Hello, I represent a bar in St. Louis, County MO that hosts a poker league twice a week. We started hosting the league about 2 years ago, and I run the floor for the bar (waitress and bartend) on poker nights. Everything for the most part was fine up until 6 months ago or so. Most of the players spent money, so we didn't lose money paying for them to play. About 6 months ago, most of the "good" players stopped coming, mostly due to the fact that there are about 10 players that continually annoyed them. Now, the league has about 30 players for each game, 2 games a night. Out of those 30 players or so, about 6 of them spend more money than the bar pays for them (individually) to play. The rest of them sip on water, or eat and drink nothing. The guy that runs the league basically said that there's nothing we can do about it, because MO law says we can't force them to purchase anything, and we can't ask them to leave if they don't if they come for the poker league specifically (basically, they are there for the league, so unless they cause a fight or something, we HAVE) to let them stay in the bar)? I am trying to find out what law(s) state this. We aren't greedy, but we do expect each person to at least purchase the $6 that we shell out in total if they play both games, so at the vary least, we break even! There have been nites where (and this includes non-poker players purchases) I will shell out $180 to the league, and I only ring in $300. What we want to state is that for each game they play, (we shell $3 per game), they must purchasee $5 in food, soda, bottled water, drinks, whatever, or they will not be allowed to come back. It's that or get rid of the league all together. If they start purchasing, great we stop losing money. If they stop coming, the people that do purchase will come back, and the bar will stop losing money. The problem that you face when you advertise something as FREE is that it tends to bring in a lot of "dregs" that want free bar tabs for dinner, or want free entertainment venue tickets (usually the top prize), or want to pay nothing on the outside chance they might luck out and win an entry into a cash game, and get free money. It does run off the serious players that truly love poker and are there trying to earn a spot in a WSOP seat (some of our players womehow use this league to do just that, but I'm not sure of the mechanics of it). Any advice would be helpful in this.
Poker Players Alliance Forums » Ask Skallagrim
What to do in Missouri
(5 posts)-
Posted 11 months ago #
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$6 to get in, which goes towards your tab?
Posted 11 months ago # -
A quick fix to the problem would seem to be to tell everyone to make a minimum purchase or to impose a charge for people coming in to play. But how does this impact the legality of bar poker?
Bar poker consists of freerolls for which there can legally be no cost to play. There are three parts to gambling - valuable consideration, chance, and reward.
The PPA's main strategy is to say that poker does not involve chance as it is a game of skill. In contrast, bar poker is based on the concept that there is no consideration paid - it is free to play. Add consideration to the mix and you have full fledged gambling, which is probably illegal in most bars.
Generally it is accepted that a cover charge or a minimum purchase is sufficient to make bar poker illegal.
A strategy that some bars employ is to charge people money anyway. Another more interesting strategy I have heard is for the management to eject non paying players based on loitering. I don't know how it effects the bottom line, but ejecting non paying players seems to give some bar owners a sense of satisfaction.
My advice, if you were to ask, would be to ignore the people who don't spend money and concentrate on the people who do spend money. Offer people something they wish to pay for, build a sense of community, and let them know it is free to them, but not free to you. They need to act like adults and spend money or lose their venue.
You mention that you had a good group of spenders who were run off by people who did not spend money. You suggested they were troublemakers of some sort. Maybe it was their lack of hygiene. Maybe they "did not play right". But whatever it was you are suggesting they did not adhere to community standards and the community left.
Just tell you troublemakers to clean up their act, or leave and not come back. If you would not tolerate another customer ruining your business, why do you tolerate the special poker players?
Define why these people are a problem for you. Define what do they do that is "bad," but stay away from the idea that they don't spend money. Then warn them and then eject them for not following the rules. What do these players do to annoy that runs off your "good" players?
You should generally be able to refuse service to anyone who does not act within the boundaries of your community standards.
Posted 11 months ago # -
Sell bottled water. :D
Posted 11 months ago # -
Have you consulted with whomever actually operates the poker league/tour/whatever it is they call it to see how other bars they operate at may be managing this issue?
If they want to keep your business, I would expect them to be as helpful as they can in assisting you to overcome this issue. They may not HAVE an answer, but then again they might, so no harm in at least asking, right?
At the least, they should be willing to let you stand up on a chair before play begins (or whenever all or most of the players are there) and give a "welcome to nameofbarhere" speech during which you can point out that the bar pays about $6 for each of them to come and enjoy the games, so you'd appreciate the players consideration by purchasing some food and drinks while they are there if they want the games to continue to be available.
Yeah you are still going to get the freeloaders, and I agree with the above that you can and should eject anyone who you would consider a nuisance at any non-poker time (in other words, whether or not poker is being played should not be an element of the decision to reprimand or eject) - but you also may well "wake up" some non-freeloaders who hadn't realized the bar was incurring an expense for the games to be there.
Posted 10 months ago #
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