Bridge style Tournament for Holdem?

[roy_miami]

I've never played in a bridge tournament, so I don't know all of the details about how they run but the gist of it is everybody is dealt the same predetermined hands and whichever team plays all the hands the best wins. It takes all of the luck out of the game (when you run bad in bridge, it's just no fun)

I would be very interested to see a NL Holdem tournament, or a series of tourneys played using this type of set up. I think this would really separate the skill from the luck and you would see the same guys making it to the finals over and over.

Any thoughts?

[TheBlueMonster]

I really don't see how you can do this. Also, I can't imagine anyone liking it.

[stigmata]

It's been suggested before. It's definately an interesting idea, but I really can't see how it can work. I would like to be proved wrong though.

Some of the problems:

A) There would still be a huge amoung of luck, depending on your opposition and relative positions, etc.
B) Perhaps you have several hundred hands each in a small tournament. How do you decide who gets what hands? Relative to the other hands? E.g. does everyone get the same hundred hands in different order -- again this is not fair because I may have my AJs when someone has AQs, wherease someone else will get AJs against a ATs. Do you see where I'm going? It's really hard to pre-set a series of hands so that the skill factor is completely balanced.

[TMFS9]

I'm sure it wouldn't be too difficult to do with a computer program.

[stigmata]

Explain…

I'm entirely unconvinced that it is trivial (or perhaps even possible) to produce say 300 hands of Hold ‘em, where there is absolutely no luck, taking into account:

Position of players
Relative position of players
Starting hands and relative strength of starting hands
The flop
All the various complex combinations of above.

For example, you could just have 300 set hands, which everyone gets once. But then you could be getting towards the end, thinking “I haven’t had my AA yet, it’s coming soon”. The other problem is that even though you got the same hands as everyone else, it is entirely dependent on relative strength, the flop, position, stage of tournament, etc

I really think it’s not easy.

[partygirluk]

This has merit but it would be best not to run it on a knockout basis a la current tournaments.

[partygirluk]

FWIW the op is incorrect to say that there is "no luck" in bridge tournaments. There is a quite a bit. I think there is less luck in bridge per se, then in Hold Em.

1 way a Hold Em tournaments could work is thus:

6 teams of 6 players.
6 tables.
Each team has a player in position 1 at one table, position 2 at the other etc.
The hands are prearranged, so that for hand 1 at each table, position 1 gets the same hole cards, the flop is the same etc.
Each table plays say 200 hands over the course of a day, so each team plays 1200.
The cumulative chip counts of each team are tallied at the end of the day to determine the victors.
This could go on for a few days in round robin format until the initial quota of (say) 50 teams is whittled down to a final 6.
These 6 play for say 1,000 hands in 5 days in a grand finale.

[stigmata]

That's sounding much better.... Nice ideas. Can't really see team poker taking off, but nevermind.

[TMFS9]

The more I think about it the harder it seems

partygirl: This would work only if no players would ever go bust. It's an interesting idea.