Dodgy Rake for Freerolls Scheme - Thoughts?

[jjandellis]

I've been playing in Blackpool G this week, mainly cash.

It turns out that not only are they raking @ 10%, they are taking 50 pence out of each pot to contribute towards their freeroll tournaments (think they are £500 gtd).

Obv I'm not a reg there, but I can spot the tourney regs when I go back. They tend to swerve these freerolls - and the freerollers avoid all other comps. They most certainly don't play cash!!!

So obv not happy to be seeing rake sent to the b*ggers. The cardroom manager told us that it had been trialled all over and was proving popular.

Has anyone else seen this sort of thing in operation?? Is it actually popular? Where else is it happening??

[celtic]

Not happened at Luton G.

[luther101]

You've got to admire the 'freerollers' though - they seem incredibly capable at sniffing out any opportunity to play for nowt   ......     I wonder if they have a website of their own to point out where the 'action' is?

Every year - on Boxing Day and New Year's Day - at Luton they hold freerolls with two tickets up for grabs to the £100/150comps later in the day.

Fields of 120/150+ are not uncommon, and I'd say that up to 70% of the attendees are unrecognisable as having ever been in the cardroom since        ......       the previous year's freerolls on Boxing/New Year's Day.

Now I can understand the local smaller buy in comp players knowing about the comp + wanting to bink a ticket - but the 'freerollers grapevine' is pretty efficent at bumping it up to huge numbers.

Either that, or they're all turning up bright and early to see of they can distinguish which stain on Calenti's shirt came from which dinner/donner over the Festive period!

[doubleup]

Seems completely bizarre - the whole idea of these kind of arrangements is to encourage regular players, not take money from regulars and give it to non-regs.

[EvilPie]

I think it's absolutely disgusting!!

Can't the regs just refuse to pay the extra 50p? Is there somewhere else you can play?

[jjandellis]

Glad you say disgusting as I was raging, yet kinda wondered if I was being OTT.

As I say I only go back for a week every few months; the scene in Blackpool seems to change constantly. Everytime I phone the Genting I get told 'no poker til the new league starts next week' (meh), the G chops n changes it schedule and generally tries to antagonise all the cash players.

But what is quite sweet is that they couldn't possibly have timed their 50p scam any worse. Turns out a new casino (not naming in case I get told off for spamming) has opened and its making a big play for the poker players. A few comps on and, for the first month at least, at the cost of £10 loyalty card cash players are playing rake free for a month!!!! The 1/2 5/5 games all moved over there, unofficially, last month...but I think this will be the death knell for poker at the G unless they rethink their strategy.

As I say though I was just curious to see if G casino were implementing this elsewhere.

Can it even be legal? Like Luther says, these freerollers just come outta the woodwork. Good luck to G casino if they really think these guys will spend any money in their pit games!

[jackinbeat]

I know clubs in London run their rake race freerolls through extra £1's from qualifying pots, bad beat jackpots are funded this way too, not out of the rake, out of extra rake. I've always avoided playing in these places, two reasons being, in the rake races some players just sit and fold to earn hours, and therefore extra chips for the freeroll final, and in places where bad beat jackpots are offered, the game changes again people overplaying suited connectors, pairs (depends on qualifying hands), and worst of all the cardroom usually take an admin fee. 

How is this any different?