Both places have agreed to a $40/night rate (which is super for AC),
and have blocked 75 rooms for Friday the 21st and Saturday the 22nd.
(Thursday and Sunday nights shouldn't be a problem). To my relief,
the casinos will handle their own room reservations this year, taking
me out of the loop.
Both places are willing to host the no-limit hold'em tournament on
Saturday morning and the stud tournament on Sunday morning. I haven't
got everything nailed down, but with a $50 entry, the overhead should
be $10.
Resorts won't be able to offer a video poker tournament. The Trop is
willing to run all three (assuming we can schedule them all on Friday).
I assume the Trop will do the normal thing: entry + fee for the "side"
tournaments. Resorts has offered to run the non-poker tournaments (BJ
& Craps) for *free*. They will work this by making them free
promotional tournaments. Any cash that changes hands won't be any of
their concern (I assume everyone is comfortable with "honest jazbo"
holding the stakes :-).
I haven't got confirmations on a banquet yet -- I hope to get some
information next week. If one or the other has all their banquet
space booked that might be a deciding factor (the logistics of going
outside the casino look too tough to consider).
OK, here is the plus/minus list:
Resorts
+ Loyalty They took us last year when nobody knew us. And, they did
a great job.
+ Free side This is an incredible deal. Note: I don't see why we
tournaments couldn't run MATS in the room they will set up for us
to run the BJ & Craps tournaments. We probably can't
get a "real" poker table, but a round table & dealing
for ourselves would work fine, I think.
+ Proximity For those who hanker after high stakes, especially
to the Taj hold'em.
- No VP They don't have any machines that they could convert
tournament without a major hassle.
- Facilities Not as nice as the Trop.
- Risk Resorts was recently bought by Sun. I don't think this
would be likely to affect us, but you never know.
The Trop
+ All side I'd like to play a VP tournament myself :-).
tournaments
+ Facilities Beautiful poker room. Rooms are also nice.
+ Far from :-)
the Taj
- Side tourneys
not free
- Experience Except for a few freerolls, the Trop has little
tournament experience. However, they do have Tommy
Mooney, who did a great job at Resorts last year.
I'm having a tough time making a decision (I was actually hoping one
of them wouldn't come through so I would be faced with this).
I'll be happy to hear opinions by everyone --- to keep traffic down,
please just send your responses to me & I'll summarize.
--jazbo