Reentry or No Reentry?

Yesterday the tournament director Matt Savage tweeted to his followers a fairly straightforward question, presented as having to do with a bet between himself and Allen Kessler.

“Do you prefer reentry or no reentry in your poker tournaments?” he asked.

I replied “no reentry.” Scrolling through others’ answers, it appeared responders were divided between preferring reentry, not liking reentry, or wanting to ignore the question and propose other options (e.g., single reentry or other qualifications).

I was answering as a player. I have always preferred freezeouts to tournaments that allow multiple entries. I think the main reason for me has to do with bankroll management and being on the nitty side. It’s not that I’m unwilling to fire more than once in a reentry, but I just feel more comfortable knowing at the start how much I am in for.

I think I also just prefer how the game is played when there is no possibility of coming back after busting -- both as a player and when following or reporting on events. In one unlimited reentry event a couple of years ago, I recall reporting “bustout” hands for the same player six times (no shinola). Talk about Groundhog Day. In such an environment, it’s like nothing that happens prior to the close of the reentry period has much meaning at all.

Reentry tournaments remind me of back yard wiffleball games as a kid and the “do over” play. You know, the old “I wasn’t ready” plea that seemed like it would come up at least once every game. They also remind me of all the challenge flags in the NFL, something I’ve complained about here before as making it necessary to withhold response to any play until after the opportunity to call it back has passed.

Of course, we could step back even further and talk about the culture as a whole as one constantly in the process of appealing every decision or judgment, never seeming to settle on anything in a satisfactory way. In this postmodern world, there’s always another perspective, another version of the “truth” to challenge the one that had been previously accepted.

That 72-event EPT Barcelona festival from which I’ve just returned featured a few reentry events scattered in the mix, but the great majority (including the Main Event) were freezeouts. In other words, in most cases if you wanted to buy back in and play more, you entered a different tournament.

I’m aware, of course, of how reentry events (in some cases) give players with bigger bankrolls an edge, and also how they can be especially advantageous for those staging the tournaments for potentially producing a lot more rake per player. I’m also aware of how in some cases making tournaments reentry genuinely adds to the fun, as in the case of the media event last week where having reentries meant no one had to leave within the first hour.

Forced to choose, though, I’m going with “no reentry.” And I’m sticking to that choice, too -- i.e., there will be no reasking or reanswering.

Considering the Colossus

Got that note along with everyone else this week from the World Series of Poker about the $565 buy-in “Colossus” event that will help kick off this year’s WSOP in late May.

That’s the one featuring a big $5 million guaranteed prize pool, which means in order to meet the guarantee at least 10,000 will be playing. Which means, in turn, if that guarantee is met it’ll be the biggest field for a live tournament ever, topping the 8,773 that played the Main Event in 2006.

From this distance of two-plus months out, that total of 10,000 seems not unlikely. But it sounds like the WSOP is expecting well over that -- like 15,000 or even 20,000 -- or at least that’s what WSOP VP of Corporate Communications Seth Palansky is saying.

Just skimming through the “basics” (as well as the structure sheet) and other tips to would-be players regarding registration is a little bit head-spinning. There will be four Day 1 flights total occurring during two days of play, with flights starting at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. each day and each racing through ten 40-minute levels (meaning they’ll last a little less than eight hours apiece).

There is a reentry option, although players can only enter one time per flight, and aren’t allowed to reenter if they bag a stack at the end of a flight. They can, if they wish, forfeit a stack at night’s end (say a super-short one) and play a subsequent Day 1 flight, but they have to make that choice prior to bagging. After all of those Day 1s are done, they have three more days’ of poker scheduled to complete the sucker, although in the “FYI” list of items is a note that it could well extend one extra day.

Players are advised to preregister, but there are plans in place to seat a couple of “Late Waves” in each of the four Day 1 flights. I’m not even going to start to try to summarize it all -- you can read through the explanation yourself over at WSOP.com. Suffice it to say, when Palansky refers to the event as “a big operational challenge,” that sounds like understatement.

If only there were another word for “big.”

Short at SHRPO

Poker news over the three-day weekend focused largely on that Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Championship, a $5,300 buy-in event with three Day 1 flights and unlimited reentries that sported a $10 million guarantee.

They ran a similar event last year right about this time, again culminating a long series of tournaments comprising the “SHRPO,” and after it drew 2,384 entries to build a $11,920,000 prize pool the tourney earned a lot of notice. I was there last year at the time, actually, helping cover the first World Poker Tour Alpha8 event that was happening that same week at the Hard Rock in Hollywood, Florida, and I recall the buzz surrounding the event which Blair Hinkle ultimately won to claim a hefty $1,745,245 first prize.

The return of the “$10 milly” was announced back in May and I remember Rich Ryan then spending one of his “Five Thoughts” looking forward to the sequel while commending the tourney’s organizers for scheduling it after EPT Barcelona (albeit by just a couple of days).

Barcelona ended up breaking all kinds of records, attendance-wise. Then the end of August ultimately became quite crowded on the poker calendar on this side of the pond with events in California (the WPT Legends of Poker), Oklahoma (the WinStar River Poker Series), Mississippi (Beau Rivage Gulf Coast Poker Championship), Colorado (Colorado Poker Championship), Ohio (Labor Day Deepstack), Pennsylvania (Pittsburgh Poker Open Summer Series), and Montreal (Playground Poker Montreal Festival). There might have been others, too, not to mention the WSOP Circuit stops happening on either side as well.

Even so, it was a little surprising to hear they only ultimately drew 1,499 entries for the SHRPO Main Event, meaning an enormous overlay of just over $2.5 million after the tourney organizers honored the $10 million guarantee. The tourney is now down to 18 players. The EPTLive folks will be live streaming the final table tomorrow, I believe, as well as the final table of the Super High Roller today with James Hartigan and Joe Stapleton handling the commentary.

Among the chatter over the last couple of days has been the observation that this represents biggest overlay in poker tourney history, exceeding even that International Stadiums Poker Tour (ISPT) event at Wembley last summer where €589,060 had to be put up to ensure a €1 million first prize. The Seminole’s big overlay has also spurred other interesting conversations about the current state of tournament poker.

Those who think the turnout coming up short at SHRPO indicates something dire about the state of tourney poker in the North America are wrong. The other events listed above all saw healthy turnouts and there’s hardly a shortage of players and/or interest in tournament poker here. Those wondering about the possible negative effects of unlimited entry tournaments upon non-professional players have a point, although I don’t think they really dissuade the non-pros from participating all that much. Meanwhile those speculating about the future of super-big guarantees have a point as well. In any case, one would think the Seminole will probably be a lot more cautious about trying another $10 milly event in the future.

I guess I’m most intrigued by how complicated the reaction to the SHRPO overlay has been. Rather than simply hearing from players rejoicing at free money in Florida, the angles of inquiry and subsequent discussion has gone in all sorts of directions, including some that seem constructive. The fact is, the overlay has highlighted several issues relevant to players, casinos, tourney organizers, and even the media who cover tourneys, bringing to the foreground concerns that have significance to anyone with an interest in tournament poker.

Tournament Director Matt Savage summed up the conversation well in a single tweet, I thought, when he noted that “Poker tournaments are a fragile ecosystem, we (Players, TD’s, and Casinos) need to work together to get them to survive and thrive.”

There is most certainly an “ecosystem” (or special “economy”) in poker, something the rise of tournament poker has made all the more conspicuous over the last decade. And everyone who is part of it affects it in some fashion, whether they work together or not.

Borgata Brouhaha

Reading today about this trouble at the Borgata where the first event of the big two-plus week Winter Open had to be suspended before the start of today’s third and final day of play thanks to the discovery of some sort of issue affecting the tournament’s integrity.

As Rich Ryan reports over on PokerNews, Joe Lupo. Senior VP of Operations at the Borgata, said this afternoon “we have reason to believe the tournament was compromised,” and given the importance of “ensuring the integrity of the tournament” play was halted for 24 hours.

Ryan goes on to share that someone speaking for the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement mentioned “a situation involving counterfeit chips,” and via Twitter and elsewhere one finds many more references to some shady-looking 5K chips apparently being introduced into the tournament at some point.

In fact, Luke Edwards, a player in the tourney, yesterday tweeted a picture showing some differently appearing 5K chips. Some are saying over 1 million of the phony chips made it into the event, an amount that if true would represent about 1.13% of the total chips that were supposed to be in play.

Learning that got me scurrying back to the old story of the extra chips accidentally introduced into the 2006 World Series of Poker during a color-up at some late stage prior to the final table, something like 2.4 million worth which in that tournament represented more than 2.7% of the chips in play.

There were 4,812 entries total in the $560 buy-in event at the Borgata, a tourney that had three Day 1 flights and allowed re-entries. They’d gotten down to just 27 players to start today, meaning the money bubble has already burst long ago as the top 450 finishers made the cash.

Will be especially curious to hear the rest of this story. Assuming the extra counterfeit chips are indeed the cause of the tourney being compromised, it will be interesting to find out (1) what comes of the investigation into how the chips were introduced into play, and (2) what will be done about the tournament at this late stage.

Regarding the latter, all of those entries ended up building a total prize pool of $2,325,835, thereby besting the $2 million guarantee. About $900K of that prize pool has been claimed already by players who have cashed thus far, with something like $1.43 million still left to be divided among the final 27. In other words, it’s exceedingly awkward spot to try to fix an issue such as the one that appears to have arisen.

Indeed, I can’t think of any solution, really, that wouldn’t seem unfair to someone. Can you?

A Lot from a Little: Poker Tourneys Making Millionaires

Two poker tournaments are scheduled to complete today and tomorrow, both of which were planned and structured so as to emphasize the idea of making a “millionaire” out of the winner. In a sense, they both hone in on what has long been a central thesis and primary attraction of tournament poker, namely, the chance to make a lot out of a little.

Tonight at the 2013 World Series of Poker will come the conclusion of Event No. 6, the so-called “Millionaire Maker” $1,500 no-limit hold’em event (with a re-entry option) in which the structure was designed to guarantee the winner at least a seven-figure first prize.

As it happened, the event managed to attract enough total entries -- 6,343 -- to push the total prize pool up over $8.5 million and provide for a payout schedule that gives the winner even more than the $1 million that had been guaranteed. With 10 players returning today, a day that had to be added to the schedule to accommodate the large field, a cool $1,198,780 awaits the winner.

Besides setting a few WSOP records (as Nolan Dalla spells out on the WSOP blog), the big turnout and large prize pool also allowed the payouts to be less dramatically skewed at the top than might have been the case otherwise. That said, there’s still a mighty big jump of more than $450,000 between first- and second-place in Event No. 6, as $741,903 is scheduled to go to the latter.

Meanwhile the €3,000 buy-in Main Event of the 2013 International Stadiums Poker Tour at Wembley Stadium in London has been playing out over the last few days, a tournament which also features a gaudy guarantee for first place, in this case €1 million or the equivalent of just over $1.3 million. They’ve just returned from dinner break of Day 5 at the moment with nine players left, with the plan being to play down to a six-handed final table afterwards and then complete the tournament tomorrow.

That this ISPT event is even happening at all perhaps comes as a surprise to some after more than a year-and-a-half of confusing advance notice regarding the event, punctuated from time to time by frequent changes in the scheduling, format, structure, and expectations. I wrote a post back in February in which I referred to the ISPT and its tournament as a “poker cipher,” and to be honest now that it’s playing out I’m still not too sure what it really signifies.

The fact that the tourney ended up taking place during the first week of the WSOP has also diverted a lot of attention from it, not to mention been one of the factors affecting turnout for the event. The tournament ended up attracting a total of 761 entries (re-entry was also possible for this one), which added up to a total prize pool of €2,054,700 and a scheduled first prize of just €410,940. That meant organizers had to add a whopping €589,060 to the first prize in order to meet the €1 million guarantee for winning.

That massive touch-up also means a gaping difference between first and second, as the runner-up is currently scheduled to earn €285,000. It appears certain, however, that there will be some deal-making at some point prior to the end, and in fact with nine left players left there’s already been one unsuccessful attempt to negotiate some sort of multi-way chop.

While the ISPT event isn’t really registering so much with those of us on this side of the pond, the idea of someone earning a seven-figure return in an event costing only a couple of thousand (or thereabouts) to play nonetheless intrigues, just as it has over in Event No. 6 at the WSOP. And of course, the added oddity of an extra three-quarter million dollars’ being contributed to a tourney on top of players’ buy-ins raises the eyebrows, too.

We’ll see going forward if events such as these have any lasting influence. Something tells me the WSOP will certainly be keeping some version of the “Millionaire Maker” among its offerings in the future, given the popularity of the event this time around. I guess in a way these events could be said to occupy a kind of middle ground between the usual lower buy-in tourneys and “One Drop”/“Super High Roller”-type spectacles -- the kind of thing that can work well as a special, novel offering, particularly in the context of a larger slate of tourneys such as are offered at the WSOP.

Here Comes the Accumulator

Event No. 1 at World Series of Poker Asia Pacific got underway today. Or yesterday. Or tomorrow. Lotsa time zones to deal with to pin that down.

The first event a the WSOP APAC is this $1,100 “No-Limit Hold’em Accumulator” event which features a novel format never employed before for a WSOP bracelet event. Nor have I heard of it being used anywhere, although I’m sure it has somewhere before.

Looking in over on PokerListings, I see that 329 players participated in today’s first Day 1 flight, with Dan “djk123” Kelly having ended the day with the most chips among the 50 or so players surviving the eight one-hour levels.

Kelly spun his starting stack of 3,000 chips up to 66,250 by night’s end to lead all of those making it to the bagging. Like everyone else who played today -- survivors and bustouts -- Kelly can come back for tomorrow’s Day 1b and/or Saturday’s Day 1c and play again. And if he were to survive either or both of those flights, he’d then be able to add whatever additional chips he wins to his overall stack, combining all to begin Sunday’s Day 2.

Thus... the “Accumulator.” Sounds a little like some sort of materialistic superhero. Or champion collector of stuff! A relation, perhaps, of the Comic Book Guy’s alter ego from The Simpsons, the Collector (pictured above).

The “accumulator” presents another variation on the whole rebuy/re-entry/multi-entry tourney twisting that has been pursued both online and live in various ways over recent years.

Rebuys have remained part of the tourney landscape even after the WSOP decided to jettison them following the 2008 Series. I remember at the time gossip going around about funny business with prize pools and the collecting of cash for rebuys, but a lot of the debate seemed focused more on ideas of fairness and “level playing fields” and suggestions that there was something wrong with players with deep pockets being able to “buy” bracelets in these straightforward rebuy events.

As I wrote about in late 2008, no one really could buy a bracelet in these events, although a player able to afford dozens of rebuys in a given event obviously had more options available to him or her than did the player only able to buy in once or twice.

In any case, the rebuys did fade a bit from the scene, soon to be replaced by the “re-entry” tournament that usually introduced some kind of restriction on how many times a busted player could buy back into an event while also not allowing players to do any rebuying unless they had busted altogether. Nowadays re-entries have become somewhat commonplace.

The World Poker Tour main events are often re-entry tournaments. This weekend I’m off to Foxwoods for the WSOP Circuit $1,675 buy-in Main Event which like every WSOP-C ME will also be a re-entry tournament.

There will be two Day 1 flights (both played Saturday, actually), with players eliminated from “Day 1a” (lasting nine 40-minute levels) unable to buy back into that flight, but able to buy in to Day 1b on Saturday evening.

Then -- if I’m not mistaken -- when Day 2 begins players who only played one of the Day 1 flights and busted can if they wish buy in a second time just before play resumes on Sunday. But those who’ve bought in and busted twice already don’t get a third chance. Covering these events before, I don’t recall that many coming to buy in at the start of Day 2 (either for a first or second time), but a few generally do.

Like I say, now these re-entry events have become somewhat standard, thus making it possible for the WSOP to try yet another variation on the theme at the Crown Melbourne this week.

I’m curious to see what kind of statistics emerge regarding participation in WSOP APAC Event No. 1. I’m sure many who busted will be back to fire another $1,100, but I wonder whether many of those who survived today will think it worth coming back again to try to accumulate more chips.

I suppose people could once more argue that those with deep pockets stand better chances to win these re-entry and “accumulator” tournies. That said, it’s already true that those with the ability to play more tournaments necessarily have more opportunities to win them.

Not everyone is a fan of the way re-entry tourneys are taking over, of course. For more on the debate over re-entry tournaments, here’s a Card Player piece from a year-and-a-half ago which includes several players’ offering thoughtful observations about the pros and cons.