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

[Dan Druff]

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:

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.

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.

[mdj1980]

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.

[Forum Wars]

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.

1

[Dan Druff]

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.

[Call_Station]

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.

[Shizzmoney]

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