Quote:
Originally Posted by broken_jia
Also can you guys discuss the PartyPoker High Roller fiasco?
Comments from players and the PartyPoker rep can be found in this thread (starts at post 2532):
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61.../index102.html
Cliff notes:
-Three players regged for a $2,600 tournament from the start.
-All players went all in during the first hand and ended the tournament, giving $100,000 to the winner.
-Hours after the tournament, PartyPoker freezes the winners account. No further comment from Party, but sounds like the winnings was confiscated from the winner's account .
Would be interested in hearing you guys' opinion on this situation.
If this happened in a $5 MTT with $2000 as the amount lost, would similar actions be taken? Would a sinilar ruling had occurred if ths took place on Pokerstars?
There's a growing trend where more players are late registering because the first few levels are quite meaningless. What are ways of getting players to register earlier? I can think of extra rakeback/rake discount, changing the blind structure so that blinds jumps are more gradual and decreasing late reg time altogether.
First, to the main question of the post. No one should be punished for manipulating the tournament within the rules.
Situation 1--When I was playing on PokerStars, 2+2 had the Official Double or Nothing thread. In that thread, the pros were bragging about "timing the blinds" (playing faster or slower so that the blinds would go up as they hit certain players.) Those DON pros had turned timing the blinds into an art form, sometimes using
implicit collusion to kill an entire blind level. No one ever complained in that thread. No rules were broken.
Situation 2--When it was proved that Chinese players were
explicitly colluding in the DONs, many players were banned, over a million dollars was returned to affected players, and DONs thereafter allowed only one player from China to register for each tournament.
Situation 2 was cheating. Situation 1 was not. The Party Poker tournament was a situation 1, a no-lose situation for the players. No rules were broken.
If you have aces in that situation, you're a fool not to call a shove. If you have 52o facing two shoves, you call because you're going to at least win a very nice third place prize. Those players were punished for two terrible crimes: profit maximizing and registering in time to play the first hand.
All three players should the prizes that they earned.
Now, on to another topic that you mentioned:
On threads for both Americas Cardroom and Winning Poker Network the very long/deep tournaments with several hours of late registration are frequently discussed. I have seen players register very late, sometimes starting with an M < 10.
When you say "the first few levels are quite meaningless" that's certainly one way to look at it. I look at it a different way. I accept the tournament for what it is and I prepare and adjust accordingly.
1. If a tournament might run for eight hours or more, I only play it when I've had plenty of sleep. I will sometimes adjust my schedule so that I'm up late several nights in a row, which prepares to me to play well past midnight. Other players are tired with several hours to go. I'm not, which gives me an edge.
2. I like to play a lot of speculative hands, and those deep stacks and/or long levels give me more chances to do that.
3. if I expect to have an edge over the early starting field I want to play as many hands as possible before the bad players get knocked out. I have no problem playing for eight hours and not missing a hand. That's what pee jars are for.
4. If it's late in the tournament and my stack is many times the stack of a new player, that's a matchup that I want. I can call shoves with a low level of risk because it's a very small percentage of my stack, and also because villian is desperate to get chips and will be shoving with a very wide range.
I don't worry about fixing tournaments like this. I look for them.