Rob Yong's Blog V3 "WSOP 2010 & Life After DTD Opened"

[EvilPie]

Thanks for the comments Rob.

Seeing as you've asked nicely I'll reluctantly buy in online for the grands prix.

I think the TV comps will be fantastic. You'll smash the guarantee for the 300 easily.

It'll hopefully help the grands prix as well.

Good luck as always.

Matt

[mondatoo]

91 already is good going imo since 90%+ of poker players don't like to arrange things the day before nevermind a few weeks before,good times ahead and will be hoping to make both.I reckon the 300 will be huge.

[Mitch]

Think this TV deal will be massive for the club. Congrats on getting it sorted. Makes sense what you say about saving money on advertising and putting it into guarentees for comps. Keeps the money in the poker community.

I presume its just the final being televised in the comps or is there going to be a feature table? Im not very good at making finals you see!

Also looking forward to the new cash room and big guarentees. Good luck with it all.

Just a weekly 'specials menu' for food to be added now for us fattys and ill move in for good 

Mitch.

[tikay]

Thanks for the clarification, Rob.

Buying in Online.

As you mentioned, the Sky Poker Grand final used this system, & enabled the 250+ runner Comp, which included many DTD newbies, to get off smack on time. Sky Poker have yet to announce their 2010/11 Tour Details, but we have already booked the Grand Final Venue. There is no other chioice, you have looked after us superbly.

Dealer Thread.

1 or 2 of the comments made me wince with embarrassment. I think Rich Wootton's replies were most dignified, all things considered. On the whole, the Dealer standards at DTD are the best in the UK, though obviously, you can't get every decision right.

Grand Prix.

I cannot be there as it clashes with the Sky Poker Blackpool leg, but I hope your efforts prevail. There's been no shortage of folks saying it can't be done, but "can't" is a word many people like to use. "Can" is better. 

DTD & blonde.

Finally, this is a great opportunity, on behalf of Blondepoker Web Ltd, to thank DTD for their immense support since Day One, but especially in 2010. blonde would not be here were it not for DTD, & I think the vast majority of blondes appreciate this.  The range of new initiatives you keep trying at DTD never ceases to amaze me, &  a few are bound to fail (which seems not to deter you), but no other place makes so much effort to revitalise & energise Live Poker in the UK. Long may it last. It's not in poker players genes to say "thanks & well done", but we think it, we really do.

[Lucky]

Hello,

I read a lot of peoples the comments on here, especially the ones on Dusk Till Dawn, for what it’s worth here of my comments on some of the recent subjects;

Quality of our Dealers

I think the quality of our dealers in the up there with any card room, when we hold larger events, we bring in self employed dealers, on the whole, these dealers are good, many of them such as Harvey are almost permanent fixtures now, but there is the odd time when a self employed dealer doesn’t work out, and we don’t bring them in again. There are also times when some of our own dealers get a bit sloppy and need a nudge in the right direction, but for every complaint about one of our dealers, we do get a lot more compliments.

Changes to Weekend Tournaments

We do change our weekend schedules around, events such as Sky, Redtooth, Pokerstars, Rileys, APAT often mean we have to shuffle our events around. We also try different things such as Super 50’s, various Deepstacks, Grand Slams, Terminators, 6 max and Twenty Twentys, some work, some don’t, its trial and error. We recently tried a £300 Deepstack a couple of weeks  after the monthly one, and it went pear shaped, we had a £80k overlay in one of £1K comps last year when we could have selected a better date, proven when we got 313 at the next one. We definately make mistakes but I think we do get more stuff right than wrong.

Overlays

Overlays in the club and online average about £10k - £15k a month, some weeks we get hit by a big one, for example, £15k when we clashed our £300 event with the Irish Open, however, we do not spend much marketing money externally, some card rooms and sites pay thousands a month to be in magazines and third party web sites, we set big guarantees as part of our marketing, sometimes we even create tournaments when we know there will almost certainly be an overlay, sometimes we don’t change our guarantees when we know we are going to get less runners due to other events happening on the same weekend, we want to be known for big prize pools relative to the buy-in, and that of course, has its risks, but means we don’t have to spend advertising and marketing in other areas. At the end of the day, an overlay is just adding to the prize pool and therefore giving money back to your customers, which hopefully they will come back and try and spin up again at the next comp.


Our Next Big Tournament

“When is the next big one” is a common question I get asked at the club, last year we did £250K GTE and £1,000 buying for our annual December event, we have not released details for this year yet because Pokerstars have been asking us about the possibility of a December date for their UKIPT, but that’s definitely next February now, so there is no problem hosting our annual December event, details will be on the web site soon and it will be televised.

Grand Prix

I have read some comments on here about some people not wanting to buy in online because this is a hassle for them. Over 90% of club members that have played a £50 FO or a weekend Super 50 at the club already have an online account, it takes like 2 mins to register maximum, less time that waiting in the queue for cash desk. The tournament is really targeted at our £50 regular players, not bringing in new poker players, when we did Super 50’s and Twenty Twenty’s we got 200+ people buying online for each day, it was no problem at all. We have “in house” online support, based at my head office and at the club in the evenings, so any problems can be dealt with straight away for anyone that has the slightest issue buying into the Grand Prix. The time spent posting on the subject is probably more that it would take someone to buy-in, no one says you have to play online to get into the tournament, you just have to register online, SKY Poker did this at their grand final at our club, as do most of the companies that hold events at our club, so I really think this is no big deal, I actually prefer to buy-in to all comps online myself, so I know 100% I have got a seat and I can use my online funds to do it, its so simple. The Friday 1pm start has been mentioned, well, if that doesn’t suit someone, just buy-in on Saturday, there are 400 places left!   

Television

When we opened to club, we invested in a TV table with hole cameras, a TV lighting rig and various cabling to make the club TV friendly, but apart for third party events and a bit of web streaming on our site, we have never filmed any of our own tournaments as the cost is around £30K - £40K per event.  A couple of months ago a TV gaming production company called Casino tv approached us for some poker content to go on Virgin 1 and Sky 860, we have agreed a deal to televise 5 events at Dusk Till Dawn over the coming months, which will be broadcast on Virgin 1 and Sky 860, and probably  a third channel. To be honest, I think they had already planned to do this in a venue in London, which would make more sense as they are based in London, but when they saw how easy it was to film at our club, that may have swung it. I think the viewing figures average around 200,000 on Virgin 1 at the time when the show will be broadcast, which is pretty decent as far as poker shows go, so will be great to see some of our regulars on TV, especially if they make the final table. The events agreed so far to televise are:

29th – 31 October   £50 Grand Prix (GTE £40K)

6th – 7th November   £300 Deepstack (GTE £100K)

16th – 19th December   £1000 Event (details to be confirmed)

The TV company ideally wanted a £100K prize pool for the November £300 deepstack, we could have increased the buy-in to £500 rather than try and get more runners, but that would have been too easy, so we are sticking with £300 and keeping our fingers crossed, it would be amazing to get both these events rocking for our first every televised events at the club.

VIP Room

Most of our members have noticed the VIP room has been ripped to bits and is having a new fit out, can I confirm that we are definitely NOT putting Blackjack and Roulette tables in there, I must have had 100+ people ask me that! We are just putting 3 -4 cash tables in there for higher limits, our version of Bobbys Room at the Bellagio, and therefore giving it a makeover, plus we want to make it TV friendly. Over the last 6 months Simon Trumper has been arranging bigger and bigger games at the club, and we feel that the next step is to have a dedicated area for these games. I play in the NL games regularly, and the games are getting bigger and bigger, especially at Deepstack weekends, we do have some very good players who have worked there way up to these stakes from the 50p £1 in the club, I have been trying to bust them but they are too good!

I hope this update helps,

Cheers Rob

PS. Please buy into the Grand Prix early , Nick and Simon thought I was mad to do this for a £50 comp and we only have 91 people so far, so it’s not looking too rosy

I've said it before but "If Carlsberg did poker, they'd do it like DTD"

[BulldozerD]

awesome, aiming to play the grand prix, the 300 and the December 1k when details are announced.

[StuartHopkin]

Wasnt overly excited by the Grand Prix, more to do with me lacking excitement about live poker than anything else.

Luckily though the idea arose to have a 2 pint minimum per level throughout the Saturday with Matt.

For that reason I am in.

If anyone else would like to be included in the rounds please let us know.

[StuartHopkin]

Just out of interest

If it is to remain online buy in only does that mean there are no late entries or alternates allowed at the club?

[DaveShoelace]

Just out of interest

If it is to remain online buy in only does that mean there are no late entries or alternates allowed at the club?

They could use one of the laptops/pc terminals in the club I spose

[Mitch]

Wasnt overly excited by the Grand Prix, more to do with me lacking excitement about live poker than anything else.

Luckily though the idea arose to have a 2 pint minimum per level throughout the Saturday with Matt.

For that reason I am in.

If anyone else would like to be included in the rounds please let us know.

Would rather it was 2 meals per level but w/e. Im in.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii   

[DaveShoelace]

Wasnt overly excited by the Grand Prix, more to do with me lacking excitement about live poker than anything else.

Luckily though the idea arose to have a 2 pint minimum per level throughout the Saturday with Matt.

For that reason I am in.

If anyone else would like to be included in the rounds please let us know.

Would rather it was 2 meals per level but w/e. Im in.

Wiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii   

Thats actually the perfect challenge for me because I am equally lightweight in both drinking challenges and making it to the antes.

[JK]

Wasnt overly excited by the Grand Prix, more to do with me lacking excitement about live poker than anything else.

Luckily though the idea arose to have a 2 pint minimum per level throughout the Saturday with Matt.

For that reason I am in.

If anyone else would like to be included in the rounds please let us know.

Defo in if I can make it

[duncthehat]

Was hoping to have around 6 players from our home game come up for this.

These are very recreational players that have only come up to DTD once or twice each (we are 90 mins away)

Mentioned its online buy in AND any winnings go into your account rather than cash at club, and met with total disinterest in playing, even with the massive value if there is an overlay.

Now there will just be 2 of us coming up

[Alverton]

Appartenly a mini busload of people are coming from Dundee for this.  5-10.  Every little helps.

[RED-DOG]

I just don't get it. what's the problem with having winnings paid into an on-line account?

I spend half my life trying to get money into an on-line account.