BCS Title Game, Southern Poker Championship, and other tidbits... part five

So, I write this before the BCS title game and it'll be published the day after the game, so bare with me for not discussing the winner or the loser. Obviously, I hope it's Auburn, but my head tells me Oregon might have an edge. Would love to be wrong on this one. I’m sure, if Auburn prevails I might have a summation of my experience but should they lose probably it’s just back to poker only content. Speaking of which the rest of this post is poker only content.

I’ve heard players are mostly pleased with the Texas Holdem poker structure at the Beau. There are some early inflection points where you are going have to take risks but apparently that is going to leave plenty of play “in the money” and at the final table. I have to say, if true, that I appreciate that more. I’ve cashed a couple of times at the Beau in past events and found the latter action to be too luck dependent.

I’ll have to see it for myself, as me and my source differ fundamentally on what a good structure is. I tend to side with Monkey’s player perspective, my source is a little more considerate of the dealers and the venue, and what it takes to keep good dealers in the box. I don’t discount what he says, but the fact remains, player friendly structures exist and the venues that offer them benefit from that.

Granted like the next guy, I like to get some play for my buck, and hate tournaments that I’m going have to push marginal hands early and take risks I wouldn’t normally, so hopefully, the Beau figured out the happy medium. You want people to come back so you need to give some early play, and you need people to be able to play when it’s most critical so you need late play, it’s like the middle has to force the action.

Clearly the Beau isn’t going to do what Steve Fraser and Jimmy Sommerfeld do for the WSOP Circuit and just make every tournament a long one. With play throughout, I like that best as a more NITish player, but if I had to choose when to have the blinds catch up to you it would be in the middle of a tournament. Last year at Harrahs I got into the swing of anticipating the inflection points of their weekly tournament and using my stack a level early for fold equity and chip accumulation than everybody else. Hopefully, I’d be able to read the structure sheet at the Beau and figure out when the right time would be to do just that.

Incidentally, I wonder if Harrahs has re-started their weekly. I like it when it’s running during tournaments on the coast. A lot of the younger players head to Biloxi and the field dwindles down to about 50 to the mid 60s, and those present are usually weaker casual players. Good value in scooping a top five place. Maybe I’ll go to Harrahs on Wednesday first if they’ve restarted. Oddly, I prefer the field to be in that 50 to 60 range or almost full at 100 to 120.

On one side it’s a lot easier to make the money in a small field, on the other side you are getting full value on your buy-in. I’m sure some math guy could tell my feelings are way off base on this, but I also feel more comfortable in either scenario which isn’t something you could measure tangibly. With the smaller fields I take less risks and can wait for hands and pick on some easier targets in critical spots.

In close to sell-outs I know that I have to take risks and can ramp up the speed of play. For whatever reason when the number is in between I have trouble with the pacing.