Venetian Suffer $27K Overlay As Players Boycott Heavily Raked Series

The Venetian’s controversial Lucky Shot series backfired on the cardroom, with close to a $30,000 loss to the casino after their abusive rake format hit the headlines last month…

As we reported recently, the Sheldon Adelson-owned Venetian introduced a highly-dubious prizefund whereby any buy-in money paid above a certain amount would go straight to the cardroom rather than players.

That led to calls for a boycott of the event, and although that didn’t quite happen, there was to be no golden egg for the casino at the end of the series.

Despite eventually managing to hit, and with a late rush even exceed their 600 player ‘breakeven’ target for the $150k capped prizepool in the biggest of their six-tournament series, overall numbers meant the cardroom was on the hook for a $27k or so overlay.

As many had pointed out beforehand, had the ‘main event’ attracted 1200 players, the rake would have been an incredible 50% - which event 5 in the series actually came close to, a 48% hit to players.

Thankfully, for the sake of common decency, the $52,000 ‘drawing’ of tickets for those paying at least $250 in buy-ins meant that the cardroom’s rake-grab was eaten up and then some.

It’s never nice to have to hit out at poker rooms, who generally provide an excellent service to their players, but in this case the Venetian got the slap they deserved.