Often, we can see casinos and poker series brag about how some of the tournaments they are hosting have broken the guaranteed prize and promote it as something that is supposed to be beneficial for the players, when in reality, it only benefits the casino/organizer.
The whole thing about a guaranteed prize pool for the tournament is supposed to be protection for players. As a player, you don't want to play in a tournament that has no guaranteed prizepool, as you would be playing just for the money you and other players put in, minus the rake.
What casinos and series organizers are doing these days is to put a low guaranteed prizepool, which they know they will beat, and use it as a promotion to attract players to the tournament. The key detail is that by doing that, they get all the benefits but minimize the risk.
Risks and Rewards
When a casino puts a guaranteed prizepool on a tournament, the casino is risking that if not enough players show up, they will have to cover the prize pool, as they expect players to cover it with buy-ins, and they take the rake. So until the guaranteed prize pool is reached, the casino is losing money, once it's covered, they make money by charging rake first and then putting excess money into the prizepool.
This is very bad for players as they are back to the situation mentioned before, where they just play for each other's money minus the rake.
Biggest Scams Casinos Are Doing
One of the most disgusting things I saw casinos are doing is putting "Expected prizepool" instead of guaranteed, which is worth nothing, and they are not putting any of the money, but are trying to mislead players to expect a big prizepool. What they are not saying is that they will just take 10-15% of the money and let you play for the rest of your own money.
What some of the casinos also do is they would write on the MTT description with super small letters, somewhere where it's not easily visible, that they will take an additional 3-4% of the whole prize pool to pay for the dealers. So the natural question is, why are poker players paying for the staff? What is the casino paying for then, and what is its purpose except avoiding legal issues?
This might also help you understand why they love unlimited rebuys, add-ons, re-entries, and final day buy-ins (in 3+ day events) types of tournaments.
In addition to what we have already mentioned, if you win, most nationalities will have to pay tax on the winnings. There will also be people working at the casino expecting a tip from the tournament winner.
These kinds of scams are easy to do when there is a large group, since it's hard for them to make a union and boycott, but we saw what happened when GGPoker raised the rake for high-stakes cash games. All high-stakes cash game players grouped and boycotted GGPoker and went to play elsewhere. The result was that GGPoker reduced rake back to lower levels.
Conclusion
There is nothing in this whole case that is done by accident or because that's the only option. Casinos are already making enough money with slot machines, roulette, and other types of gambling.
Poker is not some existential thing; it's just their greed to make more and to push the profits as much as they can before somebody starts to complain. Most of the casinos are just a complimentary thing to some hotel, which is the primary driver of revenue, and casinos do not depend on poker rake going up to survive.
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