Don’t Piss Down My Back and Tell Me it’s Raining

More “innovative” developments at DTD to “help” the poker community have been recently announced. The announcement goes as follows;

DTD Club Tourney players - from next week we will be returning to our previous system of deducting 10% from the prizepool instead of charging up front registration fees on tournaments. We strongly feel that this system is best for the huge majority of DTD players resulting in cheaper buy ins for all our comps, especially our lower buy ins, (eg. XXL 15 is £15 inclusive, XXL 25 is £25 inclusive and Super 50 is now £50 instead of £50+£8).We expect the Club to be worse off revenue wise in the short term - unless we get an uplift in player numbers (eg. 10% of £5K prizepool for a super 50 is £300 less than 100 x £8 reg fees) and we will still need to hit the same number of players to make our GTD prizepools BUT we believe the return to this pricing method benefits the overall long term ecology of the club over 52 weeks - by keeping more money in the majority of our players pockets. I have discussed this with all levels of players and recognise that some of the pros players /repeat winners do prefer the existing system but I feel this works better for our DTD business model which is mostly targeted at the majority/recreational player base. Cheers Aces

I totally disagree with this business model for a couple of reasons and strongly believe the “Old” standard model (£50 + £5, or £50 + £8) gives the charging structure total transparency. Players can see exactly what it’s costing them under the old/standard model and make a decision accordingly.

The first thing to say is with the old standard system is that re-buys and add-ons are not raked (though re-entries are) but with the new system the whole prizepool is raked no matter how it’s made up.

Now I fully understand that it’s virtually impossible to charge around 10% rake and make a profit out of a poker tournament and the casino only really benefits from MTT’s when it gets lots of runners in the venue who buy food/drink, spunk money on roulette and then play cash. (sounds like a typical Friday night).

What’s real the danger with the New System?

If they never increase the rake there is not too much wrong with it at all, as the only disadvantage is the add-ons and re-buys, but what worries me is when they then start to quietly increase the rake.

What if you played the next Grand Prix at DTD and in the small print it said something like due to the high cost of “X” we’ve had to deduct “Y” from the prizepool on this occasion.

With this system players will ultimately end up paying more without realising they are doing it and that’s what worries me the most.

If you have 2 card-rooms next door to each other, one with each system, and they both increase the rake over time it’s like someone who does his weekly shop at the supermarket and buys his petrol on the way out.

Every week he comes out and moans that the price of his shopping has gone up but the £50 per week he put’s in his tank always cost’s £50 and he doesn’t notice that the petrol has gone up every week as well until one week he runs out of petrol on the Wednesday!

Value For Money is the Key.

Because she’s worth it

I’d still pay the extra if DTD wanted to increase the rake because it’s worth it. The thing is it’s like Lidle versus Sainsburys you know you are going to pay less/more depending on where you shop but it’s your choice.

£20 + £2 for self deal, shit conditions and a bent game or £20 + £8 for a top class product in a safe environment with the best TD’s around and big prizepools? It’s a no brainer for me and DTD shouldn’t be afraid to increase it’s rake in a transparent manner.

DTD and all other UK casinos must look at Vegas and wish they could get away with charging what they do.

The last time I looked the Aria’s daily $125 tournament deducts $25 from the prizepool and the Caesar’s $70 comp takes out a whopping $20 per player! So it’s effectively a $50 + $20 comp or $50 + 40% extra or equivalent to a 28% rake on the total prizepool!

I’d like to see anyone in the UK try and get away with that! The truth is that currently things are so much in favour of the player that Casinos are in a no-win situation; they know if they start charging what they should charge to make it pay they lose all their customers in a heartbeat.

There is so much choice and competition in the Midlands that we don’t have to play any old shit comps any-more we just go somewhere else. I went to the G Cov last Friday (see previous post here) and hated the comps structure so this week I went somewhere else, it’s as simple as that. As a player “we’ve never had it so good”.

I seem to disagree with a lot that DTD does/says but generally speaking I’m glad it’s there. It’s a bit like Harrods, none of us go there that often but we’d be sad if it shut.