Given the $10,000 choice.....

Phishy McFish · #1 02-01-2005, 03:46 PM

If I were to win $10,000 in a tournament and had the choice to use it for an entry to the WSOP main event or keep it....I would keep it in a heartbeat.

I have often thought about what the limit to that thinking is for me. I think I would be willing to play into the Bellagio Friday night tourney (risk approx. $200 to win and then risk approx. $1000).....but that would probably be it....at least until my family and I have more money than we know what to do with. If I ever won a lottery type amount of money....it would be my immediate response..."What am I going to do you ask? I'm going to pay off any debt, buy my wife the house and car of her dreams and go play in the WSOP!"

But I could use $10,000 a lot more than the "chance" at beating 2,000+ for million$.

toots · #2 02-01-2005, 05:14 PM

S'pose it depends.

I mean, if I just casually entered some $100 tournament and won the choice, yeah, I'd take the ten grand and be done with it. (In fact, I read that this was also Moneymaker's first choice.)

But, if I always wanted to play the main event, and entered a satellite with the explicit goal of winning the buy-in, I guess I'd go with the buy-in.

But, I have to ask myself why I'd be doing the latter in the first place. It would seem that either I just wanted to have the experience of playing the big game for some expense, or I'd have an overinflated assessment of my own poker skills.

I'm hoping I'll have a sound enough head on my shoulders to stick with the former reasoning.

I mean, if I win $10K, in a tournament, I might be inclined to enter another (cheaper) tournament like that again. If I kept winning or at least making the final table, then yeah, maybe it'd be worth a shot to try the bigger game. After all, the $10K win would no longer be a unique experience in my life, so there'd be more where that came from. (I'd hope.) On the other hand, if I didn't trust myself to win another $10K prize small tourney, why would I trust myself to even cash in the main event?

johnnybeef · #3 02-01-2005, 06:14 PM

thats why they call it gambling

wray · #4 02-01-2005, 06:16 PM

So the Friday night 1000 Bellagio tournament has 200 qualifiers?

GambleAB · #5 02-01-2005, 06:32 PM

[ QUOTE ]
If I were to win $10,000 in a tournament and had the choice to use it for an entry to the WSOP main event or keep it....I would keep it in a heartbeat.

[/ QUOTE ]

In this day and age, you don't have to make that choice anymore. There are supers and single tables running almost around the clock for about 4 months leading up to the main event. If you have the skills in place to win 10k in a sinlge tournament, odds are very high that you can sat in for probably an investment of only $1000 (5 supers).
Assuming you knew this, and simply posed a meaningless hypothetical, obviously it would be silly to risk what would probably be your entire bankroll (or very close to it) on one single tournament.

Spook · #6 02-01-2005, 07:00 PM

What if the reason is tax based?
If you are rewarded the seat and lose, how much taxes do you pay?
Same question if you win $10,000 and then pay $10,000 in entry fees and lose. I believe you are then stuck with the tax on the winnings even though you lost that same money you bought in with.

TruePoker CEO · #7 02-01-2005, 07:04 PM

Truepoker will allow you to take the $10,000 in lieu of playing the WSOP Championship, if you win a WSOP seat from us, right up to the time we would otherwise buy a seat for you from Harrah's.

Why ? Well, we run our Sunday Tourneys with a WSOP SuperSatellite seat as an Added Value. You win BOTH the Sunday Cash plus a SuperSatellite Seat for a WSOP Seat.

If you then win a WSOP Trip in our WSOP SuperSatellite, we will pay you $10,000 if you prefer getting cash to taking the Trip and playing the WSOP Championship.

In our view, you won something in a cash tournament as added value, you might want cash instead. Although we would like you to play in and win the WSOP, we also recognize that you might prefer to pocket the $10,000 Seat value and skip the trip. (In the interest of full disclosure, we also save about $2,500 in trip costs that way.)

The choice of a WSOP Seat or cash would be yours, if you win a WSOP Championship seat from Truepoker.

Truepoker CEO

Frenchie · #8 02-01-2005, 08:00 PM

I kind of had that situation last August when I won a TV Star tourney at Empire. The price was $17000.00 ($15300.00 for tourney entry at Bellagio 5 Diamonds + $1700.00 Cash). I did not have the choice that TruePoker offer but to me, it was obvious that I was playing the $15000.00 tourney. The $1700 was more than enough to cover my expenses to participate (I live 6 hours from Vegas) and the experience to sit in a big money tourney was really worth it. I learned quite a bit in the 10 hours that I played (190 out of 376) and was able to translate that into more winnings since (I won 3 mtts (60, 215 and 570 players)) compared to winning the TV Star and getting a 2nd place in a $5 tourney before. Can not wait to qualify for another big money so I can play more agressively as I was pretty weak tight in the Bellagio tourney.

Frenchie

augie00 · #9 02-01-2005, 08:11 PM

That is a creative way to spam. Well done.

TruePoker CEO · #10 02-02-2005, 02:22 PM

Aw, c'mon. That wasn't spam. It was on-topic. I had a pretty interesting talk on the topic with a fellow who won a seat from Site A last year, later joined Site B as a "pro player" and ended up in a reported shouting match with Site A .... on the topic of having to play AND wear gear for Site A, let alone play on their nickle.

The same issue is likely to arise this year somewhere. I thought it worthwhile to post that Truepoker leaves the choice to our players. (I have a lot of respect for Site A's marketing team, we just offer something different.)

Does that make this a creative way to bump ??

Truepoker CEO