Subject: Builidng a Top Section: My Advice to Hustler Management or any struggling cardroom-Part One From: valentinorosssi@yahoo.com (Valentino Rossi) Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker Reply-To: valentinorossi5@hotmail.com Date: Fri, Feb 28, 2003 1:19 PM Message-ID: <3e5fcb7b.83718120@mammoth.usenet-access.com> The Hustler Top Section is gone. If you were the Hustler poker room manager, how would you go about rebuilding it? The first thing to realize is that there is no "magic bullet" that is going to magically bring dozens of top section players through the doors everynight. Giving away money e.g. car giveaways, sports drawings, freerolls, etc., is not going to create regular customers. Building a poker top section in L.A. is going take time and must be done one regular customer at a time. The second thing to realize is that top sections are built like a pyramid. The lower limit games provide a pool of players from which the bigger games draw their players. There is no cardroom that spreads a single table of brown chip action without at least spreading four yellow chip games. There is no cardroom that spreads two tables of yellow chip action without at least spreading eight $6-12/$9-$18 games The third thing to realize is that if you spread "sucker games," i.e. games where the rake/drop is so large that the games cannot be beat the games will not be self-sustaining and the action will never grow. This means that the Commerce "bend over, rape me, and don't even kiss me in the morning" low limit drop is not going to get the job done. You must lower the price that is charged to play $6-$12 through $10-$20 poker, i.e. lowering the drop to $3 per hand or $5/ 1/2 hr. or the equivalent in these games. The objective is not to break the players in the quickest possible time but to get them to come back two or more times per week, week after week, year after year, until they die of extreme old age. Remember the adage--you can shear a sheep many times but you can only kill it and eat it once. Do not fall under the misconception, prevalent among many cardroom managers, that poker players are a pack of degenerate, self destructive, gambling addicted, losers who just have to gamble and will put their money into action in whatever crappy game the casino deigns to lay down. Poker players play because they want to win money by what, in their minds, constitutes skillful play. They may not be playing all that skillfully, but in their own minds they are playing because they can "outplay" the other players and get their money. Poker players are fully aware of what they are paying to play and are fully aware of the effect a Commerce level "bend over, rape me, and don't even kiss me in the morning" low limit drop does to their winning prospects. You should also lower the rake/drop to selective players by giving out some comps but be selective in the players you comp. The players you want to "take care of" are the regular players who play everyday, give the cardroom $1,000's of dollars of collection every year, and act as unpaid props, making sure the games start everyday. A dozen of these regular players are worth as much as 4 or 5 props whom the cardroom pays $15/hr. plus benefits. If you can attract and retain these players, the money spent on comps is less than the salaries you would have to spend on props if you didn't have them You can comp these selective players by giving them coupons for free food, buying them a sweatshirt in the gift shop, having a player rewards program like the Bicycle Player Rewards Program, or even giving them an entry card to the VIP parking lot. Many cardroom blow $1,000's on mindless promotions, like superbowl drawings and raffles, that have no effect on their long term profitability. You can get much more bang for each marketing dollar spent if the money is carefully targeted to where it will have the most effect---at attracting and retaining a core of regular players. Most players at these limits never get anything from the casino and are almost pathetically grateful (unlike the players at the bigger limits who are sometime shockingly ungrateful) for any crumbs thrown their way. The final thing to realize is that building the foundation of your top section (10-15 tables of $6-$12 to $10-$20 daily weekday action) is going to take time (6 months or more). Don't expect to lower the collection and free stuff giveaways to bring scores of players through the door next week. The lower collection and selective comps are going to act like water running over and slowly eroding a rock. On any given day you won't see that much change in the action, but over time, business will steadily pick up and once the foundation of $6-12-$10-$20 games are established you can start worrying about the bigger games. -----------== Posted via Newsfeed.Com - Uncensored Usenet News ==---------- http://www.newsfeed.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! -----= Over 100,000 Newsgroups - Unlimited Fast Downloads - 19 Servers =-----