2025 Las Vegas Summer Series - non-WSOP

Unacceptable. All credibility shot at this point

Honestly, if I were you I would stop posting at this point. We all have respect for you personally and appreciate what you have tried to do. We understand the position you are in, but at the end of the day you are a representative of this BS. No amount of openness or empathy from you is going to fix anything.

I'd just cut bait, stay silent until you get more power in the Golden Nugget or are no longer affiliated with them.

I disagree. I played 4 events at the nugget this summer and I personally witnessed Jay do all he could to make it a quality series. His updates and responses on 2+2 should be commended. His thoughts on this summer and future summer series would be welcome.

I would not call him a representative of the bs that occured. He is a cog in the gn poker wheel and things were out of his control. His transparency on these forums is welcome. To not engage with us and leave things as is would be the true crime.

I would prefer Jay comment as much as he wants to regarding the situation this summer. Not only is it interesting to see things from the employee's perspective, but it also helps everyone understand why things happened the way they did.

I would be most interested if Jay thinks this disaster was due to specific bad decisions made by one human versus a corporate culture in the entire casino.

Regardless, best wishes to you Jay.

This….

At this point its even hard to believe the whole “the suits upstairs had us handcuffed…etc.”

Dealer scheduling is on the TD, not being ready for a championship event is wild. Looks more like dealers jumped ship since they weren’t making enough to pay for housing.

What you believe is up to you, not sure why I have any incentive to deceive here, especially when I have receipts for everything I say.

But I will reply to this now because frankly it sheds a bit of light on how things shook out at the end.......

The events of the last week were enraging, I've been pretty frustrated all summer constantly fighting seemingly everything at every turn. The "expected prize pool" shenanigans and the events that were allowed to unfold during Flight A of the Goldennaire pretty much got me to the point that I sort of snapped and I actually considered quitting. Ultimately decided to see it through because I firmly believe we can turn this around in the future.....but if I'm being honest I'm not sure if they'll ask me back next summer because of how much fighting I've been doing behind the scenes. We seem to value a lot of things very differently, so there will have to be some tough conversations and decisions on both sides.

Once the first flight stuff happened, I knew that event wasn't going to run. As a result, dealer downrates would likely be in the toilet as that event was the biggest generator of that downrate pool for that week. Their expenses don't stop coming just because we were likely going to drop an event.

After a VERY rough night of sleep and millions of thoughts, I felt that I needed to address our staff.

My loyalty lies with our dealers first and foremost, way before it lies with the Nugget. I basically told them that the time had come for them to make decisions that were best for them moving forward and that there would be no hard feelings from me if they felt they needed to go early in light of a downrate I thought could dip below $10 (ended up being $13+) and hotel and other expenses still being due. I had asked if we could comp rooms for our dealers to help with this and was pretty flatly denied. I shot our dealers very straight on this issue.

This summer has been financially **** for everyone, myself very much included. I'll never require anyone to stick around and dig themselves into a further hole just to show support for me. As transparent as I am with you here, I'm as much or moreso with our dealers and feel like they appreciate that.

A number of dealers were experiencing hardships and did decide to go home. Another number of dealers were already working 2 jobs and decided to just stick with the other one. Totally get it, applaud it, and would invite them back.

If that makes me a "bad TD" to you because I want to make sure my people took care of themselves, then I'll be a "bad TD" every day of the week.

We entered the last 3 days with about 50 dealers, a fraction of which can deal the 8-game mix. If I wasn't on swing shift and asleep, I would have come down to get in the box. Day shift folks did everything they could to try and get the event going, but I totally understand those who showed up and assumed the worst and moved on.

As someone pretty familiar with summer time in vegas, I know you cannot please dealers and customers and suits to the same degree its almost impossible. However, if you have two customers here in the thread who both left and said “not coming back,” then the dealer loyalty thing might make you feel better (I’m assuming you were a tourney dealer at some point), but it may ultimately cost you. They are adults, they know their rates and their expenses, they gambled on working there underneath a new management staff just like others gamble on working on the strip in the meat market.

I think as the transition happens from dealer->floor->TD itÂ’s similar to changing stakes in poker and perspective must change.

All that to say, cancelling the 8-game “championship” and making sure the communication was sent on as many platforms as possible would have been better than a late start with dealers who will likely have to be directed by players during every game. It’s a lose-lose but one saves you something in the future.

I donÂ’t like a discussion without a potential solution. I have mentioned it previously, GN needs to become the Cadillac of the low rollers, or consider getting rid of an unprofitable summer series.

A ton of small buy in nlhe events and sattyÂ’s, play to the market that doesnÂ’t want to spend $300+, pack in the low rollers, you lose some high level dealers, cool bring in some break ins, volume and competition is clearly the issue. If you do low limit mix tourneys people canÂ’t complain about dealer quality. Build it from there, do some free classes for the dealers to improve their skills and game knowledge to build loyalty with break ins. If players see numbers they will be there.

Do I think the suits will like the solution, no, because ultimately I think they see the series as an opportunity to bring in traffic to the pits/slots during slow season. As the scheduled evolved, through their analytics and occupancy data they can see that OMC demo that has usually carried the series is going elsewhere. They would probably argue that lowering buy ins wouldnÂ’t help any other aspects of the casino and shoot it down, but its a better solution than what happened this year.

Agree with you for the most part, under normal circumstances. What happened this summer was very much not that. I have a responsibility to protect our dealers from blatant dereliction.

As for blasting things out on socials.....don't even get me started on that 😂. I agree 100%, but didn't have access.

Anyone know if the Orleans ME is playing 9 or 10 handed?

First visit to Resorts World last week for some $300-$400 tournaments. Clean room. Good atmosphere. Enjoyed casino and food options. Definitely worth the 30 minute walk from mid-strip.

Resorts world had a nice room. Went there to play a 300$ or 400$ one weekday. It started slow b7t ultimately got nearly 100 entrants plus some rebuys. It was well run for the most part, no real hiccups.

But man at 11am was i surprised at how dead that place is. It didn't seem overly crowded later in the day as I almost cashed which I guess was about 8pm. Im considering going back for the NAPT.

Jay I haven't been paying attention, but whatever happened at Golden Nugget just stand by your values. It seems you're a good guy and I think that goes a long way-personally. You actually care and everybody should respect that

I was there for NAPT last year and it was great.