Venetian $150,000 Guarantee event is actually a $150,000 MAXIMUM event where they pocket extra money

Total scumbag move by Venetian's poker room, where they have mangled the entire concept of a guarantee, and made it super player-unfriendly without being totally up front about it.

Their late October "Lucky Shot" series is described here: https://www.venetian.com/casino/poker/lsp-oct-2019.html

Here's the structure sheet for Event #1, a $250 NL event with rebuys, and 6 flights: https://www.venetian.com/content/dam...019-250_NL.pdf

Go to page #2 of the structure sheet linked above, and look at term #9:

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100% of all funds collected will go to meet the $150,000 Total Prize Pool. Any funds collected above and beyond the total prize pool will be the sole property of The Venetian Poker Room.

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:what

So basically, the prize pool is going to be exactly $150,000, no matter how many or how few entrants they get. So if they get 1000 entries, they will be collecting $250,000, yet only awarding $150,000 in prize money! If they get 2000 entries, again they will be only awarding $150,000 prize money, and pocketing the other $350k!

WTF!!!!

While it's true that there will be an overlay if fewer than 600 entries are achieved, that's unlikely because they have 6 starting flights, and allow rebuys. They would need just 100 entries per flight (including rebuys) in order to avoid the overlay and start pocketing every single entry fee beyond that.

This is totally non-standard. Never seen anything like it before.

What's worse is that they are not up front about this horrendous payout scheme. It's buried in term #9 of page 2 of the structure sheet. On the main tournament webpage, they refer to the tournament simply as "$150,000 Total", which isn't at all clear. Every single event of this series has a pre-set "total", with one as low as $4,000 for a $125 event, meaning they will pocket the remaining buyins once they get 32 entries! WOW!!!

The poker world should speak up LOUD AND CLEAR that this will not be tolerated, and the Venetian Poker room should be pressured to change this awful policy, or at the very least, be VERY CLEAR AND UP FRONT about this scheme to everyone attempting to register.

That is awful. I hope word gets around and there end up being overlays. That is something you would expect from a smaller cardroom or shady Indian casino, not The Venetian.

Of course some players will not understand what is happening here, and even if everyone did, natural greed would take over and prevent much of an overlay, so I would expect The Venetian to make out pretty well with this. Best case scenario is the more aware regulars will boycott their other tournanents or cash games, take their business elsewhere and leave them with lower numbers across the board for everything else.

What in holy hell.

This is a BIGGG blunder by Venetian. 100% agree with Detective Druff that Venetian needs to be called out on this LOUD AND CLEAR.

>>> This is totally non-standard. Never seen anything like it before.

I'm tempted to say I agree (and this is obviously the brainchild of some fantasizer on Venetian's staff that thinks poker players are just mindless idiot gamblers like slot players)...but you know, I have seen this before. This tourney is basically the crappy everyday scam we commonly call a:

RAFFLE

I always am amazed when there's some office raffle where people stuff 350 $5 raffle tickets into a box for a two year old iPhone 7. That's basically what's happing here, just with some skill need to win the "prize offered".

It'll probably be changed if Venetian gets enough heat. If these don't die quickly and become huge underlays (trade mark pending on that term BTW) then God help us all.

:facepalm1

:facepalm2

:facepalm3

:facepalm4

According to Terry King, Vegas poker veteran dating back to the 70s, this isn't a new idea.

They tried it at the Riviera (RIP) in the mid-1980s.

But this hasn't been seen in the "modern" (post-2003) poker era, and even before that it was uncommon.

Awful.

That this is being pulled in one of biggest and most popular rooms in Vegas is a huge deal, and sets a terrible precedent. The only good news is it shouldn't be hard to convince any players above the minimum to boycott, since they would be throwing away money by doing so.

Even though the room is nice and the structures are good, kinda glad I put the Venetian on the banned list (due to Adelson)

No poker player should be playing there ever anyways ... don't feel bad for any of them

Adelson and his company fucking poker players.. Color me shocked.. Sure he may not be directly involved in this action but this is ridiculous but on a side note if people are clowns enough to play in this tournament then they deserve what they get.. Nobody who gives a shit about Poker in general should be giving Adelsons Venetian or any other Sands corp a dime of money.. Has anybody thought of a good name for this type of tournament.. I have..

The Reverse Guarantee.. Seems perfect.. There is a guarantee prize pool but the poker room is guaranteed to make a shit ton of money over and above as they only have to shell out the total amount of the said guarantee.. Ya know at least if theyre gonna fuck the players they shouldn't charge any vig on the tournament since theyre likely to make plenty on the backend anyway

Actually, it is a no rake tournament. Just fixed prize pool and the house keeps the rest.

Todd got the bossman at VENETIAN is stuttering and now getting ready to explode! you know what u getting into, must be posted on 2+2! please Mr.Malamuth Mr sklansky.let todd EXPOSE this scam and EXPLOITATION of Poker players! fk u Venetian!

Well, this tournament series quietly started. Nobody noticed because everyone is thinking of a gentleman named Mike Postle.

Postle did for the Venetian what 9/11 did for Gary Condit.

Anyway, according to the @VenetianTD Twitter:

34 people played Day 1A of Event #1 ($150k total prize pool, $250 buyin), and 4 people survived
73 played Day 1B, and 9 survived
129 played Day 1C, and 17 survived

Day 1D was Thursday, and results have not been reported.

Day 1E is Friday (10/25), and last flight, Day 1F, is Saturday.

Days 1A/1B/1C combined for 236 entrants, making the prize pool $59,000 at the moment.

However, as you see it's rapidly growing as the event progresses (grinders waiting to see if there's an overlay), I imagine they will break easily past the $150k mark, and there won't be an overlay.

They are claiming in their tweet that it will likely "be rake free with overlay", but that's just a marketing gimmick. I don't think it's likely at all.

I want to correct the previous post.

They were not getting that many players. These were the totals after each day day.

In reality, they got 34, 39, 56, and 95 in the first 4 flights, leaving them with 214 players total. 2 flights to go (one just went today, haven't seen the numbers yet), the target number for them is 600 to avoid the overlay, and anything less than 720 will have provided at least ok value for players, as 720 players would be a 20% effective rake.

I still hope this fails for Venetian because the concept is obnoxious and bad for poker.

I begrudgingly am playing this event.

My bankroll is at a point where a $250 tournament is feasible, and I believe a lot of the LV tournament regs will stay away. Making this a softer than normal $150k tournament.

I don’t believe that they’ll rake more than normal in the end. Not that this makes it ok. Playing this and doing well though would benefit me quite a bit.

I joined in mid level 4 and there are currently 190 entries towards the end of level 4.

If I were to happen win or run deep, I’d sound like a hypocrite, but I would make sure to make my voice heard on why this is a poor format.

2 other decent players (from what I’ve seen) also only played today because they thought there would be overlay.

3 people at my table had no idea it was a capped prizepool with a drawing tomorrow.

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Originally Posted by AhoosierA

2 other decent players (from what I’ve seen) also only played today because they thought there would be overlay.

3 people at my table had no idea it was a capped prizepool with a drawing tomorrow.

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Good luck but make sure you get the word out & tell every player at every table you play about the cap as well as a first hand account of the number of entrants & overlay.

They needed 600 to make the $150k

Going into Saturday, they needed 247 entries.

They got it. 292 entries. They are giving away $52,000 in drawings (21 - $2k & 1 - $10k) for every $250 in tournament entries you have. This includes their $125 - $6k total prize pool they held through the week. Not sure if and if so, how much they profited on those.

Hopefully they have to reach into their pockets still to do these drawings and it detours them from running shit like this in the future, but idk...the cash game traffic’s rake this tournament may have generated may have made up for the $$ they come out of pocket.

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Originally Posted by Hockey Guy

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Originally Posted by AhoosierA

2 other decent players (from what I’ve seen) also only played today because they thought there would be overlay.

3 people at my table had no idea it was a capped prizepool with a drawing tomorrow.

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Good luck but make sure you get the word out & tell every player at every table you play about the cap as well as a first hand account of the number of entrants & overlay.

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I’ve been talking about this at the table nearly as much as the poker world was talking about the Postle situation. My table is probably tired of hearing me talk about it, however I think it’s important to raise awareness...even though I feel like a major hypocrite

Bagged 180k coming back to 2.5k BB. Still need to make it through nearly 1/2 the field to be ITM. I spoke with more people who were NOT aware of this being a capped prizepool than I did with people in the know.

For every $250 collected per individual, they are giving out a ticket to the drawing. 710 tickets total were accumulated. So 710 x $250 = $177,500. Plus add in the money from the random stragglers that only played 1 - $125 nightly....they did not cover the total amount for this tournament series.

Yeah looks like they lost money thanks to the $52k they were giving away for the drawing. So maybe they will not run this shit again in the future.

Hilarious that 3 people at the table had no idea about the capped prize pool. Remember the guy on the phone during the radio phone call, where he insisted that everyone was well informed, and that they did enough to educate the public what they were really buying?

That was my biggest problem with this event. It was constructed specifically to hide the truth from people regarding the maximum prize pool.

Meh, marginal money loss.

They can always add another zero to the roulette wheel to make it up. Call it a thruple for more publicity.

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Originally Posted by Dan Druff

Yeah looks like they lost money thanks to the $52k they were giving away for the drawing. So maybe they will not run this shit again in the future.

Hilarious that 3 people at the table had no idea about the capped prize pool. Remember the guy on the phone during the radio phone call, where he insisted that everyone was well informed, and that they did enough to educate the public what they were really buying?

That was my biggest problem with this event. It was constructed specifically to hide the truth from people regarding the maximum prize pool.

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I played at 3 different tables throughout the day. Overall, more people were not aware of the capped prizepool.

I feel like a lot of the players I was playing against were out of towners just taking a shot at a $150k GTD prizepool for $250 (in their mind).

I did not see a lot of the tournament regulars I see around Vegas for these type of stakes

This is an annoying fail.

We restart at 12:05 with 15 minutes left in a level.

We play 15 minutes and they send us on a 10 minute break until they start they drawing at 12:30...

It’s currently 12:38 and they’re on 4 names in to the 22 names being drawn.