Ever since new management, all they did was raise the price and provide lower quality of service.
$10k weekly tournament was $160; now it's $200. The $25 free roll is now $35. A 40% increase in fees that all go straight to management and not the players. The add ons/rebuys went from 3 for $60 to now 5 for $100. Clear money grab. The main lodge in Austin has upcoming "art of poker" with $150k gtd for $250.. meanwhile here it's only $25k gtd yet same price. The regular daily tournaments use to have free lunch for $25. Now they are same $1k gtd but price raised to $80. Overall tournaments are the same gtd or less but for more fees.
Cash games arent any better either as I went to play 1/2 cash, and normally, when you sit at a brand new table, you can buy in there and swipe your card to play. Now you are stuck to wait in line to get buy-in at the cage. The worst part is that immediately, as soon as you are called, you are clocked in, and your time is running. I waited at the table with 3 other players, all with our time burning for 10 minutes before the remaining players were able to get chips from the cage to play. Each time a player needs to add on chips it's painstakingly slow now to wait for some staff member to get them vs the dealer immediately having chips ready to go.
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Hi B029281, please bear with us while we continue to tweak our tournament schedule. We added a lot more in weekly guarantees, but have heard loud and clear that players prefer the lower buy-ins.
When it comes to that weekly $10K GTD tournament you referred to, we are increasing the guarantee to $15K and lowering the buy-in to $150 (with an optional $100 add-on). This will run on Sundays starting July 28th. We've lowered other buy-ins since the initial schedule as well.
Regarding the Art of Poker, the $150K GTD version in Austin is a special 6th anniversary edition with two starting flights with a day 2. The $25K GTD version in San Antonio is a single-day event, hence the lower guarantee.
While we did remove the free lunch, we are providing free breakfast to all players in the room every day at 10:30am (starting July 22nd).
Regarding the cash game time issue you mentioned, we agree that it is not acceptable for your time to be ticking down before you've gotten seated in a game. We've already moved to a new system based on this feedback where your time will not start ticking until you are seated at the table and ready to play. We're also giving everyone who plays at the club this week (July 16th - 23rd) a free hour of play to make up for any wasted time.
Thanks for providing your detailed feedback!
