Guelph/Rockwood Tourney from Hell
Be Warned: Sour Grapes / Vent-o-rama.
Up to this point, charity tourney experiences has always been positive, quality tables, tournament directors / dealers with a good knowledge of the rules, etc. The sheer amount of dead money in these things usually makes it easy to overlook the shortcomings...
Gavin Smith was the "special guest" for this abortion.
Buy-in: 50$ for T2000.
Rebuys for first three levels.
Add-on: 40$ for T4000.
(Rebuys and add-ons go to charity).
Estimated turn out 150. Actual: 80 or so.
I should have turned on my heels when I got to the hall and found no poker tables. Wooden fucking banquet tables. Fine. I can deal with that.
Get to my table, and find used casino cards. They're punched, and have marker runs down the sides. They've mixed decks of these, so the marker marks aren't consistent (i.e.: Kh had a mark at the bottom, others at the top). Myself and another guy at our table who knew our shit brought the deck back three times before settling on a "reasonably marked" deck.
Tables were supposed to be 10, but were about 8-7. Fine. No dealers.
Blinds doubling every 20 minutes. Not terrible, but:
After the rebuy period: Tournament director didn't know how to breakdown tables. He'd (and his two friends) would walk around arbitrarily and move people. Some tables had 7 or so, others including mine were playing 4-handed. At a friend's table (also 4 handed) two guys decided that to slow things down they'd go smoke, and take their chips. Nothing done about it. So my friend played 800-400 blinds heads up for about 10 minutes.
Director didn't know where to move people from. On multiple occasions, he moved people behind the button, others in front of the button. I was moved from behind the button (of a table of 4), to another table (of 5). I tried to seat myself behind the button, but could only take the only available seat, since the people eliminated were still occupying their seats. There was no directive as to seat behind the button, least advantageous, etc.
I won't even address the payout stucture..
I was doing fairly well, and then snap, all of a sudden (thanks to doublin' blinds), was about 1.5 - 2M at a 5 seat table.
Caveat Emptor. Here's the website of the people running it: Feature Table Poker | "I'm All-in.............I Call" Avoid any of their tournaments like the plague.
(I should have known, being that it's Geocities circa 1997 quality, Though plenty of good local hosts don't even have websites).
Hell of a first post.
Up to this point, charity tourney experiences has always been positive, quality tables, tournament directors / dealers with a good knowledge of the rules, etc. The sheer amount of dead money in these things usually makes it easy to overlook the shortcomings...
Gavin Smith was the "special guest" for this abortion.
Buy-in: 50$ for T2000.
Rebuys for first three levels.
Add-on: 40$ for T4000.
(Rebuys and add-ons go to charity).
Estimated turn out 150. Actual: 80 or so.
I should have turned on my heels when I got to the hall and found no poker tables. Wooden fucking banquet tables. Fine. I can deal with that.
Get to my table, and find used casino cards. They're punched, and have marker runs down the sides. They've mixed decks of these, so the marker marks aren't consistent (i.e.: Kh had a mark at the bottom, others at the top). Myself and another guy at our table who knew our shit brought the deck back three times before settling on a "reasonably marked" deck.
Tables were supposed to be 10, but were about 8-7. Fine. No dealers.
Blinds doubling every 20 minutes. Not terrible, but:
After the rebuy period: Tournament director didn't know how to breakdown tables. He'd (and his two friends) would walk around arbitrarily and move people. Some tables had 7 or so, others including mine were playing 4-handed. At a friend's table (also 4 handed) two guys decided that to slow things down they'd go smoke, and take their chips. Nothing done about it. So my friend played 800-400 blinds heads up for about 10 minutes.
Director didn't know where to move people from. On multiple occasions, he moved people behind the button, others in front of the button. I was moved from behind the button (of a table of 4), to another table (of 5). I tried to seat myself behind the button, but could only take the only available seat, since the people eliminated were still occupying their seats. There was no directive as to seat behind the button, least advantageous, etc.
I won't even address the payout stucture..
I was doing fairly well, and then snap, all of a sudden (thanks to doublin' blinds), was about 1.5 - 2M at a 5 seat table.
Caveat Emptor. Here's the website of the people running it: Feature Table Poker | "I'm All-in.............I Call" Avoid any of their tournaments like the plague.
(I should have known, being that it's Geocities circa 1997 quality, Though plenty of good local hosts don't even have websites).
Hell of a first post.
Comments
How did they take their chips off the tables without their legs being broken?
Speaking of breaking legs, this (nice, older) woman pulled someone's (table co-captain) folded hand out of the muck and looked at it! Cripes.
I'm done with these, at least for the time being, despite having made decent bucks in the past.. And when it's time for some hair of the dog, it'll be a poker host I've played with before.
TILT-FEST in a can.
So I'm at a training session all weekend, and they held a $20 fundraising tournament for leukemia.
I'm obviously hung over ($1 drinks!!), so I'll do the point form thing.
- Wooden, non-poker tables.
- The classic "let's play a game of poker" setup; chips are worth 1, and the blinds will start at 1/1
- Starting stack was a "tube" filled with chips. Did they count off chips / tube? Nah, they just filled the tube man! So, some had as few as 38 chips, and some as high as 50.
- Blinds were 1/1 for the first 50 minutes, then they went to 1/2, and then doubled every 12 minutes
- Blinds kept doubling UNTIL it became sensible just to bet in increments of "tubes", where it went back to 1/2. Oh, just so you know, the blinds went up to 64/128 before going to tubes (that's right, the blinds went back down!)
- Payout? You win a prize - a poker set!! :P
- My favorite part? Player's missing from the table? Oh, we'll just wait for him/her... while the blinds creep upwards
- Standard betting example;
What are the blinds?
4-8
I bet 8!
Call, call, I raise.. to 10
10 total?
Yes.
fold (original raiser), call call
Siiiiiiiiiiiiiigh... and no, they wouldn't agree to a cash game!
Mark