Survived Day 1 of the BPC ... barely

Originally the tournament was supposed to have 240 qualifiers on two starting days. But it turned out that a huge number of qualifiers decided for whatever reason not to show up for the final. While I don't get it that people pay €35 to play a qualifier and then decide not to play ... it wasn't bad for the rest of us as the value of our ticket increased now from €208 to €322.

With 155 players the Bavarian Players Cup had only one starting day but still pays 30 spots and a total of €50.000. The main part of the tournament was set up in the "Casineum" which is some kind of an event center at the Casino Innsbruck. As 12 tables filled the room completely they also used the 5 tables in the main poker-room. Unfortunatly I drew a seat out there. Not only was there no screen with the tournament information but it was also clear that these are the tables to break first.

Our table was very passive and we lost only one player till the table was broken after about 2 hours. I was so card dead that 7-9 looked like a monster to me. I maintained my stack but the blinds took their tribute. At the end of day one I had 5,800 chips (just 800 more than the startstack). And I never was beyond 8,500 today. I had only two real good hands: QQ and AKo. I had to play the first one very aggressively as I had 5(!) limpers in front of me. All of them folded. And I was shortstacked with AK and went all-in directly to pick up the blinds and the bets of two limpers.

With blinds starting at 400/800 on day two I am supposed to act soon. Either double up or it will be a very short day. The chipleaders have between 30,000 - 45,000 so they aren't away to far and the average is around 10,000. It will be interesting to see how fast people will bust tomorrow.

Talking about busting ... during the next to last level (300/600) they announced that the last level will be 300/600 again (instead of 400/800) as we lost players too fast. I had no objections to that and except for one or two big stacks none of the others had problems with that too, I assume. While I usually don't like changes in an official plan I think every change that is player friendly and allows more poker play is a good change. Too bad they didn't think about that earlier. I ran the Numbers through my Patience-Factor Calculator and the additional level changed it from 9.22 to 10.05. This shows how even a single added level can improve the PF at a factor of 9%. BUT, if they kept the original structure and would have raised the blindlevels to 45 minutes they would have reached a whooping PF of 15.0. Which would have created a great tournament structure.