How messed up is this

nicnicnic

Marty was telling me about this in killarney, I hadn't seen it mentioned so thought I'd post it up, the following is from Marty's blog.....pretty ridiculous stuff for an EPT event

In the second tournament I managed to get a small cash for £4750, but to be honest this was a bit disappointing too because my exit hand was a pot for 2/3 of the chips in play with 5 left, and would have made me a huge favourite for the title if I’d won. Also on reflection, I think I made a mistake in the hand which makes it even more annoying.

I don’t like to rant on about things, but the way the tournament was run was pretty disgraceful. The Vic poker room has to close at 5am on a Sunday, and so whenever it became apparent that the tournament wasn’t going to finish in time, they shortened the levels from 45 to 35 minutes, and then to 20 minutes. Obviously this turned the tournament into a total crap-shoot at the end, which I personally don’t mind as I’m well used to it from all the TV 6-seaters that I play and think I’m more experienced than most in this sort of game, but it was a bit unfair on the other players. This wasn’t a £20 rebuy - they had paid £1000 to play in an EPT side event and I’m sure that they expected better than this.

When it got 8 handed we had a look at doing a deal, however I refused since I was the short stack it meant that I would only have gotten £4k or so more than what I was already guaranteed, whereas if I played on I could have got £30k more - and I know how quickly things can change at a final table.

At the end of the tournament we asked if we could all come back the next day to finish it off, and were told that we couldn’t because even though we all agreed, it wouldn’t be fair on the players who had been already knocked out as they may have played differently. This may be true to an extent; however we were then told that since it wasn’t going to finish on time that they would end the tournament at the end of the next level and pay out the remaining prize money according to chip stacks. Now if this change of plan didn’t affect the way the players played then I don’t know what would.

In the hand that I busted, the chip leader had limped in first seat for 20k and I looked down to find KKQ8 (one suit) on the button. Since the 2 blinds were both playing about 100k each I reasoned that if he had AA then he would have raised to drive me out and hopefully pick up the blinds or else take on one of the short stacks with his aces since it would be practically all in preflop.

I therefore raised with my kings, and decided to call his re-raise since I thought it was more likely that he’d limped with a nice drawing hand like 9TJQ or something than AAxx. It turns out I was wrong, and his hand held up. This mightn’t sound particularly terrible, but the reason I say I was a bit annoyed with myself is that:

1. I didn’t need to get involved, as if I’d held on to my chips I would have gotten at least 20k with the bizarre system they were going to use to settle the tournament.

2. I shouldn’t have been so quick to rule out him having AA, as he may have just decided to play more cautiously with his aces because he was chip leader and was also guaranteed over 20k if nothing changed

LuckyLloyd

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ITT-Pat

i call shenanigans on england

tylerdurden94

Thats highly absurd

kakak1

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Needless to say, I think that's pretty disgraceful. I can never understand why players aren't more forceful in these types of situations though? I think I remember flushdraw being at a €500 IPC side event final table where they refused to continue unless the structure was modified - and the tournament directors relented to some extent.

Surely in this instance the players should have insisted on coming back tomorrow?

if the prize fund was made up of only the players money i.e. no added money by the sponsors they should certainly have kicked up & refused to play.

It's a real case of we have your money & you have your pi**

Mellor

em, ridic

phantom_lord

ridic bad.

Ollieboy

this also happens at the GUKPT events, a lot of the side events have been decided by chip counts.

DEEP THROAT

Is this because gaming is regulated in England and they may be required by law to close at a certain time

RoundTower

how do they do the chip counts? seems like a good place for a smart player to have an edge. Basically if you have a big stack you should definitely not gamble with it/

obviously it's a terrible ruling if this wasn't in the rules beforehand, I don't see why they couldn't have allowed the tournament to continue until the next day at the point where they originally shortened the levels.

connie147

I really dont know much about EPT events and their side events, but really, I find it hard to believe that. (not that I dont believe Marty, just that I cant believe the EPT would treat players like that).

Disgracefull episodes like that should be widely publisised and Venues that cause problems as described above, should be avoided like the plague.

And what kind of people run the EPT that allow tournaments to finish like that? Are they in any way answerable? Is there an email address where we can send our thoughts?

Goes to show once again that we as players are really fortunate to have so many good structured and well run tournaments to chose from. And we're the one country that they chose to strip of an EPT tournament!

Connie

max_power

^^^^Yes but surely they're allowed to open the next day^^^ @deepthroat. I would not be happy with this at all and would have kicked up a hell of a fuss if it affected me adversely. Although if i was chip leader and could lock up 1st with 6 or 7 left i'd be delighted.

marty smyth

in their defense, there may well have been something either on the ept site itself, or somewhere in the vic that stated that the tournament had to be finished by 5am (and i suspect there probably was)... or maybe this is standard practice in the vic. i don't know if this is true or not because, obviously like most other players i just turn up, register and play the event without asking about stuff like this... and i suppose we all knew the rules by the time we got to the final table and we were all in the same boat.

however whether it was stated in the rules or not i still think it de-values an event such as this to run it that way, and they should really have made it a 2 day event or started it earlier in the day (i think it started at 6pm).

mormank

max_power wrote: »

^^^^Yes but surely they're allowed to open the next day^^^ @deepthroat. I would not be happy with this at all and would have kicked up a hell of a fuss if it affected me adversely. Although if i was chip leader and could lock up 1st with 6 or 7 left i'd be delighted.

im pretty sure its a chip chop at the end of play and not just whoever has the most chips at the end of the level wins first prize!! that would be insane

RoundTower

"chip chop" is almost as insane. what if you have a really big stack and everyone else has 2BB? You could get more than first place that way.

Or a more likely one, what if you have 1/20 of the chips in play with 4 players left and the payouts are 10k/6k/4k/3k? You'd have to try to get knocked out before play stopped, to get 3k instead of 1k.

Ollieboy

marty smyth wrote: »

in their defense, there may well have been something either on the ept site itself, or somewhere in the vic that stated that the tournament had to be finished by 5am (and i suspect there probably was)... or maybe this is standard practice in the vic. i don't know if this is true or not because, obviously like most other players i just turn up, register and play the event without asking about stuff like this... and i suppose we all knew the rules by the time we got to the final table and we were all in the same boat.

however whether it was stated in the rules or not i still think it de-values an event such as this to run it that way, and they should really have made it a 2 day event or started it earlier in the day (i think it started at 6pm).

its pretty standard in the UK and most players are aware of this rule. Its nothing to do with the EPT its the gaming laws in the UK. Nearly as bad as the laws we have, or dont have here.