I am deeply wounded

Had a lady on facebook say I was a troll because I said she was wrong, explained why, and then provided a link to a story about peer reviewed article. She thought that explaining why was "picking on her and borderline trollish". Thus, the bar for trolling on the modern internet is amazingly low. Still, people do manage to jump high above that bar.

Also, don't tell the anti-GMO crowd that their goodfoodsavetheworld.org linked article + conspiracy theory was soundly debunked. It is cruel or something. That, even if the headline was a fabrication. You'll be called names.

Maybe you had a dickish tone

To be fair Zomg_rigged is a troll account that occasionally posts some good strategy.

To be fair DougL always has a dickish tone. It's just his way. We love him anyway.

I just wanted hugs.

You could probably get a back rub at th casino for $2 a minute. Basically the same thing

After speaking with some of the Maryland regs during the 3k LHE event, I'm curious what it would take to get a significant buy-in LHE event attached to some of the major stops on the tourney circuit (that also have big-ish LHE cash games)? Seems like it wouldn't be too much of a strain on the local cardroom if it's big enough for rake a few tables and not having oversized fields. Plus would assume it has some overlap with straight NL MTT lifers who would be there anyway for a main event.

Off the top of my head, Bay 101, Maryland Live, Borgata, Parx, Casino AZ, Blackhawk all seem like they'd be good candidates to run a 2500/3k event. Think Commerce runs one still during LAPC but it's a smaller buy-in. Or do you guys think it just wouldn't be worth it for LHE players to travel to given the smaller field?

Results?

CAZ has never had a major tourney stop.

Well maybe not major tourney series, but was thinking they have that $1K upcoming Arizona St. Championship that gets a decent turnout they could attached a $2K or $3K LHE event to.

I don't know how good a turnout you'd get for that. I think a 1k would get a good turnout because Joe 20-40 player could stomach that, but 2k+ seems like it might be a bit steep for most the LHE regs here. And a lot of the higher stakes regs don't seem to care much for LHE.

Tbh, I think it would be a relatively low turnout regardless of the stakes. The $570 LHE event at the LAPC only got 70 and the $350 got 111 the last two years. And LA is probably still #1 in terms of LHE player pools, right?

I was thinking more along the lines of a buy-in level that would make travel worthwhile for out-of-town LHE/mixed game players (who might also take a shot at a NLHE main event), plus capitalize on NL MTT guys (much like at the WSOP) and whatever local LHE player pool was already there who don't typically play tourneys. And at the price point, it might be worth the cardroom's time because they're raking a higher dollar amount for the use of a few tables at most and players would just trickle naturally to their regular LHE cash games they already offer rather than alienate them during tourney time as some seem to do.

A couple hurdles I would imagine is that most might assume the field would be too tough or the tournament would take too long, so some kind of guarantee and a good structure might be key to sustaining this.

The turnout is really relative to the popularity of the game. There's so few LHE MTTs annually, people just aren't used to it expecting it. But imho, it's an underutilized event type given how many 20/40+ LHE cash games there are out there.

Lapc is by far the best option for turnout, Florida would have the softest one. LHE tourneys have the problem of too deep to start it doesn't matter and people get annoyed, too shallow and you bust quickly and get annoyed. Feels a lot better to lose 2 hands and be out in no tourneys vs limit tourneys in the early stages.

LHE is just a hard game to have port from cash to tourney and have it feel the same. For whatever reason people care way less about that in nl.

How lhe tournaments work.

16 total entries - I think it was 13 unique runners and 3 rebuy.

They tweaked the structure a bit to makes things a little faster than last time and I thought it worked out pretty well - none of the levels felt like a waste of time, but there was still a decent amount of room for play. Might try to slow things down a bit after the dinner break for next one as blinds were big enough that any hand going past the flop was huge difference to stack sizes.


3 paid. I bubble obv, and a reg gets third. Basically the worst possible people chopped up first/second - fakelogic (from CA) and a solid semi-reg who's not going to dust it back off.

I say "worst" people chopped it because we have an interesting lhe ecosystem in md. You can either come here and play 4/8 or you can play 75+ - there's no feeder games. So, when people go broke, it's very hard for them to get back into action. Hence the introduction of the bigger buyin lhe tournaments. We're running them in part for something different, but mostly to give folks who are currently busto (ish) a shot to get back into cash game action.


Anyhow, despite bubbling, thought it was pretty fun, and I give a lot of credit to the guy @ MD live who runs the tourneys. He was flexible with us on a lot of house rules that are basically death for people who are used to playing big:

Ez1. I lose some brutal pot early in the day and then immediately get yelled at by dealer for being on my phone. Talk to tourney director, he agrees that the rule is dumb for this tourney. All dealers for rest of day seemed to know to not be dumb.

Ex2. Added time to the dinner break when 6 of remaining 9 were stuck waiting for food.

Basically, dude gets that rules should be flexible depending on the situation, and that a small-field, high buyin lhe tournament is way different than some daily $55 NL tourney.

LA definitely has the biggest player pool. I do agree that the turnout will be low in an absolute sense regardless of buyin. My totally random guesses are a 2k buyin would get 15 players, a 1k buyin would get 30 players and a 500 buyin would match LA's 70 players.

The reason I think it would match is while the player pool is smaller here, there are a lot fewer total tournaments throughout the year to dilute the field size. A random unadvertised $300 buy in O8 tournament earlier this year drew 58 players including many 4-8 regulars. This is not much smaller than a similar tournament would get in LA. And a lot of extra people are in town near the state championship.

Do 20-40 and 30-60 not run regularly anymore?

Did it get additional bigger LHE games going?

20 and/or 30 only run rarely on Saturdays these days, although that may be be picking up again.

Somewhat ironically, the cash game after tourney was 30 kill. This was because some people who the tourney was too big for started the game early. As people busted, they just played the game that was going. With more runners, I'm fairly confident there would have been a 75 or 1/2 game.

It just seems strange that you could get a sustainable 75/150+ game out of having a group of people drop $1K or $3K into a pool where 80% or more of them just lose the money. Let's have a lottery for people who can't afford tickets pool their money, then one or two lottery winners get to play in high stakes games they can't afford. That will fix all our issues with games being too big.

OTOH, lots of other cases where seemingly crazy things lead to the games running and actually being good. Like here, it turns out that a $2 BBJP drop is a key feature in a healthy economy. How could you predict 5+2 drop is a requirement to keep a 30/60 kill game going? So if you say that the odd tournament is required, you're probably right.

You had Colorado on the list of places for a LHE tourney circuit event. We have weird rules about buyins, so not sure. Think PLO or O/8 tournaments have happened, like AZ. Also not sure if inviting some tournament circuit players would help local games. There isn't true NL, so that could be a negative for the road gamblers. Do think the WSOPc and WPT were popular, though. Maybe Quantph or Wizard50 knows that stuff.

I think LHE (or maybe all limit) tournaments would be better if they just gave you 25-35 BBs and play it like a cash game for 6 levels or whatever, then have blinds go up from there. The structure of NL tournaments makes sense, its a variety of deep stack, mid stack, shallow stack play, but obviously there's no "deep stack limit" strategy so why bother with those levels.

Agree this is counterintuitive and I could obv be wrong, but I don't /think/ I am given the evidence. 3 of the first people to commit to both tourneys we've had are ex-regs who went bust. 6 way chop on first tourney that a few on those folks cashed in and they were right back to playing cash next week.

I guess my point is that while I know having a big buyin tourney isn't a fix for having a limited player pool playing a game that's too big for most people, it might be a temporary bandaid if the right people win the tournament lottery.

I dunno, I'm no expert, just trying to do things to keep the game going.

And agree that lots of times stuff that doesn't make intuitive sense sometimes works out. For example, in MD, we basically had to keep kicking up the stakes to attract big bet players who have become regs in game in order to help sustain it. When we played smaller, none of the big bet guys thought it was worth their time. So now it's a balancing act of playing big enough to attract non lhe players to increase size of overall player pool vs. playing so big that everybody goes bust.

Yeah I agree LHE tourneys consistently have the "this game sucks" vibe from both regs and big bet MTTers alike, but I also think that has something to do with how rarely it is spread (familiarity/nuance) and when it has been spread, the structures have been poor or the wrong fit. The WSOP in years past hasn't done a great job with the limit structures, and though improved, they still are structured to have the bracelet prestige and necessarily be stretched over 3 days.

I'm thinking if you ran it at card rooms with regular LHE cash games, you could definitely find a structure that plays more like a cash game (especially with allowing re-entries) and have it be a one-day event (maybe a Day 2 for 6-max FT). Think this past 3K at Maryland really had something close to the right structure for this type of event (agree with Foobar's feedback on it).

You're never not going to be miserable busting a tournament, so imho don't think that's a strong argument that LHE cash regs wouldn't play it. I think if it were available, people would get familiar with the MTT swings. It's more difficult to convince non-LHE regs to play like they do at the WSOP imho.

Yeah this is pretty much the concept that I'm hoping could take off with these things. Think it's kind of like how Whole Foods or boutique/high fashion stores get their business. The more expensive it is, the more people want it when they might not have otherwise. I would never have considered flying out there for a $1K, but the $3K buy-in plus higher stakes cash games made it more intriguing. If you guys got Maryland to run another one during the $3500 WPT, I'm a favorite to come back and dump it back into your ecosystem.