veeRob’s Blog

Well this is a new one for me… I’m here to write a review of the iPhone (and iPod Touch) application PokerZig that a few friends of mine took a part in putting together.  Even stranger, I was bullied into downloading this application, so rather than getting paid, it costs me $1.99 to do this review.  But that’s ok… I was offered to be reimbursed, but I’m happy to support my friends.

If you don’t already know, PokerZig is an app that will allow you to find a live tournament in Las Vegas that suits your needs.  It does a decent job of doing so, as loading the app instantly shows you a list of upcoming tournaments, including time, venue, and buyin.  Clicking on a tournament gives you more information such as the average number of players, duration, starting chips, typical 1st place, and what % of the buyin goes to the house.  It also shows a rating from 1 to 5 chips (stars), though it’s very unclear who’s rating the tournament.  My first instinct was to go to the Bellagio tournament I play often and give it five stars like I do when listening to music, but it did not allow me to click to give it my rating.

It was then that I realized that I couldn’t click on hardly anything.  If I played a tournament that reported 40 average players and the day I played it got 20, I would love to click on the app and update a database somewhere so that the average would be better reflected for myself and future users.  This is one area that I think the app would be very useful for if a handful of players continually updated them, as the information available on the Internet won’t necessarily be 100% accurate.  If this application let you see past # of entrants and averages, it would be very useful.  For example, I tried to play a Wynn tournament that the Internet told me had an average of 30 players, yet on the night I showed up, it didn’t run.  Had I known via PokerZig that other players had run into this problem or that the field could sometimes be 10 people, I wouldn’t have ever showed up.

Another problem with this application is that at the bottom of the screen, you only have the option to see tournaments by date, by event series (they call it “majors”), or by casino.  I didn’t see an option to see tournaments sorted by buyin.  I want to play higher buyins, but recreational players may want a buyin in a certain range.  Another great option that I use on AllVegasPoker’s tournament listings is sorting by vig, so that I can find the tournaments that take the least amount out of the prize pool.  There is no reason why this app can’t integrate sorting by both buyin or vig.

Going further, I’d like to see this app offer a filter, rather than just sorting.  For example, I’d like to be able to pull up a screen to find a tournament with a buyin from $100 to $200, with a vig of 18% or lower, and between 11am and 5pm.  With all of the sliders I see on the iPhone, I see no reason why this wouldn’t be an easy task to program.  And, for completeness, why not have a “pick a tournament for me” option where you can shake your iPod and it will spin a wheel and pick a tournament that’s starting within the next hour.

Lastly, the app fails to make use of the location services available on the iPhone.  I believe the app could be programmed so that it would know where you were, and you could list tournaments sorted by proximity.  That way, if you were playing at Bellagio and busted out, you could see where the closest tournaments are that were coming up in the next few hours.

Now the question is will I continue to use it?  Unfortunately, for me, the answer is no.  See, I don’t own an iPhone, just an iPod Touch.  I would use it if I busted from a tournament and was looking for another tournament to get into, but I’d need Wifi to be able to do this.  If I had an iPhone, I would definitely be making use of this app in the future.  I encourage the developers to consider porting the application to Windows Mobile so I can use it on my Touch Pro.

So after my blog post and my tweeting about my displeasure with the World Poker Showdown not being up front with the fees they are taking, the Hard Rock poker room has been tweeting incorrect information in protest to my tweets.  Here’s the two tweets I take exception to:

ALL tournaments take 3% out for Mega Stacks. Line 1 of Mega Stack Poker Showdown payout SHEET DISCLOSES the 3%. Just read it~No SECRET

This comment is just blatantly wrong.  The “fact sheet” discloses the 3%, but the payout sheet and all of the promotional materials do not.

the wps tournaments take the same out as everywhere else maybe less! ever do the math on what they take out at the wsop? or the venetion?

Bad spelling aside, this is wrong as well.  In past “Deep Stack” tournament series, Venetian has taken 14.4% from their $340’s, which is $49.  $30 goes to the house, $10 goes to the staff add-on, and $9 (3% of the $300 buyin) goes to the staff.

As for the World Series, this year’s structure sheets show that they take anywhere from 6% to 10%, depending upon the buyin.  For the stimulus event, which was $1000 to enter (not $1000 plus some fee), they removed 10% total — 7% or $70 for the house and 3% or $30 for the staff.  For the $10,000 Main Event, they removed a mere 6% total — $420 (4.2%) for the house and $180 (1.8%) for the staff.  With a bigger buyin tournament with a bigger field, they’re making it up in volume, so they can afford to have a lower tournament fee.

To compare this to the World Poker Showdown at the Hard Rock, they’re charging $10 more than the Venetian did for their $300 events, which makes the tournament fee 16.9%.  To review, they’re charging $40 for the house, $10 for the staff add-on, and $9 (3% of the $300 buyin) for the staff.  On top of them having the highest fees for a tournament series here in Las Vegas, the Hard Rock seems to be missing the point that I am upset that they were not upfront and honest in what they were taking out, and their higher rake led me to believe they were not removing 3%, which would have made their tournament fee a much more reasonable 14.3% ($50 / $350).

Unfortunately, as I said before, the Venetian has posted their schedule for their upcoming Deep Stack series in November, and their $300 events have moved from $330 to $340, making their fees equal to what the World Poker Showdown is charging now.  Venetian seemed to influence the poker industry with its deep stack structures, so I am afraid that they may set a trend of getting away with charging $10 more for $300 events.

To summarize:

• WSOP = 6% to 10% withheld from buyin due to larger buyins & field size (fully disclosed on structure sheet)
  
• Venetian (past events) = 14.4% withheld from their $340’s (fully disclosed on schedule)
  
• World Poker Showdown = 16.9% withheld from their $350’s (not fully disclosed on structure sheet)
  

Yesterday was the most upset I’ve been leaving a poker room after cashing in a tournament that I can recall, and I’m ready to blog about it to give you all the details.

There’s a company called World Poker Showdown that runs one to two week tournament series for poker players that have smaller bankrolls — anywhere from $100 to $500 events with main events that are a few thousand.  Friday started their series at the Hard Rock in conjunction with the Canadian Poker Tour, who they partnered with in the Dominican Republic for a similar series earlier in the year.   As I had no poker tournament scheduled for this month, I was excited about the prospect, though hesitant about what the turnout might be.

On Friday I played event #1, a $300 buyin, which got 93 runners.   I busted out short of the money and ended up heading back on Saturday for event #2, a $500 buyin.  This tournament got a dismal 31 entrants.  I ended up taking 4th place for a paltry $1500 after 14 1/2 hours of play.  Prior to playing the tournament, I read all of the flyers in the poker room to understand what they were offering and how everything works.  The flyer they were disseminating showed a $340 buyin and a $550 buyin for events #1 and #2.  Compared to the Venetian’s most recent Deep Stack series, the Hard Rock’s $340 buyin was slightly higher than the Venetian’s $330.  When I showed up to the cage, I learned that there was a $10 “optional” dealer add-on that wasn’t listed on the flyer, so it ended up being a $350 tournament.  Venetian also has this option.

My real problem lies in the fact that Hard Rock, WPS, and CPT hid the fact that they were removing 3% for dealer staff without telling anyone.  Not one of the promotional flyers I have seen, nor the payout structure sheet inside the Hard Rock poker room, lists this 3% fee.  Further, the payout sheet shows the breakdowns for a 31 person tournament as paying 5 places and adds up to 100% payout, not 97%.  My 4th place finish was listed as 10% of the prize pool, which should have been $1550 ($500 x 31 = $15500 x 10%).  When the floor explained to me about the 3% fee, he could not show me anything that explained this.  He had to call the owner of the WPS to find out that it was listed on a separate sheet in the back of the poker titled “fact sheet.”  Even still, they apparently decided to “round down” the payouts to make a few extra bucks, as $1500 x 97% = $1503.50, not $1500.  Yes, it’s only a few dollars, but where is it going?  The other players aren’t as observant as I, so I estimate that the Hard Rock will make an additional $30-$80 per tournament if they keep rounding down like that.  I only hope that the dealers and floormen are pocketing this money and not the Hard Rock corporation.

Now I’m sure I’ll come off as a complainer by posting all of these facts, and that’s fine, I am definitely complaining.  But to clarify, my issue is not that they’re taking out 3%.  My issue is that this fact is hidden and not listed upfront.  On top of that, they’re still doing poor math, which I can only hope was a brief oversight for my one tournament.  On top of THAT, they’re charging more than “industry standard” for their $300’s.  I guess that’s the way things are going, however, as the posted buyins for the next Venetian Deep Stack show $340’s taking the place of $330’s.  Perhaps Matt Savage can explain to me why it’s costing more to run a lower priced buyin event.  I again commend Venetian for giving out $10 food comps with every tournament entry, which effectively lowers their buy-in price by $10 as I am usually at a tournament long enough to need to eat a meal.

I will say that though this is the first real tournament series the Hard Rock is running, they’re doing a good job of it so far.  The floorman I dealt with (I apologize for forgetting his name) was very reasonable and understood my concerns about the 3% as well as other issues, like introducing unscheduled breaks that prolonged the tournament.  The dealers were overall pretty good, though not well-versed with the TDA Rules as they are primarily a cash game room.  My advice to the TD’s is to educate their dealers a little better on this, especially concerning collusion as a lot of these players seem to play together on a regular basis and talk a lot about playing their favorite hand or other forms of unintentional collusion.

I had said last night that I will not be playing any more of these tournaments.  After discussing it rationally with my roommate, I was reminded that the players are bad and there is still good value in them, even if I feel lied to since the fees were not listed up front.  I may play more of these, but I will certainly be scaling back in the number of them that I will play.