When I first started running the card-room at Gala Notts, the schedule consisted of 4 competitions per week, all of them Pot-Limit Unlimited Rebuys(90 minutes). Two of them were £20 buy-in, and the other two were £30 buy-in. The only exception to this was the first Sunday of the month competition £100 Pot Limit Re-buy (Unlimited Re-buys 120 mins)
Popularity and attendances for these competitions had been growing steadily, so it may be understandable that the ‘Casino’ would see no reason for change.
Casino managers pretty much fall into two camps. They either hate poker with a passion or they judge it to be a good way to bring the ‘punters’ in and is therefore a necessary evil.
Every so often you will find a manager with a passion for poker, who will take an active interest in the varied opinions and ideas offered by the playing masses. (I am not talking about myself here… I never was a manager, just a senior inspector who occasionally ran poker competitions) In my experience these type of managers are few and far between.
I began my casino career 10 years ago with Grosvenor Casinos. After about 6 months on the job I was trained to deal Texas. There were three competitions a week, all with dealers provided – I cannot remember what the buy ins were but I recall that the competitions were very popular and attendances were good.
Things were a lot different then… it was the old equal blinds on the button.
Bit by bit, successive management regimes managed to destroy all trace of poker in the club. The card-room became an extension of the bar area at weekends and there you go.
From time to time, poker was experimented with but never really gained its former popularity.
Grosvenor are very forward thinking when it comes to poker and they have a massive share of the UK festival market.
The club in question was Leeds Merrion Way and it is good to see that they have finally re-introduced poker albeit a £2 re-buy.
Most of the players in Leeds wanted the poker comps, but the casino took them away.
The fact that they have started again probably has very little to do with what the players want. It is more likely an attempt to use the poker phenomenon to gain a few extra bums on seats.
This is what poker is to a lot of casinos… a few extra bums on seats. It doesn’t actually matter to most casino managers whether the competition is a re-buy or a freeze-out (I would guess that about 60% of senior casino staff do not even know the difference) just as long as the bums make it to those seats.
Unlimited Rebuy competitions are casino friendly competition as they tend to appeal to ‘gamblers’. The possibility of a high reward for a small stake is inherent in these competitions although very few manage to win from just their entry.
On roulette it would be like playing Straight-Ups where it may take many spins before your number comes in (if at all)
Limited Rebuy events are like playing Splits & Streets. The numbers come up more often but the relative reward is not so high.
Freezeouts are like betting corners – the rewards are there they are not so high though
Maybe this is a stupid analogy
Casinos like gamblers. Gamblers like to gamble. Unlimited Re-buy chip-throwing competitions are a gamblers dream.
Maybe this is a stupid theory.
At the end of the day the casinos just want people in, changing things that seem to work everywhere else just takes too much effort.
At Gala Nottingham I fought long and hard for changes to the way ‘things had been for a long time’. It was a real battle. Most of the time I came up against complete indifference. Even the smallest of changes required an elaborate protocol of requests, referrals, refusals and subsequent re-requests.
Gala Nottingham, when I left, had 7 weekly tournaments
3 Pot Limit Hold-Em: Unlimited Re-Buys, £50, £30, & £20
3 No Limit Limited Rebuys £10(3 max), £20(1 max) and £50(1 max)
1 No Limit Freeze-Out £30
First Sunday of the month is still £100 PLHE.
I tried to organise a festival 3 times to no avail.
What was achieved:
2 x £200 PLHE Rebuy comps
1 x £200 NLHE Rebuy
1 x £250 NLHE Freeze-Out
1 x £300 NLHE Max 1 Re-buy
Most of this was done because it reflected changes that the players wanted.
The casino did not stand in the way of these changes, equally it did very little to initiate them.
I believe that a balanced schedule is the key to keeping most of the people happy most of the time.
The other thing which has changed since I left is this:
A Lot Less stress!
About the author:
Nightfly is an expert at ‘going off on one’, currently post operation with a hole in his back. He lives at home with Mrs Nightfly and their lovely(but cheeky) 10 month daughter, Olivia.
Sorry about the essay guys!
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