It's tangible

To be honest, I expected mildly good things from changes we've recently made to the room. Results have beat my personal expectations. Granted, my intended goal for what we're currently doing lies far down the road. I hesitate to even say we've turned a corner, but that perfectly describes the attitude in the room over the weekend. The effects of our recent changes were tangible.

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.

***

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!

Growing Pains

Change sucks. Inevitable, sometimes necessary, but never pleasant, change sucks.

Actually, change is good. Without change, there can never be growth. Change doesn't suck. Managing change, dealing with change, trying to bring others along - usually reluctantly - on a journey of change, these are the things that suck.

Nothing happens fast in a large organization, especially change. Many people refer to the struggles they experience related to change as growing pains. I suppose the term is applicable to what I currently struggle with every day.

On AVP, someone pointed out that running a poker room without a poker room manager is chaotic and messy. I agree, but I don't believe it means the room can't be run well. I've been in rooms that were well run and had no poker room manager. The biggest keys, to me, are communication and unity.

If the powers that be and the front-line supervisory staff communicate well, agree on a direction the room needs to go, and support each other in their efforts to move the room in that direction, things run smoothly.

Reaching accord doesn't happen overnight. Even when angels descend, harp music plays, and everyone agrees with everyone else, hurdles still exist. Legal issues may prevent immediate staffing changes that might be best for the room. Procedural issues might drag progress to something that looks like stagnancy. Just because the powers that be decree something to be a good idea doesn't mean said something is implemented immediately, etc.

My belief is that we have one shot, and one shot only. The changes we are putting in place are good but will take time to take effect. Many more changes need to be addressed. As I mentioned in my last post, it's a long road we face. The biggest worry I dwell on currently is one of perception.

To most people, perception is reality. It matters little if we make all the right changes behind the scenes and a returning guest looks at the room and perceives something different. Appearances matter. If a guest had a bad experience in the past and decides to give us another shot, walks into the room just to look around, and sees the exact same environment - staff, players, etc. - that led to the previous bad experience, that guest might simply perceive that nothing has changed.

My perception from the inside looking out could be that we are making great progress while your perception from the outside looking in could be that nothing has changed, that management has not seriously bought into wholesale changes necessary to rebuild the room.

As alluded to above, I believe we get one shot. Those that left due to bad experiences might choose to give us another try. We get one shot to show them we truly intend to change. If they come back and have the same negative experience they remember from before, we will not get another chance at earning their business. One shot - I hope it's a good one.

May is going to be a very long month.

***

As always:

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!

A long row to hoe

As evidenced by the discussion here and the comments on my friend Rob's post here, our room has a lot of work to do. I always liked a challenge. I've apparently volunteered to help tackle a big one.

I'd like to say that I firmly believe that management is behind us 100%. I do actually believe that more today than I did even last week, but I can't say I've completely bought that story yet. The powers that be seem to be open to suggestion, within reason, and they've been very supportive of ideas that the dealers and I have put forth recently.

I know that our parent company wants to be a player in the poker scene. The HPO brand is something they want to build upon. With early successes despite a few stumbling blocks, it looks like the HPO brand will be around for a while. As such, it makes sense that the pressure is on to rebuild our room into something more than it currently is, something more befitting of hosting a yearly championship tournament such as we will be hosting in June.

I personally sense that we might not be finished with our personnel changes - we might see people in new roles, etc. I also sense that management is open to doing something big and splashy at some point down the road. The immediate focus, however, is on reviving our cash game business.

The first step we're taking is upping our comps. For May, and possibly June, we will be giving $3/hr comps for live play in the poker room. All day, every day. Hopefully that will draw a few people back. I know the powers that be hope for more from this single change, but personally I would be thrilled to see just one or two more games per day than we currently get. It would be something to build on.

Our high hand jackpots will be changing. Their values should climb faster than they currently do. We also will stop limiting players by eliminating the rule that says each jackpot can only be hit once per day.

Our Four-Flush Friday promotion, which has been fairly popular, will now also be a progressive jackpot. I believe it will run every day starting in May, but my age-addled brain currently struggles to recall the specifics discussed before I took a couple days off work ;)

One last change, one that I struggle to believe will have an impact, is that we will offer a NL game with no jackpot rake for those who want it. I know there are some in the locals market that pay zero attention to promotions and don't care if they ever get paid a jackpot for hitting quads so long as they get paid off by the other players. I doubt, however, that simply offering the option to play without a jackpot rake will cause them to play in our room. Maybe they'll prove me wrong...

As much as I've railed against change in the past - being a creature of severe habit, I despise change - I actually believe recent changes can only be good for the room. As I recently mentioned to the powers that be, were we to continue doing the same thing we've always done and were we to expect different results, we'd have to be insane.

***

Here we go with that disclaimer thing again...

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!

Theories

"Noticed you took down your latest post." I read the message a second time. "...took down your latest post." I had no clue what it might mean, so I responded accordingly. "Yeah the site called The Challenge? She's no longer there..."

I walked over to the computer, confused. I pulled up the blog and....said post was missing. I signed in and went to the post list. There it sat, a post I had published the day before, now sitting in 'Draft' status. I opened the post to edit & republish. The only problem was that nearly half of what I wrote was no longer there.

The short story? If you didn't get to read my last post, now you can only read half of it. Half of it seems to be lost into the ether, and I'm not talented enough to recreate it. My apologies.

***

The last post ended with me mentioning blame. Everyone wants to place blame yet nobody seems to be able to identify a suitable scapegoat to blame for the situation we find ourselves in. I would love to be able to tell you exactly what led to the dramatic - and was it ever dramatic - downturn in business for our room. I would love to be able to identify something tangible because, you see, something tangible I could more easily fix.

Instead of placing blame, I decided to share some theories. None of these theories are mine. Some are conjecture based upon heresy based upon rumor. Some of these theories likely stand up to scrutiny. I imagine all, even the most ludicrous, have at least some small nugget of truth in them. 

First is the theory that bad seeds ran off too many customers. There were floor staff whom both players (not all, I'm sure) and dealers disliked. There were dealers whom players disliked, but aren't there always? When I used to play, there were dealers who I would not let deal to me. A couple of those dealers simply came across as abrasive when they were doing their job and it was easier on my sanity for me to just step away. So, sure, I see how a bad seed can negatively affect business.

Second is the theory that collusion amongst regulars ran off too many customers. Some people posit that because of the promotions we ran, the promo chasers would run off those who wanted to play poker. 

Someone told a tale of a game that was running during the thousand-dollar-flop days that ran thusly:

Dealer pitches cards.
Players ask if anyone has a pair, because a pocket pair was required to qualify for flopped quads.
If nobody had a pair, everyone mucked, the blinds chopped, and they moved to the next hand.
If somebody had a pair, at least one person would call and they basically checked it down if the pair didn't become four of a kind.

Personally, I doubt it ran exactly like that because that simply sounds too insane to be true, but what do I know.

Someone else told a tale of a game wherein the promo chasers chastised anyone who dared raise, or actually try to play poker, because "we're just here to hit a jackpot." 

The third theory is that inconsistency killed the business, that the promotions were changed every month - or sometimes more often - and players tired of the constant change and never knowing what would be happening in the room. Some say that as soon as players grew accustomed to one promotion, it disappeared because no promotion ran longer than a month - some promotions failed to last even a month.

Continuing with the inconsistency theme, some believe that rules were inconsistently enforced across shifts. Apparently, "we do that on day shift" or "that's the way swing shift does it" were examples of common refrains. Having worked graveyard, I thankfully heard none of that ;)

The fourth theory revolves around bad timing. Players like to describe how our room was once capable of providing promotions that nobody else had but that, later, everything done was reactionary and haphazard.

Many say a lack of communication underlies all of the theories, that staff didn't communicate among themselves and that management failed to communicate changes appropriately.

The fifth theory is that players disliked management and, in the end, simply quit coming because they believed nothing would ever change.

My personal theory? I honestly have no theories, no tangible things I can point to and say with certainty "This is why we have lost business." I only know what my new reality is.

I inherited a poker room that is struggling desperately to define itself and rebuild even just a shred of the business it used to enjoy.  Perhaps in the next post I'll share some ideas on how I hope we will attack our challenge. Thankfully, I have great friends who are helping me put together a plan to achieve our goals. Once I have a plan, though, I can only hope that the powers that be believe in it enough to make it happen - no guarantee, that.

In the meantime, I believe I have an adult beverage to finish...

***

And now, due to the corporate landscape in which I've chosen to work, here is some boilerplate schtuff that is required of me:

This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. Also, I might change my mind - people do. If I change my mind, anything I've written before that date may no longer be the same, or even similar, to my opinions of a given day. I hope you enjoy the ride!

The challenge

I found myself only able to stare as my phone slid beneath the water's surface. Snapping out of shock, I frantically grabbed the phone from it's watery grave. It slipped from my hand and crashed to the tile floor."Great," I thought to myself, "now I have a cracked screen AND a fried phone."

I dried my hands and bent to retrieve the phone from its landing place on the floor. Finding no visible damage gave me hope. Seeing the power on also gave me hope. My hope proved to be short lived.

I stared at the screen as I walked back towards the office. It flickered a few times. The brightness began to fade. I gingerly tried to turn the phone off. The screen went blank before I could. By the time I reached the office, the case of the phone had heated to the point it was uncomfortable against my skin.

Look at that," I said to no one as I laid the phone down. "I have a red hot, FRIED, paperweight." It was time to go back to work.

***

The challenge I've accepted seems, at first glance, near impossible. I doubt it's a secret that the room in which I work struggles these days.

Visit any other card room in the city and you will hear numerous variations of a theme. It would seem that, to most people, our room is either already closed or will be closing soon. They'll tell you July 1, immediately after our big HPO event. They'll tell you July 8, after the HPO event & Fourth of July holiday weekend - going out with a bang, as it were. They'll tell you August1. Why August 1?


The powers that be promise there are no plans to close our room. My only sane option is to believe them and trust that I don't find myself in a situation such as what happened at Alliante


Somehow, everything I wrote past that point, that some of you read, has disappeared. Anyone that can help - maybe you have a cached copy in your browser? - let me know ;(

A new reality

I vaguely remember what it's like to work hours normally accustomed to a "real" job. Don't worry, I haven't taken a "real" job...yet. I will, however, shortly be working hours that sounds like a real job. We're talking 9am-5pm. I trust it's going to feel quite strange in the beginning.

When I first moved to Vegas, the old-timers liked to tell anyone who listened that the farther up in management you moved or the more responsibility you took on likely only moved you closer to the door. Generally, they said, if the casino gets bought, management goes and dealers stay. Generally, they added, if new senior management is brought in, middle management goes and dealers stay. You see the point they tried to make.

Apparently, I failed to learn my lesson. Either that or I'm simply insane - that's never been truly ruled out though there were those tests when I was in the military...

At any rate, as a large percentage of you already know, or at least have heard rumor of, I entered a new reality about ten days ago. The poker room manager where I work stepped down. They asked, sort of, me to fill the void. No, I shall not be the poker room manager. Yes, I shall be performing the vast majority of tasks one might associate with a poker room manager.

It boils down to the fact that I like a challenge. I found one. Hopefully I know enough, and can convince those who truly make the decisions that I know enough, to overcome said challenge. It's going to be a long road, a long road up a seemingly unconquerable hill. Feel free to come along for the ride. Maybe this will even be the catalyst that serves to get me writing again - yeah, I know, we've heard that before. I suck. I get it ;)

See there, I promised you a post on Saturday. I delivered a post on Saturday. I imagine there will be a few more posts coming shortly as my new reality takes shape. Stay tuned...maybe...

***

And now, due to the corporate landscape in which I've chosen to work, here is some boilerplate schtuff that is required of me:

This is a personal weblog. The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer. Also, I might change my mind - people do. If I change my mind, anything I've written before that date may no longer be the same, or even similar, to my opinions of a given day. I hope you enjoy the ride!

I feel somewhat obligated to include a link to someone who writes better than I do but expresses my opinions of disclosures fairly well.

5k Weekly Survivor Tournaments

They've cooked up new weekly tournaments for May that sound interesting.

Two tournaments a week. $2500 overlays for both. Tournaments will be held Wednesday and Saturday at 2:00pm.

$70 Buy-in, of which 90% ($63) goes to the prize pool. $10 optional Staff Bonus for 2,000 bonus chips day of the tournament.

$7,000 starting stack. 20 minute levels.

If you don't want to buy in for $70, you can free roll your way in through live cash play - 10 hours to qualify.

Want to play in the Wednesday 2pm? Play 10 hours in cash games between the hours of 2am-2pm the week leading up to the tournament.

Want to play in the Saturday 2pm? Play 10 hours in cash games between the hours of 2pm-2am the week leading up to the tournament.

Qualifying hours are worth $7 each towards the buy-in. Don't manage to get 10 hours in during the week? Pay the difference. Play 5 hours cash & get in the tournament for $35. Play 3 hours cash & get in the tournament for $49.

Daily tournament play counts, too. Earn one qualifying hour for each daily tournament you play in up to a max of 3 hours.

Tournament plays down to final table. Final 10 players will split the $2500 overlay + whatever prize pool there is. The $2500 will be broken down:

• $500 to the chip leader
• $400 to second place.
• $200 to the other 8 players that make the final table.

Any prize pool collected from the $70 buy-ins will become part of the 10-way Survivor chop. No early chops allowed - 10 player payout only.

***

Yes, I know it's been over 3 months since I posted anything. I will definitely have something to post Saturday - I have meetings Friday ;)