... like I already know I'm not available Sunday for the Full House Raffle, so why drive the extra distance when I can find an evening game in GR?

You want to reward the people who support the room the most somehow and yet you don't want to limit 'anyone' from coming in either. So the balance of these challenges versus the BBJ and HH 'instant' rewards is 'their' challenge. GL

Answer20 vs promotions. No disqualification

I'm glad that guy won the free roll over some of the other players who play at GLC..

How often do they do these freerolls?

This was a free roll for a seat in the wsoo ME. First time they did it since opening

GLake would like to do another 'hours' challenge freeroll but they are still discussing the details. I told them a seat into the WPT Deepstack that is supposed to be coming to MCC in August might be the next target. But it's not official yet so that makes it hard to put in a promo that Gaming can approve.

Another avenue might be a similar 'points' system that FKeepers uses for it's quarterly freeroll. Problem is that there's very little tournament traffic at GLake right now so it would be hard (again) to draft a promo with such a wild card. Something like that might spur the tournament play, but it may be just the cash players not playing cash if they see that as an easier avenue to the freeroll. New (more) players is what the goal would be ... and going into Summer that may be harder to do. Although I think WM had one of the best Summer seasons for poker last year ... you never know until you try .. .GL

The amount of coolers i suffered today at GLC was ridiculous. Hahaha. Thank you Old faithful blackjack for bailing me out

Ahh yes, the old double or nothing in the pit strategy to recover from a losing session. Im guilty of taking that road a few times.

There have been a couple of GLake Players having issues with points v tier credits. Make sure you know the difference and it's probably best not to take your 'concerns' to the Players Club desk right away (perhaps).

Points = $$ for food or convert to bets/entries into drawings. We are supposed to earn 500 points ($1) per hour of play.

Tier Credits = 'points' towards Gold/Black card status. We are supposed to get the same 500 'points' per hour towards those status levels.

Based on the conversations there are some Players who believe they are only earning 200 tier credits per hour, but 'maybe' still earning 500 comp points per hour.

A month or so ago GLake dropped the tier credit standing off of the kiosk screens so the best way to look yours up is by registering online.

At the start of the year I was told that they roll over roughly 33% of your tier credits from the previous period to give you a jump start on the current 6 month tier time frame. This appears to be the case for my tier standing and based on my play so far since January 1st. This was obviously 'not' the case when I had one of the Players go online and check out their standing. They had completed the 200 hour challenge and had very few tier credits.

If you think you have an issue start with Tom, Allen, Scott or Jeff(s) before going to the PClub. GL

If there is confusion on this issue, it seems to me that it should be explained in detail on a Gun Lake poker room web page.

I have another question. Do tournament and cash players get the same rewards based on hours played? It seem that it would be difficult to track as cash game players can walk away from the table whenever they want without penalty, but tournament players can't.

Staying at Poto tomorrow in a compd room. I am not in town for poker/casino but will play if I have time. Most likely a 1am session if anything...

Maybe I'm being negative but I swear rooms keep those pages as uninformative as possible.

Even in person it can be difficult to acquire basic information like what the rake on a tournament is or if the dealers get a cut.

I've given up asking asking employees at cardrooms about tournament rake. Literally no one has ever been able to answer the question.

Ok .. one at a time ...

1) I've never had an issue at any casino answering questions about the rake (cash or tournament) .. as long as the tournament was currently going on. Any other time and the lack of exact knowledge is surprising. I've yet to ask very many questions at GLake, but all have been answered as long as you ask someone in the top 4. (Tom, Allen, Jeff, Jeff?)

2) Cash Players are 'lobbied' when they get up from the table at most casinos, they earn no comp or tier 'points' when they are away from the table and the Dealer logs them into the lobby. This was a point of emphasis during the 200 hour challenge ... that being the Dealers logging Players out when they left the table.

3) Tournament Players don't earn comp or tier credits for their play. Although I have no idea where FKeepers got their numbers for my year end statement for 2017 when I spent basically zero hours in the pits/slots, so some of my tournament activity may have ended up being logged into those numbers.

4) The poker room doesn't control the comps nor tier credits ... they fight for them for us with the main casino!! I wouldn't be surprised if the poker room didn't get 'charged' for them somehow in the inter-company accounting mish-mash. The poker room at GLake is it's own entity as far as Gaming goes. They didn't intermingle it with the main casino other than the full time Dealers are on the same medical plan ... and that's the main reason that poker Dealers 'can' play at GLake, but the rest of the pit Dealers can't.

I get my intel from pretty reliable sources and I try to remember it as best I can. But yes, there are some talking points that really should be easier than they appear to be, but we aren't in the meetings either to see the politics. And just like some rulings, there may be little twists from Floor to Floor even though there shouldn't be. GL

Dude tournament rake is easy to determine with some math.. and usually the floor will tell you before hand.. Firekeepers is the only place worth playing tournaments at as of now

Played at Poto last night(not first time). I had a great active competent players.. 2 players stood out as the better place to in particular and thus were dominating the table. I ended up limping aces in HJ correctly and button made it $15-4 callers- I make it $75- 2 callers to flop J104-U2G open jams for $250!!!!!- - everyone folds I tank sitting on $400 and eventually make the correct call he asks if I limped with Queens then shows his KJ. Clean board and I scoop. Pretty successful night. Waking up to a rack full of Reds and a bunch of other colorful pocket chips

Rake and promo drops in contemporary casinos are routinely camouflaged to extent joint is able to do so. "Do da math".

So youre telling me you can't distinguish from tourney prize pool of how much money they take out?

Headline: POINT SHAVING AT GUN LAKE ... Story at 11 ...

With this being April this is obviously a late break news story but the reward structure at Gun Lake did change (or at least was supposed to) on January 1st. When in the poker room Players are now reduced to 200 'tier' credits per hour instead of the previous 500. This means that a strictly poker Player would need to log in 1000 hours to become a Black Card holder ... about 38.5 hours per week!!

Players should still be earning 500 'comp' points per hour, roughly $1 per hour. These points can be used for food or converted to pit play (or raffle tickets).

I'm not sure how this all came about, but it would seem quite petty IMO to stir up this much dust to 'prevent' maybe 30-40 people from getting their Black Cards. Gold Card status is still pretty reasonable to expect at 100 hours in 6 months.

It will be interesting to see how this affects the attitude of some Players in the short run. I've already heard that some Players are looking back at FKeepers.

Lots of dust in the short term (not that I'm helping prevent that!) and going into MSPT season it really could affect play at GLake just out of principal. GL

I preferred knowing before I bought in, not after. :P

It's amazing how many places seem to muck this up, seeing as how casinos are about the closest thing to money printing licenses you can actually get in this world. Over-promise and under-deliver is pretty much the worst thing you can do in just about any business venture.

Maybe I'm being overly critical, but running a semi-successful poker room seems to be a fairly simple. Keep it simple. Get a good floor and good dealers. Firekeepers has been doing this well since day 1. They aren't perfect, but everyone who works the room treats the players like a customer. It's amazing how many poker rooms I have gone to and gotten crap and attitude from the staff, and many of those rooms have seen a big drop in play relative to their competitors. I think it's a testament to the staff at 'keepers that they've managed to stay a fairly successful room despite being a small market room in the post boom economy with significant competition in the nearby metro regions.

I'm going through the same thing online, with Juicy Stakes Poker, the masters of information hiding and vague answers. Once when I asked about withdrawal requirements, and I got the exciting news that the withdrawal fee was $250.) My wife was shocked by that number, because she remembered me going through their pages to find that information.

Then I asked if there were any other requirements for withdrawal, and I was told that I when I'm ready, tell them and "we will let you know if there are any other requirements."

I finally pulled the trigger and gave them got all of my documents, but twice when I've asked where everything stands, they say they'll get back to me in 48 hours, which took four days. Now I'm on day three of the second 48 hours.

Because of all this crap I'm switching most or all of my playing to live (extra benefit, live tournaments don't lag or crash.) This month I've played twice at Gun Lake, my first times playing at a casino and now I learn that they are hiding information.

Wow.

Clif, have you tried Global Poker?

For those that don't follow Bravo .. GLake's Friday 5/10 PLO 'grew' up to a 25/50 by 9 AM Saturday morning and they were getting call-ins from all along I-94 wondering if it was true and how long the game might last (so they could get there).

I did notice that action was way down later in the day with only one 1/2 and one 2/5 PLO running. Later at night (maybe 8 PM) it still look down with maybe five-six 1/2 running, but the 2/5 PLO was still running with a small list. (Yes, I know it was Easter). GL

I am happy to report that I finally got my check yesterday, delivered by Fedex.