The Enemy

Imagine this: You’ve played a $160 buy-in tournament with a (not really that) optional $100 add-on anywhere between once and twenty-two times. That’s right, I said twenty-two. There were twenty-two starting flights for this tournament. Anyways, you played this tournament. Each flight, 10 percent of the runners cash and 5 percent advance to day 2. There is a $1 million guaranteed prize pool for this essentially $260 buy-in tournament. You had to slog your way through 400 other players each day to try to qualify for this thing and you did it. Most of the people you have played with during this trek, like you, are weekend warriors or straight up recreational players chasing a dream of a $240,000 first-place prize. This is something that only happens on the Internet, or so you thought. Just $260 and a chance at $240,000 for first, wow. You have 200,000 chips, roughly 35 big blinds. You look around the table and maybe see some of the people you played with on day 1, your fellow weekend warriors. Then your eyes settle on someone else at your table. Someone you’re pretty sure you recognize, but not 100 percent. You think he’s probably been on TV. What’s he doing playing a $260 tournament, trying to qualify? Well, he didn’t. He bought in for $5,000 at the start of day 2. His $5,000 bought him 240,000 chips, slightly more than you have. That doesn’t seem fair. He gets to buy in to the tournament when there are only 300 people left instead of the 6,500 that took their shot for $260. Would you be upset that he gets to skip the early stages of the tournament or happy that he’s contributing another $5,000 to the prize pool?

This is the situation I was in not too long ago, except I was the guy who bought in for $5,000. For me, it was an easy decision. I get to play a $5,000 buy-in tournament for a $1.4 million dollar prizepool with 50 people who bought in directly and 300 satellite winners. Even better than that, I’m already in the money, guaranteed to get at least $800 back, so it’s really a $4,200 buy-in. Each player who bought into the early flights received 5,000 chips for their initial buy-in and 7,000 for their add-on. So, the starting stack is essentially 12,000 for $260. I’m receiving 240,000 for $4,200. There are some considerations about how much chips are worth the more you have, but I’m essentially already ahead on chip value if I’m average for the field, and I’d like to think that I’m better than the average player in a $260 buy-in tournament.

If I’m one of the grinders who played the tournament on day 1, I’d also welcome the players who can buy in late to the tournament for a premium. First of all, not everyone who is buying in at this time is a very good player. Some of them are probably average for the field but have a large bankroll and don’t want to waste a bunch of time playing in the early stages of the tournament when they can just buy in on day 2. Second, it’s a large influx of money to the tournament without a huge increase in number of players.

There were about 50 players who plunked down the $5,000 or won a satellite and 300 who qualified from all of the day 1 starting fields. When you take out rake, those 50 players added about $225,000 to the prizepool. Not too bad, considering you would have needed over 1,000 more day 1 players to have the same impact on the prizepool.

Finally, from the casino’s perspective, it’s a good deal as well. You get to advertise a guaranteed prize pool of $1 million aimed at recreational and part-time players, while at the same time having a good selling point for professionals and more well-heeled players with less free time. It’s the best of both worlds and a great way to generate interest in your tournament series while also creating a ton of rake.

I don’t think this is something that should be offered at every tournament because it’s just another way for the better players to clean up the money from the poker community and to make fields tougher, but it was an interesting tournament to play from my perspective and I wouldn’t mind seeing a few of these in Southern California every year. New ideas and new thinking is always a good thing for the growth and development of an industry, and if there aren’t any tournament directors and casino venues taking chances on a new approach to poker tournaments, innovation will die off and people will stop getting excited about poker. Change is good and I’m looking forward to the next innovative tournament to come down the pipeline. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG