I am encouraged by all the good reviews of the Oklahoma Buffalo Run Casino tournament, including side play options. It's certainly a must make. The Four Winds, in New Buffalo MI continues to be a good, well run competitive monthly tourney with good participation and respectable final table payouts. They do have one glitch with large turn outs where they have more semifinal tables than spots in the final. (One advancing from each semi table.) They compensate by giving the lowest semifinal table winner 2% of the prize pool. But they could just as easily have six tables of seven players and one of six players. Six of one half a dozen of the other. At least they pay all semi finalist winners. Not the case at Firekeepers in Battle Creek, MI. Their monthly third Thursday of the month has only run for four months with stagnant participation and mediocre prize pools. With low turnout in October they only paid down to five players of the six at the final table. Bubble "boys" in both poker and BJ tournaments are common, but I've never seen it at a final table. With the effort it takes to get to a final table it's deflating and insulting to not pay all finalists. At Firekeepers especially since players in EVERY round pay,(they don't have to) an add of $5 for an additional $500 in chips. A finalist pays an additional $20 over the $85 entry fee. They also have a quirk in their table deal. They use a button for first bet and first decision, but deal the cards from first base every time.. There is also an oft putting arrogance from the tournament directors and a select few know it all experienced dealers. The remainder of the dealers are novices. In short Firekeepers is a borderline event unless there is mass improvement. More than one participant told me it wasn't worth it and they would not return. On a last note, there has to be a certainty of a Vegas tournament actually taking place, not cancelling at the last minute. But casino marketing being what it is, doesn't account for the intelligence of folks on this site.
I got into an email conversation with the table games honchos at Firekeepers a very few years back. They had contacted me thru a mutual aquaintance who had told them I was a bigtime national BJT star (maybe a bit of over-selling there) and might be willing to help them with a problem. They were running a series of BJT's with silly carnival rules, a crappy payout structure (only 3 people won anything - wtf!), etc. On top of wanting advice on how to fix the poor turnouts, they were also debating running something much bigger - say, on the level of the Meskwaki events of yore and they wanted to avoid shooting themselves in the foot. Or, so they said. All of my shared thoughts were met with some very hard resistance and some pretty intense arguments. It turned out the folks I was talking to were merely looking for validation of what they were doing to prove that it Wasn't Their Fault that the BJT's were failing. They got downright snippy towards the end of the email conversations, one said something to the effect of "I've been running tournaments for 30 years so I know what I'm doing." In my frustration, I lobbed back with "So how's that working out for you?" & that was the end of the conversation.
How's this for a contrast? After last Saturday's play at OK tournament, Cindy wasn't sure how many wild cards she wanted to be drawing into the quarter finals. She spotted several of us participants (some that were in need of a wild card and some that weren't). She also got on her cell phone in an attempt to bring in more participants for their input. She actually wanted a general consensus of the PLAYERS before making her decision. It's just another example of the outstanding job she is doing with the Buffalo Run events. Billy C
BillyC's post reminds me of the Meskwaki staff in the early days of their fine events. Great tournament management consisting of folks who not only asked knowledgeable players for input but were willing to listen. Sure hope Cindy's events continue to improve and she does not get the rug yanked out from under her by the higher-ups, as happened in Iowa.
That is always a concern at any venue but at present Cindy indicates that management is totally with her tourney plan. I see your fear though. We're all familiar with what happened at Kewadin overnight.
