Quote:
Originally Posted by Poker Clif
I play only tournaments, and for now, only on ACR. I was upset when all the straight freezeout tournaments disappeared. I've thought a lot about this issue, and you're both right.
In the short-term, reentries are a good thing for good players. With the same starting stack but bigger blinds, those who reenter are at a big disadvantage, and you'll probably have a bigger stack when you're in a hand against Reentry Guy, which gives you an edge. RGs certainly add money to the prize pool while being realtively short-stacked. You could call it semi-dead money. Short-stacked players can still play, but their options are limited against the large number of remaining players who will have much larger stacks.
That said, I'm not happy about the overall trend of ACR tournament structure. Nearly every MTT now offers rebuys (sometimes unlimited) and/or add-ons and/or reentry.
In that situation, bankroll requirements grow. The add-on is usually for a large number of chips, which almost forces you to buy it to remain competitive. A $3 tournament with one rebuy and add-on is in effect a $9 tournament. In this situation, a lot of the fish are going to get cleaned out very quickly, which is not good for the poker economy. If you're thinking, "Of course fish go broke, that's what they do," please read the next two paragraphs.
When I started on PokerStars, I deposited $50. I played $1 tournaments and was breakeven for a while, finally losing my first deposit after about three months. I knew that I had learned some things while I was playing, and I thought it was worth another $50, even though money was very tight, to give it another shot.
If someone like me tried to do the same thing on ACR, either entering for $3 (skipping the add-on and rebuy and being shortstacked), or playing $9 effective tournaments with a $50 bankroll (remember, fish don't know about bankroll management), it is likely that the fish would lose his deposit very quickly and never come back. Because I had some good choices and could mess around with $1 tournaments until I had some idea what I was doing, I am still playing, and generating rake on ACR.
The bottom line is that as far as I can tell ACR doesn't have $1 or $2 tournaments for MTTs. The lowest denominated MTT is the $3 with rebuy and add-on. This structure could easily destroy the bottom of the pyramid.
On the other end of the spectrum, ACR has tournaments that are advertised as deep-stacked, but they don't play that way because of the structure--antes start at level 4! A serious profit-maximizing player who likes playing deepstacked is likely to look at that stucture and see if he can find somwhere else to play $30 MTTs.
What you have here is a business plan to get as much money from as many players as you can as fast as your can. That may make good business sense in the short run, but you're going to chase a lot of fish away before they have a chance to become rake generators, and the better players who care about tournament structure won't be far behind.
If you're wondering why I'm still playing on ACR, I'm clearing a bonus. When I'm done with that, I'll reevaluate. Of course, and this is the really sad part about this situation. I might stay on ACR regardless, the post-Black Friday options being what they are.
For the record, I am a current ACR player who
votes strongly to keep the re-entry tournaments. I, for one, appreciate the larger prizepools the re-entry tournaments allow ACR to provide. I am glad they are re-entry and not rebuy. The rebuyers can stack their chips and truly make it a disadvantage for the 'one buy players'. I do not find that with the re-entry tournaments. In my case I find an extra advantage in that some players are making bad plays early on knowing they can re-enter, but it is allowing me to chip up easier in the early stages with big hands, whereas normally these players would fold or not give you as many chips. So I might get bad beat with a big advantage, but I will take that given the odds in my favor. That is better than the same person at your table double rebuying and pushing his 2x stack at you every hand, or better than the much smaller prizepools that would result from a change to regular freezeouts in many of the tournaments.
FTP introduced multiple entry tournaments that were very popular, now I would hate that version, but I am happy that we can trade higher prizepools at the moment for a simple re-entry scheme.
On the other end of the spectrum, ACR has tournaments that are advertised as deep-stacked, but they don't play that way because of the structure--antes start at level 4! A serious profit-maximizing player who likes playing deepstacked is likely to look at that stucture and see if he can find somwhere else to play $30 MTTs.
Personally, I find at least one of their deepstack tournaments very appealing, the $25+2 7-8K (varies) Monday-Friday starts with 5K chips and plays long enough for my tastes. Total tournament time is well over 6 hours and that does not come across as a 'hit n run' with your money as described for my $30.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ACR Rep
You asked for it, we've added it!
We've just added a new feature to our poker software called Auto Top Up. Now, you can make sure your chip stack never falls below a set minimum—as long as you've got cash in your account to back it up. You can choose to make sure your chip stack never drops below the table max, the table minimum, or a set number of big blinds.
To enable Auto Top Up and Auto Buy In, click the Table Options button (top left corner) while seated at a table, and then click the Buy-In/Auto Top Up tab. You will then have the options displayed
The Auto Top Up feature is the first of many tools that Americas Cardroom is building to improve the lives of the online grinders.
Enjoy!
Good feature, but more important, hopefully feature added soon to immediately rebuy in tournament games where you do not have a player sitting with zero for one hand and messing with the small and big blind. And same thing with addon after break where everyone plays one hand with pre-addon stack.
Last edited by WEC; 05-29-2012 at 08:46 PM.