Reader Mail: Impotent Poker

Posted by One Angry Monkey | Filed under Reader Mail

Welcome back to another round of Reader Mail, where we answer your complaints about things that we have absolutely no control over. But we try anyway, because why the hell not? We’ve got nothing better to do, and we always love to feel important (rather than our usual state of impotence). You can contact us with your questions, complaints, insane ramblings, and medical inquiries (because I also happen to moonlight as a doctor) at pokerfromtherail@fulltiltpoker.com and we’ll be sure to get back to you at some point – please leave a message after the beep. On to the show:

Say I play in a huge guarantee tournament for $10+1 and just make the money and get paid out like $12. If I wanted to break even, I just wouldn’t play in the first place. Why doesn’t FTP pay out less people so that those who cash actually benefit and so the final table doesn’t have such a huge discrepancy? You should only pay 10% at the most.

That’s an interesting question, but you seem a little misguided. If you’re only playing in this tournament to hang on and make the money, you’re doing something wrong. You absolutely shouldn’t be playing in a tournament just to break even, you should be playing to win first place and get the big prize money. At the same time though, if you do make it to the money you’re at least getting a small return on your investment. I don’t know you, but I assume you could use it.

The payout of these tourneys is already fairly top-heavy, making it a 10% payout structure is just going to add to that. The system isn’t broken, your perspective is. You have to play these tournaments to win, not to cash. And if you only manage to turn your $10 into $12, you have to live with that. At least you got to play poker for a couple of hours and have some fun. In other words, don’t be a sore loser just because you’re not good enough to win a tournament. Would you rather have busted out on the bubble and not won anything at all?

What the hell is the point of the Knockout, Double Stacked, Turbo Tournaments? If you’re going to make it a luck-contest turbo tourney, why give me double chips? Why not just make it a normal stack, normal tournament? How stupid do you think I am? Colorful boxes next to tournaments make me spend money, right? Actually, they do. You’re so clever.

We do pride our selves on the cleverness factor. Research shows that having pretty boxes next to the tournaments does increase participation.

The 90-man KOs are extremely popular as far as I know, so we must be doing something right. I happen to really like these tourneys. The double-stack provides plenty of play in the early levels, but the turbo effect means that it’s not going to last all night. These things are always done just over two hours. So yes, they might turn into a flip fest by the end. But what’s wrong with that? All I know is they’re a hell of a lot of fun. And having fun is why I play poker (along with losing all of my money).

As a big fan of six-handed play, I wish there were more multi-table SNGs that were six-handed − like 18 players, 3 tables. What are the odds of this happening anytime soon?

The odds of this happening soon are about the same as hitting a gut-shot straight draw on the turn or river. Which is to say that I have absolutely no idea. They let the more important people around here deal with that kind of thing, and trust me when I say that I have absolutely no interaction with the important people. My primary duty around here is to be a smart ass and laugh at people who trip and fall flat on their face (which happens surprisingly often for some strange reason, cough).

The real question here why is you like six-handed play so much. All that does is force you play a higher percentage of crappy hands, which strictly goes against my policy of folding as many hands as humanly possible. I once played in a tournament where I astoundingly only saw about two percent of the flops – and this was over 100 hands. I’m extremely proud of that accomplishment. Of course, I didn’t win that tourney. I didn’t even cash. Maybe I’m doing something wrong…

Tags: 6-Handed Play, KO Tourney