Players and dealers alike seemed positively upbeat over the weekend. Friday night ended up being the most successful night the room has had financially in over three months. Players expressed how much they like the new progressive high hand promotions. Last week, we paid them a mere $25 if they managed to get four-of-a-kind. This weekend? The values of each high hand jackpot rose $25 a day.
The $3/hr comp thing? It seems to be drawing in some business.
Email blasts telling people what we're doing bring people in too. No less than three people approached the podium the last few days to let me know they were thrilled to be receiving emails about the poker room, especially since a couple of them previously assumed the room had long ago been closed down.
The powers that be, seeing recent results, seem cautiously optimistic. On a note more noticeable to those who play in the room, wholesale changes in front-line management seem to be producing some results as well. Our floor staff is basically entirely new. Nobody who worked the floor a year ago on a regular basis works the floor today. We now have a team I feel confident in, a team focused on running a tight ship and giving customers a great place to play.
Not all is utopian in the room, obviously. Some changes that positively impacted one group of players negatively impacted others. Giving the cash game players $3/hr comps necessitated we stop giving the $1/hr we have so long given to the tournament players. To say the least, that wasn't our ideal scenario. Unfortunately, a technical issue with software on the backend makes it so that we currently cannot assign different comp rates to different types of games. We're working on it, though, and the $1/hr will come back as soon as the tech guys figure out how to deal with it.
We added an optional $10 staff appreciation bonus to every tournament. Most players seem to like it. A few, unfortunately very vocal, others tell anyone who will listen how we are screwing the tournament players over. Apparently, the meaning of the optional eludes some members of society.
Sure, we have a long way to go. Still, seeing the renewed enthusiasm from the majority of the staff and hearing so many positive comments from players this weekend gives me hope that we will make it.
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If only this weren't necessary:
The views expressed above are strictly my own and reflect only the official opinions of the voices in my head. The opinions of those voices sometimes change. When they do, anything expressed before that time might no longer be the same, or even similar to, the current mood of said voices. Enjoy the ride!