**** the pros

Exactly the same? The tournament *didn't exist* before you came on.

And now, because something is popular, that's a good enough reason to have "slightly high" rake? You think it's acceptable to have a tournament rake more than what 1st place makes *by a wide margin*? I disagree.

The fact is, this is something that poker players aren't really going to really care about... let's say a 12% rake vs 17% rake. But, as someone who does play at the Lodge from time to time and does look at these things, it kinda sucks that the guy who for years mocked those operators over-raking and players for being fans of it, that's the same guy now charging the highest % rake on tournaments basically anywhere in the nation.

The lodge's upcoming $1200 1.5 million GTD has a 12.5% rake on it, compared to 11% for a random 1k freezeout at the WSOP. WPT typically rakes in the 10-11% range for those buyin range tournaments as well.

Ironically, The Lodge has fantastic rates for cash games. Probably too good to be honest... I don't expect it to last long. I'm sure the only reason it's still 10/hr is because 52 is @ 6/hr.

And my criticism aside, I do get that when you're expanding as much as you are and upgrading a room that quite frankly needed a lot of the stuff done that you're doing - in particular the tablets at tables - there's obviously a large cost associated with that that inevitably the players are going to get "taxed" on. I'm just concerned that, long term, we are starting to accept tournaments that are taking 17% or greater rake, which I personally think is just an absurd amount that in the long run *does* affect the poker ecosystem.

I've decided that you have been a hypocrite because that is obviously true. I've heard you like logic so I'll use a bit of logic.
(p1) you care about the game
(p2) you have high rake in some of the games of your cardroom
(c1) you think high rake is good for the game in some situations (otherwise, since you care about the game, you would simply lower the rake so that it was not so high)
(p3) you ridiculed DNegs mercilessly for suggesting that high rake might be good for the game in some situations
(c2) you are a hypocrite (you simultaneously hold a view, and denounce others for holding that view - the view being that more rake is better for the game in some situations)

Doug has done good for poker? All I remember is him bullying a bunch of people and trying to teach everybody about GTO

agree with this post except it's only inelastic if you're looking at the short-term... long term I think higher rake hurts a lot

I mean, you're making a "more rake is better" argument when you say more rake is good for maintaining a healthy player pool.
If Doug comes out and says, sincerely, that more rake is better, and also apologises to DNegs for being unfair to him, I will stop calling him for his blatant hypocrisy.

lol

Honestly I don't care if the rake is 10 or 12 cheeseburgers. Nothing to see here.


Of actual interest......

Did everyone just miss this. WHAT THE ACTUAL F ?

That is a significant room. Other than commerce, name me a bigger one in the world. There are some but they are escaping me... Playground? The Bike?

now this is some good stuff

Leon's hell hole on the Czech-German border has 160 tables. The sound of shuffling chips is everywhere.

Oh no, we have a perfectly reasonable 50% increase in blind levels at some point rather than an incremental level in between them so that I've got more time to fold and wait for aces, boo hoo. You're making out like it's a ridiculous 100/200 200/400 300/600 400/800 500/1000 then better get the tournament finished colour up the 100 chips and go 1k/2k 2k/4k structure.

I know folks love picking on Doug Polk (or anyone who actually makes a ton of money) but do people really think he’s been at a desk at the Lodge working on rakes and structures these two months? Id say alerting him to an issue is more fair than blaming him for it right now.

And also lol at the notion that you cant charge a profitable rake and simultaneously mock Daniel for asserting said rakes are actually better for average players.

The first thing I said is that Doug cares more about money than about doing what's best for the game. That's what you're saying too - he's charging high rake because he wants to maximise profit.

But Doug stated that this was not the case, so the only option left was simple hypocrisy.

You're moving the goalposts now. The Monthly Monster at Lodge got over 2,000 entrants last time. People literally fly out and build vacations around bracelet events, so are you saying WSOP structures are generally worse than other tourneys at same price point? You're just digging in and doubling down for no reason.

If a tournament has roughly same structure as a same buy-in bracelet event that isn't a turbo, then you can't really say it's an unreasonable structure. You can't say a structure where a start stack is 40 big blinds 4 hours into the tourney just quickly becomes push-fold.

The card room already existed when Doug bought in, with partners. Do you really think he is micro managing and controlling ever aspect of the club? Face it, you're just a hater, simple. You're approach to this shows to me that your angling to make Doug look dirty. You don't care if there are 2 or 3 sides to the story.
Unfortunately business and life can make a person seem hypocritical. After awhile I personally stop explaining myself to people, because for the most part, they don't get what it takes to run a business, or care. "Look he's making money! He's evil!!" Just to much....lol

This. A few years ago, people were bitching that the rake at a series was too high. I mentioned then they should not play and the operator may take that into consideration. The response was "but the tournaments are too profitable to skip." So the tournament is currently so profitable for players that they can't afford to skip it, but you think the operator should take less money exactly why then?

Comparing rake to first place or other payouts was done in that other thread, and it was equally silly and foolish then. Any time you have a relatively low buyin tournament with tons of runners, the raw amount of rake gathered will look high compared to a single individual player payout. For example, the WSOP this year will have a $500 with a $5,000,000 guarantee meaning they expect at least 10k players. Let's say they get 15k players. What % do you think is reasonable to rake a $500 tournament? How many tables, dealers, floors, decks of cards, etc., do you think it takes to run a 15,000 person tournament that has a reasonable structure?

Let's just say they rake 10%, even though there is no chance they can actually run this tournament for 50 dollars a player. 15,000 x $50 is $750,000, so that's the rake. Prize pool would be $6.75M. Should we pay the winner of a 15,000 person tourney 20% of the pool just so you aren't in your feels that the rake is more than 1st? Then just too bad for the person who gets 13th of 15,000 for 3500 then, because we had to artificially steepen the prize pool. 10% for first in a 15,000 runner tourney is totally reasonable, but then *gasp* that's $675,000 and is less than rake EVEN IN a situation with rake taken at a sub-profitable level.

Also you say "The lodge's upcoming $1200 1.5 million GTD has a 12.5% rake on it, compared to 11% for a random 1k freezeout at the WSOP." Lodge Main Event starts with 60k chips, starts at 100/100, and has 40 min blinds Day 1, 50 min Day 2, 60 min Day 3. WSOP 1k freezeout starts with 20k chips, starts at 100/100-100, and has 40 min blinds throughout. Lodge Main doesn't skip levels either, level 30 in both tourneys has 150k big blind, but Lodge by that point has 50% longer levels and everyone started with 300% more chips. The Lodge is raking $150 per player and WSOP is raking $110 per player. Do you think maybe the dramatic structure difference makes up for that small rake difference?

Doug, I Played at the Texas Card House in Dallas recently on my way through. Thought it was the worst card room I have ever played in. Located in a strip mall, no ambiance, tables packed in like sardines, action was meh. A solid 2 out of 10. Hope your room will be a step up.

IDGAF if he's the one who made the rake high or not. DNegs certainly didn't personally increase PokerStars' rake - so it's beside the point. The point is that Doug is trying to justify the high rake of the room with which he is associated, while saying that he simply cares about what is best for the game (and certainly not trying to maximise profits). Surely you can spot the hypocrisy there.

speaking of rake, this article in Card Player says a room in PA with 28 tables had $660k of rake in one month. Minus expenses, that has to be a pretty good income.

https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-new...er-tournament:

Hey Doug. This is the wrong answer. Especially in this industry, your players are everything. I know you’re the king **** poker player. But now you answer to the masses. You can keep running things with the “I’m the big boss mentality” but you will have a better product if you personally care about what every customer says , and you make sure they know you care.

Congrats on the card room. Kiss your personal time goodbye

Appreciate the time here from people, I know the majority of posters have positive things to say or just want to make the room better and have their voices heard.

I started my career playing 1c/2c and posting on this forum. Have always loved this community and have done my best to help people long before I had any business interest (wrote a long serious of posts in the beg forums, had a chat group for free to help struggling players, was an active part of the strategy discussions etc). As someone who owes all of their success to this game, I think its extremely important skilled players can win in the long run. Not only that, we should embrace that and highlight what is possible, instead of the direction of many online poker rooms which is to ban winners, lower skill, increase variance, and increase the house take.

With that in mind, over the last 5-6 years I have transitioned from playing poker to owning a training website, building my brand and name in the industry, and now owning part of a poker room. When people talk about me not caring about the people of the game, it has a particularly drastic effect on me because of how much I have cared about the players over the years, so much so that it has always been a cornerstone of my content. On many issues I defended player rights when most other people did not because they wanted to be sponsored by poker rooms/hired by poker businesses. I ran my own ship and maintained my freedom to speak out on behalf of the players for what I believe is right.

I understand that now that as I expand into actually running poker games, there will be backlash against decisions I make (or dont make) with regards to my operation. This is excaserbated by the number of players who have played at the room, seen the room online, read about the room, etc. The reality is that there will be people who have a negative view of me and/or the room and will not like some of our decisions. We cant make everyone happy and the most important question is "Are we doing a good job to provide our members an enjoyable place to play poker in games with a fair pricing structure?" And I think we are doing that.

Also understand that the club access fee (We don't have a rake, we have memberships, seat fees, access fees, I know this seems like semantics but from the perspective of the house not having an economic interest its an important difference) is reasonably priced given the pricing of other tournaments in that buyin range. You cant compare a $500 mtt to a 1k mtt becuase they end up with the same prize pool. As an extreme example, if you play a 50k hu sng, or have 1000 people play a $100 mtt, those are both 100k prize pools but have drastically different requirements in staffing necessary.

Our cash games are once again one of the lowest priced cash games in the entire country if you compared us to rooms with rates per half hour, or other places that take a rake from their game.

As for the room itself, I have from day 1 been aggressively spending our money on various ways to improve the room, some examples.

- Changed our cash game cards to one of the best brands avaialble despite a drastic increase in cost per setup
- We are in the process of changing out our dealer chairs to make it more comfortable for dealers
- Installed tablets to help streamline games and alleviate players having to wait to be called for open seats (was a problem before)
- Leased the two units next to the room to give us a good space for a studio to improve the live stream, and add in something like 20 or more tables (We ran out of space last month in a 60 table room for our tournaments)
- Buying lots of high end equipment to set up our stream

My goal here is to build this business the right way, provide a great experience for our members, and bring the Lodge to different areas around the country. I am happy to take feedback into consideration, I have asked many of our members for feedback so far and will continue to do so moving forward.

Hey Mason, appreciate the time weighing in.

Its a bit hard to say at the moment, becuase we are having an explosion of growth over the last few months. Currently it is difficult to determine long term impact, but for now we are growing rapidly. As for the area, its been growing tremoundously with a large influx of good jobs (primarily with lots of tech companies as the catalyst). The games have been running for ~4 years and have been consistently growing over that period of time.

Doug,

Welcome to the operator side of the tables. Quality of the experience is king, price sensitivity is much less an issue when you are giving people "good gamble".

The unique economics of Texas live poker operations make "the experience" all important, and raise the value of whatever unique attributes an operator can use to differentiate its branded offering in its market.

When I joined, this tournament had already been planned for months and had an extact structure by the prior owner and tournament director. They had already been advertising the structure and pricing.

I recognize and appreciate fighting for lower pricing for poker players to play poker. Those comments dont fall on deaf ears. I will make sure that our future decisions regarding price are fair for poker players, I have built my name on fighting for people within the community and will continue to do so.

I am not trying to be the big boss, in fact im really trying to do the opposite. When you run a business you have to be able to trust the people who work for you in important positions. I have spent almost no time in my entire life thinking about tournament structures. Meanwhile we have an outstanding tournament director who helped found the venetian deepstack series. It makes no sense for me to be trying to micromanage his decisions, he does a very good job and people love our structures. I will look at things as we go along, if it seems like something needs to be changed ill talk with our team about it. But our tournament offering is wildly popular and all in all he has done a phenominal job with these strcuctures.

Doug build the business as you see fit. You know what you are doing. Can’t wait to play at the lodge!

People love to complain. OP probably doesn't even live in Texas.

I'm not moving goalposts at all. My friend played in that tournament. He told me the consensus at the table was that those skipped levels like 1200-2400 and 2500-5000 sped the tournament up and it became a shovefest. Nobody liked it according to him. And I would agree with him.

Lodge main starts with 50,000 in chips not 60,000