REPORT - Westwood Hotel Galway €50 Weekly

Jaden

I wandered down to the Westwood Hotel last night (wander being a loose term for the 30 odd mile drive).

All in all, a worthwhille trip I will be making again. tourney is €50 in (with 5 registration), and one rebuy or topup allowed, at an additional €50. You start with 4,000 chips, the rebuy get you 4,000 more, which you can get during the first 2 hours, and the top-up is 5,000, available at the beginning of the freezeout stage. Blinds are 20 minutes, and start at 25/50, so you have plenty of time to settle in.

Every table has it's own suitably attired dealer, and a tournament director oversees all goings on. There was an €8K prize fund for the night (6K cash and 2K in paid trips to a tourney in Cork). Last table gets paid.

Overall, the play standard was quite good. The table I was at was tight, but friendly, and some decent craic. Made it to the first break with a little above average stack (12K with rebuy), and the blinds were restarting at 400/800.

After the break it became tough. Alot of players were worried about being blinded out, and I saw several bust outs with K,10 beating K,8 type showdowns. The numbers fell rapidly, with a player going out every second hand at our table.

Eventually I got caught in a 3 way all-in, and got nailed by a runner-runner straight calling my top pair all in post flop.
I won't moan, but it hurt. I really felt I'd played well all night. Maybe next time.

Verdict: Well run tourney, and definitely worth the entry fee. It's on very Wednesday in the Westwood in Dangan, registration at 7.00pm, cards dealt at 8.00pm sharp.

See you there.

Rob.

Dub13

Thanks for the review...I was thinking of heading down to this some Wednesday have you any idea when this runs ontill...?

bmc

Hard luck! It's not a bad tournament.

Although I am a little put off by the prize fund.

How many players were there?

I played a couple of weeks ago and there were 164. €50 + €5 to enter and a lot of people rebuying. Say half the people rebought - that's (82 + 164) * €50 = €12300. That's ignoring the €5 "reg fee".

The prize fund was still €8000.

Why do they bother to describe it (as they did to me verbally) as €50 with €5 registration?

Jaden

Dub13 - I went out in 39th or so, at about 11:30. I'm told the final table is made by 1:00 - 1:30. It lasts about an hour.

bmc - There were 110 players last night. 8K min is not bad for a fifty in. I've seen worse, ALOT worse.

murfie

Ya, I agree its a nice tournament to play in, didnt have time to head down to it myself last night but my dad did with a mate of his. He did very well in it, 5th and juat missed out on a place to cork!! I believe there were 4 places to cork.
He went out after going all in with A J, he had 50k chips, but the chips leader at the time had over 300k and had QQ, so he had to call. He got €450 for coming 5th which was not bad alright.

The prize money alright is one that i am wondering about, if a normal guy wants to run a local tourney and posts it here on boards he gets the third degree on what money is going to prizes and if rebuys and topups are included towards the prize money.

It seems to me because these tourneys are sponsered by Vc and run by a company and because of this none of you seem to care the that none of the rebuys and topups are going back into the prize pool. Can someone please explain this to me!!??

If for example the dublin student tourney in the Gresham a few weeks ago had done this you would all be up in arms demanding blood!!

Just an observation, please correct me if i am wrong.

DapperGent

Jaden wrote:

bmc - There were 110 players last night. 8K min is not bad for a fifty in. I've seen worse, ALOT worse.

Is the prizepool capped though?

Personally I'd find it a bit suspicious to have 110 runners and the prize pool is exactly €8k, the same as it was another time with 146 runners.

If they're charging reg of only €5 then it's unlikely that they can cover their costs out of that €500-€600 but if that is the case they should increase the reg and not cream off the prize fund. A capped prize pool is the worst sort of cúntish exploitation made worse by the fact that there isn't too many other options in Galway.

I'm not saying the organisers are doing this but I don't like the stink of 110=164=€8k.

DapperGent

murfie wrote:

It seems to me because these tourneys are sponsered by Vc and run by a company and because of this none of you seem to care the that none of the rebuys and topups are going back into the prize pool. Can someone please explain this to me!!??

If for example the dublin student tourney in the Gresham a few weeks ago had done this you would all be up in arms demanding blood!!

Just an observation, please correct me if i am wrong.

Show me where the details of this tournament have been posted before or where a boardster has posted up his experiences in this tournament before. I can't remember seeing anything much about these tourneys before personally.

Maybe I just missed it and we've been remiss in our pay out structure sabre rattling.

murfie

Pokerevents wrote:

50euro tournament in the westwood hotel every wednesday night.
register @ 7 first hand dealt @8 sharp €8000 prizepool
Croupiers at every table, tournament director etc.
2x small card clubs in city 4 aces dominick street and 21 club forster st.

No i'm just wondering how they can offer the €8k prizepool for 110 and the same for 160 players. Also seen as the topup/rebuy is another €50 on top of the €55 at the door. Just seem strange, but there are others on here that know alot more about the tournament structures than i do, so i dont know.

Davey Devil

It was posted months ago and was given the third degree:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=210033&highlight=westwood

murfie

I stand corrected then, sorry.

But the dublin games starts tonight and i would say they will have at the very min 160 at it. will they be offering 8k for that one also and is it capped??

bmc

I'm pretty sure from what I've seen and heard that the prize fund may well be "capped" at €8000 and even if it's not it certainly doesn't seem like the full €50 from your initial buy in and €50 from your rebuys are going into the fund.

The weekly payouts were on the pokerevents website but appear to have moved. As far as I recall, the payouts were identical each week.

DeVore

They get grilled if they post here to advertise it.

DeV.

Jaden

Specific to this tourament (and the reaon why I went) was that it seemed to me to pay out quite well.

There were 108 people play last night, this means:

€5 x 108 = €540 Registration.
€50 x 108 = €5400 Buy-in.

There was Tea/Coffee and some finger food (Cocktail sausages and Chicken wings). I would say that the registration covered this plus the room rental for the night.

They had 12 Tables running, plus 1 director and 2 other floor staff I could see. As tables closed, they became side games with dealers.

12 x €75 per dealer = €900
3 x €150 floor staff = €450

Add this to the €6,000 cash prize &
4 x Cork tournie tickets @ €500 each.

You're looking at €9,350K costs, with €5,400 from buy-in. This would mean that they needed 79 Rebuys/Topups (limited to 1 each) to break even.

€1,500 max profit on the night.

I know the ticket costs for the Cork game didn't cost €250, but that is their value. They also paid €250 accomodation for each ticket won.

In fairness, unless I've got something arseways, this was all done in a very fair manner.

Am I right(ish)?

Shortstack

Does anyone know the legalities involved in organsing a tournament in hotel ?
I am thinking about holding one in Louth and would like to know if it is ok to charge a registration fee. Also can you do the same on sit & go's for the people knocked out?

I am thinking a monthy €100 tournament. Capacity of 200 runners. €10 reg. All entry fees given out in prize money - 100%. 5000 starting chips. 25 min blinds.
25/50 50/100 75/150 100/200 150/300 200/400 300/600 500/1000 800/1600 1000/2000 1500/3000 2000/4000 3000/6000 5000/10000 8000/16000 12000/24000.

It would be self deal until the last 3 tables with 27 paid if event is full.

Payout based on a full tournament :

1st - 4500
2nd - 2600
3rd - 1800
4th - 1500
5th - 1250
6th - 1000
7th - 800
8th - 650
9th - 500
10th - 18th - 350
19-27th - 250

bmc

Jaden: Yes, the tournament run in Galway is run privately and yes it is very difficult for them to make a profit (which they obviously aim to do and fair play to them) from it. However it was just to point out to those of us who are lucky enough to be able to play in Dublin that we normally get much better value. What the casinos make from the tournaments has been discussed to death and the conclusion is a big fat nothing. They do however, lure people into the cash games and table games. Just by the nature of this tournament being privately run it offers poorer value. I wouldn't like this to be seen as criticism of the organisation/organisers though.

Shortstack: The IPT tournaments require you to become a "member" of a "private club" in exactly the same way that the casinos do. As far as I know, (and I'm not suggesting that that is very far), this is all that is required from a legal point of view.

bohsman

If they are taking registration they cant also take money from the prizepool, Ill have a word with some people and see what the story is.

bmc

bohsman wrote:

If they are taking registration they cant also take money from the prizepool, Ill have a word with some people and see what the story is.

I don't think they're describing it as registration in any of their advertising but the guy whom I paid on the Wednesday night explained to me (in case I hadn't played a tournament before) that €50 was "for my chips" and €5 was for "administration". They are certainly taking more than €5 per head for themselves.

bohsman

From what Im hearing they are capping the prizepool, Ill try and confirm it but if they are I will have nothing to do with dealing or playing these events. There is a regular on these boards who might be able to confirm this.