Lets face it the biggest problem we have is most of the casino personel handling the blackjack tournaments have never even played in a tournament themselves or either are so stuck in their ways that they will never change. Personally I have tried most everything I can think of to help promote tournament blackjack events, even going as far as offering to help with the events at no pay if the tournaments were not successful. Until we can get higher management involved with the tournaments (which I don't see happening) we will never have the good events we use to have back in the 70's/80's. Dealing with marketing managers and TD with no knowledge of tournaments is a losing situation. They throw something out there, most times with more luck involved then any type of skill and then wonder why they have such a small turnout. For those of you who remember the 300 - 500 player tournaments relize that it was a mixture of tournament players, VIP's, and the regular players that would all attend the tournaments because of the size of the prize pool made it worth attending and the fact most casino's understood that by hosting multiple events was more cost effective for the players to travel to these events. They also understood about having rules and regulations that were fair for all players. Well now the casino's only want to host events for their VIP's with most rules made up as they go, how's that working out for you? I hear casino's now offering $30,000 events (and only paying out less then $15,000 because of poor attendance), where in the past allowing ALL players to attend an "OPEN" event they were paying out over the listed $100,000 in prize money and filling the casino's with players as well as selling rooms. Did all the players gamble? NO! But bottomline was the casino's where making more money, paying out more money and making all the players happier, including their VIP players. So until the casino's start waking up and offering a product like they use to their customers their profits and attendance is going to keep going down. Why they are willing to cut off their nose to spite their face is beyond me? They are just costing themselves lots of money.
