Amidst The Gold Rush

Back in the 1980s it seemed as if half the companies in the UK were looking for new ways in which they could throw money down the drain by investing in the US. Marks & Spencer was just one of the retailers that got burnt, while Midland Bank got hit so hard by its failure to spot who the mug was at the table (the Midland, in case you didn't guess) that shortly after it fell gratefully into the arms of HSBC.

So it was with some hilarity that I read the newswire announcement yesterday that Dixon's had found its new Eldorado -- that mythical land which was apparently made of gold. In this case, Russia. And the company it is going to invest in? You betta believe it. Eldorado.

Eldorado is an eletrical goods retailer in the Russia and, if you believe its own figures, grew buy 83% last year. Dixons will swear blind that things are different this time round and that it is well-protected against serious damage, but the fact remains that if it all goes belly-up, Dixons will be $190m in the hole.

And the reasons for the investment are all wrong. This is the standard case of: "we need to expand to support the share price. The UK sucks. Where can we expand? I know! Russia!" It's not a matter of looking at the potential rationally. Dixons needs this to work. Its alternative is to hold up its hands and say "that's it, we are a mature business, it's all downhill from here". The point is, this could well be the correct strategy. As John Harrington noted, if Wang had done that in the late 1980s, its shareholders would have been a lot better off. Struggling to find somewhere to put your money and then trying to justify it post hoc is a bad sign.

And what of Eldorado? Not only is this company from outside Moscow, since 1999 it's been from outside Russia. It moved from the Urals (where it was founded in 1995) to the Ukraine. To be frank, in the case of a company just 10 years old that has shifted location to one of the most corrupt countries in the east (prior to the recent elections) I wouldn't care if it did have 600 stores in 420 towns. I would want to take a very hard look at both the numbers and at the reality behind the numbers before I promised $190m of hard-earned cash.

Toujours la change at Gutshot, toujours la meme chose

Paul Shearing played in the fifty quid freezeout at Gutshot on Thursday. He then wrote a long, but constructive, criticism of the tournament (adding in his comment that all the locks were broken on the toilets, but that is a slightly separate matter, albeit equally serious) on the Gutshot forum.

To the credit of Derek, John Iannou and other staff at GS, they didn't take it as a personal attack, but saw that Paul wanted things to be better. For every person who complains, 10 don't complain, but don't come back, is the conventional wisdom. (Although, by-the-by, how do customer-care executives "know" this?)

Part of Paul's complaint was that he was on one of two tables upstairs, that there were no staff controlling the game, that they weren't told when the blinds were going up, and at one point they were playing six-handed when there were nine-handed tables in play downstairs.

Our old friend Roy Houghton was in charge, and this was his response.

Hi Paul:
As you know I was in charge for the £50 freeze-out on Thursday evening.Firstly let me apologise for the lack of supervision upstairs, but we were simply swamped by the sheer number of players for the event, 94 in all. Because the cardroom is open until early morning, sometimes it is 9.0a.m. before the room closes, we have to stagger the dealer times.
At the start of the tournament I only had 2 dealers available both of whom were dealing tournament tables. A third dealer came in at 9.0p.m. who supervised for a short while, but then I needed him for a cash game.As far as I was aware the mike was working upstairs therefore I did announce over the mike the blind increases, but have since been told that sometimes the speakers do not work properly.
A fourth dealer came in at 10.0p.m. and he was immediately sent upstairs to supervise the tables. Yes it is true that at one time you were only playing six handed upstairs, but I only had to lose one more player and you were all downstairs.At that time there were only three tables left downstairs none of which were playing 9 handed, the most players on a table at that time was 8. As it was only going to be a matter of seconds before another player went out(which it was) it seemed pointless sending a player upstairs only for him to have to come down again immediately.
As we have said we are always striving to improve our service to players, but sometimes unexpected numbers of players mean we have to compromise.
I regret this happened but as you would have noticed it was manic at the club on Thursday evening.
As for the toilets, we will look into this immediately.
Thanks again for your constructive comments.
Regards
Roy Houghton

P.S. You may think that with only three tables downstairs I could have brought you down earlier, but the other tables were all being used for cash games.

Do you spot what's happening here? In two places Roy states that part of the problem was that dealers and tables "were needed for cash games".

But this is specious logic. In the old days, casinos could not charge an entry fee for tournies, so cash games quite reasonably took priority when it came to getting dealers, the best tables, etc. But Gutshot charged each of the players a fiver to play in that tournament. THEY HAD PAID THEIR MONEY JUST AS MUCH AS THE CASH PLAYERS HAD. Even if they busted out first hand, they would still have paid a fiver. So, and this is my question, "why should cash games be automatically prioritized at Gutshot?". Roy doesn't even address this point. He just takes it for granted. It's another example of the old poker school just not thinking things through, but saying, "that's how it's always been".

Roy had been paying just nine places with up to 140 runners in some tournaments, because that was how he had always done it. When a player pointed out that paying two tables might be a good idea, he (apparently) responded "we aren't in America now". Never mind the fact that many of these players would have come in via the Internet (rather than the USA) where 10% of players being paid out was the norm.

Until Roy and/or GS get it into their head that, if you pay a fee to pay a tournament, then that gives you just as much right to tables and dealers as cash games (in other words, first come, first served) then their club will continue to suffer. And, yes, that can mean saying to cash players, "you will have to wait until some tables break in the tourney before we can give you a dealer". I know that cash players aren't used to being treated as anything other than gods compared to the players in rebuy tournaments, but the times have been a'changing, and the cash-only players had better get used to it. After all, where else are they going to go?

I did a bit of maths on that tourney. If there were 80 players, that makes £400 in fees for the club. That's equal to five hours in a cash-dealt game. Allowing 90 minutes for the dealer at the final table, that still leaves 3.5 hours "worth" of dealer time that the tournament should be allocated. It's time that tournament players started pointing this out.

The farce of my argument here, of course, is that I think that I am more likely to be a cash player than a tournament player if I go to the Gutshot (if only they didn't run such silly hours -- until 9am? I would be thinking about my lunch the following day after being up for four hours, just as the game was breaking up. That kind of timing really gives the pro too much of an edge.