Why I'm Boycotting "League" Tourneys

ozpoker

(... and you should too!)

A number of Dublin venues have started going down the "league" path for both tourneys and cash games. I think these promotions are misguided even though they seem to be a win-win for the players and card rooms.

In an attempt to increase traffic, these promotions coercively transfer money from occasional and out of town players to the regulars. I'm sure the regular players see this as a great benefit of these promotions, but they are effectively stealing this money from the less regular players with the card room's complicity.

Contrast this promotion with another popular player funded one: bad-beat jackpots. The most likely winners of the jackpots are the regulars, but that's OK, since they fund the majoprity of it. Someone from out of town has just as much of a chance of winning it as anyone else, proportional to the amount they play.

There's 2 ways to make league promotions fair: allow players to opt out of them, or fund them out of general marketing and promotion funds and don't force the tourney winners to fund them.

Until one of the 2 solutions become adopted, I'll be boycotting tourneys during "league" periods, and I hope you do too.

-Oz-

5starpool

I have a similar attitude towards tourneys that withdraw money from the prizepool for this purpose. I believe the way the Fitz do it is as equitable as it can be though and is a decent compromise. No money is taken from prize pools or extra reg charged, but payouts are smaller than other clubs due to this. As for the league one they have a bad beat capped and a league, funded in the same way that there was only a bad jackpot uncapped before.

Personally I would prefer if there was no bad beat or tourney rake in place at all though.

Hectorjelly

Yeah I thought this too, although I didnt go so far as to boycott playing tournaments.

RoundTower

I think a reward system that disproportionately rewards your regular customers is good for any business. Take Pokerstars for example, your FPPs are worth fcuk all if you only play a few days a month, but if you play there every day you are going to end up with the equivalent of 30% rakeback. Or take Tesco for another example, the more you spend there the more coupons you get for reductions in your future shopping. Or Toyota for example. Do you really think the Gardai who buy hundreds of cars from them pay the same for a new Camry as you would?

TheRock

Completely agree.
If you are for example playing live once a week its impossible to place high enough for any gain. Especially if points are given just for playing. If you cash then your basically being double taxed.

Think cash leagues are worse however, with each pot being raked and money taken out for league, it makes it practically impossible to beat.

5starpool

TheRock wrote: »

Think cash leagues are worse however, with each pot being raked and money taken out for league, it makes it practically impossible to beat.

I wouldn't say it makes them impossible to beat. Where I play it is €1 out of every pot greater than €20. It makes a difference alright, but hardly makes them impossible to beat.

ozpoker

RoundTower wrote: »

I think a reward system that disproportionately rewards your regular customers is good for any business. Take Pokerstars for example, your FPPs are worth fcuk all if you only play a few days a month, but if you play there every day you are going to end up with the equivalent of 30% rakeback. Or take Tesco for another example, the more you spend there the more coupons you get for reductions in your future shopping. Or Toyota for example. Do you really think the Gardai who buy hundreds of cars from them pay the same for a new Camry as you would?

I have no issue with a promotion that disproportionately awards regular customers. "The more you play, the more you earn", etc. My issue is with promotions that are coercively funded by the players that give some fraction of them no chance to reclaim their EV. I'm against this scheme even though I have benefited from it in some cases.

In your PokerStars example, it's the difference between saying to your casual customer, "You've earned enough points for this nifty pen" and "Since you aren't one of the top 1000 points earners, were confiscating those points and giving them to those that are."

These are two different issues.

-Oz-

bohsman

In the case of Lukes, play every Friday and you will definitely qualify for the grand final.

bohsman

Also open to suggestions for better promos than tourney leagues.

ocallagh

bohsman wrote: »

Also open to suggestions for better promos than tourney leagues.

free taxi home if u cash?

DeVore

I dont think there IS a suggestion that can fit both requirements. They are diametrically opposed...

The clubs want to create a "stickiness" about their club that once you play there semi regularly you will tend to return there to add points to your league tally.

They do this by taking money from the non-regulars effectively.

Its a stick and carrot system which both rewards the regulars and punishes the "disloyal".

I guess they could operate a threshold after which you get some of your rake/reg back. That would reward the regulars but the irregulars would pay the normal full amount (to the club). Which would make players want to return to the same club but doesnt take anything extra from the irregular players who

I suspect that wont fly because the club has to take a hit on the revenues, whereas with the leagues they are "robbing peter to pay paul".

I don't much like it either but I dont think I'd go as far as to boycott a club over it....

DeV.

Conbro

I'll be boycotting tourneys during "league" periods, and I hope you do too.

Yep. Sure I will. Thats me finished with live cash games guys.:rolleyes:

ditpoker

100000% agree with ozpoker...

the one thing i might add is that if there were 5k + prizepools taking 100 barely get snoticed, but as is often the case, you have a 1k prizepool and 50+ is taken. example i'd give is lukes saturday 50 game, played it with 20 runners, 1k prizepool, 60 taken... i've already paid 10% reg, and now 6% of the prizepool is gone... that night 50 was taken off first so that 4th (or 5th) got his money back, that wouldnt have been necessary if 6% handt come out!?!?!

Trippie

Conbro wrote: »

Yep. Sure I will. Thats me finished with live cash games guys.:rolleyes:

sweet one less runner for tomorrow then, maybe I can hold myself together this time and actually take it down like I should of the last time

Jayminator

Conbro wrote: »

Yep. Sure I will. Thats me finished with live cash games guys.:rolleyes:

LOL yup me deffo finished too... I dont get out enough these days anyhow so am I considered an out of towner or an irregular......

The system is there, everyone is aware of it in both cash games and tourny games and there is no suggestions that may fix it so we gotta deal with it. Oz has played plenty of tournys with a rake taken for the tourny league so Im betting this boycott wont last too long before the poker sickness kicks him in the testes

connie147

We're trying out a new loyalty scheme at the moment that seems to be popular amongst the players. We're planning a club trip to Vegas for the autumn sometime and plan on giving away prizes of free trips including flights,accom and some $'s. But instead of running a league, every daily tournament has its own prizes.

Example: Monday night is a €50 freeze-out. The winner of each monday night tourney between now and the end of the promotion will get together and play a "grand" Monday night final. All players in the "grand" final will start with 8,000 chips in the F/O tournament. If you win more than 1 monday night tournament in the promotional period,you add 2,500 chips to your starting stack for the "grand" final for each Monday night victory you achieve more than 1. We will be adding some money to the "grand" final and we expect about 3 players from the Monday nights to make it on the trip.(obviously,where a player is not available to go or is under 21,a cash alternative arrangement will be made.

This system will also be used at all our weekly games. Our busiest game is our Friday night game so we expect the Friday game to supply more trip winners than any of the others.

This system doesnt penalise the occassional player as he/she is entitled to win their way into the final as anyone else.Their only disadvantage is that they mightn't get as many oppertunities as others, as regulars will have more oppertunities to win their way through to the final.

Initial responses from our members is very positive.(now a lot of our members have never been so maybe its a novelty for them), but I'm not a huge fan of the league system and this idea seems to be a lot fairer. (no doubt if I'm overlooking something I'll find out about it here:))

I probably wouldn't have posted this only for reading Oz's thread and in the responses I didnt see anything like what we're doing.Ours is only up and running 2 weeks now,but so far so good.

Comments and improvements welcome

Connie

Marq

the fitz takes nothing out of the prizepool of our tournies to fund the tournament league. The prizemoney is a free promotion run by the club to reward out most regular tournament players. Our registration, which is easily the cheapest in dublin, goes towards paying for the buffet food at the breaks and covering the cost of dealers.

As Dominick said, the cash league is funded by taking one euro (and only one euro) out of each pot over €20. Last time the league final rolled around we also added €5000 to the prize-pool.

I agree that these promotions disproportionately reward people who play more. that's the point of them. Obviously we want you to play more, that's why we reward you for doing so.

Connie,
I really must try to get down to you some monday!

Pabloh

Marq wrote: »

the fitz takes nothing out of the prizepool of our tournies to fund the tournament league. The prizemoney is a free promotion run by the club to reward out most regular tournament players. Our registration, which is easily the cheapest in dublin, goes towards paying for the buffet food at the breaks and covering the cost of dealers.

Impressive

RoundTower

well if you didn't have the tournament league, you could make it €50 + 4 or €51 + 4 with the same profit to the club. So it's disingenuous to suggest the punter doesn't pay at the end of the day.

Marq

RoundTower wrote: »

well if you didn't have the tournament league, you could make it €50 + 4 or €51 + 4 with the same profit to the club. So it's disingenuous to suggest the punter doesn't pay at the end of the day.

As we both know tournaments are in no way profitable for the club. they are loss leaders that build a player base. registration did not rise when we brought in the tournament league, and registration was highly unlikely to go down from 5 to 4. I wasn't being disingenuous, because I never suggested that the punters don't pay for this "at the end of the day". what I'm saying is that they don't pay anything extra for the tournament league. They would be paying the same registration whether it was there or not, so it's introduction does cost the club money as opposed to the punter money. Obviously we hope that it generates an overall increase in business and long-term profit, but we're hardly going to apologise for being a business.

ttilting

FYI

The Fitz ('loss leader') Strategy works !

I went in to play a few touraments about a year ago, I reccomended it to some friends and now a couple of friends & I would go In to play a tourament once a month.
The staff at the fitz are really friendly & and the club has a really good atmosphere.

Were the loss leader comes in is.... since introducing my friend to the club! every time they get a couple of drinks into them... and its pay day! they head straight to the fitz roulet or black jack tables....

Good marketing.

TheRock

connie147 wrote: »

We're trying out a new loyalty scheme at the moment that seems to be popular amongst the players. We're planning a club trip to Vegas for the autumn sometime and plan on giving away prizes of free trips including flights,accom and some $'s. But instead of running a league, every daily tournament has its own prizes.

Example: Monday night is a €50 freeze-out. The winner of each monday night tourney between now and the end of the promotion will get together and play a "grand" Monday night final. All players in the "grand" final will start with 8,000 chips in the F/O tournament. If you win more than 1 monday night tournament in the promotional period,you add 2,500 chips to your starting stack for the "grand" final for each Monday night victory you achieve more than 1. We will be adding some money to the "grand" final and we expect about 3 players from the Monday nights to make it on the trip.(obviously,where a player is not available to go or is under 21,a cash alternative arrangement will be made.

This system will also be used at all our weekly games. Our busiest game is our Friday night game so we expect the Friday game to supply more trip winners than any of the others.

This system doesnt penalise the occassional player as he/she is entitled to win their way into the final as anyone else.Their only disadvantage is that they mightn't get as many oppertunities as others, as regulars will have more oppertunities to win their way through to the final.

Initial responses from our members is very positive.(now a lot of our members have never been so maybe its a novelty for them), but I'm not a huge fan of the league system and this idea seems to be a lot fairer. (no doubt if I'm overlooking something I'll find out about it here:))

I probably wouldn't have posted this only for reading Oz's thread and in the responses I didnt see anything like what we're doing.Ours is only up and running 2 weeks now,but so far so good.

Comments and improvements welcome

Connie

Sounds like a brilliant idea Connie.
At least if you only go one night a week, your still in with a shot a league.
Fair play to you.

ozpoker

Jayminator wrote: »

Oz has played plenty of tournys with a rake taken for the tourny league so Im betting this boycott wont last too long before the poker sickness kicks him in the testes

Yes, I have played league raked events. Yes, I have qualified for them and played to reclaim my EV. No, I'm not going to in the future because there are plenty of non-league alternatives. I just wanted to point out to the promotion designers that their promotions will sometimes have a downside that they need to account for. If enough regular players like me take this approach, we'll get more creative frequent player promotions like we've seen posted here by Connie and the Fitz.

-Oz-

bohsman

Good news for ya Oz, Our tourney league ended yesterday and we wont be starting a new one for the moment. Cash League unaffected, new one started tonight, 6 weeks, 60hours to qualify.