Arias management stinks!
Just got back from another routine Vegas trip. There were tons of good tournies running all over town. First, WSOP $1000 event. Then, Golden Nuggets and Binions with deepstack event trying to snatch customers away from Venetian DSE. However, I opted for a cheaper version. Arias now has 2 tournies. 12pm price is like $180 with 10,000 TC, I wanted to play $120 7pm with 8,000 TC. 30 mins lvl starting at 25/50, really not bad, sounds like Venetian structure. So, I went and asked in the morning and was told there would be a tourney at 7pm. So, I returned later at 630pm only to be told that it was cancelled. Why??? They had too many people playing cash games that they don’t have room for tourney, so they cancelled it!! Absolutely pathetic!! How can a poker of its caliber just cancel a tournament like this? I would have played other noon tourney if I would have known. So, the rest of you guys have to be stuck with my cash game play. BTW, Arias casino turned up the lights now, so you can actually see where you are walking.
Went to Excalibur to find some soft games. Couldn’t catch any cards for 2 hrs. 1 interesting hand goes as follow: I raised to $10 with AQ in early position in a $1/2 NL game, was called by 2 players. Flop 4-8-J, I c-bet $25 in a pot of $30, got 1 caller in late position. Turn some junk, I went all in for $50 trying to buy the pot of $80. Villain called wondering if I had AJ, I shook my head and turned over my AQ, trying to catch my 6 outs. He turned over QJ. Of course I missed and had to reload. Do you think I played too aggressive? I tried to represent QQ, or KK. Obviously the soft games at Excal wouldn’t recognize it. C-bet would be met with calling station. I thought my all-in would get the attention, but players at this level are probably just too happy they hit top pair. QJ !!! I can understand if it is KJ or AJ at late position. Villain went on a heater, caught AA twice within a few hands and grew his 1 stack of red chips to like 4 stacks (~$400). Feeling sick to my stomach, I left disgusted.
Checked out the MGM room while Lidell was fighting at the arena. Expecting a wild table, I was surely disappointed. The table was tight and solid. It’s funny an older gentleman with big stack moved 2 to my right, so my friend moved his old seat which is to my left. Then, a new played came to join the table, #1 seat wanted to sit right on my right. A played even laughed and told the new played that we are playing a new game. Whoever won the hand has to swap seat with the losing player!! Anyway, the game was solid with nobody really went out of line. After 1 hr of card dead, a lively young player came and joined us at seat #10. He immediately raised to $17 on his first hand ($1/2 NL) and of course got no call. He flipped his KK face up feeling a little dejected. He would constantly raised to $15 or $17, now this is the kind of action table I was looking for. Unfortunately, I didn’t have any hands. I don’t consider AQ or AJ premium hand in early position. So, I left for dinner.
After a yummy Baja Fresh at Excalibur, I gave the soft poker room another try. This time with a brand new table. First hand, A9 UTG 7 handed, I raised to $10. Late position didn’t see the raise and threw in $2. Dealer told him his error and wouldn’t let him take the $2 back, so villan elected to call $10 reluctantly. Flop A-9-4, 2 spades. I checked trying to show weakness. Villan tried to buy the pot with $20. I flat called. Turn another spade, I was thinking of checking again. Then changed my mind since I didn’t want him to check behind , so I fired a smallish $15 bet and heard Ka-Ching when he called. River a brick and I bet $30, villain looked disgusted and mucked his hand. Then I went card dead for another hour until this hand. A loose calling station (LCS) had been straddling to $4 every round and been showing some weak holding like Q-8. He even reloaded once for $100 already. This time, I found AK in MP, so I raised his straddle to $14. Nobody wanted to mess with me except LCS. We stared at each other for a while until flop hit the felt. AK8 all heart, he checked UTG, and I checked behind. I figure he is going to call anyway or even come over the top if I bet, so I try to do some pot-control. Turn some non-heart junk. He fired $20 into a pot of about $30. I called trying to see what he was going to do on the river. River another heart and he immediately bet out $50. I was trying really hard to piece the puzzle together. Without a heart in my hand, I just couldn’t make the hero call of $50. I elected to give up my hand.
Sitting patiently for like forever, I found AQ UTG again. I elected to raise to $10 again and got 2 players to see the flop of 6-9-10. I c-bet $20 again and took down the pot this time.
All in all, the main theme of this trip is just like your regular poker games. You hardly got any good cards. When you do have good cards, they don’t connect the board, or there is a scary board out there. Thank you for reading.
@badbeat
Amyone on here able to confirm the validity of this statement? If correct, it's awful.
@badbeat
I understand your frustration at showing up for a tournament and finding out it's been canceled. But what would you want them to do, or put yourself in their shoes and ask what you would do?
They are running their 7 PM tournament daily, so when you ask they tell you "it's on". But it turns out at 6 PM that they have 18-20 cash games going and no where to put the tournament. Should they break cash games to stage the tournament? Should they sell out at 40 players and then turn away the cash game players that come in from 7-9 because the tournament is taking up four tables? With the WSOP in town sometimes things get crazy. Was this a weekend night by chance?
The worst I can say is that maybe they should have guessed based on previous days that there was a chance the tournament might not run and conveyed that to you. But if they've run it every day for three weeks straight during the WSOP, I'm not sure how they could have known.
Honestly, your play on most hands you described seemed a bit bizzare.
@larfingravy
Amyone on here able to confirm the validity of this statement? If correct, it's awful.[/quote]
That's pretty much standard for most poker rooms. Doesn't happen all that often that the rooms are so full they cannot hold a tournament at all, but it's a nice sort of problem to have, if you're a poker room. You really believe they should tell cash game players to get the hell off these 6 tables to make room for the tournament? Or maybe just keep 6 tables empty from 3pm to 7pm, turning away dozens of wannabe cash game players and the $90/hr per table they generate?
But yeah, I've seen it happen at Harrah's and IP. 7:30pm or 8pm or whatever rolls around and there are no empty tables, or if there are tables there are no available dealers. Oh well. For the poker room, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. At least, no empty tables is a good thing. Not scheduling enough dealers to handle the customers is a mixed bag since it means they got more people than they expected [good thing] but someone screwed up and didn't plan for it and they have been unable to bring in enough extra dealers from the board or from sister properties to handle it [bad thing].
@badbeat
Don't most rooms view their tounaments as promotions to get people into cash games? I think Aria's poker room manager actually said something like that in missingflop's interview a couple days ago. Correct me if i'm wrong.
-Ryan
@CRM114FGD135
Don't most rooms view their tounaments as promotions to get people into cash games? I think Aria's poker room manager actually said something like that in missingflop's interview a couple days ago. Correct me if i'm wrong.
-Ryan[/quote]
You're spot on - to those in the business aren't daily tournaments considered a loss leader for most rooms?
@CRM114FGD135
Don't most rooms view their tounaments as promotions to get people into cash games? I think Aria's poker room manager actually said something like that in missingflop's interview a couple days ago. Correct me if i'm wrong.
-Ryan[/quote]
If their $175 tourney gets 60 players at $25 admin fee per player, that's $1500 profit. That seems a pretty healthy take for what some consider to be a loss leader, isn't it?
I'm not suggesting the tournaments aren't profitable just that they aren't as profitable as cash games. Someone else used the figure $90 an hour in rake for the cash game tables. Even at $25 a player they aren't going to match that figure in the tournament which may take 9 - 10 hours to finish.
@Mrs. Lederer No. It's not. That's gross margin, which may not even meet expenses + overhead. Depending on how many tables and staff it ties up for how long, that might be a fast ticket to turning a poker room into another couple of banks of slot machines if it was the best a room could do for generating revenue on the gaming floor at peak times.
@missingflops Well, then I sure will. Tournaments generally lose money. Most are done as promos offered in hopes of indirectly bringing some more cash business in the door to make up for the expected loss. At the level of a $175 buy-in, eh, meh... depends on what else is going on (the "opportunity cost") and what side benefits, if any, one hopes the tourney might spin off.
It depends on circumstances, including the size and relative significance of the particular tourney among other things, but generally I think breaking up cash games, any cash games of even the smallest stakes, for a tourney would usually be foolish and self defeating, and this sounds to me like the room most likely made a sensible decision in managing their available finite resources of tables and staff.
Good to hear that they were so busy they had to make that kind of choice.
@Mrs. Lederer
You misuse the word profit. What you mean to say is that the gross revenue of this tournament is $1,500. Profit is whats left after expenses.
@Mrs. Lederer
First of all, that $1500 is not profit. That's gross income.
Then do some math. 60 players is 6 tables (to start). That's 6 dealers, who have to get paid. And 6 tables that are running with no drop. Maybe 6 tables going for an hour, then 3-4 for one more hour, and 1-2 the last hour (or portion thereof). Say, 10-16 table-hours.
A good dealer can do 15-20 hands per down (assuming a half-hour down). A little more, perhaps, with shufflers. (But when using shufflers, even though you can get about 3-6 more hands per hour, the house also pays to lease the shufflers, and it's not cheap.) A little less, perhaps, in NL or in tournaments, where Internet kiddies act it up for nonexistent cameras. Say 30-50 hands per hour. Assuming max drop (max being $40), that's $120-$200 per hour, per table for a cash game. So for the low end of tournament time (10 table hours), that's somewhere between $1200 to $2000 in rake. Go to the high end (16 table hours), that's $1920 to $3200 in rake.
Factor in that you may need additional staffing to run the tournament.
Then look at dealer tips. Going back to our calculations, assuming a low-end consistent $1 toke per hand, that's $30-40/hour dealers take in in tokes. Or $300 to $640 total. I'd wager in most of these small tournaments, the total tipped out by players who cash doens't even come close to this. So you can see why dealers strongly prefer dealing cash games. And management (hopefully) wants to keep dealers happy.
The long and short of it is that rooms make significantly more money when cash games are running. And even though poker rooms are either money losers or make very small profits (per square foot, especially compared to slots), room managers still have to report to clueless bean counters, so they feel every effect on the room's bottom line.
I'm sure dealers and room managers will call out where I may have miscalculated here, but I don't think I'm that far off.
That all said, it'd probably be a customer-friendly thing to do to add something parenthetical to the tournament communications, perhaps something along the line of tournaments are not guaranteed to run or tournament may not be run if either insufficient entries or if no resources (tables, dealers) are available.
There are some calculations I don't agree with -- every dealer making $15-20 per down, say "aye" -- but mainly I think the comparison is wrong.
No one would argue that a cash game generates more money for the house (rake) and dealers (tips) than a tournament. That's part of why you'd never close a cash table to start a tournament. The comparison is having a 60-player tournament to having 6 tables sitting empty and 6 dealers twiddling their thumbs. OK, you wouldn't have all six dealers there if you didn't expect the six table tournament, but that's minor.
My sense is tournaments are slightly profitable to somewhat profitable depending on the room and structure -- what % fees, how long the tournament takes. For example, your numbers suggest 16 hours for a 6 table tournament (I think that's low for Aria), which would mean $90/hr return. Sure they have to pay a dealer and maybe the have to pay a floor/tournament director but that's nowhere near $90/hr. But more importantly tournaments feed the cash games, especially in smaller rooms, which are very profitable.
With 60 players, that tournament, with a pretty decent structure, will last 6-8 hours. That's much more than 16 table hours (probably closer to 45-55).
@AdRock
I'd like to hear too. Assuming downs are 30 minutes, is it reasonable that a dealer will get 15-20 hands per down? In Vegas, what percentage of players toke?
I used to toke one chip per pot, typically. Occasionally, when the pot was very large and the dealer was good ("good' being defined as good mechanics and running the game well, not the cards I receive), I'd toss an extra chip or two. Since reading about how toking affects hourly rate, I've cut my tokes to $1/hand, generally, with the above exception still standing. (I will, very, very occasionally, not toke a dealer who is obviously terrible, at mechanics, at running the game, or has a really, really bad attitude. Fortunately, such dealers are far the exception.)
From what I've seen (primarily the limit games here in CA, and typically the $6/$12 level), I'm at the bottom of the toke range. While I rarely see anyone not toke--and I do mean rarely--a frequent toke level is my previous one: a single chip ($2) for a pot one. And there are plenty of generous players, casual players who play for fun and don't care (as much) about making money, who routinely toke 2, 3, 4, or more chips. This may be a factor of places such as this having a far, far smaller tourist factor than Vegas.
I'll try to pay more attention next time I'm in Vegas, where I expect to by e playing typically either $4/$8 or $8/$16 (except for the morning promotion poker $3/$6 game at the Mirage) and see if tokes trend differently.
I don't know Aria's tournament structure, but I was going by my Mirage experience, where their $60 buy-in tournament would get 4-5 tables and run up to 3 hours. 6 hours for a "small" buy in daily tournament (a) seems long and (b) seems pretty good, in terms of actually allowing play.
@twriter
I'd like to hear too. Assuming downs are 30 minutes, is it reasonable that a dealer will get 15-20 hands per down? In Vegas, what percentage of players toke?[/quote]
15-20 hands per down is not unreasonable, depending on the game. I have dealt $1-$2 No limit games where every hand takes 5 minutes..... first there is the soul staring, then speech making, then the stacking and unstacking of chips.... and then the UTG player looks at his cards, then the cocktail waitress walks into the room and he can't act until he gets her attention... and then he asks "who's it on".
That number for tokes is high in average. Not that there aren't many downs where I make that much. But there are lots of downs where i make $6. (I do not keep records per down.... my records are based on hourly earnings which also include time I'm not making anything such as breaks and dead spreads). There are lots of hands that we don't get toked on.
When people estimate the amount of tokes dealers make they generally overestimate. Typically they don't notice the number of hands where there is no toke (small pots, players who don't toke, players who usually toke but get distracted) and they simply assume that because they always toke that everybody does so.
Also where you are will affect the amount of tokes. Locals rooms tend to be better for consistent toking. On the strip you get many tourists who are not familiar with the custom or tend to forget...
@apollo
Amyone on here able to confirm the validity of this statement? If correct, it's awful.[/quote]
That's pretty much standard for most poker rooms. Doesn't happen all that often that the rooms are so full they cannot hold a tournament at all, but it's a nice sort of problem to have, if you're a poker room. You really believe they should tell cash game players to get the hell off these 6 tables to make room for the tournament? Or maybe just keep 6 tables empty from 3pm to 7pm, turning away dozens of wannabe cash game players and the $90/hr per table they generate?
But yeah, I've seen it happen at Harrah's and IP. 7:30pm or 8pm or whatever rolls around and there are no empty tables, or if there are tables there are no available dealers. Oh well. For the poker room, that's a good thing, not a bad thing. At least, no empty tables is a good thing. Not scheduling enough dealers to handle the customers is a mixed bag since it means they got more people than they expected [good thing] but someone screwed up and didn't plan for it and they have been unable to bring in enough extra dealers from the board or from sister properties to handle it [bad thing].[/quote]
Thanks for that, had never realised it happens. Suppose business is business.
@MelloAceCV
The number of table hours depends on how long they run with 6 tables (assuming ten players per table), then how long they run at 5 tables, etc until they are down to the final table. The number of tables hours for similar sized number of entries of course will vary.