Q. Did you have anyone who didn't play to their lines?
A. A couple

Q. Will they be invited back?
A. No.

Q. I know this was your first tournament ever, so how did you train your dealers and get them to buy into the concept?
A. Oh, they were excited. What we did was take them to Las Vegas, along with our casino manager and table-games manager and some promotional people and let them all play in the Hilton's million-dollar tourney. Then we set up special classes here at Barona to run mock tournaments to work out the bugs.

Q. That's amazing. Did any of them qualify for the Hilton's million-dollar final?
A. Yes, two of Barona's people got to play in the final.

Q. Did they win anything?
A. No.

Q. Would you have let them keep it if they did?
A. Of course.

Q. That would make for some interesting break-room conversations if one of them won it. Have any of the new gamblers come back to play?
A. Yes, at least half a dozen.

Q. It must be hard getting premium players to come all the way out to San Diego. How do you do that?
A. A lot of ways. We have private gaming that no one else can offer.

Q. How is it different?
A. Ours is reserved by the customers for them only, totally private with no public access. The room is theirs. Only their friends can play and we set up five tables to accommodate them. If the player is betting $25,000, their friends can play $25. We have $1,000 slots and $1 slots and we have private chefs, butlers, custom games, a casino manger assigned to them only, our best dealers, fine wine and liquors, anything and everything they want to eat. They can transfer their money into slot machines and back to their credit lines using patented fingerprint technology on the machines. And it's totally private. They have secret entrances. Our staff never tells who's been there. They get to choose the games they want to play.