Andy Glazer/Gaming Club Wld Poker Championship

[Fmonti]

On Jly 2nd I received an email regarding an article in Final Table Poker written by Andy Glazer. Seem he had just returned from a tournament (in Europe) I believe, but was so incensed but what transpired there that he wanted to cool down before writing about it and "naming names". Does anyone have any insight as to what did happen? Perhaps its was discussed here and I missed it...It was the Gaming Club World Poker Championship.

[HUSKER'66]

Don't know all the details, but unfortunately with his passing...we'll never know exactly what he was refering to. /images/graemlins/frown.gif

Rest in peace Andy, you will be truly missed.

Husker

[Renauldi]

One aspect of the tournament Andy complained about was that it had a non-random/non-public draw. I'm repeating this a little second hand and have tried to be as accurate as possible, but there may be a detail incorrect here or there so I haven't named any names.

The format was 8 heats or groups of 16 players. The winner of each heat forms the final table which pays prizes 1st-8th, the finalists of the 8 groups each get the same prize money for 9th-16th.

The tournament was organized by an online poker site, who also had a well publicized team of 4 paid representatives playing in the tournament. This isn't a "team" in the bad sense, in that these are well known skilled players, who share some of each others action, but play just as hard vs each other as with strangers at the table. They are very public about being friends and I've never heard anyone doubt their integrity.

This team had each member placed non-randomly in separate heats supposedly to avoid any appearance of collusion. Other groups of players sent from competing online sites did not receive the same treatment.

For a team of 4 players that plays together in hundreds of tournaments to be split up this one time seems suspect. The non-randomness of being placed in separate heats increased the team's odds of finishing higher in the money and of having more multiple prize wins. In a random draw they could have ended up in 1, 2 or 3 heats and would have zero probability of a 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th given the restrictions of the tournament structure. The fewer heats they were in the fewer top prizes they could attain. By separating them into distinct heats they were guaranteed a possibility of finishing multiple times with higher prizes as a team. Obviously the better the team finishes, the better the publicity for the sponsoring poker site, especially since the final 6 players would be televised. Nothing would have made better tv than if all four team members had made the final table.

The issue of fairness will be increasingly a problem the more sponsored tournaments there are, where there is a mix of both sponsored and non-sponsored players. There's not only the draw to consider, there are director rulings, application of the clock, seat changes etc. Any of these can be slanted to favor the tournament sponsor's players and still stay in the gray area enough to be short of being called blatant cheating.

End of Rant
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Andy Glazer:
I didn't know Andy well, but got to spend a little time with him in Australia at the Aussie Millions in January. He won his first event right after getting of the plane and won another soon after. He was overjoyed at finally moving beyond losing after making the final table to winning entire events. I got to talk to him for several hours at the Seven Card Stud event and he impressed me as fair, honest and genuinely interested in people. I've always enjoyed his writing and am glad I was able to meet him. He will be missed.

[HUSKER'66]

Good info and insight.

Thanks for the post.

Husker

[Bill Murphy]

That's what I heard happened. "Draw" was setup beforehand; a friend of mine knew what his heat was three hours before the official draw time. Two of the team members made the final table, I believe...

[1800GAMBLER]

Hi.

Are the players who gaming club had under their 'team' 4 players from the site or 4 well known players? I'm curious because i know one online player of gaming club was there, sent by them, who didn't actually win in yet gets a lot of bonuses from TGC for his high stakes (read, high rake) multitabling. Any more details you have on how they selected this team would be welcomed.

Thanks.

[byronkincaid]

It was the Hendon Mob

[daveymck]

It was the mob and they have claimed they knew nothing of the decision as they were playing in a charity tournament (which they were as there are photos on the site).

It has been discussed on the mob forum and it sounds like there were other bigger issues, eg the changing of the starting blind limits for differing heats amonst some other things.