Poker Tourney in Ottawa Aug 28th
Hey Poker players. The Ottawa Poker Club is running its regular tournament this Saturday Aug. 28th at 7:30. The buy in is $50 with one $40 re buy and one $20 add on. As always it is Texas no limit Holdem. We are limiting the event to 70 players so you will need to confirm your spot ASAP. Our event for the 21st had a 12 person waiting list. So get in early to avoid missing out. We will pay out the top 12 places. There is no rake!!! For more details check us out at www.canadapokerclub.com
You can confirm your spot by emailing us at ottawapoker.rob@rogers.com :canada:
You can confirm your spot by emailing us at ottawapoker.rob@rogers.com :canada:
Comments
This may be misleading.
As I understand it from the website, money is taken out of the prize pool to cover certain expenses (according to the website, $150 for rental of space and decks of cards, and $50-$80 for pop and chips).
ScottyZ
Tough for the dealers to rake those tourney chips!!!
Looks like it works out to around $47+$3 for the buy-in if they get 70 people... I'd be more interested in knowing the blind schedule... starting chips etc.
The term rake means that the house AKA the organizers do not profit form any part of the tourney. The snack food and pop is included in the cost of the entry.
We do take money out of the pot for the rental of the hall and cards (we use new un opened deck each week. So yes some money does come out of the prize pool but goes directly into the event not to us.
You start with 1000 in chips
The blinds: Up every 20 min
10-20
20-40
40-80
70-140
100-200
200-300
300-600
400-800
500-100
700-1400
800-1600
1000-2000
And grow from there. We introduce antes at the 800-1600 mark.
They usually run for about 6-7 hours if we get the 70 players.
Just so you understand. We do not use dealers. We move the deal around the table and use cut cards to protect the bottom of the deck. It has worked out very well for the past 5 months. We have yet to have any "disagreements" and everyone has a good time.
FYI: we also have cleared these events with the Ottawa division of the OPP. We went over how it works and they had no objections to it at all.
1. Players during the break were allowed to put their tounament chips into their pockets and leave the playing area with no chip counts recorded. The poker chips used were fairly standard chips, with no special stamp, or markings.
2. It was announced at the beginning of the tournament that tables would be broken in order from highest numbered table to lowest numbered. Of 8 tables, table number 3 was broken second. This matters a great deal in a re-buy tournament. Being on table 3 (which should *not* have been broken anytime soon) which was extremely soft, I had been in high-variance stack-building mode during the re-buy period, only to have to have to say goodbye to all of the big-stacked fish when the organizers failed to follow the rule they had set out themselves at the beginning of the tournament and broke our table out of order.
3. Players were shuffling and dealing cards themselves (as was already mentioned) with no minimum shuffling standards, and on non-poker tables. Several people shuffling did not riffle the cards. Inferior playing cards were used, and became warped almost immediately. Many cards were exposed and/or flew off the slick tables. Naturally, the dealing was incredibly slow. At one point we had 4 hands dealt in a single 20 minute blind level.
4. There was no visible and transparent way of keeping track of the re-buys and add-ons. The number of re-buys I took personally was incorrectly recorded on my tournament entry card.
I understand that the organizers are basically volunteering, and I'm sure that they are doing their best, and continuing to improve. And I'm sure that many people do enjoy these tournaments and are happy that they are available. However, statements that the tournaments have "worked out very well" and that "everyone has a good time" are extremely subjective, and, in my opinion, significant overstatements.
ScottyZ
Thanks for the feed back. I wish you hand mentioned this at the event because you have some very good points. I expect you attended the event when we played up stairs several weeks ago?? In the heat wave.
1. You can not leave the table with chips If people did they should not have been able to!(we have ordered custom stamped chips either way) But we now use table captains to watch the chips on break, verify the rebuys and add ons. Works much better.
2. Not too sure about that comment. To the best of my knowledge it was handled properly. If it was being done out of order some one should have said something.
3. We use standard cards and there are always new decks available any time if you feel the cards are becoming an issue.
4. I find that hard to understand as the totals on the cards and the total money is always verified. If I am correct on the event you attend the money as always was bang on.
5. You are right, we do this as a hobby and if you are looking for or expecting pro tables and dealers this is not the event for you. We are not lucky enough to live any where near a real casino (at least not in our own country)that can offer such options so we do the best we can with what we have to work with.
Scotty I really am glad you brought this up because I will endeavor to ensure your points are doubled check for future events. It is a fun night. And this is the first I have heard from anyone with an issue. I would like to hear any other issues you had . Please email me ottawapoker.rob@rogers.com
The things that Scotty mentioned are all easy things to fix. They are definitely not a good reason to not recommend the tourney.
I'm sure your next tourney will be even better.
Wish Icould make the trip.
Good luck with it, it does sound like fun!
By the way, if anyone does know of a Toronto tour like this.....I am ready and waiting!
It might have been this one... it *was* hot.
I'm glad to hear that this should not have happened, but the fact that it did happen was a concern. I had never seen anything like that before, and I'll have to say, it took me a little off-guard.
In addition to being careful about the chips remaining visible on the tables at all times, and your idea of a "table captain" (not sure what that means, but it sounds interesting), custom stamped chips are probably a great idea too.
Simply recording everyone's chip count before the break on small pieces of paper (for example, have everyone record the chip count of the player beside them or something like that) and verifying those counts on return will only take a short amount of time, and will go a long way towards reducing cheating via chip transfers or additions.
I believe said something. I mentioned that we were table number 3 and that that table 7 should be the next to break. The response that I got was that table 3 was breaking because it has the least number of players. It was true that we had the least number of players at that time, but this did not agree with the rule I had heard previously.
I think you're right that I probably should have spoken up even still beyond this, but this being my first tournament of this type, I didn't even really know who I was talking to (i.e. whether I was already talking to an actual organizer, or to someone else who was there helping out), or who I was supposed to be talking to about this kind of thing.
I do know for sure that *if* I correctly heard the rule announced at the beginning of the tournament that the highest numbered table would always be broken (is that your standard rule?), then it was incorrectly done that particular time.
That's good that more decks are available, but the specific brand we were using would have seemed to need replacing every half hour or so, or maybe every hour at the most.
The cards were not such a big deal really--- it was the slow pace of the game that was a more significant concern. However, if it must be that the players deal the cards, I'll have to admit that I can't think of any really good suggestions on how to try to speed up the game.
While I'm sure there were no problems with the money, I simply noticed that my own re-buys had been incorrectly recorded, and the re-buy process seemed to me to a little hectic (to be expected of course). The whole re-buy process just struck me as something that *could* possibly be a little off in the final accounting.
This sounds like only a minor detail, and probably is. However, running a re-buy tournament in the first place I think might add too much of an accounting complication to a semi-casual event.
Of course, I know it's a balancing act, since offering re-buys is a
*big* plus to the players (and organizers) since no-one is forced to leave the tournament getting almost no play.
Yeah, I understand this. Like I said already, I'm sure that there are lots of people who do enjoy these tournaments very much, and they seem to be very popular according to the recent turn-outs. Despite all of my critisims so far, I *do* think it's great that people are out there doing this kind of poker event in some form or another.
My main overall suggestion would be to somehow get actual poker dealers. I know this is incredibly difficult, and probably impossible with the resources you have and style of tournament you are running. Finding a large number of competent poker dealers (in a city with no real poker scene) is going to be hard enough in the first place, and they will want to be paid (or have it be otherwise worth their time) of course. I certainly don't know a whole lot about this sort of thing, but using dealers (or otherwise having non-volunteer employees) may very well cause complications with the legality of the tournaments also.
ScottyZ
I agree that *some* of the things I discussed are relatively easy to fix.
The main reason I am hesitant to recommend these tournaments is that the fact that players are dealing, and under difficult conditions (for example, dealing on tables that are not poker friendly, complications with players who don't know some of the finer rules of poker, making calculations involving side pots) leaves the pace of the game so slow (in terms of hands per hour dealt) that there is almost no play in the tournament.
Apart from getting non-player dealers (which is itself very difficult, and probably not practical), I don't see an easy way to fix this.
I'd certainly agree with this, and I think the organizers *are* doing an excellent job given the resources they have available and the legal constraints that they face.
ScottyZ