pokerroom 20K STT challenge, anyone else in?

[DJ Sensei]

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For each real money SnG tournament played between September 3 and 5, points will be awarded to the top finishers.

10-Handed Win - 30 points
10-Handed Runner-up - 10 points
5-Handed Win - 15 points

Note. The point distribution is equivalent for all buy-ins.

By the end of the promotion period the Top 10 players who have earned the most points will be awarded tickets to a $20,000 Added Single Table Tournament. And all Top 100 finishers will receive a PokerRoom.com Beanie.

An anonymous Leaderboard will be made available for you to track your progress as well as review the current Top 10.

[/ QUOTE ]

Anybody else going hard this weekend for this one?

This presents an interesting problem... if a lot of people try for this, a lot of good players will likely go small stakes, but many other good players just won't try or won't think to go small stakes. So, what stakes do you play to maximize your chances of making it (minimize the average skill level of your opponents). I think you may wanna try $33s or so.

[DJ Sensei]

Yea, 33's was where i was at last time i played stts on pokerroom, and i did quite well. However, I think the sheer numbers of people (who mostly suck) playing 5+.5s and 10+1s means theres more potential to win the most there, i think. The question is, is there more money to be made playing a ton of higher buyins and having a good ROI (say, 22s or 33s) or playing a ton of lower buyins and going for the possible top 10 STT big score?

[Eihli]

Are single players going to have a chance at this or will it be nothing but a bunch of tag teams?

Well, you get 2k EV (I'm assuming your skill level and skill level of other people who make it'll be about even if you make it) from doing this. So if your % chance of making it * 2k > profit to be made from higher stakes, then go for it.

[Apathy]

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Are single players going to have a chance at this or will it be nothing but a bunch of tag teams?

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Unless you plan on playing without sleep yourself I would think you have no chance, but I don't know what people are like on pokerroom, just guessing.

Luckily for you a lot or the crazies will be in vegas during this one /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[DJ Sensei]

Well, the terms and conditions mention that they wont tolerate collusion, but I don't know how strictly it can be enforced. In any case, my gameplan for now is to play hard for the first night or so when it starts and see where i stand. If I feel like I have a chance, i'll keep going. Hopefully it wont cut into valuable substance-abuse time.

[KingMedicine]

there'll be more than 10 teams playing 24/7 for 3 days for this one. when its all said and done, you should be able to compute the numbers and see that 24/7 play is the only way the top 10 made the top 10.

[Nicholasp27]

they aren't talking about collusion

they are talking about one person playing 12 hours on an account...and then going to sleep while a friend plays the next 12 hours on that account...but if u get on a heater and get tons of firsts then u could still do it playing 16-20 hours a day

there is also something to be said for playing more aggressive early on to get in position to win or else to move on to the next tourney...but that would hurt your actual money, so may not be smart unless u are certain you'll make it to top 10

[benkahuna]

I don't think there are any rules about one person per account and I doubt even if such a rule existed (even for this promotion) that it would be enforceable.

Fun event. After a marathon session I got 16th, but I could have played more (and obviously should have). Next time.

PR told me there likely to do an event like this again because not only was it successful, the response by customers was also very positive.

[sirpupnyc]

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PR told me there likely to do an event like this again because not only was it successful, the response by customers was also very positive.

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<cynic>
By which they mean their eyes bugged out as they racked up piles of entry fees from people who didn't have the slightest chance in the promotion.
</cynic>

[pzhon]

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Are single players going to have a chance at this or will it be nothing but a bunch of tag teams?

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I finished 2nd with 2405 points. 10th place had 2235 points. I played for 59 hours out of the 72, so at my pace, you needed to play for about 55 hours to make the top 10. Other strategies might have been able to accumulate more points per hour. I planned to play for up to 63 hours, and could have done more if I hadn't started out sleep-deprived.

Two support people I contacted (live chat) agreed that tag teams constitute cheating, but a third (phone) said it wasn't clear from the rules, unless the team members already had other Pokerroom account, which would mean one person was playing on multiple accounts, or if it constituted "other fraud." They all said there were people monitoring the contestants for possible cheating (probably for chip dumping), but I doubt they care enough to do a good job. They kept asking for individuals to check, and I kept telling them the obvious, that they only need to check the ten winners, and they hadn't announced the winners. I sent them a number of ways to detect teams. They promised to look into it and to send me a report, but I'm not going to hold my breath, as the only worse support system I have seen is the Boss Media network.

I also reported people for colluding by explicitly asking to check it down when someone was all-in. This is endemic on PokerRoom, but it is still collusion, and I'm tired of idiots who do it and then protest that there is nothing wrong with it, or that it is just good strategy (which it isn't, but that's not the point).

Along the way, I cleared the last $200 reload bonus, but my ROI was only about 7%, so I gained only about $500 for the weekend. I think that hideous ROI was a combination of bad play (sometimes intentional), unusually tough opponents in some tournaments, and really bad luck.

[benkahuna]

A lot of people won beanies.

[PokerRoom.com]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Are single players going to have a chance at this or will it be nothing but a bunch of tag teams?

[/ QUOTE ]
I finished 2nd with 2405 points. 10th place had 2235 points. I played for 59 hours out of the 72, so at my pace, you needed to play for about 55 hours to make the top 10. Other strategies might have been able to accumulate more points per hour. I planned to play for up to 63 hours, and could have done more if I hadn't started out sleep-deprived.

Two support people I contacted (live chat) agreed that tag teams constitute cheating, but a third (phone) said it wasn't clear from the rules, unless the team members already had other Pokerroom account, which would mean one person was playing on multiple accounts, or if it constituted "other fraud." They all said there were people monitoring the contestants for possible cheating (probably for chip dumping), but I doubt they care enough to do a good job. They kept asking for individuals to check, and I kept telling them the obvious, that they only need to check the ten winners, and they hadn't announced the winners. I sent them a number of ways to detect teams. They promised to look into it and to send me a report, but I'm not going to hold my breath, as the only worse support system I have seen is the Boss Media network.


[/ QUOTE ]

Hi,

We have run this promotion on a much smaller scale before, so we know what to look out for.
And just like you mentioned the Top 10 will always be the focus of all manual control efforts.

It's clear from reading posts made by top ten contenders here and in Pokah that there were a number of different strategies that worked as a means of making it onto the leaderboard.
But I'm sure all of them included a lot of hard work.

Hopefully the final on Saturday, heavily railbirded due to the simultaneously run Become A Pro Tournament, will be a sweet reward.

The "good" thing about the kind of tag-teaming you mentioned is that the more efficient you try to do it, the easier it is to spot.

By your account and others it is clear that such attempts were NOT necessary to make it to the SnG Final.

Good going by the way. Impressive effort.

I'm sure this promo might appear again in new forms up ahead.

C u at the tables!

PokerRoom.com
Meet Them and Beat Them

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Are single players going to have a chance at this or will it be nothing but a bunch of tag teams?

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We have run this promotion on a much smaller scale before, so we know what to look out for.
And just like you mentioned the Top 10 will always be the focus of all manual control efforts.

[/ QUOTE ]
Great. Can you state unequivocally that the top 10 players (myself included) were not switching the IP addresses from which they logged in every few hours? I was told on the phone that a report would be sent to me, but I have received nothing. Keep in mind that if a player admits to cheating in this fashion later, but you didn't catch it, this will look really bad for you.

I'd also like to hear whether you have acted upon my complaint about a player asking to check it down while I was all-in. That was collusion. Again, I was told that I would receive a report, but I have received nothing.

The lack of response to my complaints about the endemic cheating and abusive chat is one of the main reasons I don't play on PokerRoom more. If you can't be bothered to respond appropriately, perhaps you just don't take the players' concerns seriously.

[pzhon]

I went out in 5th ($1700) when I pushed with KQs and ran into AK.

I'm not sure if I would do this promotion again, but $2200 for about 60 hours wasn't too bad.

[Daliman]

[ QUOTE ]
I went out in 5th ($1700) when I pushed with KQs and ran into AK.

I'm not sure if I would do this promotion again, but $2200 for about 60 hours wasn't too bad.

[/ QUOTE ]

Slave labor wages... /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[pzhon]

[ QUOTE ]
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Are single players going to have a chance at this or will it be nothing but a bunch of tag teams?

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[PokerRoom representative] We have run this promotion on a much smaller scale before, so we know what to look out for.
And just like you mentioned the Top 10 will always be the focus of all manual control efforts.

[/ QUOTE ]
Great. Can you state unequivocally that the top 10 players (myself included) were not switching the IP addresses from which they logged in every few hours? I was told on the phone that a report would be sent to me, but I have received nothing.

[/ QUOTE ]

I sent an e-mail on September 6th. Almost 2 months later, on an e-mail dated October 27th, I received the following ridiculous response from PokerRoom.com Support:

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I do apologize for the delay in reply to you, we have been extremely busy and are doing our best to answer all emails as soon as possible.

I can appreciate the frustration you may have felt regarding possible cheating during the Labor Day tournament.

With regret I am not able to investigate as suggested as the tournament is nearly 2 months past, as such no follow up actions are applicable in this case. I did access the link you forwarded but it was expired. [No, it wasn't (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=&amp;Number=3310348&amp;page=2&amp;view=expan ded&amp;sb=5&amp;o=14&amp;vc=1).]

PokerRoom encourages any information regarding unfair play, and we make every effort to follow up all reports, with a focus on stamping out, at the earliest time, incidents of unfair play.

Once again I apologize for the delay in replying and thank your for your feedback. As a gesture of thanking you for your patience I have applied a 5+50 ticket to your account, with an expiry of the 3rd November.
[/list]
The support person on the phone said it would take 2 minutes per account to check for cheating by a tag team. PokerRoom gave out $20k without taking 20 minutes to check the 10 accounts for cheating, despite my timely request before the $20k tournament. Then, seven weeks later, after noticing that they had not done anything, they gave me $5.50 as an apology. Pathetic.

I'm not inclined to play there anymore.