Turbo Tournaments

The newest trend of many online poker sites is to offer tournaments with quick blind increases, making them go a lot faster. I've participated in many of these turbo tournaments and think they are a great idea. Here are the types of turbo tournaments that I have played in, and my general impression of each.

1. Sit 'n' Go (SNG) tournaments - Several sites now offer SNGs with five-minute limits, as opposed to 10- or 15-minute limits, which were the previous norm. I think they're great, and they are now the only SNGs that I will play. Single-table satellites in brick-and-mortar (B&M) cardrooms usually have 10-minute limits. Since more hands are dealt in five online minutes than 10 B&M minutes, I have no complaint about the amount of play you get for your money.

I feel like an hour is plenty of time to spend playing an SNG, and with the new turbo format, you'll rarely see one go longer than that. Yet, you'll still see 100 hands dealt in that hour, which is enough of an opportunity for skillful players to show their stuff.

2. Qualifiers for larger tournaments - These are multi-table satellites that allow the winner (or winners) to move on to a more expensive tournament. I think the turbo format works well for these too, as long as there are multiple winners. If there is one winner, then I don't like it. It took skill to get to the final table, but then the final table itself is mostly luck, since the betting limits have escalated so high. But, if the entire final table qualifies for the larger tournament, then the tournament usually ends before the limits become too high, and that works out well.

3. Multi-table tournaments (MTTs) with five-minute limits - I think these are a good reflection of their B&M counterparts. It's just like playing a B&M tournament with 15-minute limits, except it takes a third of the time. There's enough play to benefit the better players, but not so much that you have to spend your entire day playing the one tournament. If you manage to make it to the final table, you might be disappointed at how high the blinds are compared to the number of chips in play. But, if it takes less than three hours to make it to the final table of a tournament with 500 players, that's to be expected. It becomes a matter of taking the bad with the good.

4. MTTs with two or three-minute limits - These are a little extreme. Yes, I like turbo tournaments, but you have to draw the line somewhere. There is hardly any skill involved in a tournament in which, once the first hour is completed, you are all in any time you decide to play a hand. If I had to choose between these tournaments and shooting craps, I would choose the tournaments, but barely.

I'm not saying such tournaments aren't fun. I went partners with a friend who played in one recently, and he even managed to come in second out of almost 1,000 participants! But, we knew that it was almost all luck. We recognized that we weren't playing poker, just something that looked like it. But hey, we played in one, so who am I to tell you to avoid them? Just make sure you're in a gambling mood.

My Overall Opinion

If you are a winning player, and you play a decent amount of hours, then you should favor the turbo format. It gives you the opportunity to play more tournaments in less time, so your hourly win rate should increase. With the exception of #4, skill remains enough of a factor that the best players should still win.

You should remember that tournaments, by their nature, have a lot of luck involved anyway. One could argue that by shortening the limits, you are increasing the luck factor even further, which makes it more difficult for the better players to win. While that is true, I think you also have to consider that the shorter limits allow you to play a greater number of tournaments in the same amount of time, which cuts down on your overall luck factor. The more tournaments you play, the closer your results will be to reflecting your actual skill level, even if each individual tournament has a greater degree of luck to it.

Of Course, I'm Biased

I play poker for a living, and as such, I want to play more poker in less time. When I was a recreational player, I did not feel that way, and I'm sure most of you don't feel that way either. I can easily see why you might not want to play in a turbo tournament. You might want to be able to play for a few hours and not risk too much money, so why would you want to speed up the process? You might want your tournament to last for a while, so that you can enjoy the experience, and I understand that completely. Maybe you have $20 to spend, and you want to make it last a long time. In that case, you'd clearly rather play a normal $20 tournament. If you played a turbo one and got knocked out early, that could be very unfulfilling.

But, there is another possibility. Maybe you could play four $5 turbo tournaments? That's what I might do. I think they're more fun, and now that their popularity has increased, they are attracting large numbers of entrants. That means larger prize pools to shoot for, and everyone loves a nice prize pool. If you haven't tried a turbo tournament yet, why not give one a shot? Maybe you'll never go back to normal tournaments again.

Matt Lessinger's "Bet With Less" column appears in Card Player magazine. He can be reached at mlessinger@hotmail.com .

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