Friday, January 04, 2008

What Las Vegas has been needing

I've had an idea brewing in my brain since shortly after I moved here and started playing a lot of live casino poker about a year and a half ago. There's no way that I have the time, the financing, or the technical expertise to pull it off myself, so I'm just throwing it out into the ether for any entepreneur to pick up and run with.

We need a centralized web site with continuously updated information as to what games are currently being spread at the city's 50+ poker rooms.

Many times when tourists find out that I live in town, I get asked where they will most reliably be able to find a 7-card stud game, or $10-20 limit hold'em, or whatever. I can only guess.

If you read trip reports (there are new ones almost daily) on http://www.allvegaspoker.com/, you'll frequently see visitors commenting that they went to a particular poker room, but it was dead or didn't have the game or limits they wanted to play, so they had to walk down the Strip to the next casino.

I've sat near the poker room desk often enough to know that the brush or cashier has to handle lots and lots of phone calls asking what games are going on.

Since I generally prefer the smaller poker rooms, I have had times that I have had to call four or five places to find one that had a no-limit hold'em game going. It's a big time waster.

All of these problems would be eliminated, or at least reduced, if we could log on to a web site and get that information.

I envision being able to specify a game and limits, and have the site spit out a list of all of the casinos currently spreading that game, with a notation of how many tables they have going. Alternatively, I could enter my current location, and ask for a display of all of the live games within a certain radius, for example, 0.5 miles (if somebody wanted to see what was within walking distance, say).

Obviously, the big sticking point would be getting the poker room staffs to keep their data frequently updated. Maybe I've got on my rose-colored glasses, but I think they would have sufficient motivation to do so. Letting people know what games they have going brings in more business. It also avoids giving people the sour taste in their mouth that results from taking the trouble to go someplace only to find that there's no action, and have to move on. Third, I think it would take less time for a casino employee to occasionally update their list of games than to answer all the phone calls they get requesting that same information. Finally, poker rooms could advertise on the site, with information about current promotions, etc.

I'm psychic. I can tell what you're thinking. You're thinking, "But Grump, wouldn't the casinos be inclined to fib, and say that they have games going even after they've broken up, just to bait-and-switch people in?" Well, they might, if given no reason not to. But I propose that the site be open to feedback from users. On http://www.allvegaspoker.com/ you can get a pretty good feel for how places treat their poker-playing customers from the aggregate reports they compile. Big sites like eBay and amazon.com's used-book dealers also get useful (though admittedly not foolproof) profiles of merchants' reliability through massed reports from purchasers. As I see it being set up, if, say, Caesars Palace were found repeatedly to be claiming to have games running that weren't (and this could be either through deliberate false advertising or simple failure to keep their list adequately updated), angry site users who wasted their time going there would quickly shame Caesars into cleaning up their act, or risk losing business.

Whoever owns and runs the site could generate income from all sorts of poker-related advertising.

I think that once a critical mass was achieved, such that the majority of poker rooms was actively using the site, it would become a significant competitive disadvantage for the others not to join in. The usefulness of such a site would clearly expand over time, as more and more consumers start carrying and relying on web-capable cell phones, such as Apple's iPhone. It is a general fact of life in this century that people will more and more be expecting--even demanding--real-time information in ways that are easier to access than making a tedious series of phone calls. Look at movie theaters as an example. Nobody calls around to theaters these days to find out show times. Even using newspaper ads to get that information is going the way of the dinosaur, as web sites can compile, update, and distribute it much faster. The way poker rooms now inform customers of their offerings is stuck in the stone age.

Maybe someday registered users could even put their names on waiting lists through the site, but that introduces a whole 'nuther level of complication and problems that I would avoid at first. It would be sufficient to have poker room telephone numbers listed so that once you've decided where and what you want to play, you place one call to get on the list while on your way there.

So that's my million-dollar idea, given away for free to anybody who wants to do the hard work of getting it implemented. That's just the kind of guy I am, ya know?

2 comments:

SirFWALGMan said...

I think you could hire students or something to watch the poker rooms.

Anonymous said...

That would be nice, but I doubt it will ever happen. For me, it's even more frustrating (obviously self-induced) because living here in Las Vegas, I've decided that I will refuse to wait (more than 10 minutes) for a seat to open or a game to start.

I think rooms like to advertise they have this game or that, but we all know that's usually not true. I find all too often, that the only game is "bingo" (2/4 limit), and usually more than one table! Arghhh.....

It amazes me that the same people that have no problem feeding $20's into a video poker machine, are afraid to risk a $100 or so buy-in, in a live game that they might actually have a fighting chance to win!

Sorry for ranting. I think casinos will never do this, regardless of reviews of their rooms. Simply because of the advertising is meant to draw people onto their property, regardless of what game is going on. They've got you on their property, that's the goal, right? That's part of my reasoning for refusing to wait for a game or a seat. I cruise around poker rooms, like professional sports bettors cruise around sportsbooks looking for the best line. I'll continue to do so until your great idea comes to fruition.