Structure Limbo

I’ve been a professional poker player for almost 16 years now. That’s an awfully long time. I have been on both sides of lots of things that have changed in tournaments over that time.

I love the big blind ante, it’s probably been the most positive change in tournaments in recent memory. I have been, and always will be against quantum and multiple re-entry tournaments, which have probably been the most negative change in tournaments in recent memory. All three of these things benefit me as a winning poker player. It’s great for me that games are sped up and there is less confusion with the advent of big blind ante. It’s also good for me that tournaments allow me to enter late and increase my hourly by effectively eliminating early levels. Some things that increase my hourly rate are good for the game, and some are bad. I just don’t think that increasing the hourly rate of professional players should be at the forefront of any decisions made in poker.

You may be wondering what I’m referencing. I was at the World Series of Poker for a few days and played three tournaments. I played roughly 40 hours in those three tournaments and profited about $200. My realized hourly was trash. My theoretical hourly, I’d like to think, was pretty good. I went into these tournaments realizing that I could play for quite a bit of time without making the money. I can make decisions about what tournaments I want to play based on the days I’m available, the structure of the tournament, the buy-in, the game, whether I have someone to care for my kids, and whatever other factors I, or someone else, might consider. That’s my job as a professional, to find the games that I’m most profitable in and play them. It’s not the job of the tournament venue to make games that are better for my hourly rate. Their job is to make tournaments that recreational players will attend.

The pot-limit Omaha eight-or-better tournament that I played and cashed in is a good example. Lots of pros were complaining because the tournament was too well-structured, even though the event drew 200 more players than it did last year. Their hourly rates probably weren’t even really impacted much because of that increase of players even though the average time playing was increased. The truth is, it’s a game that takes longer to play because of the split pots and the fact that it’s pot-limit so there are no antes and short stacks can blind off farther with more of a chance to rebuild.

I’m just not interested in catering to other professional players’ hourly rate as a reason to make structures worse since it’s doing a great job of attracting new players to the tournaments. There are reasons to make the structures faster, and they are good ones.

Even though recreational players want the structures to be slower, it’s not in their best interest. The faster the structure, the more variance there is and the greater the chance one of those recreational players wins or does really well in the tournament.

The biggest reason not to make the structures slower is one that most players don’t talk about and aren’t really thinking about: The staff. We’ve made the structures slower and longer and the fields bigger, but we’ve kept the rake the same. That means that there are more dealer downs to be dealt and more floor shifts to be had all with a similar amount of money coming in. Therefore, the dealers and staff make less money than they have in the past.

In case you don’t know how this works, I’ll go over it briefly. Cash games are a simple proposition in most places. Dealers get tips from the players and at the end of the night, they usually have to pay some sort of down fee to each of the support staff around them like cashiers, floor staff, and board operators. Since they’re the main interface between the poker room and the customer, they get most of the tips and pay out to those around them. Some casinos do slightly different things for the dealers, but many do it this way. In tournaments, all of the money is raked off the top and sometimes players tip extra at the end of the tournament after they bust. How do the dealers get paid off of this? Well, each time a dealer sits in the box, they sign a “down card” this keeps track of who has dealt at each table for how long. Then, at the end of the tournament, all of these are added up to get the total number of downs. This is divided into the dealer fee amount for the whole tournament to get a “down rate.”

For instance, let’s say there were 1,000 downs dealt in a tournament and there is $10,000 in dealer fees for that tournament. Each down would be worth $10,000/1,000 or $10. Then each dealer gets paid for the number of downs dealt in that tournament. If dealer A dealt 20 downs, they would get $200 and if dealer B dealt 10 downs, they would get $100.

The more downs there are in a tournament, the less each dealer gets paid per down and the slower a structure is, the more downs there are. I heard several dealers talking about their down rates, despite being in town for only six days. I’ve been coming to the WSOP since 2004 and I’ve never heard a single dealer talk about the down rates. This is not a workable situation. I’m not suggesting that the tournaments should be raked more, the WSOP is already raking a ton of money. I’m suggesting that this is an actually good reason for making the structures faster as it would increase dealer pay and decrease dealer attrition.

My hourly rate isn’t a good reason to make structures faster, but the dealers’ hourly rate is. We’re going to start losing the best dealers at the WSOP because of this and the players who request these better structures are going to have a worse product and they won’t even realize that’s the reason it’s like that. Small changes in tournaments, or in anything, have effects on other things down the line that are sometimes easy to predict and sometimes hard to predict. When we’re selfish and only think of ourselves and our own enjoyment, some of those things could be easily missed.

In this instance, I think professional players arrived at the right conclusion for the wrong reasons. Make the structures faster and pay the dealers more. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG