10,000 starting chips, 30 minute levels

level 1 10/20 holdem
level 2 20/40 omaha
level 3 40/80 razz
level 4 60/120 stud
level 5 80/160 stud8


I was looking forward to playing in this event, but the structure is ridiculous. The first couple hours are a total was of time.

so sit out and take a nap

o/u on the time it takes for the first bust?

2 hours?

i will take a nap for the first two levels, but i would rather Pokerstars would come up with a better structure.

Get rid of the first 5 levels, start out at 75/150 or 100/200 then add levels later in the tourney like 600/1200.

wtf 10/20 w 10,000 chips

Get LAGGY.

yeah full ring LAGs are great at limit holdem

With the same structure in the $215 HORSE, but with 3000 starting chips, it took just over 1 hour to bust the first player. And by all reports he was virtually dumping off his chips (capping most hands pre-flop).

I had an absolutely terrible run, losing every showdown I went to for almost 2 hours, and I still survived 3.5 hours. With this structure, I'd still have had 7k chips left!

I think the first bust out could come as late as 3.5 to 4 hours (150/300 O8 or 200/400 Razz).

Nobody ever gets limit tourneys right.

They need to structure it with relatively lowish starting stacks with very slow/small level changes. Make it so if you have an average stack and lose alot of big pots in a row, you risk getting knocked out, while at the same time if you have a healthy stack and lose a big pot you aren't busto.

WSOP was absolutely horrible, you could win every single pot for the 1st 2 levels and MAYBE increase your starting stack by 25%, but once we got into the money if you lost a multi bet pot you were out.

if anyone remembers, i believe a year or so ago one night(might have happened more than once, i can only recall it happening once) they introduced a super deepstacks horse, which was 33$ buyin and 10k starting stack. the structure resembled this, and it took about 3 hours if not longer for the first person to bust.

Online, I suspect that this would require 60 minute blind levels. Not really a problem if you start off with about 50 big bets and (for HORSE) cycle the games every 12 minutes.

Isn't this (for the most part) true of NL tournies as well.

I think this is a common mistake made by people who are too used to setting up NL tourneys. In NL, it's relatively easy to change a structure from "normal" to "deep" by simply increasing the starting stack size. Strictly speaking, all this does is delay the final table until stacks become as deep as they would have been with normal starting stacks. However, for most of the tourney, it plays deeper and most people don't notice that it ends up playing like a normal final table (because most people are long gone).

However, a true "deep" tourney has far more to do with the length of the level intervals and the average % increase at each level change. It's the % increase in the BB/hour (or, more accurately, /hand) that defines how deep a given structure will play. That's why last year's 100% level increases were so devastating at the end of the 5K HORSE. There is no real difference between 50% increases every 15 minutes and 100% increases every 30 minutes. You just get a much bigger shock at the transition.