spawell tonite

jobless

Hi all,

I heard there's a NL tourney tonight in the spawell tempelogue....does anyone have any details on this...what time does it start?

OhPinchy

alright jobless - the tournament is part of the VC poker in pubs challenge. Do a search in this forum for it and you'll find details and listings of the different places its played in.

I played one in Scholars and got turned away from the Old Mill cos it was way too full.

Kickoff is supposed to be 7.30-7.45 and reg is from 7 they say but youd wanna be there well before then to make sure you get a spot cos it could happen that loads of people turn up. Its 120 seats and in the Old Mill they turned away 100 people.

I'm going tonight I reckon and might throw my chips in the car to get a STT side game going if I miss out cos I mightnt be there early.

Its aimed at newbies really and the standard is piss poor. Its €10 buyin and is a freezeout so no rebuys and they dont take a rake as its a promotional event. €500 to winner and up to 8th gets paid (€20).

I enjoyed it as it was my first live tournie but even still I felt I didnt come up against any really decent players, but the insane blinds increments (which fair enough are due to them having to close by 11.30) really do make it into a crapshoot. And my pre-flop blind raises were treated with complete dismay.

If youre like me and trying to get a foot into live tournies then its perfect but dont set your hopes too high.

jobless

cheers pinchy....its gonna be my first live tourney so it shud do me fine

OhPinchy

Played this last night and it was exactly as mentioned above - a complete crapshoot. This time I got nothing (not even a single picture card) in the first 8 hands, by which time the blinds had gone up to 100/200 (starting chips=2000) leaving me with 9 xBB and 15 minutes to make a move before they double again. Long story short - I got one hand decent enough to make a raise (AKo), raised it to 700 from 200 and the flop came 995 which youd expect helped none of the 3 callers, but a clear tell told me one had made trips, so I folded to a 500 raise. Turns out both of them made full houses as the river came with a 5 - not sure how they figure calling that raise with J5o and K9o respectively was good value but there ya go.

So this left me with just about twice the big blind and I limped with a marginal hand from BB that didnt hit and called from the SB to put me all in and my Q9s lost out to a J3o that hit a pair of 3s. So thats the way it goes, I got to play about 5 hands in total I think, enjoyable atmosphere but I left thinking "this ain't proper poker".

I knew what to expect so its my own fault I guess, but as I left something Devore said in another thread about people going away from the poker.ie events maybe thinking "if thats poker I'm not interested" ringing in my ears. These events are aimed at getting newbies involved in poker tournaments but I think the whole blind structure means that you either have to put in huge bluffs at the start or get good enough hands to call down a huge bluff early on. This doesnt reflect proper tournament poker which is a lot more intricate than that and I just feel that a lot of people will walk away thinking "whats all this play tight agressive stuff about - you'd be blinded to death in no time with that approach" or "jaysus next time I play poker I must bluff the whole time" which I don't think will do anyone any good.

As for me I want to get a taste of a low buy-in proper tournament - what is there in Dublin in the €10 buy-in range? I'll probably start off with a freeroll in the Merrion or Fitz which will be a good stepping stone I reckon.

jobless

was also there pinchy....couldn't find a decent hand to save my life and when i did qo all in wit KQ (feck all chips left) the guy next to me had kk, after having AA the hand before and flopping a flush b4 this.....my mate got to the final table by mainly calling people's bluffs...and winning with a high ace every time.....as u said a crapshoot

POKERKING

it wasnt a 'poker.ie' event that dev was refering to because they dont run events it was pokerevents.ie 2 totally different organisations

OhPinchy

Sorry to poker.ie so for the confusion.

Yeh jobless, there was precious little method to the madness that was going on alright.

I was pretty sure there was a mechanic in operation at my table aswell and him and his mate were dealing each other cards from the bottom of the deck. I was daydreaming when I noticed it so had one of them 'did I really see that?' moments but from his reaction I could tell he knew I was onto him....I turned on the auld Brave Star eyes of a hawk from then on and needless to say the standard of hands they both got dealt quickly dropped.

Did you happen to get stuck with that big fat wench with the four soverigns? When she arrived to my table in Scholars she immediately started bossing everyone and had the nerve to think she should be dealing for everyone cos she was the best shuffler. Needless to say I told her where to stick it but shes some piece of work.

podgeen

I rang up about the one in rochestown hotel the previous thursday. Whoever I was talking to give me the details, took my name and said to show up at 7pm that i was on the list. I asked her did i need to pay in advance to secure my place, she said no once my name was down i was guaranteed a place.

I arrived about 6:45 last week to find it was booked out. The two people at the front desk said if i had not paid in advance i was not on the list.
I explained how I had rang the previous week but they were having none of it. I could not remember the name of the lady i spoke to so i didnt have any come back. I was pretty pissed off at the way responded to me. There was a waiting list so i didnt see the point in hanging around. Well they basicaly told anyone who wasn't on the list to fu(k off. Not a great way to run a tournament, I'm surprised at vcpoker, they are the ones who look bad at the end of the day.

I won't be attempting to attend any more of these "events".

DapperGent

OhPinchy wrote:

As for me I want to get a taste of a low buy-in proper tournament - what is there in Dublin in the €10 buy-in range? I'll probably start off with a freeroll in the Merrion or Fitz which will be a good stepping stone I reckon.

Unfortunately you shouldn't expect the play to be too much better at the freerolls and given that they're mostly self dealt I wouldn't expect you to get a huge amount more hands per blind level either.

From what I've seen you'll only really start getting a bit of play at something like the €20 rebuy in the Fitz, 99% of the time you'll have a dealer it can still descend into all in madness pretty quickly, with things calming down a bit after the break until the blinds catch up. From a live tournament perspective I don't think you'll play one with a good structure and good play without parting with at least €50 up front. Preferably €100.

ionapaul

I think that the €50 Double Chance would be more to your liking than the €20 rebuy - the rebuy is a €45 minimum investment, with €65 and €85 likely, while the double chance is a fixed €55. The standard of play at either isn't a patch on the €100 game, IMHO, still much madness.

Dub13

You could also checkout the new Sunday afternoon freezout in the Fitz.It will start in the next few weeks.