I'm planning for the opening event probably Thursday and maybe a few of the satellites for the main. Though I haven't played a live tournament in a long time so my expectations are low.

Played flight 1 of the opening event. Considering the bashing people have done of live poker in Australia on this forum I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the dealers and the organisation of the event. It took a bit of getting used to the weird phone rule and dealing out of a shoe though!

Are these rake figures still up to date?
http://www.starpoker.net.au/Information/Pages/default.aspx

That would make them cheaper than the Crown if this is to be believed.

I'm playing in tomorrows flight. What was the phone rule? How many in your flight and what level did you play to today?

The phone rule states that you have to stand up from your table to use your phone, regardless of whether you're in a hand or not. Sometimes floors even came around to tell players who were standing to use their phone that they also needed to step away from the table a bit more, with "a bit" definitely defined as an arbitrary amount at the floor's discretion...
We had ~ 250 runners and they played 12 40-minute levels. The breaks were 20 + 10 + 10 + 10 mins I think.

I played last night. We had 291 runners and played down to about 45 remaining at the end. Day 1 had about 250 runners and played down to 34.

I'm out shortly after the first break. Good tough table plus being my first live tournament in a long time and not playing the best(made a stupid push to end my day). Was a fun afternoon though. We had ~200 today.

Oh well, There's always tomorrow.

aha - never knew this thread existed

agree with the point up thread about some of the 5/5 regs. very rarely any super bad behaviour, just noisy 'in the club' type stuff that puts off semi reg and rec players

the 2/5 is definitely a load softer but I think it's slower too and it's so passive. drives me nuts

the action was great during the Sydney champs - just a shame it isn't like that the rest of the time

cmon skillz, you're talking rubbish as usual

I got a free card protector with my $2k Summer Series ticket and a free hoodie with my $3k Sydney Champs ticket

plus we only have to pay $1.50 for the worst coffee in the Western World

and free parking...

what more do you want?

I want the $3k hoodie to come in sizes other than XL and XXL if you play flight 2.

I wouldn't have thought that was too much to ask.

they were massive as well. I got a Large and it swamps me

Sorry I lied - I did get a free Sapporo when I final tabled a summer series event a few years back...

I remember when I FT'd a team event a few years ago. They would only give the team member who was playing that level the free FT beer.

One of the teams got knocked out during that level and the waitress refused to give the other team member his beer.

they're such pricks

Should at least give you 2 straws

I had a long black there the other day. It was the worst coffee I'd ever had. And I'm an American who used to drink gas station/diner drip coffee that had been left on the burner all day.

Any idea when the summer series schedule comes out?

Probably in a month or so. Usually comes out a couple of months before a series.

it's generally the last week of Nov and first week of December

whats the state of the NL games at the moment? stakes/tables running?

Week nights Usually minimum five 2/3 tables, one or two 2/5's and a 5/5 with all numbers increasing on Fridays, Saturdays.

Things the star needs to improve:

- allow ipods on tables in cash games
- reduce 10 handed tables to 9 max
- better chairs (melbourne crowns chairs are so much better)
- Allow chip purchases on the table
- Get rid of the time charge
- Make the straddle live
- Get rid of the stupid rules that are not standard anywhere in the poker world yet the star implemented for example Button goes all in, is called by UTG yet at showdown UTG has to show first.......makes 0 sense

-Dealers and supervisors to use a little common sense. When a rec who has very little experience in poker accidentally drops in a $5 chip a millisecond before putting in a $200 bet....they are not string betting or angle shooting. It is obvious to everyone watching. Yet of course the $5 bet stands and the rec player leaves never to come back to poker again.

-In $2/$3 games the $6 straddle then 2 red chips thrown in therefore making it a raise to $10 when the rec players obviously wanted to call is now being used by regs to angle shoot constantly. Why is management so ******ed to fix this rule?

- Some dealers are clearly terrible and make mistake after mistake every time they deal yet are never retrained. A few weeks ago there was one dealer who was over raking every pot for at least 30 minutes before finally someone noticed. Some dealers are horrendously bad and you need to watch them very carefully as they can't even get simple things like split pots right.

Playing at the crown for a few weeks really does highlight the problems the star has.

Don't disagree with any of it, but they literally don't give a ****

The first half of those aren't going to change and honestly I'm not keen on having ipods at the table, it's hard enough to get some people to follow the action as it is. I'd give my left nut for 6-max tables but the chance of them reducing to 9-max isn't going to happen either and honestly doesn't change much of the dynamic.

The second lot of points have been plaguing the room for years. My huge whinge is always the non-standard rules, especially how you get the "no, these rules are standard everywhere" response if you question the logic. Terrible dealers will always plague poker rooms but it's worse when you get time charged while a dealer is spending half the time correcting errors. Due to the time charge the casino minimises the impact on its bottom line by the incompetence so there is no motivation to improve.

I have seen recreational players ripped off blind through a combination of obvious extreme angle shooting coupled with dealers and floor then playing stupid technical games with the rules. The regs seem to have no concept of where the money comes from in this game, between the floor and the regs they are trying their hardest to kill the games. A few tweaks here and there and the room could be booming like it was back in the peak.

Unless things have changed in the past couple of months the room was actually better than it was a few years ago believe it or not. Yes it was a lot worse at one stage. You missed the good ol' days when there was no time charge or rake, hands were charged at 2.50 PER PLAYER PER HAND!!1!

wow, don't remember that. I've probably been playing regularly or semi regularly since early 2011, when we were still upstairs

Holdem is slowly dying out completely. For Star to be the only casino game for 5m people plus all the surrounding areas and for there never to be HE bigger than 5/5 and mainly these days only 2/5 is completely criminal

I played last Thursday and we couldn't get 5/5 up.

the only good by product is that most of the good HE regs don't seem to be playing as often, which means the games are fishier than ever. It's a shame, because the 2/5 basically plays like a 2/3 or 1/2 game, with very little pre flop aggression and dozens of players to the flop. I don't enjoy it as much, albeit it's really fishy

A big reason 5/5 holdem struggles to get up is that its ridiculous that the time charge is double that of the 2/5 game.

I played in Melbourne on Friday night and its amazing how different the poker culture is there. There were many 2/4 games running, at least one 5/10 holdem game running, a list for a higher holdem game and one table of 1/2/5 omaha was struggling to get going at 11pm on a Friday night. Totally different to Sydney.