The highly anticipated opening of Kahnawake’s newest poker club attracted nearly 300 people when it officially opened its doors this month.
“We were very happy with the success of our opening weekend,” said Playground Poker Club’s chief of operations David Montour.
“During our first three nights, we had an unlimited rebuy tournament, but the first buy-in was free, he said. We also guaranteed a prize pool. If we got 100 players and none of them did a buy-in, the prize pool would be zero, but we guaranteed $10,000, just in case no one re-bought,” Montour said.
“But it so happened that on Friday night, we met the $10,000, Saturday we didn t, but we did it again on Sunday.”
Montour hopes that the popularity of the club since its opening is a sign of things to come. “Right now, we’ve been operating for about 14 days and business has been steady,” Montour said yesterday. “After the initial opening weekend push, we still got some very good business afterwards. Every day is getting better, so we’re very happy with the success.”
After months of transforming the facility, which formerly housed the Okwari Poker Palace, Montour said he was pleased to hear plenty of positive feedback from the customers during the opening weekend.
“The comments were overwhelmingly positive. I think the décor and the atmosphere is very different from what people might have seen before,” he said. “We were told that the food and service were excellent. Space-wise, we were told that we could probably do a little work on table positioning. But we were at our full capacity and we were able to manage all that.”
After months of work and preparation, Montour said he got a great sense of personal satisfaction on opening weekend.
“The first night was really hectic, but by Sunday, I was feeling proud that it was successful. But you also have to realize that there’s a long way to go improving operationally. There’s no rest really, you have to keep trying to get better from here on out,” Montour said. “You’re happy, but not for too long because you have to keep working.”
He pointed out that as expected, the majority of those that attended the opening weekend events were from outside of the community.
“It was local in the sense of the Montreal area, but as for Kahnawake, I personally registered about 20 players. On Friday, less than ten percent were from Kahnawake and on Saturday and Sunday it was less than two percent,” Montour said. “To me, it is a positive, because for our economy we want people from outside of the community to feel comfortable doing business here.”
Although he wouldn’t reveal any future plans just yet, Montour confirmed that big things would be happening at the club in the coming months. “We have a Facebook page and a website, which we are still working on, that people can check out to find out what’s going on as we release the information,” he said.
