October 15thish hopefully will be in Hong Kong potentially playing in a private 200/400euro cash game that I won't be able to go into any details about but also looking forward to seeing a friend there and seeing Asia for the first time ever. I may extend this trip via china but haven't made any concrete dates yet.

I don't post much here but read your diary here every now and again and find it interesting. Good luck in this cash game I must say!  Are you going to stay for the ACOP in Macau? The main is around a $12k buy in on the 4th of November and the HR is around $30k. I'll be there to play the ME and to be in China in general. I hope you know you need a visa to visit mainland China and usually have to have either an invitation letter or all of your flight and accommodation booked ahead of time as far as I know. Good luck!

Thanks! I decided to add a few more notes, for people I thought were green but are actually good winning regs,. They are light blur now, which gave me the edge.

This might get lost here with all this talk of specific players charging ridiculous mark ups but what do people think when MU is tiered? Such as if people but 1% MU = 1.3, 5% = 1.2, 10% = 1.12 etc. I feel this is exploiting the many buyers who like to buy 1% or 0.5% or something small for a sweat. It is reasonably common on 2p2 I think, which is where I occasionally sell my action and there are a lot of people buying under 2% of a lot of packages. Sure it is more of a hassle to send refunds to 20 different players for 1 package but it should only take 5 extra minutes compared to refunding to just 1 or 2 players.

Most of the time I assume players selling on facebook are doing so for 1 of 2 reasons, either they can't sell on forums for some reason, which is suspicious to me or they have a large fan base on facebook and it is easier for all involved to not need to post a SC graph and introduce themselves over and over again. Most of the time the facebook punters will have no effect on me and I just ignore it or wonder why they think it is ok to charge that amount but I am sure some people think that way when I sell on 2p2 and it is often very subjective. I have had good players come up to me and say they think I am really good value at certain prices and then I see other good players buying from others and avoiding mine so they must think I'm not worth it or possibly not good at all. Everyone is entitled to their opinion on these but I don't think they should be necessarily always sharing it.

This thread has inspired me after several years to for the first time edit my note labels.

Yellow = fish or they bad beat me some time in the last 3 years
Green = bad reg or they were yellow till I realise they seem to be winning
Orange = sicko
Red = slowroll

Spectacular venue and spectacular action!

Food as always on EPT is massively overpriced and awful, however

Free water and hundreds of cafes and restaurants within a 10minute walk though. Shouldn't be too hard to find a reasonably priced meal that can be eaten on most dinner breaks imo. Agree with the venue being incredible but I wonder how slow the security will be at peak entry times. Re-entering the building seems to go smoothly with half hearted bag checks though so hopefully everything is running ok. The venue is much too small at the moment with the massive fields in the Eureka main and mini. I hope they get everything running a bit more smoothly when the EPT comes around in a few days.

Missed my flight. Turns out arriving with 30mins to go and a bag still to check in won't cut it. Try again tonight though, good luck all.

In for both, good luck
Sent from pvas2

UKIPT Main Event Day 1A - Single Re-Entry *

Is this right? I haven't played a UKIPT but didn't think the mains were re-entry normally. It wasn't needed last year to hit the 1million guarantee, so what is the need this year? Haven't been to dtd since last year's one I think but will happily come again for this one since it doesn't seem to clash with anything.

I was only there when the tourneys were finishing up but I think they got around 20-40 most nights and of course they use sterling there but their notes look silly and can be hard to spend here so ask for normal english notes when you win one!

I was in Gib about 4 years ago and was just starting to get in to poker. They had a lively £1/2 that ran every night after their evening comps with a few Germans from pokerstrategy.com although they didn't seem too good on the whole. There was a game there each night I visited with mostly the same people since there isn't that much to do there in the evenings. Fairly soft games imo but might have changed a lot since then. As for tips, definitely fly in to Gib not Malaga because I went mad getting the bus transfers that my local friend assured me would take less than an hour.

3% of a £2k tourney isn't really on par with 3% of a £100 tourney though. I understand what you're saying though but don't think it applies because even though the EPT tourneys last 3 times as long so needs 3times as many dealer hours per play they are still getting 20 times the salary from that 3% all other things being equal. Maybe I don't understand the card room tipping economy though.

I'd have a different opinion if they didn't help themselves to a percentage of the players prize pool in their live events     ....    like Stars need the money!

Too right. That extra slice they grab takes the mick.

That pecentage goes to the dealers and the staff, not to Pokerstars the company. Not the same thing.

They are at least up front in doing this. Some tournaments take money out for staff and don't even state it anywhere on advertising. However a personal gripe with this policy is that it is the same 3% for a four day tournament as for a turbo that takes a few hours. Also yeah because of this it is actually only 58k overlay instead of 73. Anyway I don't really mind either way if the make the guarantee or not, I suppose it is good if you travelled to play the event and it is actually a drop in the ocean for Stars. Would prob be better if they dropped their main event buy in a bit but maybe they don't want massive fields as there aren't actually that many places in the UK that can handle a 1k plus field. DTD a noted and honourable exception to this.

I still worry with this 3% though because when you do cash an event the stars person at the cashout desk will still always ask "are you leaving anything for the staff and dealers?". Maybe not always that phrasing but they don't really go out of their way to tell you about the 3% unless you specifically look what the asterixes mean on schedules, thought when I ask them if they have with-held anything already they do mention it.

My actual advice would be to forget EPT sats and play sats for other stuff, or just play regular tournaments and use the money you win to play an EPT.

If you really want to play EPT sats then the ones midweek tend to be less reggish (except Tuesdays?) and of course the rebuys mean you pay less rake. However the turbo 3x rebuy ones are a total crapshoot and I don't understand why Stars persist widely with this format. Others may have an opinion on this. Also beware that if you play for a package you will also be playing for a very overpriced hotel room.

Summary: I think EPT sats are toughish and the packages are poor value.

Exactly this. I only play the 500 euro sats if I can get in to them on a Sunday for under 200euro. Often there is very little value and there are a few really strong sat regs that take most of the equity out of them anyway. Some of the 215 double chance ones can be decent though. I'd just try for the PCA instead and play a mega!

Wow nice one. Not doing a deal till hu is really really sick. Gg

I also need to learn how to close these tournaments...