Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 42 (M)
Posts: 852
So I have been playing a lot of live tournaments over the past 6 months and thought I'd share some of my experiences. I currently reside in San Diego, Ca which is the home to a handful of indian casino's & card rooms, not to mention it is only 2hrs from L.A. which also has a couple of very large card rooms. Now as I moved into live play I invested my money I was quite shrewd at first playing lower buy tournaments. I quickly found out that live tournaments (which I had rarely played, most of my live experience was in cash games.) & online tournaments had a few key differences. The first thing I noticed is that most low buy in tournaments in a casino or card room are often more of a gamble than a slot machine. Why you ask? Many reasons too few starting chips, too high starting blinds, too short of levels.... Essentially, just terrible structure. Who want's to put up 30$ of their money & start with 3500 in starting chips with 100 and 100 blinds going up to 100 200 in fifteens minutes? You don't get to see nearly as many hands either as you would in an online tourney, there is not 30 second time limit and the hand is folded though I sometimes wish there were as I think some players just like to take 1-2 full minutes per decision. Really? You really need that long? Let me tell you a secret dude, it's 30 bucks! You can't even take your lady out to a show for 30 bucks and these blinds aren't getting any smaller! I've actually had a live table get hostile with me for calling time on a guy late in a tourney. I may have been a little steamed as I had just lost 60% of my stack in coin flips in the last two hands I had played. That's precisely why I needed the guy to get a move on though! Anyhow I did eventually figure out that in order to win those "turbo" style low buy in tournaments you just have to gamble and hope to win some flips. I hate to gamble. I hate to have to win flips. So on the day after Thanksgiving, "Black Friday" it's dubbed in the State's as retailer's have huge sales and depend on the day to "get in the black"(appropriate timing don't you think?) I played the highest buy-in live tournament I had ever played when I ventured to Ocean's 11. Ocean's is a local card room that you can actually read about in this month's Card Player Magazine. Back to the action. I played in Ocean's first ever Turkey Day Shoot-out. It was 125$ buy in, we started with 8000 in chips, got 30 minute blind levels that started lower than 100-100, and every player had a 25$ bounty on their head. I took out about 10 player's on my way to an 11 way chop for just over 1600$ add that to my 275$ in bounties(11 total including my own bounty I got to keep as no one busted me) and at just under 2 grand for roughly 6 hours of work, I too would get into the black. I have continued to play live though I am in the midst of a losing month, if there is one piece of advice I can give to all of you online player's wanting to experience live play. Go for the higher buy-in events, the structures are always bettr, along with the payday's. until next time Mobster's.
Joined: Jan '11
Location: United States
Age: 60 (M)
Posts: 3361
Nice to hear what you've been up to hoodi! i haven't seen a post from you for quite some time, but I guess that live play keeps you away from the computer.
You know maybe you should start a blog like some of the other Mobsters and then post in it every so often. I read most every Mobsters blog and it's a good way to get an understanding of the various techniques each player has. Also the kind of games their playing.
Joined: Nov '09
Location: Canada
Age: 55 (M)
Posts: 2387
I know how you feel about the time it takes some people to play during live tournaments. When you are used to the pace of online play, and it takes someone a long time every time he has to make a decision, one hand can often take several minutes to play, which then forces you to sh*t or get off the pot, or else you will be blinded out. My favourite live players are those who theorise endlessly out loud when it is their turn, guessing at what you probably have since you raised 4bb when the flop came out.
