Regional Finals, Final Tables, and the Coming Final Four

Not unexpectedly, both my Heels and my NCAA bracket crumbled, and now I semi-dread the inevitable happening a week from today, namely a Kentucky-Duke final. (Others feel similarly?) Some exciting games, though, particularly in the regional finals.

Meanwhile I watched some poker on the computer this weekend, too. On Saturday I frequently dipped in and out of the EPT Live stream of the final table over at EPT Malta, including some of the seven-hour long heads-up battle between the two Frenchmen, Valentin Messina and Jean Montury that Montury ultimately won.

They ended up playing 148 hands total against one another, with the lead swinging back and forth in what turned out to be a hard-fought duel. What stood out the most, however, was the emotion Messina showed during his all-ins in the latter stages (such as pictured above in a screenshot from the stream).

Was hard not to be affected just a little watching him, something mentioned both in the commentary and in the PokerStars blog recap of the final table. The latter includes a nice picture of Montury consoling Messina after the final hand, as well as a good description of the scene by Howard Swains -- check it out.

Then on Sunday I followed a random tweet alerting me to the fact that Barry Greenstein had found his way over onto Twitch, and once on his channel I discovered him playing what turned out to be the priciest play money tournament ever on PokerStars, a 1 billion-play chip tournament that attracted 31 players.

Interestingly, Greenstein’s fellow Team PokerStars Pro Chris Moneymaker also took part, and the two of them ended up making it all of the way to heads-up against one another. Decidedly less emotion was on display for that heads-up match, although it was clear both were battling just as earnestly until Greenstein ultimately emerged the victor, winning 13.95 billion play-chip first prize while Moneymaker picked up 9.3 billion.

Obviously the kitty there was not as significant as what Montury and Messina were playing for (Montury won €687,400 while Messina took away €615,000 following a heads-up deal). Even so, from the rail both were interesting finishes to follow. And I guess the parallels help point up how poker can be meaningful at a wide variety of stakes, high to low.

I guess in both cases I wasn’t necessarily rooting for either player to win, but rather just to see a well-competed contest, which turned out to be so in both cases. Meanwhile we’ll see if that NCAA tournament comes down to the predictable heads-up next Monday, too, where (if does turn out to be the Wildcats and Blue Devils) I guess I’ll also lack any specific rooting interest.

Go Michigan State! Go Wisconsin!

Joining Team Moneymaker

Had great fun last night playing a poker tournament. Feel like I haven’t been able to say that much lately.

If you happen to follow Chris Moneymaker on Twitter, you might have seen him yesterday inviting people to join his new PokerStars Home Game. He has a new website -- Team Moneymaker -- which is part of a few new projects he’s developing, among them the PS Home Game. And the good news for those of us in the U.S. who aren’t able to play real money games, his Home Game is for play chips.

I signed up during the afternoon and then participated in the first of a few tournaments Moneymaker scheduled during the evening. Eventually he got his Twitch channel up and running as well, and provided commentary and feedback as we played.

I have to say I got a big kick out of Moneymaker’s stream, especially one time when I mistyped an opening raise with pocket jacks from UTG -- making it nearly 5x the big blind when I had been aiming for just under 3x -- and a couple of minutes later Moneymaker was commenting and making a note on me about my oversized open.

There were only 17 in this first tournament (including “Money800”). I stumbled early on, with none of my steal attempts or c-bets seeming to accomplish anything other than my dribbling away chips. But then I managed to pick up some decent hands and get paid for them, and eventually made it all of the way to having a chip lead with three players left.

Ran into some hard luck at that point -- if I were tweeting my progress, my followers would’ve gotten an “Out. QQ < AQ, then AJ < A8” note like those we’re all always seeing in our timelines -- and went out in third. The buy-in was exactly 1 play chip, my prize for finishing third was exactly 3, but the entertainment derived from those two hours was considerable.

So was the instruction, as I found myself genuinely challenged by certain decisions along the way and appreciating Moneymaker’s advice to players as he talked about bet-sizing and other decisions made by others (and himself) on Twitch.

I believe his plan will be to host Home Games each Monday night at 8 p.m. Eastern time, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a couple of hundred at least taking part -- maybe more -- by the time word gets around and some momentum is built up. If you’re curious, you can join Team Moneymaker here, then join his Home Game using the Club ID 1954662 and Invitation Code TeamMoneymaker2015.

Wanna Buy Some Play Chips?

During the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games on PokerStars last Sunday, I drew attention to a new text link appearing up in the left-hand corner of the play money games on Stars. As pictured to the left, one can now actually purchase play chips -- for real money -- directly from Stars.

Being stuck here in the U.S. and still a great fan of the PokerStars client, I will jump on the site and join play money sit-n-gos every now and then, even apart from the HBP HGs. Playing for play chips is how I first got started with online poker, and indeed for many months played nothing but play chip games until finally making a first deposit and moving over to the micros.

Play money cash games are mostly tedious -- to me, anyway -- mainly because players are so understandably erratic and there isn’t a lot of genuine competitiveness on display. Sit-n-gos and multi-table tournaments also feature a healthy helping of goofiness, but they tend to be played more straightforwardly (even if not that skillfully) which thus makes them mildly interesting and even worthwhile to some extent (I’d argue) for new players.

When I first started with the play chips I managed to build up a “roll” (as it were) and in fact had a couple of million in there by the time I started playing the real money games. I remember at some point shortly afterwards becoming aware of the existence of a real-money-for-play-chips market and even looked into trying to sell my play chips for cash.

This was an actual phenomenon at the time -- I’m talking pre-UIGEA, say 2005 or so -- with play-chip purchasing websites and everything. No shinola. If you go back and search forums of the day, you’ll see a plenty of talk about such deals actually being made. You’ll also find people discussing getting scammed out of play money chips, which seems like a meaningless ploy unless the scammers were then able to turn the play chips into cash by some other means.

I never did look into it deeply enough to try to sell any play chips, although I kind of remember rates of something like $11 for 500k or a million (or thereabouts). I also recall stories of some folks starting their real money rolls this way. Microstakes master Nathan “Blackrain79” Williams -- whom I interviewed for Betfair Poker some time back -- is an example. Nathan tells the story on his blog about selling 5 million play chips for $60 back in ’05.

Clicking on the “PURCHASE PLAY MONEY CHIPS” link in the Stars client carries you to a “Play Money Cashier” page. There you’ll find options to buy 350,000 play chips (for $1.99) on up to 165 million play chips (for $199.99!). Again, no shinola!

Like I say, I brought the topic up during the Home Games on Sunday. Someone asked in response “Can you sell them?” Good question, I thought... it doesn’t appear you can. Not back to Stars, anyhow. (Not that we Yanks are part of any real-money-anything on the site, anyway.)

I guess stepping back this is one of those “nothing to lose” ventures from PokerStars’ perspective. Kind of an interesting experiment, I guess, which recalls other “conversion” strategies with free-to-play games (e.g., on Facebook) that have ended up becoming significant revenue-makers.

Meanwhile, I am noticing these days some 1 million play-chip buy-in SNGs -- something I don’t remember there being back in the day -- for which I guess one really should have 100-plus million play chips in the ol’ play money account to join.

You know, if one is practicing sound play bankroll management.