Poker Overtook the House

Poker industry has been reborn and is becoming stronger than ever, with more players converting into the dedicated fans daily. This rapid growth has brought poker to a new dimension, which has turned the balance of power on its head. Now instead of the house calling the shots, the patrons do. In a casino environment, when a customer speaks, a croupier listens. Now, in places with intense oligopolistic competition between casinos, the house doesn’t always win any more, the customer does.

Poker rooms are trying their hardest to create a competitive advantage through customer satisfaction, using zero tolerance quality control policy and other methods of attracting players. One of the examples of such efforts is the introduction of deep-stack tournaments.

Most poker players always hope to take part in tourneys with a lot of play potential. It has always been the story before that the fairly affordable tournaments came with a fraction of the starting chips and very short blinds levels, in contrast to big tournaments. Now, due to the increased competitiveness of the industry the format has changed and more tournaments are becoming deep-stack in favour of the players rather than the house, which is also good news for those who just learned poker basics, who can now take part in serious tournaments and test their beginners luck without having too much at stake.

The Venetian started the trend in 2007 with the first ever Deep-Stack Extravaganzas (DSEs), a $300-$1000 tourneys with larger than usual starting stacks and an extended blind structure. This has created a great opportunity for poker lovers to win huge prizes for a fairly moderate entry prize.

The manager of the poker room Venetian, Kathy Raymond admitted to the fact that deep-stack tournaments are absolutely vital for any poker company that wants to stay competitive.

“For years, many tournaments have been short-stacked with accelerated blind structures,” she said. “I believe that casinos are spreading more and more deep-stack tournaments to try to remain competitive, and I do not see this trend changing anytime in the near future.”

Other casinos have followed the trend set by Venetian to keep their market share safe. In fact, the Bicycle Casino in Los Angeles is hosting a deep-stack event this week, called “Mo’s Deep Stack”, with a number of tourneys with an entrance e from $300 to $500 and a $1,600 championship happening on Saturday.

The Larry Flynt’s Challenge Cup also decided to switch to deep-stack.

Here is how Patee McGuire, the manager of the poker room, explained the move: “This could be the wave of the future,” she said. “Players like these tournaments for obvious reasons — they start with more chips, feel more confident with the deep stack, and have the ability to play comfortably for longer periods.”