Palms $1 rake/$4 promo drop plan turns into chaos, costs house $22,000

[zealanddonk]

Most poker rooms, especially the small ones, use some type of shills to hold games together. So, I'm not sure what New Zealand Donk is referring to with collusion with another dealer, although that might not of been meant for my response, because the first paragraph didn't seem to have to do anything with me. A shill is put into place as a service to the players, as well as the room, to try and maintain full games, so its not about beating the players (colluding?). If you sat down and tried to beat up your players, they would very quickly become your former players.

I'm not speaking for ZD, but I think I know what he meant. I think he was saying that, as with any shill player not you in particular, you could intentionally dump casino money to "friends". I've always been a bit weary of shills although I know that they do serve a purpose.

Yes, this is what I meant. As someone else said "splashing the pot" or whatever else before the cards are dealt would make it a lot fairer for all players rather than you purposefully losing hands.

[Steve-O]

I'm not speaking for ZD, but I think I know what he meant. I think he was saying that, as with any shill player not you in particular, you could intentionally dump casino money to "friends". I've always been a bit weary of shills although I know that they do serve a purpose.

Yes, this is what I meant. As someone else said "splashing the pot" or whatever else before the cards are dealt would make it a lot fairer for all players rather than you purposefully losing hands.

When he says purposely losing he means playing sub-optimally, not calling a river all-in when he has 3 high, or folding the nuts to a bet.

[PokrPrinses]

Why are managers allowed to play in their own room? I am surprised there is no rule against this. Maybe there is but he just stepped past it.

Also LOL @ him not thinking this wouldnt be found out.

-I'll say it, the managers name was ****** *****. I worked for him when he ran the M and we wondered why they would fire him two months before they closed our room down.
Looks like he was up to something shady at both places. Why would the Palms hire this guy right after being fired from the M?

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Edited by Druff: Removed name until verification of this story is received.

My name is Shannon and I worked at The M resort poker room from the day they opened til the day they closed and I don't know who you are but it is a common known fact that my handle is PokrPrinses accross the Poker community (easy to check by googling) and you are clearly using this handle trying to impersonate me as you have joined this site 2 days ago leaving your profile empty. You are a chicken shit piece of crap to hide behind an imposter internet handle and pose as me, rather than speaking your mind like an adult! Funny when I google your handle nothing comes up! I don't who you are though you obviously know me. I don't need to hide behind a facade to speak my mind.
FYI for those reading I joined today since forums arent really my cup of tea however, having this pointed out to me I felt it was necessary to set the record straight and let those who know and respect me in the Las Vegas Poker Arena understand that this was not me. If I have a problem with you I will tell you to your face. While I do know the person this thread is regarding, I do not know all of the facts and would never presume to comment.

[Dan Druff]

-I'll say it, the managers name was ****** *****. I worked for him when he ran the M and we wondered why they would fire him two months before they closed our room down.
Looks like he was up to something shady at both places. Why would the Palms hire this guy right after being fired from the M?

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Edited by Druff: Removed name until verification of this story is received.

My name is Shannon and I worked at The M resort poker room from the day they opened til the day they closed and I don't know who you are but it is a common known fact that my handle is PokrPrinses accross the Poker community (easy to check by googling) and you are clearly using this handle trying to impersonate me as you have joined this site 2 days ago leaving your profile empty. You are a chicken shit piece of crap to hide behind an imposter internet handle and pose as me, rather than speaking your mind like an adult! Funny when I google your handle nothing comes up! I don't who you are though you obviously know me. I don't need to hide behind a facade to speak my mind.
FYI for those reading I joined today since forums arent really my cup of tea however, having this pointed out to me I felt it was necessary to set the record straight and let those who know and respect me in the Las Vegas Poker Arena understand that this was not me. If I have a problem with you I will tell you to your face. While I do know the person this thread is regarding, I do not know all of the facts and would never presume to comment.

What a mess.

Now people are impersonating M poker room employees?

This thread is getting out of hand.

[Dan Druff]

Well, until more evidence is brought forth to the contrary, I think Todd's story is believable enough to where I will change the thread title and original post.

I do have to say that a manager playing in the game and intentionally playing poorly with promo money isn't the greatest idea, because that could result in preferential chip-dumping to friends. That is, you can decide to call an all-in preflop with 44 against a guy you like, and fold it against a guy you dislike. I'm not saying you did that, but in general this isn't a good idea, especially since this was promo money (earmarked to be distributed to the players) and not house money.

You can understand how certain people took your playing with promo money the wrong way, even if you did not mean anything dishonest or harmful.

With that said, it does seem unlikely that you were doing this to steal, as you barely booked any winning sessions, and in fact appeared to be trying to lose.

This seems more like a promotion that ran out of control than any sort of malicious or dishonest behavior.

I will never know for sure, but that's my gut feeling at this point.

Thank you for taking the time to explain your side.

[vegasbeek]

Hello Dan,

Why is this thread still named this? I have answered all your questions and clearly explained all the internal workings. You said you were a reasonable person and would fix this assassination of my character. I have answered openly and honestly, using real facts, yet you still have this thread saying I'm a thief. You are obviously tracking this thread, but don't seem willing to end it. Why? Who is your secret source? Maybe a disgruntled employee? If you don't want to post there name, I will offer you the same deal that you gave me. Email me their name and maybe I can give you more input. I will also keep their name a secret from the forum.

Thanks, Todd

[Dan Druff]

Hello Dan,

Why is this thread still named this? I have answered all your questions and clearly explained all the internal workings. You said you were a reasonable person and would fix this assassination of my character. I have answered openly and honestly, using real facts, yet you still have this thread saying I'm a thief. You are obviously tracking this thread, but don't seem willing to end it. Why? Who is your secret source? Maybe a disgruntled employee? If you don't want to post there name, I will offer you the same deal that you gave me. Email me their name and maybe I can give you more input. I will also keep their name a secret from the forum.

Thanks, Todd

I have changed the name of the thread to "Palms $1 rake/$4 promo drop plan turns into chaos, costs house $22,000" and modified the original post to indicate that I do not believe you stole.

I'm not sure why you are still seeing the original title.

[HarleyFarley]

You said something to the effect that I was reimbursing myself for shill loss. That seems to imply that somehow I was putting lost money into my pocket. That never was the case. Nevada allows the use of shills or props. Any money signed out from the cashier would be lammered to try and hold the game together. If there was a loss, which was 90% of the time, then it would be documented and turned into accounting with the daily paperwork. If there was a win, then it was turned into the cashier and they would drop it into the reserve pool. There was never any cash moving around that would have to be reimbursed.

Reserve pool for what ? Shill funds are not legally allowed to be deposited into the promo fund.

Giving the cashier my tips while dealing just seems like the right thing to do. As a manager, I think it sends the wrong message, to both the staff and players to be out "hustling tokes", so any money I got from the players I just gave it to the cashier. She doesn't make very much money and those few extra bucks help her out dramatically. (as a side note to the players, when your cashing out of a game, give the cashier a couple bucks, it means nothing to you and helps their situation dramatically). I didn't accept tips from the staff.

Any money toked out to cashiers/dealers is now missing from the promo fund.

Reply if you need another question answered. Please change the name of the thread. The PALMS poker room manager, me, did not in any way, shape, or form, steal anything from any player.

Who and why was the line item ‘Game Protection’ chosen?

Why not write down exactly what promo was being paid out. Typically auditing likes to know, who, what, why and where? Why did you break from these accepted conventions?

Have you ever known or worked in a room previously that used an ambiguous line item ?

Was your paperwork audited daily?

Who was supervising the games when you were playing in them ?

You say you never cashed out a single penny, you sat in the game until you was felted every time?

Who is the we you refer to “You said that when we lost we wrote it off, but when we won we pocketed the money”

If during the course of a session, you used promo funds to reimburse your losses, any tips that you gave to a dealer were not returned to the players. Or did you never tip the dealers

Was you employed for longer than 90 days?

[John Mehaffey]

It is nice to see the manager speak openly about the situation and setting the record straight. I covered the initial promotion and thought to myself that it looked like something that would last a short time and implode. I did not even think of the angle that the lack of NL games would have an even bigger effect.

I thought the promo was great enough to encourage players to check it out. It looks like it could have been the end of the road for the room though.

The Palms poker room is one of the nicest in Las Vegas. It is too bad that it never gained any traction.

[RileyG]

http://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdoc...ocumentid=2898


Regulation 23, Card Games Page

[Crowe Diddly]

http://gaming.nv.gov/modules/showdoc...ocumentid=2898


Regulation 23, Card Games Page

 

View on scribd here: https://www.scribd.com/doc/205752363/  

[RileyG]

Hello Dan,

Why is this thread still named this? I have answered all your questions and clearly explained all the internal workings. You said you were a reasonable person and would fix this assassination of my character. I have answered openly and honestly, using real facts, yet you still have this thread saying I'm a thief. You are obviously tracking this thread, but don't seem willing to end it. Why? Who is your secret source? Maybe a disgruntled employee? If you don't want to post there name, I will offer you the same deal that you gave me. Email me their name and maybe I can give you more input. I will also keep their name a secret from the forum.

Thanks, Todd

For The Record (FTR): I am not the one making said claims in this forum. With that said, I worked at the Palms-Cantor Poker Room as the cashier/brush/board operator from Jan 2013-July 2013 after working Palms Security from dates June 2006-Jan 2013 before that. My position was eliminated in a so called corporate restructuring as Cantor told me, and also the Nevada Unemployment Office.

Added note to the room losses, not included in your promo payouts is the loss of many dollars per day in the $0 to $1000 PLUS per day in Palms drink receipts that Cantor must pay for . All drinks ordered by players in games and noted in a spreadsheet that Cantor must pay the Palms for. Cantor made a terrible deal (IMHO) for the leasing of said space at the Palms for the Book, and Poker Room. Plus the Palms Management has the right to have any Cantor employee terminated without cause as they run the poker room under the Palms gaming license.

With all this said, I doubt that Cantor will renew their lease of the poker room space when said lease ends very soon. This means the room will be closed, or taken over by the Palms once again. This would mean a Palms Food & Beverage loss of booked revenue of approx $5000 plus per week from the poker room alone.

[shortbuspoker]

Added note to the room losses, not included in your promo payouts is the loss of many dollars per day in the $0 to $1000 PLUS per day in Palms drink receipts that Cantor must pay for . All drinks ordered by players in games and noted in a spreadsheet that Cantor must pay the Palms for.

This would mean a Palms Food & Beverage loss of booked revenue of approx $5000 plus per week from the poker room alone.

How could a Cantor to make money having to cover this and promos and I assume a lease rate to the Palms also?

[RileyG]

This whole ordeal of was it the PROMO funds that were being used to pay for poker prop player(s)/shills or GAME PROTECTION as posted would come to the accounting used. Were the shortages being recorded in the main poker or aux bank being reported on a daily variance slip to have the Palms bank reimburse the Cantor Poker room shortage each day (24 hour period), or were the loses being recorded on the promo sheet as payouts and no reimbursements made back to the Cantor poker bank. If variance form filed, then NOT PROMO FUNDS, but If listed on promo payouts sheet to Cantor accounting, and Palms accounting to even out the Cantor poker bank, then it would be PROMO FUNDS.

NOTE: That Poker bank overages go on a variance form as well, and overage turned into the Palms bank.

[Dan Druff]

A little bit off topic here, but there are just too many poker rooms in Vegas. We'll probably be seeing a lot more closures over the next few years.

They are also very poor money makers for casinos. In fact, even if they have the space, the poker rooms keep gamblers away from the pits/machines, and their disposable money gets taken by the sharks rather than the house.

The only value in having a poker room is drawing in middle/high limit degens, who will play in the pits on the way out (especially to chase losses). A room with a few 1/2 NL tables is a waste of time and space.

[Callingbs]

Ok my turn to vent. I am a current Palms/Cantor employee(for now) who has lots to correct and vent about.
I prefer to remain anonymous for fear that Todd might actually fool someone else into giving him a poker room to run again.
Todd, although I do believe you might have been trying to "help" us, you ruined us. In fact I'm here to call BS on lots of what you have said on here.

1. The only staff meeting we had was when you first started. In that meeting you said you were all about making the dealers more money.
-Not only did you make us less money than before you started, you will be the sole reason why I won't have income soon. There is no way we can recoup after Cantor cancelling all promos just days after you being fired.
2. You showed your face in our room for about 2 hours a day, 2 or 3 days a week.
Granted, I was only working 10-15 hrs a week, the talk amongst all of our staff was that you were never here.
In fact the only time you were in the room is when you were playing.
3. Game protection?!!! I had the pleasure to dealing to Todd when he was "protecting the game". It was very uncomfortable! Not only would you check raise players and belittle them when they beat you, you stormed off many times and would wear your emotions on your sleeve so much that the only reason we didn't complaint was because you were the best toker/tipper in the game.
4. You let our cashier and any dealer that wanted to play with house money play in the game. This was bad in so many ways. Often I would come in on swing shift and our floor sups would point out that day shift dealers were winning promo money in the am. This while playing with house $. How was that fair to our customers?
5. Either you weren't telling Palms/Cantor what you were doing or they were too ignorant to realize it.
I truly believe you were fired because you were never here. I say this because when Cantor came in and told us no more promos, they said they had no idea we were that much in the hole. And I believe it.
Why would they fire you, and still have the same promos for another week and a half?
6. There was no discipline or standards that were followed. Not a day went by where at least a dealer and a supervisor didn't call in sick. Yet i still only managed to work under 15 hrs a week.
The worst part is that you used (cjc) temp dealers, that were rumored to cost 2x as much to work, all the way up until your last day. Many of us had been there since the room opened, yet you cut all hours and gave cjc hours??????

I'm sorry but you ruined our room and our lives. I see you are proud to be a cub scout leader and church worshiper. Maybe if you invested just a little bit of interest in our room, we wouldn't have to come into 1 game or soon to be none!

Remember, propping and especially shilling with house money doesn't mean check raising our guests and especially getting angry at them when you lose. I personally saw you lose $200 a few times in NL so I'm calling BS on that too. The tips were appreciated, but hey, it wasn't your money so it just hurt in the long run.

So thank you for absolutely nothing! Your reputation was earned and having two rooms fail and to have been fired from both before closing makes me wonder what's really going on! Enjoy your smores, bread and wine!

Dan Druff or Shortbuss poker - why not call anytime and ask our staff our feelings of Todd!
Better yet, ask a Cantor rep why they could let him do what he did.
We were just fined a record 5.5 million for our president turning a blind eye our vp of sports books acting as an agent for pinnacle.
Just another blind eye here or maybe Cantor bosses are really that stupid!

[Hockey Guy]

Another turn. Things are gonna get interesting I think.

[shortbuspoker]

Dan Druff or Shortbuss poker - why not call anytime and ask our staff our feelings of Todd!
Better yet, ask a Cantor rep why they could let him do what he did.

Great post sir or ma'am. I have no first hand knowledge of the incidents, but as I posted I have always been leery of shills mainly because I am afraid of chip dumping. I can guarantee 100% though that if a brush playing in a game berated me for winning a pot I would raise hell until the highest ranking person on duty in the casino came to the table or security drug me out.

Situations like this are also why we need Brandon and Steve the bodyguard back. They would be the perfect people to go in and check things out first hand.

[Steve-O]

Non-aggression pact violated by Marty... Druff goes on the offensive...

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...3&postcount=83

This "Bob Freebie" person is Martin Curacao, who has been banned on multiple accounts here for trolling.

He has personally hated me for 7 years and is using this thread to keep up the trolling.

Lest you think he is a fine gentleman who is obsessed with journalistic integrity, keep in mind that he ran several of his own sites, many of which had libelous front-page stories about myself and others.

He has also run various scams of his own over the years, including an embarrassing one for $5.50 on Pokerstars some years ago. I wish I was joking, but I can post the transcript of his conversation if he denies it. He actually left one forum (flopturnriver) after scamming everyone, promising to pay them back, and never making good on it. Ask around.

About a year ago, Marty begged me to take down his full name from my site, as various (true) stories about his past misdeeds were hurting his ability to move on in life from his forum trolling days. In order to finally end his obsession with me, I agreed, and things went quiet for awhile.

Since he is intent upon starting up again with this nonsense, I think it's time I reverse that decision.

Regarding the Palms manager, go to my site and read some subsequent posts from others. This matter seems more complicated than it first appeared, and there still very well might be more to the story. Unless this short-lived manager had a whole lot of enemies who are intent upon ruining his good name, something isn't quite right here.

I still don't believe that Todd was a thief, but I do think a lot happened there that probably shouldn't have.

[Dan Druff]

Yes, I am taking heat on this matter on 2+2, between the return of Martin Carrico (Jewdonk/Bob Freebie) and even Mason Malmuth himself deciding to take a shot at me.

That's okay.

Obviously there are two sides to this story, and I feel it's valuable to leave this thread standing so further discussion can take place. This site's mission is for the truth to come out about matters like this, and I think that continued discussion and input from different viewpoints (especially from those with firsthand knowledge of the situation) will allow us to do so.

Todd responded to the strongest allegation (that he stole from the promo pool), and his explanation was reasonable enough to change my mind.

However, many questions remain at this point, including whether his playing with promo money and intentionally losing (which he admitted to) was legal, and also who benefited most from "his" losses (was it everyone randomly, or did people he knew benefit disproportionately?) Furthermore, was it only Todd playing with the promo money, or did other staff do so, as well?

There are also some questions as to how much the dealers actually knew about this whole thing from the start.

The whole story is still really odd, and I think continued discussion is valuable.