Bit hard to believe, but wow.

Farmer Ted state gaming regulations vary and some fall under your reason in #1 and another reason is casino greed any money that comes thru the cage they tend to consider it theirs to keep. Example is Hammond they charge $350 instead of $345 +10 yet dealers or staff see none of that $5. I know Jimmy, Bill, Kevin, Jordon or Dennis will give a receipt when asked. If Jimmy only had one casino to deal with like Venetian it could be worked out to add it into the buyin but he has to deal with many.

I am curious as to what you consider the now-universal 3% withholding for staff to be. I haven't tipped at the end of a tournament (with one exception) since that 3% was instituted.

As to the last point I quoted: some venues in Nevada collect a staff "bonus" or "appreciation" for additional starting chips; the ones with which I'm familiar (Venetian; Reno's Grand Sierra and Atlantis) do it at the cage at time of registration, but it's still a separate charge/fee and not incorporated into the buy-in.

This was all over the Poker media in Scandinavia at the time so likely very true.

And in Denmark I'm pretty sure the dealers have a minimum hourly wage that's a heck of a lot more than in the US. Plus very little insurance/health costs. Any tips would be cream on an already ok salary.

I've refused to go there to play based on this.

This seems simple enough.

Whoever is running the add-on 'dealer bonus' has the right as a business to structure the game that they are providing however they want to. Harrahs/WSOP/whoever is not forcing anyone to play in their tournaments. If they feel they can make more profit off of them while maintaining attendance numbers, why wouldn't they? They owe nothing to poker players. They want to make $$$ while providing a service (like many businesses). If a practice becomes intolerable...just stop playing in games run by that establishment.

Is the hidden "dealer bonus" in a gray area? Yes. Is the "bonus" structured to disadvantage a player if he doesn't choose to purchase it? Yeah, sometimes. Can the marketing for the events be misleading? Of course.

However, anyone who plays is voluntarily visiting a place of business and wagering money according to those house rules. While not taking a "bonus" might start a player off at a disadvantage, that is how the game is structured and if it bothers you I would suggest doing your homework before attending the tournament. Pick up a phone and call the poker room and talk to someone who can give you an answer to your questions.

Posting complaints on a message board about a small fee associated with a much larger buy-in, while still participating in the events is laughable. If it bothers you, stop playing in those tournaments. There are always other options.

Steve, yes, that 3%, when it's pulled from the pool, is also supposed to be a dealer/staff tip. Since I have no idea what dealers make in tourneys as it is, I have little clue as to what's fair for the forced tips, but before this started happening, I had generally heard that 3% to 5% was reasonable. I give them the benefit of the doubt that they're now basically tipping for us in order to keep a quality stable of dealers for a given venue or series. It wouldn't surprise me if voluntary tipping had gotten worse in recent years now that we have plenty of young pros worried about every ounce of EV and ROI.

At the end of the day, all we can do as players is to see what % of all the fees makes it into the pool and what goes elsewhere and then make up our minds as to whether we think it provides a good opportunity to win some money (including field softness and any other factors). The tip used to be a tricky extra component, but now that they're taking care of that, I completely agree that there's little need to tip extra at the end unless you're in a particularly giving mood.

Obviously the dealers are better taken care of in $10K's that pull 3% as opposed to $350 tournaments that do the same. So it would make sense that the lower buy-in tournaments might need to either pull more from the pool or look for other ways to get money to the dealers. In a perfect world that would all be accounted for in the rake to keep it simple (higher % rakes for cheaper tourneys), but as you note, a lot of venues/series have gotten creative in this regard with a variety of fees. Logical or not, it's how it's done, and I like to play this silly game, so I opt to roll with it.

Correct, just as we have the right to alert poker players to a business practice that is, in our opinion, shady.

Simple enough.

3% is the accepted norm for witholding for dealers. Players have an option to leave more if they choose to after they cash.

To take another 1.33% ($1500 buyin), 2% ($500 buyin), 3% ($300 buyin) or as much as an additional 10% in the $100 buyin as a forced extra tip seems unreasonable.

To do that and then ask someone to fill out a form as to why they didn't leave even more after they cash is unacceptable.

BigTex, I am sorry but your going to have to stop defending your boy Jimmy the crook. He is retiring because he knows somone big was finally gona bring it to light. A few months back someone made a new account to call out Jimmy on his crap, it got shut down and of course he never came into the thread, but what OP was saying was making sence and all the mods here did not believe him.

which thread are you referring to?

It was taken down, basically someone made a gimick account about this same issue, but everyone attackted him cause he would not reveal who he was, but anyone who can understand logic knows what this guy was saying was true, but everyone including MODS attacked him and was like how DARE you attack our Jimmy he has done so much for poker, and of course his biggest Pal Big tex was saying Jimmy would never have done something like this. Well we now know some real shady stuff was going on, but don't worry, Jimmy has retired with a lot of extra money = )

As a retired cop I'll say this show me some proof instead of just words from posters that their identity.

Why does anyone care what he says?

People can read the thread and make their own conclusions. I'm pretty confident most will realize the manner in which PTC collects the tip is unacceptable.

You can still find the archived thread if you google 'Jimmy Sommerfeld thief'

Jimmy somehow gets accused of more sketchy stuff than every other TD in poker combined, not sure why all of these former employees of his keep making up these nasty rumors about him and posting them online.

The problem with this is the ppl like me who go to a live mtt for the 1st time and have never heard of these extortionist addons. I played a wsopc event in council bluffs a couple of years ago that had this. I couldn't just turn around and go home since it's a 5.5 hr drive.

It's not laughable if this thread gets the wsopc to be more up front so other players like myself don't get ripped off.

Have you called the WSOP and asked for someone who can influence this policy? Write a letter to the WSOP perhaps? Contact the respective State Gaming Commission? These methods are all better than propping up a thread in NVG on 2+2 with complaints in hope that one day they might get seen and a few hundred posts (by several dozen people) in a gossip forum might influence policy change.

I agree that this practice is stupid and has a scammy feeling.

13k views, i think you multiply by 8 to get the actual number of views for people not logged into the site so I think 100k views would be a fairly successful way to spread a message.

Whatever. Why not use more direct lines of communication? I see the value in spreading the message but most of the people in this thread have mentioned playing in multiple events like this...if it bothered you so much, why would you keep going back ? Pick up the phone and call the WSOP and complain if you believe this practice needs to be stopped.

The general phone # for Harrahs (found here: http://www.wsop.com/legal/contact.asp) is 1-800-eHARRAH

The official listed WSOP Media Contact is Seth Palansky (# 702.407.6344 per their website: http://www.caesars.com/corporate/med...-overview.html)

Send Harrah's a General E-mail: https://www.totalrewards.com/Custome...L&displayCode=

For the Council Bluffs guy, here is the Iowa Gaming Commission's Phone #: 515-281-7352 (found here: http://www.iowa.gov/irgc/)

So post away, but unless you do more than that, you are lazy.

I guess you missed the part where seth told us to "stop pestering" and that "nobody is holding a gun to their heads" and concluded if i didn't like the practice i should stop playing the WSOP

Then take it to the state gaming commission and stop playing their events if it's a big deal.

If this thread bothers you so much why don't you "stop wasting your time" posting in it?

illini43 why is it bothering you so much that he made a thread about it? It's about community awareness amongst other things. You seem oddly over agitated by it.

I think Jimmy is working the Palm beach gig to, more money!! esp with the 1 mill Guarentee.

Just FYI Jimmy or PTC isn't running Council Bluffs Charlie Ciresi is running that stop. He also helps run Hammond.