Encore Boston Harbor already wrote the book. They took the most successful weekend daily MTT in New England, plus a rapidly growing large buy-in/guarantee schedule and flushed them down the toilet because of some parking complexities. I mean are you kidding… they couldn’t figure out the parking? And that was before anyone had even heard of COVID or dealer shortages. EBH was well on its way to becoming an east coast Mecca for poker, but turned its back on it.

Unfortunately, I don’t see this trend reversing. Live poker is a relatively labor-intensive, space-intensive, low-margin game within the confines of casinos. And the gaming industry, like most businesses, are rapidly moving towards reducing labor costs and implementing higher-margin products/services. All you have to do is look around the casino. Low margin games like blackjack have been getting replaced with higher margin carnival games for years. And now all live dealer games are slowly being replaced with electronic and/or stadium games. The casino, as we have always known it, is evolving into something very different. And poker is just one of the first places to show this since it has always been considered the bottom of the barrel in the casino world.

It’s really sad. Sure there are some fantastic venues/events around the country like the Venetian, WSOP and now Florida which should continue to be successful for a while. But how long can this last? 5 years? 10 years? It’s hard to say.

Online poker appears to be the only viable future. But online poker is rife with explicit cheating and tacitly-allowed advantage-taking. Maybe that’s just what the new casino world will look like with degenerate gamblers giving all their money away like they used to do at the roulette tables and slot machines. I don’t know.

But as for live poker, I think its only long-term hope is for some really rich person or group of people who really love poker being willing to open up predominately poker venues and tolerate operating at minimal profit. It will have to truly be a labor of love, because increasingly, casino execs are not turning to live poker to make money.

I talked to a Floor recently at Foxwoods (FW) and he said that they tried to get dealers but only 2 people responded to their attempts. They don't have enough dealers to run tournaments on consecutive days right now and they are only running single tournaments on Wednesday and Sunday (so 2 a week). They absolutely won't run tournies on Saturday due to lack of dealers (right now they have all their dealers dealing cash games).

I requested that they try to run tournies on Monday (so that they will have Sunday and Monday tournies) but I doubt that will happen.

So for FW to run their Megastax series they would need to hire many dealers. Which unless they open dealer training won't happen.

Yeah my home casino is Foxwoods and from what I was told they wanted to do a nice series in March but they couldn't get nearly enough dealers. And the higher ups think this will be a problem for them indefinitely now. So good luck waiting for a nice Foxwoods tournament series. Won't be happening most likely for a long time if ever.

Just very sad.

Thanks for the info Rick. I find it insane that so many casinos are having staffing issues. I don’t understand what it takes to run a card room etc.

But it seems like having a dealer school- people can make solid $$$ for a low skill job that really isn’t stressful. I don’t understand how they couldn’t have enough dealers to run mtts and still have a full cash game offering. Maybe they don’t want too many dealers so they can give their existing dealers solid hours (think 30-40 a week- idk what the standard dealer works in terms of hours). I imagine if not that hard to find dealers as you have a ton of people that fit the criteria to deal. Just doesn’t make sense to me.

Now if you argued with me that tournaments don’t provide a profit margin that offsets the expenses they incur…. I could understand that. I guess I just don’t understand how you could see how they don’t make the casino money in other avenues. More poker players in the casino = more food/drink sales, getting over priced hotel rooms booked, more degenerate sports betting and table game action/ etc. I feel there is currently such a demand for mtt poker live. I think parx/ borgata could really get insane player #s if they just offered a series but neither seem to really care. Just find It odd business practice when demand is so high. I really don’t think finding some dealers and training them is too hard. I’m clearly wrong though with this thought bc it’s not happening.

Actually dealing any casino game is pretty stressful. Not only is it a direct customer service enterprise, but gambling and drinking almost always bring out the worst in people's behavior. It's also a pretty terrible environment health-wise (though not typically in poker rooms), and sometimes workplace-wise since dealers are often treated as commodities and there's usually a lot of in-fighting due to seniority policies.

I agree about the solid $$$ bit. There aren't a lot of industries where you can make 2-3x+ minimum wage overall without a college or technical degree. No one is going to get rich dealing but its actually not a bad way to make money and offers a leg into the hospitality/gaming industry for those who are interested.

I think its a variety of factors. The availability of short-term dealers is definitely an issue at this time. But I think that, like COVID in general, is just being used as an excuse. The demand is there from the market, like you said. In fact, demand is probably higher than it has ever been. If venues wanted to, they could figure out how to get dealers.

However, large MTT series are special events which require a lot of planning for logistics, labor and space. For example, if an event is going to be held in a convention room, that room not only has to be reserved in lieu of something else which could be significantly more profitable, but it also has to be retro-fitted for the advanced security required by most gaming jurisdictions. Not to mention the mechanical infrastructure necessary for lighting and electrical. You can't just put a bunch of tables in a space and hold a poker tournament. Even if the series is successful, it doesn't always justify the effort and complexity required to pull it off.

As for the indirect benefits of holding these events and drawing large crowds of degenerate gamblers... this has always been my belief as well. I do not have inside knowledge of the financial records of some of these venues who have held large poker series in the past, but it just makes sense that they would drive all sorts of other economic activity besides the event itself. But as we see, there is less inclination to hold them... not more. I have to believe the analysis has been done and it still doesn't make these special events attractive enough to overcome the obstacles.

Covid will be used an an excuse for the next 10 years trust me. It's very sad to see the demise of Borgata, Parx and Foxwoods tournaments because although Rivers Casino in Philly and Maryland Live in Philly are trying, it's not nearly the same.

Nice post by akashenk. I guess I don’t understand why you can run tournaments in 2019 and prior years but now you have insane demand and don’t want to do the smart thing and open up the mtt floodgate.

I hate to say this but I feel live venues could up the rake to something insane like $300+(60-80) and people would pay that now. I’m not saying it would be the right thing to do but I feel
#s would be great even if they raised the juice on mtts.

Like what has changed? Covid is a nothing burger now. People that want to be vaccinated are. People that are vaccinated aren’t Dieing. I just don’t understand why parx / borgata wouldn’t just try to run smaller capped tournies if they need to feel
Things out etc? How can you run a big mtt in 2019 but 3 years later we can’t bc Covid is over/ we don’t have the staff bc nobody wants to work (such a lie), etc. casinos need people at them to make money right? I don’t see how it would be crazy for borgata to run a big series and get that easy foot traffic from degenerates.

A lot of the questions aren’t serious questions btw. I know it’s a lot more complicated than I make it in my posts. I guess in a simple phrasing, I don’t understand why florida/ vegas can have huge mtts with big guarantees….. but the northeast has nothing. I will never understand it.

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I'm not sure why this was posted in a thread about poker tournaments in the Northeast United States but maybe I'm missing something here.

I recently played at Live Casino in Philly before a Sixers game and happened to have a Borgata Poker Room Floor Manager at my cash table. This was right after the Presidents day fiasco. One good thing that I took out what he said about that was that the main problem was that they drastically underestimated interest in the tourney. Said they anticipated about 300 people and over 1K showed up and they just couldn't handle it. To me that should show them that people still love their big tourneys and the demand is there. its up to them to make it work for them financially and obviously to be able to staff for it.

He said the main reason for the lack of tourneys duh is a dealer shortage as many have already mentioned. To put in perspective he said before Covid, the Borgata had a total poker room staff of 350 people (dealers, floor, pit bosses whatever - primarily a ton of dealers). He said today they have 150. It just takes time to double your staff to the point they were before.

I just bought a vacation home just outside of AC so hoping they get their crap together!