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Side pools

Posted By: Daniel Murphy
Date: Sunday, 12 September 2010, at 7:50 p.m.

I want to follow up again on a comment by Svilen Todorov in this thread. Svilo's commment was:

"high class tournaments need a better ratio prize fund/expenditure. Untill sponsors come to fill the prize fund, the only way to keep the ratio is TO INCREASE entry fees or decrease travel, hotel etc."

Previously I commented that directors can attempt to locate their tournaments in easy to get to and reasonably priced venues. And I commented that raising the entry fee without raising the amount raked also raises equity. But there is also a way to offer players more equity without raising the entry fee for all, and that is by offering unraked side pools.

Let me go on record as agreeing with Neil Kazaross, Bob Glass and Jason Lee (in comments this past March) that

the return on all side pools should be 100%

I wrote in 1997 that side pools were unraked, with 100% return to investing players. Today, I find no instances of weekly club tournaments with side pools with a rake. I can think of no European tournament with a raked side pool. And I note that of the 4 remaining ABT events on the calendar this year, one (Illinois State) offers no side pools, two (Las Vegas and California State) offer side pools with 100% return, but one (Mid-Atlantic Championship) rakes the championship side pool 5% and the intermediate side pool 10%.

Raking a side pool just doesn't sit right with me. It's money put up by self-selected players knowing that they'll be competing for the side pool only with other such players. It's money put up in addition to the usual entry fee, out of which, usually, the tournament takes a percentage. That percentage ought to be sufficient to cover the cost of servicing a player's participation in the event and (in the absence of a wholly separate registration or "hospitality" fee), his presence at the tournament. Raking a side pool, and I'm sorry if this seems harsh, seems to me not different in principle from an opponent informally asking if you'd like to play for a little something on the side, and the director hurrying over to take a cut.

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