Zoo/SS Tourney last night

[JDErickson]

I thought I'd add my impressions of the short time I spent in the Tourney.

Average flop % was 12 and less. Never was a hand that wasn't raised BTF. Very expensive to play anything. I had AKo twice and lost huge amounts even when I folded on the turn. I had AJo hold up and A5s held up when I turned the flush. The hand that brought me down was K's BTF. Ended up losing to Slavic who had trip Q's and another player had trip 9's. This hand left me with 50 chips and I went out on the next hand.

One of the biggest things I noticed was with only 1000 starting chips and blinds going up very quickly it only took 1 or 2 hands to cripple anyone at first. I thought this took some of the skill out of the early game.

It was hard for me to keep track of what was happening on the table and I found myself waiting until the action got to me to see what had happened. The chips on table at far end of table were hard to tell what people had done (called/raised) without hovering over the stacks. I would raise BTF and then a few seconds later it would come back to me 3 bet and I was unsure by who or what was happening.

These were my impressions. I did have fun though.

Jim

[rkiray]

Actually I thought the chip structure started out fine. I went out 43 and still lasted over an hour. A couple of people at my table commented about it being a long tournament and wanting a break. I thought it got bad at the 100/200 level Since not many people had busted out, there were many short stacks. I was down to less than 2.5 BBs at that point and decided to Raise with A8o since the blinds would be there in about 3 hands. Husker 88 reraised with JJ, and I ended up with about $50 left (he had a shorter stack than me until that point).

Another interesting hand with Husker 88 that shows not every hand was raised. Thrid hand of tourney. I'm in sb with KK. Everyone folds. I decide that since this will be a tough tourney I need to use more deception than normal. I also get greedy thinking a cr on the flop will win me more than just a bb. So I just call. Husker checks. Flop comes A high, and I believe I decided to bet out. He raised me. I figure in this tight aggressive game, he would have raised with any A pf, so I give him some action. Ends up he had AK and I lose a medium size pot. I also lost a small number of chips on the first hand. So I got off to a bad start and never really recovered. Oh well, that's poker.

[GuyOnTilt]

About the software: I found it difficult to keep track of the action as well. They should have a player's bet/raise marked in numerals by his chips. This would be EXTREMELY annoying and make things very difficult in a NL Tourney.

On the starting stack size, I didn't think it was too small. The average stack had about 20 BB's in front of them almost the entire tourney, except for one round, when the blinds jumped to 50/100. I thought the increasing blind structure was fine.

Aside from that one glitch in the software, albeit a pretty major one, I think TruePoker did a good job.

[Mike Haven]

Thanks, Jim.

Maybe others would give their views in this regard under this thread? David True will be reading your comments and he seems to be the kind of Site Boss who actually cares about his players' thoughts and will try to meet them if it's possible without going outside his Site's fundamental business model and philosophy.

I agree with the confusion element - I was only railbirding and I found it difficult to follow the action. How our Reporters did such a good job while playing is beyond me.

[conform]

my thoughts on the true software and whatnot:

spending some time practising on the site before the tournament was really helpful. i had a lot of problems at first determining who was in a hand.

finding the preference to always show player names and stack sizes (including the pot size) was really helpful. showing that for the bet piles would be nice, too, as it can be a challenge to determine who raised if you aren't paying attention.

it's a very nice improvement over party that i can resize the "logs" window for chat or game events. it would be even better if i could have separate windows for each of those things.

the "buying chips from my money" thing is clunky and makes it a little irritating to try and keep track of how i'm doing in a session.

(during the tournament) on one hand where i took too long to act i was folded, fairly abruptly. i couldn't immediately tell what had happened. that being the end of the hand we went to the next hand, which was my small blind. my avatar (from my perspective) was ghosted. i can't remember if i clicked a button to indicate that i was back or not, but when action got around to me, i got the call or fold buttons. however i had no cards that i could see. so having just lost most of my stack on the previous hand, i folded, not wanting to pay for a nonexistant hand. my avatar pushed some cards away. did i have a hand after all? was it aces? i may never know. i busted out a couple honds later.

other than that i had a great time. the ring games seem quite soft and the initial shock of the strangeness of the software has worn off.

[HUSKER'66]

rkiray,
We did bump heads a few times there didn't we? I am not getting on you, but for everyones clarification it is Husker'66 (as in 1966/birthyear). /images/graemlins/grin.gifAnyone can call me Husker for short. I felt that it was an enjoyable experience overall....caught some good cards early, got punished a few times to end up short stacked only to come back a little and have it happen again. /images/graemlins/tongue.gif Ended up 25 out of 59 /images/graemlins/frown.gifbut had a good time none the less. I hear there is talk of doing something like this in a "series". Should be fun.......

[CrackerZack]

[ QUOTE ]
(during the tournament) on one hand where i took too long to act i was folded, fairly abruptly. i couldn't immediately tell what had happened. that being the end of the hand we went to the next hand, which was my small blind. my avatar (from my perspective) was ghosted. i can't remember if i clicked a button to indicate that i was back or not, but when action got around to me, i got the call or fold buttons. however i had no cards that i could see. so having just lost most of my stack on the previous hand, i folded, not wanting to pay for a nonexistant hand. my avatar pushed some cards away. did i have a hand after all? was it aces? i may never know. i busted out a couple honds later.

[/ QUOTE ]

This would be my biggest complaint also. there is no timer or anything i could see saying you had to act. dealer says something about 11 seconds then you just fold and are "ghosted" after being ghosted, you do get cards, but you can't see them. If you want to see them, you have to put your hand down by clicking where the cards would be (you'll see your avatar put his hands down) then clicking on the hands again to pick them up and look at them again. Then you'll see them.

The non-warning was a bigger issue to me once i found the card work around.

[Nottom]

I had that situation come up a few times as well. If you click on where your hand should be it generally popped up. I'm glad I figured that out because once there were Aces hiding down there.

[rkiray]

I complained in several posts this spring that Dave True read about the graphics being hard to read and slowing the game down. He considers it a selling point for his site. It certainly differenciates them from other sites. This is the biggest thing they need to fix IMHO (after the major bug). Other things they should do is allow people to play multiple tables and put in microlimit games. They generally don't have lots of players (although this is much better than it was a few months ago). And both of these ideas would help that. They do listen though. I used to dislike that they didn't have player notes and stats like other sites. They have fixed that, and are actually better than Paradise and UB now (the other sites I play).

[ninja please]

conform -- due to a few problems trying to play on true from my mac with virtual pc (as well as one "thinking to long on the river" play, i timed out a few times in the tourny. the "no cards" when it gets back to you on the next hand confused me at first, until i realized it was just your avatar holding the cards down on the table. if you click on your hands, you will raise your (previously invisible) hand back up to look at. i am sure i folded AA at least 3 times without seeing them for this reason before i figured it out.

i would also like to chime in about following the action. playing limit at true is ok, because you quickly become accustomed to what a single bet/raise/3 bet looks like in terms of size, even on the far end of the table. my trouble was that the stakes were rising fast enough (and i had no idea what the chip colors represented) that it made it much harder to tell what any stack on the far side of the table was. luckily for me i was sitting just to the left of guyOnTilt, so i could be sure that whatever it was at the far end of the table, it would be one more bet when it got to me... /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Mike Haven]

i was sitting just to the left of guyOnTilt, so i could be sure that whatever it was at the far end of the table, it would be one more bet when it got to me...

lol! very good!