Small buy-in tourneys near LA

I'm out visiting my in-laws in LA for the holidays, and I was hoping to have a little fun in the LA poker rooms, as where I'm from there's very little B&M action. Anyway, does anyone have any recommendations as to where to play? I'm hoping to spend $70 or less.

I did a little research online, and I'm leaning towards the thursday afternoon tourney at Hawaiian Gardens. It's a $20+10 with $10 rebuys and a $10k guaranteed pool. I know the Bike and Hollywood Park also have similar tourneys, but they have smaller guaranteed pools. Any info would be helpful, especially on the structure of these tourneys.

Also, do B&M rebuys play like online ones, where people tend to gamble for a big stack in the beginning?

Thanks,
Will

[sternroolz]

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I'm out visiting my in-laws in LA for the holidays, and I was hoping to have a little fun in the LA poker rooms, as where I'm from there's very little B&M action. Anyway, does anyone have any recommendations as to where to play? I'm hoping to spend $70 or less.

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$70 is prolly a bit too hopefull. Most LA tournaments force you to buy in more. You may want to consider asking friends/family to partially stake you in the $50+10 w/one $50 rebuy tournament at Bike on Wed afternoon at 12:15.

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I did a little research online, and I'm leaning towards the thursday afternoon tourney at Hawaiian Gardens. It's a $20+10 with $10 rebuys and a $10k guaranteed pool. I know the Bike and Hollywood Park also have similar tourneys, but they have smaller guaranteed pools. Any info would be helpful, especially on the structure of these tourneys.


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I've never played at the HG one, but I gotta assume that the structure just plain sucks. Most likely double blinds every 15 or 20 minutes. Bike sticks in a less than double level every few levels. Something like T10-25, T25-50, T30-60, T100-200.


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Also, do B&M rebuys play like online ones, where people tend to gamble for a big stack in the beginning?


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People do tend to gamble, but its not because of any real strategy. It's because they are complete 'tards.

You will see where the problems is when you get into about 5-6 levels after the rebuy period is over. There will be maybe one person left who isn't at least sort of short chipped. I've only played about 10 of these tournaments in the past two years. I've made 7 final tables. I have been in a situation where I was not short stacked at the final table only once, and that was a few months ago in one of Bike's $100+25 tournaments. Those seem to have a better structure and out of the five of us in the money, only one was really hurting. However, at another tournament, run with a bad structure, I was chip leader with about $40K. But blinds were $10K-20K. Needless to say, a 9 way chop was made. Absolutely retarded that this sort of structure was used(blinds doubled every 20 minutes). Another time, I was third in chips at $42K(chip leader had $80K) and blinds were at $5K-10K.

So really, gambling to build a chip stack is quite ineffective because you will rather quickly be in a situation where you will be forced to play and double through(or steal lots of blinds from weak tighties). Even if you have the biggest stack after the break.