Walsall GukPT: Final Day - Interactive

[waltypies]

Good luck Dan Carter. The Bristol Boys are watching and expect

Mango99 and myself will be there to cheer Dan on!

[M3boy]

Anyone else think it's ridiculous that after 18 one hour levels players complain about it being a crapshoot? And the decision to freeze the antes at 600 whilst still increasing the blinds is absolutely farcical. Surely they should stick to the advertised structure, and if players don't like increasing blinds and antes they should be pointed in the direction of the cash games.

I think anything done for the good of the game, with the consent of the players, is fantastic.

 Whilst totalling agreeing with Red's general point..... yesterday,knowing the approaching structure, I made a decision to make some moves before I got too low for comfort. Unfortunately Dan Carter was on fire at the time and took me out with Aces, .....but the point is that if I KNEW the structure was going to alter it would have affected my decision.

That's a good point too ripple. Who would organise a tourney eh?

I think Tourney Structures SHOULD slow down as the comp progresses. Reasons are that as less and less players involved, the rising blinds do NOT keep pace with the average stack , so the longer a comp goes on, the more of a crapshoot it becomes.

I hope that makes sense

[Djinn]

We're here and the setting up is continuing, both on the TV stage (which is growing like some kind of mushroom taking over the cardroom, the Casino and probably the world like in Akira) and the two 'regular' tables which will be recommencing play in about 15 minutes.  Seat draw on its way (redraw at every new day at the GUKPT)...

[b4matt]

Brilliant updates from jen and snoops aka the A-Team.
best of luck to John Conroy a real gent, and a mean player too. my 3

Shaf
Codpiece
Conroy

On the crapshoot line, i would like to see them tweak the structure a bit, i feel its got a bit to one move style to it.
Best of luck!!

[BluenoseDealer]

Normally i would go for des and i hope he wins being a regular at walsall but usually i'm not a good dealer for him if u believe in that sort of crap and rumour has it i'm one of the final table dealers  SO GET UR CHIPS EARLY DEZZIE

Break a leg Danny boy!

[snoopy1239]

 

[aidenson]

y r u not at work blue nose

[Djinn]

Redraw sees the players in these positions:

Table Bandit

Ganesh Rao    362,600
Dan Carter     232,200
Chris Bruce     270,400
Peter Evans     596,600
Billy Ngo         178,600
Joe Beevers     237,600

Table Big Name

Jerome Bradpiece  608,000
Des Jonas             225,700
Mohammed Shafiq   340,900
John Conroy           132,200
Raj Patel                246,300
Adam Wilkinson       239,300

[BluenoseDealer]

y r u not at work blue nose

I start at 8.45 tonight until 6 for the comp tonight. Can't remember what it is though. £100 rebuy i think???

[snoopy1239]

The players are braced for action!

[ripple11]

bluesq are offering odds on when the 1st  deal will be done on the final table                 no deal    100/1

100/1 WOW.....maybe the payout stucture need looking at?....

[snoopy1239]

These are tired smiles, folks.

[Bad Beat]

 I can't believe some of the things I've read and heard about the structure here.

 Let's first look at what the organisers are trying to achieve.

 The first decision they have made is that these are four day events. It was to be that some would be three days, but it seems this is going to be a very popular tour. I think four days is just right as it gives normal working people a chance to partake and gives the pros the chance to play all the events without spending their whole lives on it.

 This is a very popular tournament with more people wishing to enter than spaces. The organisers have tried to physically squeeze everyone in, and have also tried to squeeze the tournament into the time available. The tournament is four days long and basically Sunday is intended to be just for the final. In my view this is a correct deciion as it means that enormous numbers of extra players do not have to stay longer, putting in more hours, building up extra expenses and receiving little or no prize money. It also means that the final will start at a reasonable time allowing the big money decisions to take place earlier on, while people are not exhausted from a marathon day. This will also mean that a live audience will be on hand and awake to add atmosphere, and that the TV crew and casino staff will be not have to work on late into the night. If any hitches occurr or if the final becomes a really long battle, there will be no time pressure and the threat of a chip count will be averted.

 Given that they have made that decision to try and get very close to the final by the end of play Saturday then they just need to construct a structure to do that. As they started at 4pm, got down to 12 players by 3.45am and the casino is legally bound to close at 4am I don't see how they could have squeezed much more play into the time available.

 The only choice left to them now is to take play away from the early part of the tournament in order to make a better game later. It is possible that by bringing the antes in slightly earlier or by skipping the odd level they could give themselves leeway to slow things down later. The problem here is that more people would be affected by the quickening of the structure leaving more people to complain.

 There may be some tweeks that can be made but they should only be tweeks. Basically the GUKPT have got it right.

 The people who have commented already have covered a lot of good points. A lot of the people who have complained are simply not used to tournaments with running antes. I think it is a great development that the bigger UK tournaments are all starting to have antes now. All American and online NLH tournaments have a running ante and to me it just isn't a proper NLH tournament without them. I have no idea why they have not always been used in past Grosvenor festivals but I think a lot of the rocks who are not used to antes, and who were unable to adapt to a new situation were the ones shouting the loudest.

 The second really good point is that changing things that have been advertised because people are shouting and moaning is generally bad. The time for these people to complain was either when the structure was first displayed on the website or long after the end of the tournament. I thought one quote yesterday was very telling. Top tournament player, wily super agggressive veteran and altogether classy individual Alan MacLean had taken considerable risks to accrue an enormous stack, possibly because he realised that the pace of the tournament was rising fast and that people had not realised. He did not shout and scream like some, but was heard to quietly exclaim:

 "The rocks have won."

 Any time you change the structure midway, even if you think you are benefitting the game, you are penalising somebody else. In this case it was the people who just got on with it, adapted to the structure they were facing and played to win. Some of those were knocked out on gambles they may not have taken and others had won chips with gambles that were now not as valuable as they thought.

 The final person who made a lot of sense to me was Rob Sherwood. The sentiment he was trying to get over was, I believe, this one. Its a poker tournament. The blinds have to go up, people have to be knocked out, that's what happens. It has to finish sometime. If you don't like the idea of that go and play a cash game, which is exactly what I'm off to do now.

nc  

[Djinn]

My picks for the top spots:

Jerome (pictured with Des Jonas, who's looking the least sleep deprived of them all)
Dan Carter  (delighted to be inches away from getting sponsor logo on TV)
Billy Ngo   (crazy, but good to get his picture online now as he may be out within the next few minutes)

These three (four with Des) would make the most entertaining final, in my opinion, from the point of view of the second TV show in which a large proportion of the Final is shown. 

[snoopy1239]

Raj Patel is gone in 12th

Jerome Bradpiece raised pre-flop, Raj Patel moved all-in from the big blind with A-K and Jerome called, for quite a chunk, with Pocket Threes.

7-5-J-9-5 board means we've lost one of the local, a quiet and reserved Midlander who's genuinely done well to make it so far.