GENTING POKER SERIES
Series grow
and I am there as the face of the Genting Poker Series. At Main Events, we will take a tournament director and an additional supervisor as we run side events alongside the Main Events and we need more experience in the room. When we are finished, I just take everything away!
CI: Are the smaller events qualifiers for the bigger events?
KP: Anyone who makes the final table on a GPS mini event wins a £500 Main Event seat as well as their prize money. CI: How do others get into the Main Event then?
KP: Either win an event at a host club or walk up and buy in for cash, at any Genting casino before the event.
CI: You mentioned you go into a venue eight weeks before the event – does that mean you have an eight- week marketing cycle for an event?
KP: It starts eight weeks prior, but it cranks up the closer we get to the event. Some clubs will start doing satellite events four weeks in advance, some go much further than that. Luton, for example, had a Main Event in July and ran qualifiers in March. Stoke has a 10-seat satellite in March, and they will run more five- and 10-seat satellites the closer we get to the event. I very much leave it to the club to decide, the Card Room Managers know their local market and they know what will make their players happy – a long sequence of smaller qualifiers into the event, or one big hit closer to the big event.
CI: What’s the real benefits to Genting to host a poker tournament? It’s more complex than just opening some tables and placing some dealers.
KP: Benefits are numerous. From a casino perspective, you have additional attendance coming through the door, potentially people who have not visited that venue before and suddenly find that it’s a great place to go; there are opportunities to market our interactive offer to the players; there are opportunities with other revenue streams as well, so hospitality and gaming, which comes with that extra footfall. We get more media coverage, it raises the casino’s profile, and it hopefully enlightens people about gaming.
CI: Do you track and analyse the effectiveness of the marketing?
KP: We have a membership scheme across the company. We AUGUST 2019 37
have had players at Luton who have travelled from Italy, would you believe it, so we can use that to track the traffic and see where hotbeds of poker are across the UK.
CI: In marketing terms is it solely done to existing player databases, or do you try and cast the net wider, use mainstream media, that kind of thing?
KP: This year we have used a company to help us advertise more locally and create relationships with local media. I also have a good relationship with a poker forum that helps us promote events. We use social media a lot, like Facebook, to promote events and we can market to people using social media within a certain radius of the event. This year we have also been doing some blogging at a local level. So instead of being on the main GPS page, we have had mini-event blogs with local staff on the local card room page. It’s another kind of marketing for the local clubs.
CI: Has the event evolved in any way recently? Have you had feedback you have responded to, for example?
KP: We have made a couple of changes in 2019 thanks to player feedback – we have introduced button ante; we had a choice between that or the big blind ante route, but the players opted for button ante. So instead of asking nine players for the ante you’re just asking one, and it speeds things up for the players. It’s an option for the clubs to introduce, but they don’t have to at satellite level. Genting Poker Series events will also have four Day One’s at each Main event, to ensure the Main Events are much more accessible to people who are working. That’s also come about thanks to player feedback.
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