Too Much of a Good Thing

I am almost always a fan of deep stacked, slow moving tournament structures. The longer a tournament lasts and the deeper the blinds, the more skill is involved, so on average the better players will win more often.

But like everything, this needs to be taken in moderation. I saw a ridiculous example of this recently in the wcoop $500 heads-up event. This event had a guarantee of $1,000,000 so the site was expecting more than 2000 players. If the field had gotten above 2048 players there would have needed to be 12 rounds played to reach a winner.

In a move that showed a complete lack of planning, the blind structure was made so deep that each round took over 2 hours, most rounds lasting around 2.5 hours. That means that the tournament could have easily lasted over 24 HOURS straight! Lucky for the players, they didn’t reach the guarantee and only 1500 players bought in. So only 11 rounds were necessary. Even so, the tournament still lasted almost 22 hours. A tournament which started at 2:45pm lasted until 12:20pm the next day.

I got knocked out in the 6th round at around 3:30am. Usually playing till this time wouldn’t be a problem, but since I’m still partially on European time, I was almost passing out by the end. My last match I was so tired I didn’t even care if I won or lost.

I don’t know how the people handled it who lasted until the 10th and 11th rounds, but I take my hat off to them. I have never played well when I’m tired, so I try to never play any sessions much longer than 12 hours or so. Maybe others are able to handle it better than I can.

Either way, what was pokerstars thinking? Next time, try to do a little planning before you run these tournaments.

On a really minor note, what was up with the crazy blind levels? 3840/7680, 20480/40960, 30720/61440, etc… Made bet sizing pretty confusing at times.