Date: Tue, 22 May 2007 23:17:46 -0400 From: Paul McMullin Subject: [BARGE] Trip report: The CEO Poker Tour (or "Math is Hard, in Three Parts") Back in March, I stayed over Sunday night after AtLarge, and played in the first event of the WSOP Circuit week at Ceasers in A.C., It was a $300 + 40 event, and had 1108 entrants, and I managed to play for 8 hours and finished around 250th (81 places paid). I had a great time, and convinced my bride that I should enter some more of this sort of the cheaper events of poker tournament weeks. I watched the websites of the A.C. casinos, and the next apparent "Tournament week" that was announced was the CEO Poker Tour, to be held May 19 through 25(?) at the Taj Mahal. "Peg" agreed that playing in their first event as a 'day trip' would be acceptable. Math is hard, part 1: I really wasn't convinced that these events were a 'good value': the May 19th event (last Saturday) was nominally a $500 + 25 event - but the $25 registration fee was going to the CEO Poker Tour organizers, and only $450 was going into the prize pool. So it was REALLY a $450 + 50 (to the Taj) + 25 (to the tour) event. $40/$340 in March was less than 12% overhead, $75/$525 is more than 14% overhead... when USUALLY you'd find that 'higher buy-in' events have LOWER overhead, not higher! Nevertheless, I was not aware of any other "tournament week"s coming to A.C. for at least a few months, and there was NO WAY I'm getting to the WSOP in Vegas, so I decided to take the plunge. I'm pretty sure that my suspicion about the apparent 'poor value' of the tournament was confirmed when I failed to recognize a single Barge/AtLarge/Fargo face in the crowd, so apparently the rest of you found better value plays last Saturday. Anyway, off I go: They had announced that 'early entrants' would get to play in a turbo freeroll Saturday morning at 11:15 am before the 2:15 'actual event', so I got myself in gear and left Silver Spring, Md at 6:10am Saturday morning, and arrived in A.C. around 9:00am. A quickcheck at the 'normal' tournament registration podium in the Taj poker room got me redirected to a line out in the foyer outside the poker room where the CEO Poker Tour organizers were selling entries. The had decided to have the 'early entrants' use the SAME SEATS that they were assigned for the 'main event' as their assignments for the freeroll, and at 9:30 I was through the line and paid and had entry(s) in hand. What's a poker player to do with time-to-kill in a casino? I was called to the 10-20 game by 10:00, and was back at the cage cashing out of the ring game at 11:30 up $350! Ding! Part of the entry fee was paid for! Math is hard, part 2: It turns out that the free roll was for 1 seat in one of the $1500 events they're holding on Tuesday or Wednesday. They managed to get the freeroll going by 11:20, so I had missed most of an orbit by the time I sat down. Lessee, they had 128 entrants, so my 'nominal expected value' of the freeroll was $1500/128, or slightly less than $12.00. Now OBVIOUSLY, since I am a winning player, my REAL expected value from the freeroll HAS to be two or three times the nominal value... maybe $30 or so. Hmm, I was cashing out of the 10-20 game where I had scored up 17.5 big bets in 90 minutes (without any serious "lucky run of cards" - they were apparently LOOKING for ways to give their chips away) to play in the freeroll... maybe I should have stayed in the ring game! Anyway, I busted out around 15th/128 around 1:20, leaving me enough time to get up to the snak bar and grab lunch before the 2:15 start of the event I had come to play in. Which really didn't start until 2:50... The tournament structure that the CEO Poker Tour posted to their web site promised 50 minute rounds with T5000 starting chips and initial blinds of T25-T25. Surprisingly enough, the Taj DID run 50 minute rounds, and they DID start us with T5000 in chips, but they insisted on using their "standard blind structure". I just don't think that they factored in that their "standard blind structure" is usually played with T3000 starting and 20 or 30 minute blinds. There was a LOT of play in this event. I've made a practice of writing down my stack size at the start of rounds... I want to believe that it helps me be more aware of how my stack size is relating to the blinds, and how much 'gamble' I need to be accepting as the tournament progresses. So, with 50 minute rounds, here is how I progressed: ante blinds my stack at start of round 25 50 5000 2:50 50 100 4025 3:40 ten minute break 75 150 7125 4:40 25 100 200 12275 5:30 hour for dinner 50 150 300 11300 7:20 75 200 400 10400 8:10 ten minute break 100 300 600 23800 9:10 100 400 800 30100 10:00 ten minute break 200 600 1200 38300 11:00 200 800 1600 26100 11:50 ten minute break 300 1000 2000 30700 12:40 There was an hour long dinner break from 6:20 to 7:20 before the 300 600 level. We started with 238, and I think that there were 110 or so at the dinner break. The "CEO Tour" had a guy with a camera wandering around, filming some of the all-in confrontations. He managed to be at the corner of my table for a hand in the second or third round when I was in the big blind... it was folded around to the small blind; he shoved in his T3000 - I found AA and pushed in my T4500. He smirked and said something like "well, you caught me with Jack high" and tabled a pair of jacks. I actually said "I can beat Jack high", but I should have said something like "I've got Ace low". Anyway, the camera caught the small blind's victory dance when the board was exposed J 5 5, but, as usual, that victory dance pissed off the pocker gods... turn 9... river A!. The camera man said that that hand would probably make their highlight reel, but I suspect that with a week's worth of filming to go, it is pretty unlikely that I've just spent one of my "15 minutes of fame"... At 1:10 am or so, one of the players looked around and said something like "Hey, we're 28 handed - shouldn't we be playing hand-for-hand?". I suspect that we had been 28 handed for at LEAST ten minutes, but now that someone called attention to it, the floor stepped in and stoped the dealer until all three tables finished a hand. Why does it suddenly take the third table 6 minutes to finish this first of the hand-for-hand confrontations? I'll never understand, but it sure seems to be a regular occurance. Anyway there was a player with T800 UTG after the first hand-for-hand, so we only had to plod through three hand-for-hand delay fests before he was all-in in the blind and knocked out. At 1:20 am, we were down to 27, and in-the-money. At 1:25am, I was in the T2000 big blind w/AQo and about T30000 (average close to T45000, blinds about to go to 1500 3000), when the cutoff raised to T10,000 (he held about T27000 total). His poor play earlier had significantly contributed to my triple up between the 200 400 and 400 800 levels... so I "put him on a range of hands that included pairs down to 66 and AK down to A9 and probably KQs and KJs" (or so I justified). I pushed, he called and showed AKo, and no damsel came to save me. The T3000 I had left went in on the next hand w/T8o when there were two limpers, and the big blind gave me some protection by raising 8000 more with AA. Somehow, his AA sucked out when the river 2 didn't complete my double gutter after the flop-and-turn of 4 6 7 4, and I was out in 26th place. It was probably Karma: I had been tipping halves to every new dealer I at my table (including when I moved to a new table) and another halve every hand I won, and I had just finished my third roll of halves right before the AQ hand came up. No wonder I didn't win the AQ v. AK confrontation - I didn't have another halve ready to tip the dealer! While the floorperson was walking the 27th place finisher and me to the cage (to collect our $1166 prize), she asked if we wanted to leave anything for the dealers... I explained that I had already tipped $30 because I hadn't been sure that I'd make the money and I wanted to thank the dealers as I went along. She replied that the dealers weren't supposed to accept tips during the tournament (because this would lead to uneven earnings for the tournament dealers). I told her that many of the dealers had attempted to refuse the halves, but I had insisted that they take them. Anyway, I gave her another $10 for the toke pool. (So I tipped $40 out of my 1166 - 525 = $642 profit. I'm sure that Mav is revulsed at this point... Hey! That sentence ALONE makes this trip report worth sending out!). Math is hard, part 3: I turned 54 in March. I haven't pulled an all nighter in several years. It was 1:40 am as I was getting into my car for the three hour drive home. I had been up since 5:30 am. I had been concentrating pretty hard on the cards for almost 14 of the 20 hours I had already been up. I *really* need to run those computations a bit more carefully before I agree to do my next tournament as a 'day trip'. But I did get home without incident at 5:00am Sunday morning. I'm pretty sure that a trooper would have pulled me over for "lane drifting" at several different times during the drive home had one been out on the highway going my way - is there a "driving under the influence of stupidly not finding a bed for a few hours nap" citation? Man I wish Peg enjoyed Las Vegas and wanted to fly out for one of the $1500 events at the WSOP next month! -prm Math is hard, bonus question: Could paying a higher-than-normal overhead to enter a tournament be justified if it isn't COMPLETELY outrageous, yet high enough to give most of the regular tournament players (e.g., ones smart enough to realize that the overhead for the CEO Poker tour is higher than normal) reason to decline to enter the event? I thought that the play in the tournament was pretty soft all the way through - there were SEVERAL times when people made boneheaded calls on the river with apparent undercards to the board against rocks that had been betting their "obvious overpairs" throughout the hand. IOW: if the high entry fee serves to 'filter out' the good players, can this raise my expectation in the field of remaining [bad] players that stick around enough to compensate for the extra overhead?