| Normally I'm a big fan of tournament gambling. My own tendency to score good results aside (at the Commerce I managed a $5,000 fourth-place in one Limit Hold 'em event, won a supersatellite and two one-table satellites, and had one other almost-very exciting finish I'll discuss later), I view tournament gambling as a terrific way for aficionados of any game to take a shot at a big win with a relatively small investment. Slot tournaments and craps tournaments, for example, offer wonderful opportunities, because you don't have to beat the house to win the tournament! You just have to out-perform the other entrants, and in some cases that means losing less than anyone else did. For a small tournament entry fee, you can thus make a big score in a pure chance game, without much risk. (For a more in-depth discussion of these kinds of tournaments, see Chapter 34 of Casino Gambling the Smart Way.) This very positive view of tournaments got called into question while I was playing in the Classic's huge closing limit hold 'em event (320 entrants!). A very pleasant young fellow sat next to me at my first table, and the conversation we had before Tournament Director Cheri Dokken started the tournament with the familiar cry of "dealers, shuffle up and deal!" started me wondering. "Usually I play 5-card stud," the apparently corn fed, Iowa-bred, youngster proclaimed. "I haven't played much hold 'em, but I couldn't resist taking a shot at an $80,000 first prize for only a $300 entry fee." Now, the second part of that sentence made a lot of sense, because that's exactly what smart gamblers like about tournament gambling: big upside, small downside. But the first part? Hadn't played much hold 'em? Plays mostly 5-card stud? Nobody plays mostly 5-card stud, at least nobody I'd ever met at a tournament. The game is almost dead; it's too boring and too easy. I was surprised to find they actually still play the game at the Commerce. I was positive my young friend was either pulling my leg or trying to snow me into thinking he was a sucker, perhaps in an effort to lure me into trying one of those plays good players make only at novices. $80,000 first prize or not, no one plunks down $300 without having played the game much… do they? They do. Or at least, he did. My young friend, it quickly became clear, was telling the honest truth. Hand after hand his chips went into the pot with hopeless holdings. Out of 320 players I think he finished 319th. Taking a shot he was, but for someone without any hold 'em experience, he was taking a shot at a beefsteak mine. No chance whatsoever. (Our author finished 30th, not a bad showing but a particularly annoying one when they are paying the first 27 places. Especially annoying when the final hand features our hero losing with pocket kings against ace-queen offsuit. Sigh.) Perhaps my friend had been emboldened by the 1998 World Series of Poker, where ESPN's audience got to watch a heretofore unknown, Kevin McBride, go all the way to the final table and finish second, for a $750,000 payday. The commentators kept saying how McBride didn't have the necessary experience, the plays he was making were unorthodox (read: wrong), and he just kept getting lucky. Perhaps Kevin was inexperienced by World Series of Poker standards (although his victory in one of the Rio Carnivale of Poker events in January makes his World Series result seem less of a fluke), but I tell you this (despite lingering resentment from a satellite "bad beat" when I held pocket aces and he held ten-seven offsuit): Kevin McBride would beat my "Iowa" friend heads-up 1,000 times in a row. Everything is relative. Compared to champions like Phil Hellmuth or T.J. Cloutier, Kevin McBride is green. Compared to my Iowa pal, Kevin is Hellmuth, Cloutier and Bret Maverick all rolled up into one guy. So this brings us back full circle: are poker tournaments gold mines or beefsteak mines? The answer, as I'm sure you've started to suspect, depends entirely on what kind of poker tournament you're discussing, and what kind of player is entering. Cardrooms all over America offer huge numbers of small entry-fee tournaments, and by small I mean SMALL. If you scan Card Player magazine, you can find plenty of tournaments with entry fees like $15 or $20, and which offer hundreds of dollars in prizes. Even if you have very limited experience, I would classify such tournaments as gold mines, because you stand to gain lots of quality experience for a very, very small fee—much smaller than you might lose playing for an equivalent length of time in a money game. What's more, these small entry-fee tournaments offer the intermediate player a very good run for his or her money, because sharks like Hellmuth and Cloutier are nowhere to be found. Parlay cards are a good example. Usually, parlays are a bad idea. For example, if your bookie (or your Las Vegas Sports Book, or Internet gaming site—they're all the same for the purposes of this discussion, although there are definitely important differences) offers you a 6-1 payoff if you parlay three games correctly, you're taking way the worst of it. The odds against getting three consecutive even-money propositions right are 7-1 (put another way, one in eight), not 6-1 (which is one in seven). Let's suppose you made such a parlay bet 1,000 times, for $100 each time. Assuming that your individual game picks are even-money propositions, you rate to win your parlay card 125 times (one-eighth of a thousand). |
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