I saw mentions of this on twitter regarding the $1k and now apparently it has continued thru the $5k main event.

They are treating the tournaments like an entertainment venue with limited seating and ticket availability.

Scalpers are buying up these entry tickets and reselling at up to 50% markup.

I saw reports of $1k seats being sold for $1500+

Not sure what the situation is with the $5k, but the casino has to take some action to prevent this sort of thing from going on.

Its a poker tournament. Players have to be able to buy in at any time. One person or group shouldn't be able to "corner the market ".

I think this is a great balance to all the multi-entry and re-entry tournaments showing up lately.

Sadly this is not a new story. It's been like this for at least 5 years, probably closer to 10. In the past tickets for 1k sell at a huge markup but not the 2.5k and 5k. I have no idea how they still haven't fixed this problem.

u can buy a ticket from the phone on your credit card but they wont tell u what day u start, makes no sense, might as well go there and avoid the service charge u pay for using credit card. i canceled my ticket once i realized that

I don't understnad this, why is there such demand ? Why would anybody pay a premium, let alone an insanely high premium to enter this tourney? Do they serve those big jumbo shrimp?

Yeah this makes zero sense to me, why would the casino even let this happen...Do they like losing out on rake money? What... are there like 5,000 entrants to this $1k?

Just by skimming twitter concerning this event, most won't be returning due to poor this event has been run.

There's demand because they cap the field at 500/flight, which was easily reached in the 1,100 CAD event.

From what I read on the Twitter, the typical Fallsview player isn't that good.

its like ******ed soft and the 5/10 and 10/20 its ******ed soft

so yes the tournaments are super fishy also obv, the demand is high. Also there were probably only 10-20 tickets that were sold at crazy prices.

OP makes it sound like it sold out ****ing 6 weeks before the tourney....no... if you arnt a total ****-knob you could purchase a $1100 ticket THE DAY BEFORE IT STARTED. I got mine saturday morning at 1:30AM from the Casino cage. it only sold out like 12 hours before the event. so if you are a scalper you better sell those ****ing tickets the day of.

I think it's because it's a touristy type of place for people with money from Toronto and Ontario (and really, around the world.) I've seen way more randos at Fallsview than ever at Casino Rama (another casino in Ontario with a popular poker room.) This type of scalping goes on at Casino Rama as well.

You're wrong about the 5k. In fact, for most savvy players, they were able to purchase a 5000 ticket for 4800, and sometimes 4700. This was due to a generous amount of people wanting to sell the seats they won from the satellites for cash. The 5k never sold out. Meaning players could purchase regular priced tickets at the cage, or pay a lesser amount through a satty winner.

The only tournaments that scalpers were able to charge MORE for the tickets were the ones that sold out. Which was the $1100 event, the $275, and $550 mega satellites. Also, scalpers couldnt just walk up to the cage and buy all the tickets. They had to purchase them off satty winners first, and sell them at a markup later when the event sold out. The casino only allowed patrons to purchase one ticket on their accnt. But the cards were fully transferable after that.

Also, on the mornings of both $275 and $550 satellites, the casino released an additional 100 or so tickets to players eager to play but found they were sold out the night before.

Scalpers could still make a profit off the 5k, and 2.5k seats; but that is because they bought the tickets (plastic cards) months in advance off satellite winners for absurdly low rates. ex. buying a 5k ticket for $4600, and selling it for $4800.

Im not saying this because I condone scalping. But there were many players that actually benefited from this process, especially the 5k players who bought at a discount and essentially ended up paying very little rake for the tournament.

I played from sunday-friday at these events.

The problem is that they cap the entrants and have only now ran two flights of day 1s. Because the 1k is a relatively small buyin tournament there are tons of people who want to play it, but the fields get capped. Essentially, the regs there play in satellites for weeks+ leading up to the tournament amassing multiple vouchers for it (with no intention of even playing in many cases) in order to sell them day of the tournament or day(s) before at a huge markup.

This issue didnt exist with the 2500 or the 5k as there werent nearly as many interested players, so the 2500 vouchers were actually selling for less than 2500.

Imo they need to uncap the amount of people playing and have more than 2 day 1 flights, or simply cap the amount of vouchers any single player can win at 1 or 2.

Yeah, I mean I don't play live very much so I don't have alot to compare it to, but the 5/10 live games were super soft, and the tourney fields were quite soft as well. Not surprising that theres a ton of demand

I haven't been there in a few years but every year I have gone in the past I have been able to buy tickets at a discount.