Completely outrageous tournament structure -- a question

[jtr]

Hello, all.

First post here in the tournament forum, as I'm not much of a tournament player. I'm hoping to try your patience with a question about the extent of the edge one could expect in a very weird tournament structure. (And for the record, I have used the search function as best I can to find examples of similar questions being answered in the past, but I haven't found any mention of a tournament structure quite this crazy.)

So: I live in the UK. Casino poker (both tournaments and cash games) is crippled here by some odd laws and some unimaginative behaviour on the part of the casinos. There's a national tendency to want to play pot limit for some reason, which I have no problem with although I'd be happier with NL.

The particular tournament I want to discuss happens twice weekly in a small local casino. The buy-in is 10 pounds -- close to 20 dollars at current exchange rates. For your 10 pounds you get 1000 starting chips and the blinds begin with two equal blinds of 100 and 100. Yes, that's right ladies and gentlemen, 20% of your stack per orbit. Right from the first hand, you're in a push or fold situation. (Pot-limit adds to the fun by making it sometimes not possible to get it all-in preflop, but you can get most of it in with the remainder to be auto-bet on the flop.)

For the first two hours there are unlimited rebuys. In order to be able to rebuy you need to get below 500 chips. Although this 500-chip limit is a bit immaterial as most players go all-in fairly often, bust, and rebuy from zero.

At the end of the rebuys, there's an opportunity to add-on, whatever your stack. For 10 pounds you can get 1000 more chips.

On average, there are 60 entrants and the prize pool comes to about 4000 pounds, which means 6 or 7 buy-ins per person. And an average stack of 6600 chips at the end of the rebuy period.

Immediately after the close of rebuys, the blinds move to 200-400, and then they approximately double every twenty minutes.

And finally, the payout structure is fairly steep. The casino takes nothing from the prize pool (weird UK laws) and everyone at the final table gets money with 40% going to first place down to 1% going to tenth place.

So, obviously it's very much a crapshoot. But I have a couple of specific questions.

1) It seems to me that during the rebuy period, the only edge I have over the field is that I will play better starting hands. The extremity of the blind / stack ratio means that there is no such thing as postflop play here, right? Playing 99-AA, AK, AQ, or a similar set of decent cards, and getting it all-in as fast as possible, seems about the only thing to be done here. On the bright side, the opposition will certainly follow you all-in with some junk hands, particularly if they have doubled or quadrupled up already.

2) Is this "better starting cards" edge enough to make playing in the tournament worthwhile? I know I have an edge here, but I'm finding it difficult to estimate just how much of an edge it is. (And the thing I have to keep in mind is that for the three to six hours I might spend in the tournament, I could be at home playing online with a comfortably positive EV.) If a random player has a 1/60 chance of winning the tournament, what sort of chance might a "play group 1 hands only" person have against a field of "let's push with junk for the fun of it!" players. 1/30?

3) anyone have any experience of trying to talk card room managers into being reasonable? It seems to me that the young guy running the card room would only have to spend half an hour on PokerStars and would have his eyes opened to a whole new world of far superior tournament structures. On the other hand, maybe there's no point trying to talk sense into them, as from the casino's point of view the whole charade is a bit of a loss leader that's simply designed to get punters through the door on a quiet night. (Remember they make no money from the tournament directly -- I believe they're hoping that we'll all go and play roulette after we bust out.) The biggest priority on the management's side is probably an early finish, and they are unlikely to shed tears over the fact that there's no room here for any serious poker playing.

4) Assuming I do keep playing in this thing: any thoughts on exactly how far down the list of starting requirements I should go? On my first foray into this tournament recently, I started out thinking that TT-AA, AKo, AKs, and AQs were all that I would play, plus any pocket pair in late position if it looked like I could limp in behind a big field for set value. After seeing some of the junk that was shown down, I added AQo and 88-99 to my list of starting hands. Should I go further? Note that I'm not looking reduce variance here. I'm happy to keep rebuying as often as necessary -- I'm asking for the set of starting hands that would maximize long-term EV given this structure and the low calling standards of the other players.


OK, I'll stop ranting there. As I said, when I used the search function, I found some annoyingly fast blind schedules, but nothing as mad as this. So I'm open to the possibility that you guys will tell me that the edge here for sensible play is simply too narrow and it's hardly worth turning up.

[ZBTHorton]

Hm.

This structure is totally laughable. Here is what I would do though.

#1. Play it drunk. OR
#2. Start calling 2 way all ins with suited connectors or suited one gappers.

[CardSharpCook]

This is so painful, though many casinos in the US offer similarily laughable re-buy tournies. However, ours are a bit more dubious, because you have to beat the registration fees - difficult to do with this kind of structure. However, given that you are a better than avg. player AND that there are no registration fees, it is def. +EV to play. There may be a question of whether it is worth your time (do better to 4-table party 15), but I love live tourneys, and I am sure you are the same. I say go, have fun, play smart, and be willing to re-buy.

CSC

[mistaken]

This might be the most absurd excuse for a structure I've ever heard of...
I think I'd rather punch myself in the nuts and/or saw off my shin bone than play in a joke of a tournament such as this one.
Hope this was helpful [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].

Mistaken

[jtr]

Thanks a lot guys, for the comments. Much appreciated.

I think maybe next Thursday I will try staying home and punching myself in the nuts and see how that goes, and then make a decision about whether to keep attending the tournament.

[pootle]

Hi! jtr, only just got your PM, I'm replying in a sec.

The poster who recommends playing drunk is bang on.

I think this is @ the Gala Casino in Leeds and I have played it a couple of times. The 1st time I played was the best - I got a free drink voucher for my 1st visit so went to the bar and asked for a whisky. New bartender didn't know what whisky was!?! So I pointed to a bottle of brandy and asked for a glass of that. Bartender whips out a large wine glass and fills it to the brim.

40 minutes the tourney starts and I am quite drunk.

I came 11th out of 60. And I had my aces cracked on the second hand. I thought things like that only happened online [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

poooootle