The Fun Is About to Begin

It’s the calm before the storm; that quiet period before players pour into the poker room and seat themselves at our tables for the Spring Break Poker Classic. We’re excited to see you all and crown 22 of you as champions, and most importantly – we’re ready.

To give you a little taste of what you can expect, check out this Q & A with Beau Rivage Poker Tournament Director Johnny Grooms. Our good friend Johnny Kampis (writer for Rounder Magazine) sat down with Grooms last year just prior to the start of the Spring Break Poker Classic. Thanks Johnny K. for sharing that interview with us!

Johnny Grooms has been a familiar face on the tournament circuit for several years, having directed many of the World Series of Poker Circuit events in 2004 and 2005 and leading the main WSOP itself in 2005. He now heads the poker room at the Beau Rivage in Biloxi, where he will conduct the Spring Break Poker Classic later this month. Rounder caught up with him recently in Tunica as he helped direct the World Poker Open at the Gold Strike in Tunica.

Tell us how you got your start in this business and how you ended up directing tournaments.

Well, I came down to this market to go to law school in Memphis in 1999 and I had a couple of friends who actually dealt poker in the casinos. So I came down to learn to deal poker and I was going to use that to pay my way through law school. The first year I worked I made quite a lot of money dealing so instead of going through and having to pay my way through school I decided to save up the money to further myself in this business. At first, I saved money and then I started playing, drinking, gambling and having a good old time just like everybody does. After about two years I decided I needed to move forward so I told my current supervisor Ken Lambert that I was interested in possibly moving up so I started volunteering to take every shift and soon after that I got the opportunity to learn how to do tournaments. My first major tournament that I got to help direct was the 2003 Mid-America Poker Classic with Jimmy Sommerfeld and after that I was the assistant tournament director here in 2004 at the World Poker Open. I worked out at Reno at the World Poker Challenge and several smaller events and then in late 2004 I got the opportunity to direct the World Series of Poker Circuit. I got the opportunity to do the Circuit through Ken. He was the director of poker operations for Harrah’s worldwide. That got me the five Circuit events, the [2005] World Series of Poker and pretty much everything else I’ve done since has been related to having that job.

What was it like to run the World Series of Poker, which is such a prestigious tournament?

It was good and bad. The good part was being there for the event, and the excitement and adrenaline rush of going through 46 days of pure poker. For the Circuit, from April 26 through July 15, Ken, myself and Jack Eiffel got a combined total of a day and a half off during that span and worked an average of 15 to 16 hours a day. So that was the downside – we never had time off. But the players appreciated it. Anytime they wanted to come see us or talk to us we were always there. It’s one of the things that we’ve carried forward, is that we are always accessible to players. If they want to speak to us about something they will see us in the room.

How did you end up going to the Beau Rivage as the poker room manager?

Ken is the director of poker operations for both the Gold Strike and the Beau Rivage, and when I left Harrah’s in early 2006, I came to be the tournament director for this property [the Gold Strike] with the assumption I would be directing the World Poker Open and if any opportunities came up in this area I would be likely to do that. Beau Rivage was very severely damaged in 2005 by the storm and on the one-year anniversary in 2006 they did the re-opening and I was part of it. I really liked the poker room and when I found out there was a vacancy there – because of the area, the climate, the casino itself – I told Ken that I would be interested in applying for that position. I applied, spoke to all of the executives on property, and I got the job. I’m very happy to be there. I love the property.

What kind of plans do you have for that property as far as further improving the poker room?

As far as the facility itself, with its amenities I would rate it as one of the top three in the country. Everything is done 100 percent first class. The only improvements I could think of might be beefing up the tournament schedule and we’ve already started doing that. Jessica Barrett is my tournament director on the property down there and I’ve given here a little bit of guidance on what I think we need to do, but I’ve also given here free reign to make a lot of decisions because she knows that market really well, and knows what the players in that market like to see. I want to try some bigger events [like the Spring Break Poker Classic.] We have the Gulf Coast Poker Challenge down there, but the venue is so nice and the market is ready for more and bigger events down there. We’re going to try our best to have at least two major events down there every year, and if we can I think we can expose that market to people that haven’t been down there before and show them that, yes, Hurricane Katrina did quite a bit of damage, but we’re back and we’re ready to play.

You always have good sense of humor, often cracking jokes over the microphone. Do you try to keep the mood light while you’re directing?

More than anything there’s a lot of tension in these tournaments and if you let that tension get the best of you it causes bad situations to happen. One of the things I stress to people who work with me is that even if you’re having a bad day you can’t let players or other employees see that come through because it causes nervousness and agitation. If you give the players a little bit of levity, and make them feel calm and relaxed it makes things go easier. When people come to our events I want there to be something in their mind that makes them want to come back each and every time. If that means me telling dumb redneck jokes over the microphone or saying whatever it takes to get a laugh out of them that’s fine, but they’ll remember they had a good time at our tournament and they will come back.

What changes do you see in tournaments in the coming years?

The market is extremely competitive now, where it wasn’t that way in years past. In 2004, we had 1,500 people for the first event and over 500 for the main event. There were no major poker tournaments in the southeastern United States that year except for the World Poker Open. Now you have two circuit events in New Orleans, two circuit events at Caesars Indiana, two circuit events at the Grand, you have the Beau Rivage and the [World Poker Open]. That’s [eight] tournaments in a 700 mile radius. The players don’t have to save up for that one big opportunity every year. They can do whenever they want. So now we have to make the venue and events better for players. I think we may have boosted our chip counts in some events. What I stress to players is that whether we give them 10,000 chips, 100,000 or 1 million if it’s a two-day event it’s a two-day event. You’ve only got so many hours to finish the tournament in those two days. So if you’re adding zeroes on the end it doesn’t really benefit the players. It’s almost like a stunt in Vegas with smoke and mirrors. It looks really neat but in the end it’s the same old thing. The biggest changes I see coming for tournament poker I’d say are hopefully a bigger variety of events because even though no-limit hold’em is the game de jour right now, interest in other games is starting to rise. HORSE, for example, is on the rise. I think limit hold’em is going to make a comeback. I think pot limit Omaha, once it’s introduced to the masses in tournament play, will become a huge favorite.

Comments are closed.