The 'Full House' raffle is in full effect this week at GLake. For every FH or better you get a ticket into Sunday's raffle for $500. PLO will have a name drawn every 30 minutes and NL every hour from 11 AM through 10 PM. You DO NOT need to be seated in order to claim a prize ... just present in the room at the time of the draw.
PLO also has a 'Lucky Seat' promo starting March 12th and running each Thursday and Monday the rest of the month. From 1 PM to 11 PM every 2 hours a Player will be 'Bravo' selected to win $500. YOU DO need to be seated and present at the time of these draws.
I assume that GLake will have a NL High Hand promo 'soon'. With the transition and somewhat lower volume of NL (IMO) they needed to build up the promo escrow funds. PLO really didn't see too much of a decrease due to a bit of BBJ fever. GL
Tax season is upon us and there is increased traffic in the charity rooms and GLake is at capacity on the weekends.
Westgate held a $100 tournament last week that got 33 entries ... that's pretty good considering that King's is open the same day (Lincoln?). I've been hearing that King's is running 'normal' and possibly getting busier these days with a few Players choosing to avoid the drive and smoke at GLake on weekends.
I've been of the opinion that there's plenty of room for both GLake and the charity rooms in WMich.
I'm assuming that GLake will take another run at holding at least 1-2 tournaments a week ... or maybe just once a month. IMO the Saturday 'afternoon' Bounty did well most of the time. I really believe that they need to move their start times back, but with the smaller room they don't want a tournament cutting into the cash games.
And IMO, even with promos, GLake is well below par in the communication/notification department with the Players. IMO a lot of this is internal restrictions/procedures in place in order to 'control the message' and the other is actually getting some of these promos approved at Gaming, which is buried trying to figure out how to handle sports betting right now. GL
Yes, Casey Carrol had a great run (again) at the WSOPc even in Hammond last weekend. After finishing 3rd last Fall, he finished 2nd this time around for about $160K.
After hanging around with a below average stack, probably just picking a few spots to stay chipped up he found himself in the final 10. Failing to grab any real traction he was really short when he found 2 triple ups with A6 and AT. And then he had enough chips and found the right Player to make a fold just before dinner break when he shoved a River after a failed OESD. That put him in the chip lead with 5 Player left (I believe). And then he went from there getting to HU, which wend back and forth a bit.
Hammond is proving to be a good location as all 3 of his major scores have come at The Horseshoe. We'll see if he can carry some momentum into the MSPT or WSOP.
Poker certainly could be caught up in the C-virus conversation ... if not causing major havoc with Spring Breakers in the coming weeks. GL
Michigan has fared well in Chi town. Michiganders have not fared well in our home state tournaments. C-virus has to be on the poker players mind as casinos can house anyone from anywhere. Bring the sanitary wipes
Had an issue at GLC yesterday. Playing 1-2 our table had 1 guy with an hour layover, 1 other guy away from table with two missed blinds, and an everyday regular who recently busted away also. So 3 empty seats. After about 45 minutes I spoke up about picking up the busted player(who was out playing bac) the floor said the player will be right back.. another 30min later and hes still not back so I speak up again and the floor gets aggressive grabs his badge and says let me do my job. There was a list of 4 people waiting to play. In all we were probably 7 handed for 1 hour. Was I out of line for speaking up?
Usually at GLake a bust-out gets barely an orbit to get chips back on the table if there's a list. 'Any' Player needs at least one BB on the table to hold their spot if it goes over an orbit or so. Things can get lost at a push sometimes, but it sounds like this one went through a couple of pushes.
I've been trying to get them to not count a 'dinner' as a Player walking but I didn't get any confirmation either way after the rules meeting.
Should you speak up? Certainly ... but also try to assess what's going on in the room as well. There are more and more cases where a Floor is on their own and 'tasks' get stacked up ... with filling a seat definitely taking less priority than some other tasks. Picking someone up requires a call to security, but it sounds like in this case there was just an absent button? That's a little easier to get through.
I think there is some strain on a few Dealers and Floors in the new room for whatever reason ... and with the added 'pressure' of the FH tickets this week it's been amped up a bit. GL
Looks like 29 of 200 advanced to Sunday at FK. A bit lower than I thought.. we'll see how today goes. Starting stack of 40k is now 275k average at 4k/8k/8k .. GL
The busted baccarat player I mentioned above survived might be chip leader with 533k. I had some tough table draws and was really up against it and busted . WPT, MSPT, HPT, WSOP champs were in the field too.
not been a huge fan of this GL full house promo. full 8 tables this saturday night and the floors seemed overwhelmed. dealers constantly yelling out seat numbers and waiting for confirmation over 60 people talking and chip shuffling. I think it slows the game down a bit and makes things too hectic on the floor. i guess any rakeback is good, but id rather just have high hands or something
Looks like FK 750 ended in a 4way chop of about 150k .. sounds like a GL cash Reg scored an 8th place finish ..
GL raffle had the.room filled til 900 before tables started to see some open seats. There were MANY Players with multiple picks, including a five time winner in PLO (of 23 pulls). Another Reg twosome scored 2 each as well.
Gun Lake Promo was terrible waited for 4hrs and finally left, couldn’t get a seat and couldn’t even get food at sandhill because line there was super long too, maybe someday this place will figure out how to become a full service casino instead of a glorified slot palace
Not a defense of the casino, as I didn't play a hand of poker this weekend, but given what I know about how long it takes to get a promotion approved from corporate, and then through the gaming commission, this giveaway GL ran on Sunday could've been put together prior to the room going from 14 tables down to 8. Promo probably goes fine if they're in the old room.
It will be interesting to see if the virus has an affect on poker volume ... can't imagine it wouldn't. The general consensus at the table is minimal worry since the major cases are typically folks who would've been at risk of the 'normal' flu anyway. There also might be some influence at home where family may want to limit exposure. It obviously makes sense to hear this attitude at the table ... since they are already there!
At this point in time I don't see how it can be avoided .. this is coming. It's just the decisions to limit/delay the spread as much as possible as the health care industry scrambles to study in an attempt to get out in front of it. It takes years to develop and approve new drugs so it will be interesting what shortcuts are 'approved' along the way. GL
Today is the first PLO 'Lucky Seat' promo at GLake. Every 2 hours from 1 PM to 11 PM (6 total) any Player who is seated and properly logged into the Bravo system has a shot at $500 promo cash. GL
I would have to say that the first PLO Lucky Seat event was a bit underwhelming with only one table running through the drawing period with zero chance that a 2nd table was going to open. Obv there are many factors that may have influenced the lack of patrons in the casino as a whole yesterday as well. We'll see where we are at for Monday's event ...
Seats chosen .. in order .. were 1,9,7,2,7,9 with no multi-winner as the Player that was in Seat 9 'all' day skipped the last drawing. Of course I was in Seat 8 ... and am now on an 0 for 29 streak this month in promo drawings.
I did some basic 'investigation' into the Promo Fund. There's a sheet(s) that the casino must make available to you if you request it. I didn't ask for the BBJ sheet, only the 'Promo' sheet. Each drop is split between the BBJ and the Promo funds. As of earlier this week there was around $25K in the NL fund and over $40K in the PLO fund. These funds are kept track of separately ... so there is no conspiracy that NL gets any of PLO's money. Once this Lucky Seat promo is over there will still be around $30K in the PLO fund ... so I would assume there will be more PLO promos coming into April. I don't know what the language with Gaming dictates as to how fast or if there is a maximum (or minimum) amount that's 'allowed' in these funds.
Obviously there should be enough cash in the fund to make the proper payouts for whatever promo is running. We all know what happened with the Full House payout promo ... it got shut down quickly since it probably would've broke both accounts before the promo period expired.
PLEASE don't bum rush the cage with inquires .. What you can do is offer suggestions to any Floor, mainly Tieg (?), as to what promos you'd like to see offered. It's pretty obvious that the Straight Flush Promo is not really denting the funds. And even after $26,500 of payouts this month there will still be a healthy balance to use.
On the particular day I looked at (probably Monday 3 AM to Tuesday 3 AM) there had been 281 hands of PLO that had drops. With $281 going to the BBJ and $281 going to the Promo Fund. It's really easy math .. and remember that PLO does offer RIT, so there was probably 30-35 hands where the drop didn't happen.
Again, lets not make this Pandora's box ... but this is information that is discussed at the table. So here is a small bite to hopefully quell the thirst for a bit. GL
Firekeepers responded to my Tweet that there are no plans to shut down as of yet, but that was last night and things are changing on the fly.
There's a 'closings' thread here on 2+2 and it shows casinos on both coasts shutting down for 2 weeks as well.
We'll see today if domestic travel is reduced by the Feds. We re-booked our flights to FL yesterday for 40% savings. We had a non-refundable portion of our trip still holding their ground ... we'll see if things change to the point where they give in or a covered event kicks in on our trip insurance.
One thing we did learn (maybe a change since we last had to deal with it) is that any 'credit' on an airline is from date of purchase, not date of travel. So this is a small disadvantage of buying your tickets well ahead of time. GL
