First Casino Tournament tonight!

[gmac]

Tonight myself and a couple of friends are going down to the local casino where they are holding for the first time, a £5 buy-in texas hold 'em tournament... they will apparently be doing this every Wednesday-Friday.

This will be my first proper live tournament... and I am quite nervous. Could be up to about 50 people entering and re-buys for first couple of hours I think!? So the prize pool could be around £500-£600... do you have any advice?

I'm not a fan of re-buys as it drags on and people with too much money keep buying back and play crazy I assume in the early rounds to accumulate chips. I doubt I will be buying back in.

Is a basic ABC strategy the best way to go? Don't try and get fancy with squeeze plays and pulling moves that won't get you any where unless they think beyond their own cards etc?

Thanks.

[MadTiger]

Allow yourself at least one rebuy. I strongly prefer freeouts as well, but if you are going to do it, do it right. Most say allow for multiple rebuys, but I say at least one. If not more.

You want the same tools as your enemies in this war.

[hencole]

If you aren't prepared to rebuy at least 4 times you will be at a disadvantage in this type of tournament, presuming you start with a short stack, which you probably will for a £5 rebuy. Sure you may not need to rebuy at all, but usually you will. If you get put on a manic table and are not prepared to rebuy you will be at a severe disadvantage.

You also have to strike a nice balance between playing solid hands and limiting your bluffs, with the need to keep accumulating chips as the blinds will quickly rise.

Oh and remember to take a lot of luck with you, always helps.

[Rocco]

First... Don't play a rebuy tourney if you can't allow yourself to rebuy. People will play loose and you need to loosen up too. Be ready to spend at least £25-£30...

I ALWAYS take the opportunity to rebuy before the first hand is dealt. Others will do that and you'll want to have a nice stack if you get to move in with the nuts. When pots get big, don't be afraid to move in with good drawing hands. You can always rebuy...

Finally... I assume they have an add-on as well. ALWAYS take the add-on except if your stack is so small you'll bust soon anyway, or if you have an extremely large stack (say 6-7x avg stack).

Good luck!

[gmac]

Well folks, unfortunately the tournament filled up within 10 minutes of opening and we got there 5 minutes late, next week we shall be there far earlier...

However it was a Pot Limit tournament every Thursday... and it's No-Limit on a Monday.

I am a strict No-Limit player and have only played Pot Limit once or twice online - playing it live seems like a hassle to me.

We did however hang around to watch the start of it and how it was laid out:

44 players MAXIMUM
£5 Buy-In
Re-buy's for 2 hours

Dealers also appeared to just be players who volunteered for the job...

But even more confusing was... every person just started with a very small pile of chips... like 7 chips!? We couldn't work it out - at our home games we start off with 23 chips, which comes to 1000 in chips in 5's, 25's, 50's and 100's. Why was there so few chips?

Also, the dealer would just point to the person who's turn it was to act and say for instance - "four and a half"... and people would toss in chips - what did this mean? Four and a half thousand for you to call? 450 chips to call? 450, or 4500 was the size of the pot!? Surely blinds would be in place and the pot couldn't get that big so early etc? Any ideas?

It was also so fast paced, almost like the dealer was grumpy and wanted you to make an instant decision... I like to think about bet sizes etc for a moment, but don't know how they'd like that.

Rebuys were taking place after almost every hand too, lol.

Maybe it was because it was pot limit or something but I'm cautious about taking part in it next week as I really didn't know what was going on. Can anyone shed some light on the subject? Thanks.

[fiskebent]

Sounds like a weird structure.

'four and a half' may have been the current pot size if it was pot limit.

But I've never played B&M poker, so it's a wild - and probably stupid - guess... [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[MadTiger]

Structure/Event organization sounds bootleg.

E for effort, though.

[nate_46]

No way would I play this game... My time is worth more than a crap shoot. Is this a bar game or at a real Casino? Ive played games in bars with better structure.

IMHO, find a different place to play or spend more time online.

[gmac]

It's at a real casino, up at the back, they have some tables set up for this event. It was their first time doing it as I don't think they've had a hold 'em tournament there before. It's one of the Gala casino's.