Doug Polks Lodge About To Tank Their Already Struggling Business (2 Viewers)

[Anthony Martino]

Just announced today and their members are out with pitchforks, will be interesting to see if they walk it back or stay stubborn and kill their business.

There are some positive changes, but there's also some pretty big negatives.

The Lodge is the only card room I'm aware of in TX that utilizes the "post-pay" system. Essentially as long as your balance isn't negative for hourly seat time, you can be seated and go into the negative. And then you just pay when your session is over or the next time you come in.

This is beneficial because:

1. It keeps more money on the tables in play

2. It avoids the constant interruptions of the game for staff to collect time from those players who have run out. Given a lot of players will only buy an hour at a time, the interruptions can wind up being pretty frequent.

Of course, it's problematic in the sense that when a recreational player has just gotten stacked, they now also have to go pay another bill, which can leave a sour taste in their mouths. But the lack of interruption of play coupled with it being less resource-intensive on the room itself (since they don't need to constantly be sending people to collect seat fees and then process them) to me is the best option.

The biggest negative, however, is their new $5 "daily check-in" fee. So now you not only pay a membership fee and an hourly seat rental fee, but they're going to get you for another $5/day on top of that. This is definitely going to impact the players who come in for morning/afternoon tournaments that already have high fees in relation to the tournament itself.

Their yearly membership had been $200, now it's only $25. But for the grinders who are playing a ton, they're going to pay a LOT more with this added $5/daily charge.

Even if you only play 4 days/month that's $20/month x 12 months = $240, plus your $25 yearly membership on top of that. And I know some grinders that literally play 7 days/week.

This will likely drive more players to TCH, which has already been chipping away at The Lodges market share.

TCH has a significantly nicer property, better food that is better priced, and now will have the advantage of no daily fee as well.

It's mind-boggling to me how bad some of these room operators are at operating rooms and marketing them correctly. They just don't grasp the importance of building loyalty and trust with their customers.

Even though The Lodge is pretty dumpy, they've still managed to do well because the action was there, but it looks like they're set to kill their golden goose, which could've been twice as popular as it was if they had half a clue how to structure their cash games and market locally to make poker accessible to more than just the misregs and traveling pros.

 

[JDPoker]

I've never played at a membership structured room, but it seems to me the changes are intended to encourage recreational players, and discourage regs.

 

[Anthony Martino]

I've never played at a membership structured room, but it seems to me the changes are intended to encourage recreational players, and discourage regs.

They don't really attract a ton of fun, recreational players. Their whole marketing effort has been building their brand within the poker enthusiast community, so they draw in all the misregs and traveling grinders.

Also, I'm not sure how charging everyone a $5 daily "check-in" fee on top of hourly and membership fees is going to encourage the recreational players more?

That being said, the pitchforks came out from their existing playerbase and they walked back the $5 check-in fees in an announcement today.

 

[JDPoker]

$25 and $5 a day is much more attractive to someone who just wants to pop in once or twice a month. I suspect it's a tough balance to keep the games inviting while also keeping enough regs to keep the action going. How does the hourly rate compare to a typical Vegas style rake...better for the players?

 

[Anthony Martino]

Also, initially when they did their food comp system, it was $1 earned per hour. And then you'd go to the front desk and ask for a voucher for whatever dollar amount you wanted to spend and they'd print it, and you'd use that to pay for your food.

Then they switched it and were only giving you a $15 voucher if you played 6 hours in a single day, and I believe you had to use it the same day. Now they're still doing the 6 hours = $15 voucher, but giving you 30 days to spend it.

But they likely know through their data that a large chunk of their players don't play 6+ hour sessions, so it's less expensive for them than the $1/hr that everyone was benefitting from.

On top of that, their food quality is lower and the cost higher than TCH, which is a pretty strong negative.

Some examples:

TCH Burger - $13
Lodge Burger - $18

TCH Chicken Sandwich - $14
Lodge Chicken Sandwich - $16

TCH Breakfast - $12
Lodge Breakfast - $14

TCH House Salad - $10
Lodge Garden Salad - $11

 

[Anthony Martino]

$25 and $5 a day is much more attractive to someone who just wants to pop in once or twice a month. I suspect it's a tough balance to keep the games inviting while also keeping enough regs to keep the action going. How does the hourly rate compare to a typical Vegas style rake...better for the players?

Yes, the fees in texas social clubs are better for the players in that it's less money going to the house than a traditional raked structure.

However, you have to factor in the invisibility of the rake, and that the rake is paid from the pots collected by winners of those pots.

In the social club model, EVERYONE pays their fair share. So for me, as a nitty player who is really depending on 1 or 2 key pots during my session that make or break it, I feel like I'm paying more than I would personally under a traditional raked model.

And for the losing recreational player, they not only have to lose their stacks, but also shell out for their time as well.

The raked model is just that much better in keeping the fun recreational players happy and making the rooms more money.

There's also an issue of speed of dealing. Obviously the dealers want to deal more hands to make more money. But the cardrooms under an hourly fee model don't have the same incentive to deal more hands so they collect more rake.

Whether they deal 20 hands in an hour or 30 hands, their take remains the same. So I have heard of room management pushing dealers to not deal as quickly, as they don't want games to break, they want to keep fees being collected. Less hands dealt means players are bled slower than they might be.

I don't know if that's an issue at The Lodge, but dealers can be hit or miss, as there's no regulatory body here in Texas, so no licensing. The Lodge even ran their own dealer training school awhile back as they had been firing staff and others had been leaving because of the bad culture (I've been told by multiple sources, not necessarily a Doug Polk issue, but other management in the club)

But they didn't train those dealers well at all, I helped a friend out with another card room awhile back and I had three lessons and would've dealt circles around 90% of the dealers that went through the lodges school, most of them struggled greatly.