Thanks for all the above posts; some well balanced and instructive replies. I think it is important to debate these things. You have a good point, Rob, that people who criticise publicly rather than going through the channels available are not being constructive- especially if they are just moaning. At the end of the day, it is a private club; no-one has the "right" to be there. I just would not want to see
DTD struggling because too many people have been barred.
E.B
:-)
Hi TheKid,
To put things into context, I know of only 6 people that have been permenantly barred since the club opened nearly 9 months ago (this is 0.075% of the membership). I don't want to name them, of course, its not that hard to guess but this is why they were barred from
DTD:
Person 1
this individual is very well known in the Nottingham poker scene. I always got on with him really well and enjoyed the bantor we had. I was asked by a lot of players not to let him into the club even before we opened but I refused their requests as I has said that every poker player would clean slate at
DTD. Unfortunatley after a couple of visit to
DTD I was left with no choice to barr him as he was causing problems with a large number of good customers and I could not be seen to turn a blind eye to his behaviour inside and outside of the club.
Person 2
another well known player on the Nottingham on the poker scene who sometimes gets a bit vocal at the tables, however I personally like him and he was very good for the game with plenty of bantor. Unfortunatley after a number of warnings including 2 personal pleas from me in private, he continued to use foul and abusive language directly to staff and fellow players, even throwing cards at the dealer (the worse and most offensive you can imagine). I was forced to barr him, as an employer I just can't have my staff called an XXXX repeatedly for dealing an outdraw.
Person 3
a well know midlands player got very drunk before he entered the club and threw a punch at one of our doorman, the whole incident was on CCTV, this was totally out of charactor for him and I really like this customer, but what option do we have when this has happenned?
Person 4
this person worked is a manager at one of the nottingham casinos that was involved in trying to block
DTD's licence. I barred him immediately when he entered the premises as I thought is was inappropriate that he should play in
DTD after his comments before and during the court case and his presence at
DTD would cause unrest with a lot of our local customers. Again, I liked this person, he lent me my first ever poker book 6 years ago, but I felt I had no option.
Person 5
this person is another nottingham regular who sent in a letter of complaint about 2 other players behaviour during a cash game. I gave the 2 players a 14 day ban even though the incident was halmless but definatley should not happen in this club. It was however later confirmed that the facts of the letter were not 100% accurate and other players showed me text messages on their phones from this person that were clearly trying halmful trade in to the club. Again, left with no option, he had to get barred.
Person 6
when
DTD opened its online card room we launched with a $25k WSOP freeroll, this person accused
DTD of putting employees into the freeroll in a sneaky attempt to avoid paying out the prizes. I was just going through the courtcase at the time and felt this was a pretty low accusation from someone who knew the pressure I was under and that these sort of false accusations would not clearly not support my application to be a bona fide gaming operator! I told him he was not welcome at the club if it ever opened but I relented on this on my "clean slate system" when we opened the doors. He did cause a few problems on the odd occasion with his outspoken nature but nothing too serious until a couple of weeks ago when my head doorman reported an unsavoury incident in the
DTD bar regarding an argument over non payment of debts with another customer, our security managed to defuse the situation without calling the police but we cannot jepodise our gaming licence with these types of incidents. I had intended to have a word with him personally but before I could, he posted some comments about
DTD which I thought were in very bad taste on his poker blog (stuff about employees), so I decided to call him and barr him from the club.
I spoke to a 2 ex casino managers today about barring people and their view was that over the 9 months of opening, 6 people is a miniscule number of barrings especially with over 8,000 members. I went through the reasons in detail, I do not want to be unfair, and I got a different answer, apparently whether someone was barred from a casino, the length of the ban or if they got banned at all would depend on "how much they drop on the casino games".
In the perfect world every member and employee would be proud of
DTD, care about the club being successful and want it to maintain its high quality of service and reputation for being a nice place to visit. Unfortunatley, in the real world a very small minority of members and employees let the club or themselves down, often becoming bitter when action is taken by myself and the management. It would be crazy for any business/organisation/club to every want to lose good customers or good employees after trying so hard to attract them in the first place, but when people put you in a corner you have to deal with the problems and take action or these problems manifest themselves and things spiral.
I am still learning about running a poker club, I do not want to barr good customers or lose good employees, but people are not a science, with over 1000 employees and 50,000 customers accross all of my businesses, I get surprised every day by people's actions but I try not to let this get me down as the 99.9% majority are great to deal with. Also, often people that you think you know well turn out to be very different, its hard to always make the right decisions but taking a stand and trying to do the right thing is better than putting your head in the sand.
As for as
DTD struggling, it has done a lot better than I expected and is just over breakeven after the first 9 months thanks to a few decent events and festivals. This is not bad for the first year of any project especially since we have to pay the running costs of a casino without the casino tables. It will be pretty easy for anyone to check this as the accounts will have to be audited and published like any other UK company.
We are running a club that is only recently licenced by the UK gambling commission, they have the power to take our licence away at any point, we are being watched very closely by them and rightly so, the local casinos will use any political capital they can to cause problems for us (they are currently doing everything they can to "induce" the bigger cash game players away from
DTD - this is not conspiracy theory - its reality) as a lot of the "big casino punters" are playing poker at
DTD instead of dropping money on their house games - we need to run every aspect of
DTD well, and any individuals who seek to halm
DTD by their actions inside or outisde of the club need to distanced from our club ie be barred. Everyone knows that they can email
Simon Trumper or speak with him personally if they genuinely want to help us improve
DTD, this situation has never changed since we first opened the doors.
I hope this detailed post explains my/our stance of barring people and why it is important that our members are on our side and positively contribute to the success of the club.
Cheers Rob
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