Quintessential Question: Brick-and-Mortar Tourney Starting Chips....

[StickyWicket]

Just thought I'd take a poll after playing live for a number of years and playing online for the past 12 months...

Los Angeles - local card rooms here generally spread higher-limit buy-in tourneys on a regular basis ($300 and up). Rounds are 40mins, blah-blah-blah. For your whatever-the-dollar amount buy in, they flip you $800 in tourney chips and say "Bon Chance."

Online: Generally whatever your buy in, you're scoring upwards of $1000-$1500 in tourney chips for your buy in, 12-15 minute rounds, blah-blah-blah.

Let's get to the meat: I'm of the impression that the B&M casinos around here are thinking with the wrong head by offering so few chips in relation to the buy-in and the rounds. With $800 in chips and beginning blinds at $10-$15, you've got 53+/- X the BB. Online, you get to see at LEAST 2X as many heads for sometimes TWICE the starting chips and smaller blinds to start ($5/$10), and though the escalation is quicker, you're seeing more hands to balance it out.

It just seems that the B&M casinos are more concerned about how long the tourneys last - fewer starting chips=shorter tourney and faster bust-outs...as opposed to the tourney structures that are always lauded by the pros playing in the $5k and $10k buy in events ---- more starting chips and a good blind escalation structure allowing for good play to overcome the "oh [censored] I have to play a hand now 'cause the blinds are $50/100 and I haven't won a f'ing hand the whole first hour and I'm down to $600..."

Now, I'm not saying every event should offer $5k-$10k in starting chips....however, it would be nice to see some of the casinos like the Bike and Commerce step it up and offer tourneys with good play in mind, not just how long their dealers are on the clock flinging cards to people playing hands for no rake...$1500-$2500 in starting chips...40 minute rounds...Mind you, I'm talking NL and Limit tourneys here...hell, I'm sure the other games would benefit from the change in starting chips as well...The Bike does a 10X your buyin for starting chips during their Mini-Series of Poker tourneys...what? We gotta deal with a short stack for the rest of the year, too?

I'm of the school of thought that if you wanna play on luck and what the deck gives you, go play a turbo tourney online with 6-minute rounds...If I'm dropping $300-$1000 on a B&M tourney, I'm looking for some tools to work with instead of watching the blinds eat my chips like they're triscuits with squeeze cheese on top as the first hour deals me jack [censored] on a stick.

Not whining----looking for perspective from the masses... [img]/images/graemlins/cool.gif[/img]

[Dominic]

I whole-heartedly agree. But then, I sleep with you so I guess I have to.

[img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

I found myself ranting this same rant to myself on the drive home from two B&M tournaments this weekend. It sucks that you're pretty much short-stacked the whole tournament. One bad hand and you're crippled/out, even in a limit tourney, and even quite a way into the tournament.

[fnord_too]

My immediate response is that this is probably a question of ecconimics. It costs A LOT more to spread a tourney in a B&M casino, due to both actual overhead and the opportunity cost of the space it takes up.

On the up side, tournies probably draw in a lot of players who would otherwise never visit the casino. Now, here's the complexity: the novices who come are favored by faster tournaments, as they reduce the skill factor. The seasoned are favored by the addition of novices (in long term EV perspective), even if the luck factor has been increased.

I don't know how deeply cardroom managers think about such things, but reasonably fast tournaments are probably pretty good for everyone all arround. It sucks to not have much room to manoever in, but I think it would suck more to pay a larger fee or to have fewer people trying their hands at tournaments. (Of course all of my tournament experience is on line, so I'm pretty much talking out of my ***. I will be up at foxwoods playing in some satelites and hopefully a super satelite later this month though. )

[fnord_too]

Oh, and I personally like the stage of the tourney when the blind size gets large in relation to stack size. That is where I excel. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[CurryLover]

I play in tournaments (always either PL or NL) in England, so here is my perspective.

Most of the tournaments I enter give you only 10x the big blind! The buy in is very small in most of these tourneys (only £10 with rebuys for first 2 hours). However, in the more expensive tourneys that cost £100 to enter, you often still only get 20x BB in chips.

I find this incredibly annoying, since the tourney starts off as an all-in game. In fact, many players go all-in blind repeatedly during the buy-in stage to try and accumulate lots of chips whilst they can still re-buy cheaply.

And then when you make the final table, the blinds are ridiculously high. Most players have enough for a couple of pot-sized pre-flop bets and that's it. So even in the final, when it should be a contest of skill between players who have worked very hard to get there, it is still a coin-flip all-in game.

Starting a tourney with only 10x BB is stupid and takes all the skill away from the game. The rich and crazy players who can afford re-buy after re-buy are able to build up lots of chips by silly gambling and the decent players have to hope to get lucky with their decent hands against 6 all-in callers who could have anything (and often 2 or 3 of them haven't even looked at their cards!)

[fnord_too]

That is certainly excessive, and way faster than what I meant by a fast tournament.

[fnord_too]

Oh, and to quantify, I like the stage where the average stack is between about 12 and 20 X the BB. That is the time (in the tournies I play in) where standard pre flop raises get some respect and the blinds are worth stealing. Also, you typically have enough room to lay down a hand or two here, or even make a post flop play, without crippling yourself.

[Dentist]

I played in a B&M 1 table tourney the other day.

$50+5

1000 chips
Blinds: 25-25
15 minute later 25-50
15 minutes - 50-100

Since I didn't win a hand in the first 30 minutes, I was in all-in or fold mode the WHOLE rest of the tournament.

Fortunately my ability to pick good hands and knowing their hot-n-cold value propelled me to a 2nd place finish.

What was EVEN DUMBER was that a player there who said he played on Pokerstars (one site that does a good job of blind structures for the most part) was complaining that these things took too long (and it did take over 90 minutes) and that they should SHORTEN the time to 10 minutes OR start off with 25-50 blinds... sweet.. MORON.

But I thought it was SOOOOOOOOOOO Dumb.

In fact, I haven't ever played in a B&M tourney that I thought rewarded good patient play.

Then I realized they simply can't afford to run one correctly.

Do the big tourneys like the WSOP (smaller events) or WPO or other tourneys like that have reasonable playability?

Because I've basically resigned myself to playing all my ring game play LIVE, and all my tourney play on-line.