The final table of the World Poker Tour (WPT) Fallsview Poker Classic Main Event is today and while it comes with plenty of celebration, a damper was put on the excitement at the beginning of the Classic because of an unusual problem for a poker tournament: ticket scalping. It is not unusual for people to sell tourney entries, but in the case of the first event at Fallsview, a number of factors combined to produce a situation where many prospective players faced price gauging at the hands of people who never even intended to play.
As stated, it happened during the opening flights of the $1,100 event, the first one at the Classic. There were two Day 1’s, which allowed players some flexibility in their starting day. Some people bought in to the event directly through the cashier, others won entry cards via satellites.
But a few things mixed together to create a big problem. First, because of what I believe are physical capacity issues, Fallsview set a cap on the number of players for each Day 1 at 500, thus creating a limit to the supply of entry cards available. Second, all entry cards (tickets) were transferable, meaning that they could be given away, traded, or sold; as long as someone had a card, they could play, regardless of how they got that card. And third, there were no alternates allowed for Event #1, so that 500 player cap was VERY rigid – there was no opportunity for anyone to take a seat even after someone got knocked out.
Because of all this, scalpers had a field day. As they realized Day 1B was going to sell out, they bought up all the tickets they could and turned around to sell them to players at inflated prices. They likely got most of their tickets from players winning them in satellites, as that would have been the best way to get them for the lowest price. Players often win multiple seats via satellite and therefore sell the excess at a discount. It works for the buyer, who gets to play in the event for less than he would pay at the cashier (say, $1,050 instead of $1,100), and the seller pockets a nice wad of cash.
Scalpers, though, buy tickets solely for the purpose of reselling them. When the tournament sold out, the only way for anyone to enter was to buy an entry card from someone else. They may have been lucky to find a satellite winner willing to sell for face value, but more than likely, they had to try to negotiate with a scalper whose only goal was to profit as much as possible. Reports from PokerNews were that tickets were going for anywhere from $1,300 to $1,800.
Scott Davies, posting on Two Plus Two as “miamicane,” relayed his thoughts on what he saw at Fallsview after flying in from Australia, where he had just competed in the Aussie Millions:
Pretty awful that the casino creates perfect conditions for the scalpers. They cap the number of entries, let people buy multiple fully-transferable tickets, and then don’t take any alternates the day of the event. So it essentially cuts off the supply at the same moment demand peaks creating a black market. It literally brings out all of the bottom of the barrel scum of the earth to the poker area. These guys show up the day of the event with heaps of tickets and no intention of ever playing the event. I can’t believe the casino allows these guys to do business in their casino, they are as obvious as ticket scalpers at a sporting event/concert, and just as sleazy.
Not everyone was as sympathetic, though. One poster wrote, “the people who didnt get a ticket for the 1k are lazy and stupid, i literally walked down at ****ing 1am saturday morning to get a ticket for sunday at noon. not much more than 24 hours til start, just dont wait til the last damn day to purchase.”
No matter how one feels about what happened, it was unfortunate, especially because scalping could have easily been prevented by the casino.
