My hot streak in live tournaments has come to an end, having today busted out of a tourney held at Circle Casino in Manchester in double-quick time.
A friend of mine had been complaining about Grosvenor Casinos’ extortionate fees for tournaments, with a £15 event having £4 added on. So instead we decided to go for Circle’s Saturday night £15 + £2 tournament.
If only we had known how terrible the structure would be.
After we’d registered, we quickly saw that the blind levels started at 50/100, with starting stacks of 5,000 – this meant 50 big blinds as opposed to the 100 that you get at Grosvenor.
Furthermore, the blind levels went up every ten minutes! Within an hour they were on 200/400 and I’d probably only had 25 or so hands.
None of this would have mattered if I had managed to get some decent cards. Unfortunately, my best three hands were pocket 3s, A-10 off-suit and king-jack suited.
With rapidly increasing blinds and poor cards, there wasn’t really much wriggle room and I ended up busting out on a rather pathetic flush draw with overs.
Most frustratingly, we had a drunk guy on the table (not me this time!) and he was intentionally holding up the game. He received several warnings and had the clock called on him a ton, but it still slowed up proceedings considerably.
While most of this is sour grapes, I do think the structure was pretty horrible and I came away feeling deeply unsatisfied from my night of poker. I will definitely be avoiding this tournament in the future.
My friend and I decided to take a piece of each other’s action before the tournament started, meaning we would share 20% of any winnings either of us got.
He made it to the final table, but fell just short of making the money by coming 6th (top four paid).
Although neither of us got paid off on this occasion, I do like the idea of staking each other, as it means we can compensate for each other’s downswings.
I’m still hoping to play in the Genting Poker Players’ Championship later this month, but admittedly it is looking like a tall order, as I won’t be able to stump up the £165 entry fee directly.
This means I’m reliant on qualifying through a satellite, but at £15 a pop and only one person receiving a ticket, these are pretty steep themselves.
I will give myself one attempt at a satellite for the tourney, and then regrettably give up on the idea of playing in the tournament, although I am intrigued to see how I would fare against a much higher calibre of player.
Summary
Live poker: -£17
Total winnings from live poker: +£174
checking the nuts 