Tournament

For anyone looking to combine two fine sports in one vacation its worth taking a look at the next stop on the PokerNews World Cup roster.

The next event will be held atop the Austrian Alps in Saalbach-Hinterglemm in a five-star luxury ski resort, the Alpine Palace. The 2009 PokerNews Cup Alpine is set to feature of total of eight events running through March 21st-28th, with a €1,500 Main Event as the priority attraction.

PokerNews hopes to attract players with the promise of over €400,000 in prize packages that include private helicopter transfer from the airport to the resort, main event entry, hotel accommodations, ski and spa passes, and spending money for their pleasure travels.

"It is our aim to take poker tournaments to the next level by providing qualifiers and guests with more than just a poker tournament," says PokerNews Ltd CEO, Damon Rasheed. "As such, PokerNews is delighted to have the next leg of the PokerNews Cup held at The Alpine Palace, the most exclusive venue to ever host a poker tournament."

My only question is whether anyone can handle an 8am skilift after an all night table or if I should simply look at this as a very cold place to play poker?

In Las Vegas there are tons of tournaments running every day with different structures, buy-ins, and starting chip counts. Cities across the world are starting to increase their tournaments as well, and it can sometimes be hard to evaluate which tournaments are best to play in.

There are several factors to take into consideration when finding a tournament to play in. For starters, players need to find tournaments that are easy on their bankrolls. Some poker pros recommend that you do not play a tournament that is more that 5% of your bankroll. Once you find tournaments that are in your budget, you should look at what the starting chip stacks are. Some tournaments offer 1500 in chips, while there are deep stack tournaments that will give 20,000 chips or more. Some players like to have a lot of chips so they have time to sit and wait for better hands. Other players like to have smaller chip counts so the tournament doesn’t take as long.

Players should then look at structure. If a tournament has a bad structure then there is no point in playing it. Most tournaments publish a structure sheet which can be looked at prior to registration. Another element that players often forget to research is the player count and registration. If a reoccurring tournament has the best buy-in and structure, but they are not getting very many players, then it might not be worth your time to play.

After taking these factors into consideration it should lead you to a more profitable tournament experience.

Lots of talk on the internet forums about when poker "jumped the shark". I think I have another nomination for that moment. In August at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, you can enter a tournament with frequent flyer miles. Yes, Continental Airlines will hold a tournament with an entry of 50,000 frequent flyer miles. The winner will receive 21 Million miles.

I leave the frequent details to the press flyer:

To mark the 21st birthday of its OnePass® frequent flyer program, Continental Airlines announced that it has invited its top customers to participate in a Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament where they will bet frequent flyer miles to gamble on the chance to win the tournament's grand prize, 21 million OnePass miles. The four day event begins on Aug. 6, 2008, and will take place at the legendary Golden Nugget Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

The entry fee to participate in the tournament is 50,000 OnePass miles and registration is limited. Participants must book the event package with the Golden Nugget Casino.

What would the Fonz say?

My poker buddies have been having another of our periodic email conversations about a particular poker hand when the term "average stack" came up. Whenever I talk about average stack, there are always players, even very good players who are surprised by the numbers.

Average stack is simply the measure of how many chips each player would have in a tournament if you divide the total chips by remaining players. So you start an event with 10,000 chips each and 500 players, it makes sense that with 250 players remaining the average stack is 20,000. Half the players are out, so everyone should have twice as many chips. Of course, that is not how tournaments actually play and there will be a wide distribution of those 2.5 million chips.

Lots of tournament players keep track of the average stack, it is one of the statistics most good computerized tournament clocks provide. In a smaller field tournament you can keep a fairly accurate count just by knowing the starting field and how many players remain. In big events, you can just consult the tournament clock.

OK, so you have survived Day One of a multi-day tournament and you are just below average stack. What does that mean? Well, what it does not mean is that you are just below the middle of the the field, because average stack is not the middle of the field, at least not once the cards have been dealt. The way poker works is that some player build big stacks and lots of others are short stacked.

In most tournaments at the end of Day One, the average stack will be in the top quarter of the field. On average only around 25% of the field will be above average. If you keep your stack at or around average in the first three quarters of a tournament's playing time, you are actually doing well above average.

As play nears the final table, one of two things will happen to the average stack. Either the 25% rule will roughtly remain in effect and the final table will begin with several small stacks and a couple of big stacks or the big stacks will take out all of the small stacks as play approaches the final table and the final nine will be fairly equal in stacks, as they all have feasted on the short stacks equally.

Note: the longer a tournament runs, the higher the average stack percentage can go. In major tournaments of four or five days, players below average stack will at times be more than 80% of the field.