I'm just back home from The Hague and it's a good time to figure that out for sure! I think with the encroachment of the casino and general increase in cost at DCC, along with the rising popularity of Buffalo's in May for a "once a year" trip, even aside from Covid we have seen a fall off of attendance at the Derby. That said, I visited them in January for just a few days and found they do now have another new small function room just off to the side of the casino that seems perfectly suited for a renewed HOF dinner. But one big question is, would we have the support, both in attendance and helping me on site that night? I can do my part of creating a program and the logistics of the dinner, but we need a decent turnout and I need a couple extra hands mainly as people come in, to collect money if necessary and get people seated. We presumably still have Scott Frost and Shannon Daulton willing to help as MC's, and John Brumback will surely want to help address any Banks inductee if we decide we have good candidates for a Banks ballot this year.
We still have Alex Pagulayan and Francisco Bustamante fto induct for One Pocket -- they were elected a couple of years ago, but Covid and travel problems have prevented an in person presentation. Those two would certainly be good to hold a dinner for. We also can select another Lifetime Pool in Action honoree -- there are always good candidates for that, and we lose some to death and poor health every year!
I will check in with the staff at the Horseshoe Monday to see if that space is available, on a night when the Diamond staff is agreeable to the inevitable disruptions to their tournament schedule (resulting from about two hours of often key players and staff at the HOF event instead of out on the tournament floor).
Thank you for bringing this up!
Likewise the player sponsor thing is always fun for both the player and the contributors to follow the player's experience. I support that too. We have usually had the player sponsorship in conjunction with a raffle. The raffle payments are a little touchy because of paypal's restrictions on raffles, and the apparently dire consequences of getting caught by Paypal violating their rules -- at least I have heard reports of that. So we might need a different payment approach if we are going to include that component.
