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Monday, August 06, 2007

International Poker Open in Dublin (PF=33.90)

There are ideas that are worth to be supported and I think this could be one of them.

The International Poker Open in Dublin (IPO) aims to get 800 to 1,000 participants to become the largest tournament ever in Europe. They hope to reach this goal by having a quite small buy-in of €125+25. But the real catch is that you get a super-deep-stack structure with 10,000 startingchips and 40 min. levels.

I know, Dublin is not around the corner. But if you can catch a cheap flight this might be still cheaper than the usual €500+ buy-in that is somewhat standard for good structures like this. If you are in the reach of Frankfurt/Hahn you may get to Dublin via Ryanair for as low as €40 (including taxes).

If they really get 1,000 people the first prize should be around €30,000 with most probably 10% of the people in the money. And beside a great tournament you may get a nice weekend in Dublin. Oh, and the location of the tournament (the Royal Dublin Society, Ballsbridge) is the same place were the EPT takes part about 3 weeks later.

There's one thing that is somewhat unusual: You can only buy-in online via Mermaid-Poker and you need an account there. Winnings will be paid into your online account. Personally I don't have concerns with that as securing that all buy-ins are prepaid and having a good sponsor is of vital interest for the organiser.

For more informations about the tournament you can look here at Poker Ireland. If you have questions regarding the tournament just contact Stephen McLean. A good discussion about everything around the IPO can be found at this Irish Discussion Board and at the Hendon Mob Forum.

All I've heard and read so far sounds like a real good deal and I will be there.

Of course I will be more than happy if you sign up to Mermaid through my link ;-))

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Sunday, August 05, 2007

Bavarian Poker Tour (PF=2.32)

I haven't posted for some time now as I hadn't played much poker due to some other things I had to do. But yesterday I played the Bavarian Poker Tour for the first time.

Before letting you know about yesterday I would like to tell you about that "PF" information that you can see in the title of this post. "PF" means "Patience Factor" and is a formula created by Arnold Snyder. This formula allows to compare the quality of tournaments regarding their blindlevels and starting chips. In the future I will add this information to posts about tournaments if I play them for the first time. I also added the PF-Value to some of the older postings. If you select the label "Patience Factor" (down on the right column) you find all the postings that include a PF-Value (either in the title or in bold in the body). To give you an impression, the worst tournament I found so far (most may know which one I mean) has a PF=0.75. Most low-buy in tournaments in Las Vegas have a PF between 2.5-4.5. A really good tournament has a PF > 10. Values above 15 can't be found too often and usually have a huge buy-in. The higher the PF the bigger the skill level (vice versa a low PF tournament has a bigger luck factor).

So back to the BPT tournament. They play this one usually on Saturday either in the Ristorante Miramare near the Ostbahnhof or the Paulaner Braeuhaus (in Munich). They have a €15,- buy-in and play with 3 tables (33 players, MTT structure). The first three places receive prizes. You can win a €100 buy-in for the Poker-Club in Salzburg (first place receives also a one night hotel stay in addition) and third place receives a free start at another BPT tournament.

They recently changed their structure and now offer so called "Deep Stack" tournaments. To be true what they offer isn't really deep stack. Just having a big starting stack alone doesn't make a tournament a deep-stack! I wouldn't call a tournament below PF=7 a deep-stack at all. But without doubt they increased the quality of their tournaments significantly up from PF=1.14 to PF=2.32. So at least I would call this a very decent structure for a small buy-in tournament.

Unfortunately they have big problems with their organisation. The dealers as well as the tournament director needs some more education about proper tournament rules and how to enforce and obey them. I saw a lot of minor things (which don't concern me in that kind of tournament) but there happened some other things that must not happen in a tournament! Having two tables playing with different blind levels for some time is an absolute no-go. Not kowing the proper blind levels by the dealer (and mixing them up at the final table) is very bad (but somewhat understandable as the information is still mixed up on their website). Another issue was a lack in proper table balance which caused us to play with 6 players for some time while the other table still had 8 players.

There is a reason each tournament has a floorman/tournament director to pay attention and solve problems (like that one with the blinds) in a proper way. And some problems could be solved quite easy. For example just place a laptop with a cheap (or even free) tournament clock in a visible position instead using a small digital watch. I really hope they get this stuff solved soon as this one can be a really good and playable tournament in the Munich area.

Oh, and before I forget: I played two tournaments there yesterday and final tabled both times. Unfortunately I went out 6th and 7th without making it to the prizes.

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