Mohegan Sun Blazing Blackjack Tournaments update
I agree with KittyLiXX about the one-advance format. For me, that is the ONE big downside to this tournament. It appears the management was overly optimistic about the number of players who would participate.
There are 12 tables available in the tournament pit and they set up the format for 4 first-round sessions yielding a maximum of 288 players. They have not come close to that expectation.
The most they have filled was 9 tables in any one session. The attendance in each of the five weeks to date has been 180, 172, 173, 216 and 179. And btw, that includes 8 free-entry players each week who made the final leaderboard in the freeroll Win-A-Seat contest.
As a result only 3 rounds have been played each week. The upside of that is if you do win your first table you are in the semis and also qualify for the end-of-promotion final tournament with the $75k prize pool, entirely funded by the casino.
They
will have 288 players for that one. If there are not 36 players in the weekly semis (and in 4 out of the 5 so far there have been only 30, with 6 tables of 5 players), the remaining 6 qualifiers are those non-advancing players with the highest first-round total.
Casino tournament rules were not enforced, lots of string betting, lots of audience participation ( to the point that the guy sitting next to me fan club were standing behind him and telling him exactly how much chips we had and how much to bet - and noone spoke to them).
I have not seen rule violations to that extent. At every round I have played or observed, the tournament director has always announced that spectators are not to talk with the players.
The written rules (available at registration or download from the web site) prohibit interaction between players and spectators and state “If a problem occurs during play, it is the participant’s responsibility to bring it to the attention of a Supervisor or above, immediately.”
If no player spoke up, well, shame on them.:violin:
--jr