Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Live Tournaments - They'll Never Catch On
I'm glad to be back at home after spending most of 5 weeks away (and the rest with no kitchen and a front room full of boxes). I enjoyed Day 1 in Dublin a lot, but that was almost entirely because I was at a congenial table, I was able to chat to Barny Boatman all day and there were quite a few other pros on the table, so the game kept moving and douchery was at a minimum, except for one pathetic stall job on the last hand to avoid taking the blind.
The Day 2 lineup was almost a polar opposite. One guy talking crap to himself, everyone else pretty much silent, and all too much Hollywooding and posturing. All these signs pointed to better value of course, but I failed to get a resteal through and lost the 40-60, gg. I didn't play the E1500 and an hour into the charity event I was almost glad to bust on a flip.
Every year it's more necessary for someone to stand up with a microphone at the start of these events and say "The TV table's over there. The rest of you are not on TV. So stop acting like you are and get on with the fucking game". Tillllllllllt. Considering the fight, flight or freeze options, I'm going with flight I think. I have very little desire to play live MTTs now and going to the WSOP looks like a 20-1 shot at least. I can just about cope with live poker on a good table where you can talk to people and keep the game moving along, but once the sunglasses/baseball cap/30 seconds to fold every hand crowd roll in I'm almost grinding my teeth.
The overwhelming majority of live tournament players are sick - but not the good kind of sick. Poker has a way of bringing out the worst in peoples' egos, and frankly as a race we're sick enough as it is in that sense without poker making it worse ! I shall expand on this in due course :-)
Update : The guy who stalled the last hand of the day has started a thread about it on 2+2. It will be interesting to see where that goes.
The Day 2 lineup was almost a polar opposite. One guy talking crap to himself, everyone else pretty much silent, and all too much Hollywooding and posturing. All these signs pointed to better value of course, but I failed to get a resteal through and lost the 40-60, gg. I didn't play the E1500 and an hour into the charity event I was almost glad to bust on a flip.
Every year it's more necessary for someone to stand up with a microphone at the start of these events and say "The TV table's over there. The rest of you are not on TV. So stop acting like you are and get on with the fucking game". Tillllllllllt. Considering the fight, flight or freeze options, I'm going with flight I think. I have very little desire to play live MTTs now and going to the WSOP looks like a 20-1 shot at least. I can just about cope with live poker on a good table where you can talk to people and keep the game moving along, but once the sunglasses/baseball cap/30 seconds to fold every hand crowd roll in I'm almost grinding my teeth.
The overwhelming majority of live tournament players are sick - but not the good kind of sick. Poker has a way of bringing out the worst in peoples' egos, and frankly as a race we're sick enough as it is in that sense without poker making it worse ! I shall expand on this in due course :-)
Update : The guy who stalled the last hand of the day has started a thread about it on 2+2. It will be interesting to see where that goes.
# posted by Andy_Ward @ 7:15 PM 
