BlondeFish;358229 wroteUnfortunately, it seems that only a small percentage of members still plays poker in their area casinos. Every single poker tournament I've played at Casino Rama, Mohawk (& recently at Brantford) have sold out, and I recognize a lot of faces from all my old poker circles > 4 years ago (including home games, underground, casino gamblers, and even bar leagues), but not forumers. ???
I'm sure you've already calculated the rake, but for those who haven't, it's 16% for this $380 + $10 + $10 + $50 tourney. Not as good as Ontario, but still much more +EV compared to Seneca, California (extra 7% withholding rape) or anywhere in the US.
You probably don't see many forumers at the Ontario tournies since they are so inconveniently located. Try adding your travel time and gas $$ into your rake calculations and you can then understand why it is so much better to play in AB. Take your hourly live winrate and use that as your travel time factor.
It's not a good rake, but I think a small part goes to AB charities (2.5%?) (so I wouldn't even consider that part rake if it ACTUALLY goes to charity...anyone have info on this?) and I only play tournies for fun as considering them a source of long term profit given the few I play a year would be silly given the extremely high variance in mtts. So, I don't much care about an extra few % in rake if the field size and structure are decent.
FWIW, I would rather pay a bit more in rake for double the field size of Ontario rooms. It would be nice to see them stop capping games at 80 players which is terrible IMO. I'm not saying this is the case for this series at Deerfoot (anyone know the #s they've been getting?), but I knwo even the monthly deepstacks at YH in YEG get 2 days of approx 100 entries, which is much more preferable to capping at 80.
As long as the rooms have good, consistent cash games with a reasonable rake I am willing to pay a few dollars more for the occasional tournament.
That being said, I don't know if I can play today given that I don't see this taking <18 hours...so my schedule may not allow it.