The Venetian Poker Room, one of the biggest poker rooms in the United States, is the home to the incredibly popular DeepStacks Series which offers very lucrative guarantees to interested participants. In October, the poker room plans to host a guaranteed poker tournament with some rather interesting stipulations. However, poker players are not so happy about the new tournament.
Referred to the as the Lucky Shot Poker Series & Drawing, the upcoming $225,000 guaranteed tournament is set to run as from October 21 to October 27 and will feature a total of seven poker events. One of its biggest highlights will be a $250 buy-in no-limit Hold’em tournament that will have six flights and a whopping $150,000 in guarantees.
The upcoming poker tournament will conclude its run with a drawing where $52,000 will be split between the players who will manage to get 1 entry for every $250 buy-in that they made during the tournament’s entire run.
What Is the Controversy All About?
The Lucky Short Poker Series & Drawing may seem like any other normal poker tournament hosted by the Venetian Poker Room but after a bit of digging, you will come to see that it is significantly different. Most people will probably not bother to check the fine print as the most significant aspects of the games are buried deep in the poker room’s long list of terms and conditions.
Fortunately, some poker players took the time to go through the terms and conditions and they were not happy with what they found. Some of them posted screenshots of the areas they found problems in while some others took to Twitter to air their disappointment and call out the poker room for being unfair.
One of the biggest issues that were highlighted was the Venetian poker rooms plan to pocket any further funds collected once the $150,000 buy-in is reached. This is not a normal thing – usually, poker rooms add the extra money collected into the prize pool giving the players even more money for their efforts. In addition to the cap on the prize pool, the poker room also has an uncapped rake for the poker tournament.
Poker players are so upset that some of the top players are even leading the charge and calling for a Boycott of the Venetian.
The Poker Room Responds
In its response to the growing outcry over the unusual terms and conditions of its new poker tournament, the Venetian has stated that the new poker series is primarily aimed at recreational players hence its lower buy-ins. There are currently no plans to change the format of the game – the poker room will be proceeding as planned since the goal of the tournament, as it turns out, was to experiment with a totally different demographic.
