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.