Temptation Poker @ HG Casino

[masman21]

Just wondering if anyone has played in this Temptation Poker tournament at Hawaiian Gardens on Monday Nights? It says after round 5 you can "cash out" on the button. How does this work? For a $100 buy-in I'm guessing 1000 in chips and you can cash out for a tenth of your stack? ex. 5000 in chips = $500?

[budblown]

thats tonight?

[KurtSF]

[ QUOTE ]
Just wondering if anyone has played in this Temptation Poker tournament at Hawaiian Gardens on Monday Nights? It says after round 5 you can "cash out" on the button. How does this work? For a $100 buy-in I'm guessing 1000 in chips and you can cash out for a tenth of your stack? ex. 5000 in chips = $500?

[/ QUOTE ]

Never heard of it, so I'm just riffing here. But if you have 5000 in chips then 1/10 your stack would be 500 in chips, which is equivalent to $50, since 500 chips is half a buyin. No?

[masman21]

Yes Budblown, tonight at 8pm.

KurtSF... My thinking was, $100 buy-in times 10 is 1000 chips, so every ten tournament chips would be one real dollar. Hence, if I double up to 2000, I essentially double my cash value. I'll go tonight and report back tomorrow.

[KurtSF]

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Yes Budblown, tonight at 8pm.

KurtSF... My thinking was, $100 buy-in times 10 is 1000 chips, so every ten tournament chips would be one real dollar. Hence, if I double up to 2000, I essentially double my cash value. I'll go tonight and report back tomorrow.

[/ QUOTE ]

OIC what I did there. Nevermind. Waiting for your report.

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
Just wondering if anyone has played in this Temptation Poker tournament at Hawaiian Gardens on Monday Nights? It says after round 5 you can "cash out" on the button. How does this work? For a $100 buy-in I'm guessing 1000 in chips and you can cash out for a tenth of your stack? ex. 5000 in chips = $500?

[/ QUOTE ]

I played it last week; it was fun although I exited early. Would have gone tonight but the Pats were on Monday Night Football.

Here's how it works. Let's say 100 people sign up so the prize pool is at the $10,000 guarantee. You get $50 in special tournament chips and the blinds start at 1-1, go to 1-2, 1-3, 2-3, then 3-5 (this is from memory but should be close). The tournament prize pool is $5000 and the "buy back" prize pool is also $5000. After four rounds you can turn in your chips when you get the button but you need to decide before you get dealt a hand. If you exit the tournament and cash in (the button freezes) each tournament chip will be worth $1 taken from the "buy back" prize pool.

Let's say lots of people cash out. Then the few remaining players with chips will still be competing for the $5000 tournament prize pool. So their chip equity can be quite large.

Instead let's say few people decide to cash out (in this example we will assume $1000 of cash outs). The winner will have all the remaining chips (worth $4000) and let's say close to standard 40 percent of the tournament prize pool ($2000). Second place would have no chips to cash in but would have let's say 20 percent of the prize pool or $1000 (the payout structures are a little high for first and second, this just makes the math easier since I'm playing two tournaments on the other screen right now).

I figure there will probably be some interesting equity decisions at or near the final table. But with $20 juice on a $100 tournament don't expect to get rich.

~ Rick

[masman21]

I was quickly reminded why I quit playing there and went to The Bike or Commerce. Besides the sub-par facilities the staff there was not plesant or helpful. I cut my teeth there and have always defended it to people at other casinos. It's been about 9 or 10 months since I've played there so the step back was eye opening. Not sure I'll play there again.

Anyway, the tournament was much like Rick explained. I think I had difficulty playing with 50 chips, it felt really home game like. Looking down and seeing $38 in chips and not being a short stack was too much for my mind to comprehend. Weird thing to get caught up on but when you play in events where 38k is a short stack it messes with your head a bit. The play was your usual mix of nuts, fish and decent players. I like the concept of do I cash out or not but this event seemed very hodge podge and thrown together. But like a lot of things, I tried it once and it wasn't my cup of tea.

[Rick Nebiolo]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Just wondering if anyone has played in this Temptation Poker tournament at Hawaiian Gardens on Monday Nights? It says after round 5 you can "cash out" on the button. How does this work? For a $100 buy-in I'm guessing 1000 in chips and you can cash out for a tenth of your stack? ex. 5000 in chips = $500?

[/ QUOTE ]

I played it last week; it was fun although I exited early. Would have gone tonight but the Pats were on Monday Night Football.

Here's how it works. Let's say 100 people sign up so the prize pool is at the $10,000 guarantee. You get $50 in special tournament chips and the blinds start at 1-1, go to 1-2, 1-3, 2-3, then 3-5 (this is from memory but should be close). The tournament prize pool is $5000 and the "buy back" prize pool is also $5000. After four rounds you can turn in your chips when you get the button but you need to decide before you get dealt a hand. If you exit the tournament and cash in (the button freezes) each tournament chip will be worth $1 taken from the "buy back" prize pool.

Let's say lots of people cash out. Then the few remaining players with chips will still be competing for the $5000 tournament prize pool. So their chip equity can be quite large.

Instead let's say few people decide to cash out (in this example we will assume $1000 of cash outs). The winner will have all the remaining chips (worth $4000) and let's say close to standard 40 percent of the tournament prize pool ($2000). Second place would have no chips to cash in but would have let's say 20 percent of the prize pool or $1000 (the payout structures are a little high for first and second, this just makes the math easier since I'm playing two tournaments on the other screen right now).

I figure there will probably be some interesting equity decisions at or near the final table. But with $20 juice on a $100 tournament don't expect to get rich.

[/ QUOTE ]

I played again last night and went deep (third) so I have a much better idea how it works and so on. A $100 single rebuy was added so it's really a $220 tournament for most people. This is the size range I'm shooting for in a weekly four to six hour tournament and the ten percent juice is competitive.

The rebuy money is added to the live prize pool (the "buy back" prize pool in my post quoted above). Last night we had 59 entrants contributing $50 x 59 = $2950 to the tournament prize pool and an equal amount to the live prize pool. There were 47 $100 rebuys which all went into the live prize pool ($2950 + $4700 = $7650).

They took out the 1-1 blind level and may have made other adjustments to the structure I didn't track. I imagine there may be some further tweaking; in general I'd recommend they make it a little faster earlier and a little slower at the "temptation levels" where most of the fun is while maintaining the same total length.

I built up to about $600 in chips (including my rebuy) entering the "temptation levels" starting at level five. I felt I was in position to gobble some smaller worse-playing stacks so I passed on "cashing in" with a few tables left. A few stacks did cash in during this period (usually someone who may have been tired from work with a small to medium sized win).

With 59 entrants the final 9 get paid with first getting around $1075, second $600, third $375 on down to ninth getting $120 or so. As we broke down to two tables the big stacks (like me) were thinking about making the big score and the small stacks were passing on cashing out on the button. A few medium stacks took the temptation option about this time. This helped us get to the final table fairly quickly and added to the excitement.

The final table was real interesting and I believe the temptation option led to more mistakes than usual. I built up to about $900 and once again passed on cashing when I had the button preferring to gamble for a big (for me) score. In a confrontation with the huge stack ($4000 or so) at the $50-$100 level with about six left I got unlucky but held onto $400. I had a chance to cash this again but passed, still figuring I could at least make third and maybe have another shot at the big stack.

At one point I thought the big stack might cash his $4500 or so on the button leaving me with about the biggest stack and two or three opponents. But he passed (probably correctly) since he was a huge favorite to make first place and could wait for the small stacks to bust. (Note that if you take the "temptation option" with let's say three left you get your stack plus $375 third place money).

With four left there was the huge stack, a tiny stack, and two medium stacks with my medium stack slightly larger than the other. I felt if I could double up I'd have a good shot at taking down the huge stack meaning I'd win $1075 first place money plus about $5500 remaining in the player pool (about $2200 took the temptation option and cashed out by this point). That said had I gotten head up with some stack sizes I would have had interesting "temptation" decisions on the button.

Anyway I lost my confrontation with the other medium stack as favorite but had enough chips to survive to third as the tiny stack got busted. I had to take a bathroom break at this point and I forgot to ask what the final two did but I think the second place guy took his "temptation option" with about $1000 live chips and the $600 second place money. The last remaining player probably took about $4500 in live money and the $1075 first prize. Note that there are no deals allowed since you can always take your temptation option on the button and get your live money and your tournament place money.

It was a fun and potentially profitable tournament so I plan to play again if I'm not in a great game elsewhere on the floor. Host Dave Simom may tweak structures and things a little more so don't hold me to all these numbers. I do think it will grow especially if we can get to the "temptation levels" a little faster; people seemed to be having a lot of fun then.

~ Rick

[KurtSF]

That actually sounds really fun.

[Spidar]

Rick,

I was one of the guys that cashed out early this week, Monday, I misunderstood the structure and didn't realize that a player cashing recieves the value of his chips and the prize money. As a result I looked at $645 in chips(2nd place money)with 30 people left and couldn't find a reason to stick around. Understanding it as I now do, I think it woulda been a better idea to play a bit more. There's gotta be a formula to figure out the right time to surrender.