"interesting" Tourney strucrure!!!

eoghan104

I went to casino in Edinburgh on Sunday to play their advertised £20 rebuy. When I got there i was impressed with the casino and looked forward to a good tournament. Upon regestering though i noticed on the computer that the starting stack was 600 and 25-50 was the first level!! :eek: :eek:

I was astonished by this but just as i was about to leave i noticed that the first level was no less than 1hr 45mins long!!!

I decided to play for a bit but left after 1 rebuy as it was a joke. Self dealt with everyone taking change out of the pot themselves and on two occasions we had to stop and think about who was in the pot and for how much as everyone was just throwing chips into the pot rather than leaving them infront of them. Very annoying.

Anyway on my way home i was thinkin what kind of a tournament this was going to be for the freezeout stage??? When i left, 40 mins in there had been 81 rebuys between the 55 starters! So i imagine by the end of that level there would have to be a massive gap between the huge stacks and the tiny stacks that just rebought. Every rebuy was another 600 chips.

Am i wrong in thinking this structure has a small bit of merit considering the average stack would be huge compared to the blinds at the end of the next level???

latenia

What was the name of the casino? I played a tournament at the Leo in Liverpool last month while over for a match and the structure was the same. Every hand had about 5 or 6 all-ins pre and I rebought once.
I raised UTG with AQs after getting more chips and when 3 more people went all-in after me I just threw the rest of my chips in and decided I might as well play blackjack. I hit the flop aginst the biggest collection of thrash I've ever seen turned over in that situation and the quadruple up meant that first 2 hour level became playable after the donks ran out of rebuys.
By the time it got to 20 or so left the prize pool was massive considering it was a 20 pound entry but I missed the money after I was crippled having to put down what was top 2p on the flop turned into an open straight.
This type of structure seems to be common in the UK but if you're a serious player it will probably annoy you more than anything.

BigDragon

I remember writing this for the ''old'' antesup.com

February 15, 2005
WTF? Poker In Walsall....

As some of the esteemed readers of this site will know I have a bit (only a bit) of a life outside of the Fitz and PS/VC. Part of that involves me going back to school to learn very boring stuff relating to work.

That means that I have to go over to England once a month on a weekend for the next couple of years. Now the thought of missing a live game on a weekend does not appeal. So, cunning plan hatched! Like the rest of you I am forever reading the big glossy adverts in the free poker mags at the Fitz advertising big buy-in tournies in Grosvenor Casino’s, especially in Luton, Brighton and Walsall.

Having only played in the Fitz, the Other Place Around The Corner and a quick trip to Foxwood’s whilst at a conference in Boston, I really wanted to experience poker in the little island to the east. I had asked around and nobody had played in Walsall so I did a bit of searching on the net and got myself registered by fax (cause of the 24 hour rule in the UK). Due to my schedule I could only play in a £5 re-buy tournament for a ticket to the £500 Midlands Medley at the end of Feb. As this was an exploratory mission and as I intended to play tight I didn’t mind that I was not going to be able to play in the game if I won a ticket.

Well, after getting the mug shot done, I headed into the lush interiors of the casino that is an industrial warehouse type building on the outside. There were the usual blackjack and roulette as well as a computer terminal roulette. I soon found the high tech poker desk and paid my £5 and 50p reg. I got a receipt and my name was entered onto a computer, wooohooo!

The reg closed and the table and seat numbers were posted on a board 15 mins before kick off. I was now the proud owner of a player number too! There were 105 runners in this NLTE game.

The tables looked ok. It was the first time I’ve played on a table with no rail. That was to be the least of my worries. There were no dealers so someone volunteered. It was definitely not going to be me!

Slap my belly with a wet kipper!!!

I had no idea that this was how poker was played! It was utter chaos! The blinds are raked after the cards are dealt and when there’s a raise. It was taking all my powers (read ‘few’) of observation to keep track. There were chips going in all directions. I played about four hands before the break and was chip leader at the table when my KK all-in on the BB held up against 5 callers with rags and a few large suited connectors did them same job.

After the break a few players tighten up but for the most part the same ‘car crash poker’ prevailed and we were soon down to 3 tables and I had not increased my tank. I got moved with about 5xBB to a short-handed table and we were told to deal on with 6 on our table and 10 and 9 on the other 2 tables. I flatly refused to do this but was told to play. So, I had two rubbish cards and sat there for at least 5 minutes looking like I was contemplating going all-in. Nobody on the table called ‘clock’ so got away with it and we got 2 more players.

The inevitable happened after the next break when with about 19 players left and on the BB I see A5s and throw it all in and get one caller with AKo. Bye, bye Walsall.

Or, maybe not! There is always the cash game that might be profitable if the standard of play was comparable. I looked at 2 hands on a cash table and walked out! They were self dealt with no resemblance to any cash game in a casino I’ve encountered. That’s a moan for another day.

It was great to play live poker out of my usual surroundings and I was impressed with the hi-tech registration. However, my player number in Walsall shall probably never be used again!

Hopefully, in the next couple of months I’ll give the Gutshot a go so I’ll reserve judgement on poker rooms in general in England till then.

Jesus, I’m a spoilt poker moaner.

‘GG all’

BigDragon

LuckyLloyd

This post has been deleted.

RasTa

eoghan104 wrote:

. Self dealt with everyone taking change out of the pot themselves

That pisses me off so much over here when I offer to deal. I now refuse to deal and the players are all grumpy feckers. Still the tourney's are soft, I have only played 3 in 6 months due mainly the fact that I have to powerwash the smell of cig and pipe smoke off my clothes. But I split one so it does have it's slight advantage. Even the cash games are self dealt

TrueDub

Every time I've played in the Gutshot, there's been a £25 buy-in table which is self-dealt, but the bigger cash games are dealer-dealt. That being said some of dealing practices are different, and a lot of player behaviour is very different!

BrokenArrows

RasTa wrote:

Even the cash games are self dealt

How is the rake sorted? Is there any?

RasTa

BrokenArrows wrote:

How is the rake sorted? Is there any?

Never sat down once I saw they where self-deal. No rake I'd guess. It's funny because they have around 8 tables but only pay attention to the house games.

eoghan104

I went on a trip to the Gutshot with a few lads that had won an entry to a tourney over there. The self dealt cash tables are great craic cos there was a group of us sitting there really kind of taking the piss and having banter, far from good or real poker. The funny thing was that some regular would come over and sit with 50 quid and end up getting busted by one of our 94 offsuit type hands!!! They couldnt understand we were just playin for the craic!

the rake is £3 per hr and some guy just comes and takes it every hr so its grand! Id recommend the Gutshot to anyone that loves poker its class.

DeVore

Recommend the Gutshot but never EVER at the self deal tables. Get into the bigger game (its 1/2 iirc) and get a dealer. Its about.... umm... a billion times better.

DeV.

eoghan104

DeVore wrote:

Recommend the Gutshot but never EVER at the self deal tables. Get into the bigger game (its 1/2 iirc) and get a dealer. Its about.... umm... a billion times better.

DeV.

Yeh i was playin the 5/5 Omaha and just played the self dealt as a while for a bit of craic!!

TrueDub

DeVore wrote:

Recommend the Gutshot but never EVER at the self deal tables. Get into the bigger game (its 1/2 iirc) and get a dealer. Its about.... umm... a billion times better.

DeV.

Couldn't agree more. While the players are very mouthy and there's a lot of rubbish talked at the table, you can have some tremendous fun there. I saw two of the most spectacular player meltdowns ever in the gutshot - chips flying, ranting & raving, eyes out on stalks, the whole show.

Goodluck2me

TrueDub wrote:

Couldn't agree more. While the players are very mouthy and there's a lot of rubbish talked at the table, you can have some tremendous fun there. I saw two of the most spectacular player meltdowns ever in the gutshot - chips flying, ranting & raving, eyes out on stalks, the whole show.

trip report...

Dub13

latenia wrote:

I played a tournament at the Leo in Liverpool last month while over for a match.

What did you think of it...?I am in Liverpool a lot and keep meaning to pop in but I have never got around to it.Whats the tournament schedule like...?

TrueDub

goodluck2me wrote:

trip report...

It was a long time ago, and the poker side of it is uninteresting, but one of the guys, who was from the continent, was apparently a local character, with a bit of a Walter Mitty complex. He had these enormous Jackie Onassis sunglasses that he work on his head, unless he was dealt a good hand, in which case he put on the glasses and tried to look composed.

His blowup came out of nowhere - the hands were being folded round to him in late position. He looked up & saw one of the blinds was about to fold out of turn. He waited, and the guy in the blind stopped. He then started ranting & raving about the guy's cards having crossed the line and that he'd folded. When the dealer told him to get on with it he threw his cards across the table and roared at the dealer. He then picked up his chips and fired them at the guy in the blind. He then stormed out.

He returned 20 minutes later, to ask for his chips back. The dealer had gathered them up, and foolishly gave them straight back to him. The guy then slung them across the table at the guy in the blind again! He ripped his membership card in little pieces, launched them at the table and stormed out.

One other guy would only play with £1 white chips. He'd insist on sitting with £150-worth of these £1 chips, because "that's my trademark, man!".

They're as mad as balloons, but great fun.