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.