Remember when Binion’s in downtown Las Vegas used to be a legendary venue for poker? Now it’s more like Binion’s is a place that people only hear about in legends. The latest piece of evidence in the near-disappearance of poker from Binion’s altogether came yesterday, as the gambling hall announced that it is dropping the guaranteed prize pools from its current tournament series.
The 2015 Binion’s Poker Open, part of the relatively unknown Players Poker Championship (PPC) Poker Tour, began on September 18th and is scheduled to run through October 4th. Twelve of the first fourteen events have $200 buy-ins and $10,000 guaranteed prize pools (the other two have $240 buy-ins), while the final tournament, the PPC Main Event, has a $300 prize pool and a $50,000 guarantee.
It appears, though, that Binion’s has not drawn enough players to hit those extremely modest numbers. In Facebook post on Tuesday, a representative from the casino said that aside from the September 26th tourney and the Main Event, the rest of the tournaments will no longer have guaranteed prize pools. Here is the message in its entirety:
Due to VERY LOW attendance, we have elected to cancel the guarantee on our Binion’s Poker Open Events with the following exceptions:
Saturday, September 26th $200 NLH will have a $10,000 GUARANTEE
The $50,000 GUARANTEE PPC Poker Tour Event will run as scheduled.
We will continue to run all other scheduled events, just without any monetary guarantee.
We apologize for any inconvenience and I would like to personally thank everyone who has played in our Binion’s Poker Open. (Paul)
Think about what that means. Using tomorrow’s tournament as an example (I assume the rest of the $200 buy-in events are the same), the $200 buy-in is structured so that $165 goes to the prize pool and $35 is taken as a tournament fee. That means that only 61 players are needed to hit the guarantee (60.6, technically). That’s six full tables. Now, poker tournaments don’t always hit their guarantees, but it’s not always horrible. As long as they come close, it’s not a big deal and the players might still hit the cash game tables or their families might spend some time in the casino. But if the attendance is so bad, so “VERY LOW” that Binion’s felt compelled to cancel the rest of the guarantees, it must be awful. Like 20 people awful or something like that.
Unfortunately for reporting’s sake, the Binion’s Poker Open has been so under-publicized that is impossible to find information on the tournaments that have already been completed.
