mike, thank you so much for your work! looks like it's us 1, bigtex 0.

this sounds like a win for people in the industry (dealers/staff) if you thought that the money collected at the tables wasn't going to the people it was said to be going to)

and not a loss for the players as the optional $20 may in fact no longer be optional

grunch

I've cashed in a few wsopc events and every time they make me fill out a form and write down how much I want to give to the dealers ($0 because they already keep a big %). So yeah, I like the idea too. That's just not what happens...

We have you to thank for these changes, Mike. Thanks for your work on this issue.

this was the first time i went - was just me and kelsey in '03.

Seth palansky discusses this issue in depth with mike Johnson on the current podcast episode #209.

Discussion starts around the 98 minute mark.

Good job Mike. One question though.

Why is the WSOP still allowing these fees? Why not just do away with them?

Yeah, it's half a win IMO, the fees are still an insult to anyone who thinks about them and it's still unethical to have the salaried floor staff get a cut!

And yeah wish we coulda got an answer on the vouchers

Seths responses to mike were much more civil than to you. I didn't get "the travelling staff needs this extra addon" explanation since most of ptc run events are at harrahs properties with inhouse staff, tunica for example.

Matt savage will be running the upcoming mgm grand series for example. He will probably bring a few people from commerce with him to run the event. Imagine the outcry if he charged an additional staff fee over the 3% to bring in his crew to run that event.

I guess Adam is mad I didn't mention him as well...

Not mad, just needed an excuse to post that gif.

It never was "optional" for any semi-serious player, I mean come on, who's going to pass up 50% more chips for $20?

my point is nothing is going to change for the players

your point is ignorant.

You're not really a "big picture" type of guy are you?

Now that all fees are documented, players can make a more informed decisions on whether to attend or not. I suspect people will be less inclined to make the trip if some of these fees get to be too high, but that's up to the market.

Also, if there is any funny business going on that comes to an end. If the fees are going into someone's pocket, rather than divided amongst the staff it's a win for those employees that weren't getting their fair share.

what's going to change for the players

1) they will know about all fees BEFORE they buy in to the tournament at the cage, not after they have already bought in. As such, they will have the option to enter or not depending on whether they are comfortable with the fees that are being charged as opposed to someone putting their hand out looking for another $10/$20 AFTER they are already sitting at the table waiting for the cards to be dealt

2) they will have all fees accounted for on their receipt at time of buy in

3) they will presumably be made aware that the fee exists before they show up at the event as all fees will hopefully listed on promotional material for the event and not just in the fine print on the structure sheet

4) it alleviates the perception when cash is handed over at the table at the last minute that thost $10 and $20 bills could be ending up in anyone's pocket. If it's charged at the cage, players have more peace of mind that the money has a better chance of being distributed as it should be (obv no one knows for sure where the fees go).

That's a pretty good amount of change

The best is when they give an extra $50 cash to satellite winners for the sole purpose of giving us the opportunity to tip the dealers. So they take $10 add on + 3% out of the prizepool and then add $50 to the seats (thus they give out less seats) with the intent of us to tip...

I always tip when tournaments have reasonable rake but will never tip in any tournament with a staff add on.

What do you think the reaction to smaller fields because of high rake will be?

another interesting thing about the Biloxi stop was you could pre-register online. Interesting enough, nothing about the $10 add-on when paying by CC online.
You sit down at the table and wham!

The pre-register ended up being a disaster. I made the final table of an event (not a sick brag - low 4 figure payout) and had registered online a few weeks earlier for the next event. Obviously these conflict with Noon start-up of new event and 2 or 3PM restart for final table of event the day before. I showed up early to try and get a refund. No quick mechanism. I had to talk to 4 different people. Someone did finally say it would get done, but it was going to be a lot more time and after the new event started. I had to weigh the options and decided for fear of losing my whole buy-in, I'd just multi-table live. My stack was live and in-play already by time staff was anywhere close to handling a refund for me despite showing up before 11AM. I ended up bubbling the money on the event (about a table away from the money), which is pretty good considering I missed two-thirds of the hands. A bit perturbed that unregistering wasn't an easy thing. Everything was sort of chaotic. My favorite was one person directing me to another, who directed me back to that original person.

I say this as a warning to let people know how unorganized these events are and so people don't preregister.

Has anyone contacted Harrahs about it? If people decide to not play because of it, of course effecting their bottom line, doubt they would let it continue. Also if you brought it up to the various state gaming regulators at the various venues, they might intervene as well as it's probably not part of what was originally approved. Just an idea, I'm drunk on margaritas eating Mexican food so this might not be as smart as I think it is...

Thanks Mike and all other who fought the good fight here, on twitter, etc.

This is the biggest thing, imo. There was never any legit justification for a system that basically resulted in giant bags of tens and twenties, with nothing more than an oral promise from tournament staff of "yea we'll account for it all accurately and distribute it the way it should be." anyone who spent at least 10 seconds thinking about that saw how shady it made the events, staff, and wsop brand look. glad it's gone.

PokerTickets allows you to cancel the purchase of a buyin/ticket up to 3 hours prior to the event starting.

It took a while and I was looked at like I had 3 heads a few times but I finally did receive a hand written receipt for my $10 "optional" addon today

I think the dealers get paid a fixed hourly before the amount of entrants are determined. Any extra money taken out of the pool for dealers and staff probably goes to the staff, whoever that is. Whether player tips actually go straight to the dealers or not I don't know.

Does anyone know if the tips do go straight to the dealers? I'd like to find out for future reference.