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4 Reasons Your Poker League Needs Great Tournament Directors

A bar poker league is an excellent way to build ties in your local community and enjoy a great game with others who have a passion for playing. A bar poker league gives everybody an opportunity to play competitively, even those who cannot afford a buy-in. For the director and staff members operating the league, as well as the bars and restaurants that participate as venues, it offers a chance for profit as well. Without a great league director, though, no poker league can be successful. The league director is responsible for planning the games from top to bottom and ensuring that everything runs smoothly in all the different venues. Here are 4 reasons you absolutely must have a professional tournament director to run your league:

1. Host fun and stress-free events

Proper planning is the key to running a successful poker game at any venue. A great director who really knows what he or she is doing will make this easy for everybody involved, by providing the proper supplies, getting the venue set up, and sharing the time and date of each game with the community online in a timely fashion. With the director overseeing all these details in the background, the games are more fun for venue owners, dealers, and players. Fun events quickly become popular events!

2. Increased traffic and sales

A skillful tournament director will know how to effectively promote poker events within the community and outside it. Without a director who knows how to market, you will not get as much traffic within the league or generate as many sales. But if your director excels at reaching out to the public, the poker league can be a successful one.

3. Problem resolution

It is the job of the tournament director to be an expert at all things relating to poker as well as the relevant rules and regulations which pertain to all tournaments that the league is taking part in. The tournament director has the job of selecting the dealers, which determines in large part the quality of the league. Even with well-selected dealers however, disputes will sometimes arise among dealers and players.

A top-notch tournament director will be able to provide expert and fair advice when conflicts arise, and also arbitrate disputes and deliver final decisions in case disagreements do not resolve on their own. On top of that, a great director will be able to do this quietly and calmly, not disrupting the rest of the event. This is a big part of keeping things running smoothly through the course of a night.

4. Customer service
Finally, the tournament director has the important role of providing customer service to dealers, players, and venue owners, as well as employees who work in the restaurants and bars and interact with the players. How the tournament director deals with league members and members of the public will have an impact on how the league is perceived. A great tournament director will be polite, clear, friendly, and enthusiastic, and will always be ready to provide answers to questions. His or her enthusiasm will be contagious.

Being a tournament director is ultimately about being a leader. While many leadership skills can only be learned through experience, the in-depth knowledge which is needed to run a tournament and take care of the details of event planning and execution can be taught. The only way I knew how to teach our Atlanta Poker Club tournament directors was to create an online resource they could use as a full blueprint for running a poker league. That resource has become our Director Training program. We’ve had a lot of great feedback on our program, and it can help you too if you are trying to form your own bar poker league or host private poker tournaments. Check it out to train your own directors—or yourself!