By Cole Boehler
Things around your town and business a little boring lately? The "shoulder season" between winter and spring kind of slow?
Consider tearing a page from the Red Lodge fun book.
A couple of enterprising licensees there just put on event that brought several hundred people to town and put several thousand dollars of new money into their tills.
Jim Johnson, proprietor of the Bull and Bear in the tourist/ski town of Red Lodge, told the Montana Tavern Times of a highly successful poker tournament he and fellow operator Greg Zieler of the Snag Bar hosted in February.
Best of all, Johnson said, the tournament itself was turn-key for the operators, though they had to hustle to keep up with the crowds in their establishments.
It turns out a few poker aficionados approached cardroom contractor Sandy Cleveland with the notion of a major tournament. Cleveland, of Molt, just north of Laurel, deals a regular game at the Snag. She, in turn, approached Zieler and Johnson who, risking little, agreed to give it a go.
Cleveland lined up the sponsors, licenses, tables, chips, cards, dealers from Billings, Bozeman and Great Falls, and handled the advertising. She even supplied snack food for players, but the tournament also provided one full meal for competitors. What was left for Johnson and Zieler was to staff up and stock up to accommodate the crowds of customers.
According to Johnson, the tournament hosted 130 players but he quickly noted the participants brought partners and families with for the fun weekend, greatly multiplying the beneficial impacts.
"It all ran very smoothly," Johnson said, noting his liquor and food sales were "very good and machine drop tripled. I worked 20 hours Friday and 20 hours Saturday. I was whipped."
He suggested other businesses throughout the community also saw a bump in sales. "It was very good for the whole community."
The tournament utilized innovative concepts allowed under a 2007 poker statute revision. For the first time, a tournament can be conducted at multiple "satellite" locations with "satellite tables" and winners of the satellite games can then accept as a prize a buy-in to a larger championship round.
Buy-in for the satellite games was $30, but the main tournament buy-in was $200. The top 10 places were paid prizes with first place enjoying a nice haul of $8,100. Incidentally, the champion was 84-year-old Mitch Fullerton from the Powell, Wyo. area.
Tournament coordinator Cleveland said, "That championship was one of this man's greatest achievements of his later life. He was on cloud nine; so proud."
Johnson said the establishments also ran "cash games" on the side simultaneous to formal tournament play. Players bumped out of tournament action could always find another game to join if desired.
The Red Lodge event was conducted Friday through Sunday. Friday and Saturday morning were filled with satellite rounds with main tournament play beginning Saturday night and continuing through Sunday.
Sunday also featured a "bounty tournament" where players were each issued a special orange chip. The player responsible for taking out an opponent took possession of the opponent's orange chip. At the end of the game, the orange chips were cashed in at $20 each.
Jones said the tournament proved so beneficial for his businesss and the community, and enjoyable for customers, that he, Zieler and Cleveland are considering conducting tournaments on a regular basis, perhaps running another as early as June 21.
Cleveland, who runs a small cardroom contractor business she calls Montana Rims Gaming, conceded organizing the event was a lot of work.
She enrolled the local Miller Lite distributor as a sponsor and had them produce hundreds of posters which she said she and helpers hung as far away as Missoula and covering northern Wyoming, too. She maintains a player mailing list (in fact she publishes a little poker newsletter periodically) and sent out direct mailings promoting the "Montana Beartooth Poker Championship."
In working with state regulators on licensing, she said she found them very helpful and straightforward.
"As far as I know, this was the biggest tournament ever in Montana using the new progressive multi-location 'satellite' system of organization," she said.
"We worked with lodging facilities and local restaurants to offer discounts to players; even the Ford Dealership came through with transportation for those who wanted to do a little partying without risk," she said.
Cleveland knows a little about the card business. She began dealing professionally in the 1970s in Nevada and has worked in Mississippi, Arizona and South Dakota. She's even dealt poker on special off-shore cruise ships.
She said she covered all her expenses and "made a little money," but conceded her "pencil is a little sharper now."
As a test case for the new statutory poker revisions, The Beartooth Championship would appear to prove it is a winner for players, for workers, for taverns and for communities.
Source: The Montana Tavern Times, April, 2008, published monthly by Continental Communications, 125 W. Granite St., Suite 102, Butte, MT 59701.