The poker folks at Lumiere Place and River City have decided to put their synergies to better use.
“The goal is to have two distinct rooms, under one blanket rule,” Lumiere poker room manager Anthony Chester said.
The base games at Lumiere are $1-$3 no-limit and $4-$8 limit. The base games at River City are $1-$2 no-limit and $3-$6 limit.
“You have two distinct rooms, two different groups of blinds and two groups of players,” he said. “Each room is developing a group of players that like the games at each room, but can move between rooms and find a common set of rules.”
Restructuring the bad-beat jackpot allows for a schedule of payouts leading to the traditional quads beat.
“(This) is going over amazingly. We are over $300,000 in payouts in just three months,” Chester said.
A losing hand of nines full of jacks is the weakest qualifying hand and would pay a minimum of $300. Check in each room for full rules and schedule of paying hands.
“This is the players’ money and we want to get it back into the community. We want to get it back faster,” he said.
Another new innovation is related to a topic covered recently on the Ante Up PokerCast. Are antes in tournament play worth the trouble and delay?
Chester is addressing this with a new three-blind tournament structure. Chester credits casino executive Tony Korfman with the initial idea of this structure. The total cost per orbit is the same as when antes are used, but consist of a small, medium and big blind in the normal position after the button.
For instance, Level 4, which used to have 100-200 blinds with a 25 ante, now has 100-200-300 blinds. In the old structure, a round would cost a player 550 chips at a full table. Under the new structure, a round costs 600, which is comparable.
Though at first glance it may look like your chip stack gets depleted faster under the new structure, in later levels the cost is actually less, such as Level 10. Previously, players would pay 1,000-2,000 with a 200 ante, for a total of 5K units per lap. The new system is 1,000-1,500-2,000 for a total of 4,500.
All of these blinds are live and count toward your bet. An added benefit of this structure allows more hands per hour by removing the delay of collecting the antes.
The new structure was introduced on Thursdays for fine-tuning and is expanding to other days. I spoke with players and most liked the changes. These tournaments are ending at roughly the same time as before, with more hands being played.
— Don Matusofsky is Ante Up’s Missouri Ambassador. Email him at anteupdonm@gmail.com.
