The Beat
Saturday, 2 March 2013
Neil "Bad Beat" Channing surveys the affairs of the gambling classes
March Madness
September and October used to be the big months for UK poker but it looks like it’s all about March these days. Since the WSOPE moved to Cannes, and now Paris, the biggest event in the UK is now the EPT London. It was always the one that got the biggest prize pool.
A recent trend in poker is to clump tournaments together with the different tours keen to “dovetail” and “bookend” and to really try and work together to avoid clashes. This has got to be a great thing for the players, particularly those who travel. Not only are people encouraged to come from far flung countries, knowing there will be lots of good tournaments to suit all bankrolls which guarantees there’ll be plenty of action even if you bust out early, but also you save a lot in the expenses, as you just come once for a long trip.
For the players in the home country you know the event will attract many more visitors and obviously a bigger prize-pool. For the promoters, the satellites will be more popular, as the event is certain to create a big field and a large first prize. For the venues, they know the place will be full.
In fact, when you think about it, there seems to be no downside at all. Don’t worry, though, I’ve found a few. Firstly, it makes this month so vitally important. If you happen to run bad for a month, or if you get taken ill, or have a prior engagement or, worse still, find yourself temporarily broke, you really miss a large amount of the important stuff for the year. Secondly, specifically in London, I think the cluster of events may actually make things tougher. London is such an expensive town to stay in and, with the events stretching over a number of weeks, it’s only the mega-wealthy who can afford to stay throughout and play all the events.
I think the top US online guys will all make the effort to come over, with a few events to shoot at, whereas they may not have in other years. Thirdly, some of these events are going to overlap. Looking at the schedule, there are several times when £2,000 buy-in events are chucked-in, almost as an afterthought, and players will have to miss them due to being in other tournaments. I promise you there will be times in July, August and December when those events would have got double or triple the numbers, as the players will be starved of good tournaments.
I’m definitely looking forward to the events now, but the glut of tournaments means I shall be picking and choosing carefully.
Before we get to the big PokerStars stuff we'll have the £1,000 GUKPT at the Vic from the 28th February to warm us up. After I’ve won that I should be in good form and ready to take on all-comers in the London UKIPT on the 5th March.
Some people have been a little critical that this one has three day ones, but those days have been shuffled forward and they are Tuesday to Thursday. It is obviously a shame that this event isn't particularly user-friendly for those with Monday to Friday jobs and lives, particularly when the change was quite late and some may have planned to play Friday, Saturday and Sunday with just one “sickie”. It is easy to see the pressure that the UKIPT team were under to squeeze this one in and to get it to fit nicely with the EPT schedule, so I can sympathise. I’m sure the event will be very popular anyway, with lots of qualifiers, but direct buy-ins may be hit.
The UKIPT has its own £2,000 High-Roller that weekend which comes just a day before Day 1a of the £5000 EPT Main Event. The day before the High-Roller, on Day 2 of the UKIPT, there is a £500 NLH, also at The Vic, which may get a few early casualties back in action. You do have to wonder whether the £1,000 “win the button” turbo, also happening that day at the Hippodrome, and the £1,000 NLH turbo the next day might struggle to get the numbers.
Unless the travelling pros turn out in force, it doesn’t seem to me that the London poker scene is currently strong enough to support all these events, but I do hope I'm wrong.
As well as the players themselves, the other people studying these schedules and making decisions will be the stakers. So many of the young guys on the circuit have backing deals and it’s going to be hard for stakers with five or six horses to put them in everything they want to play this month.
Horses for CoursesI’m guessing a lot of overseas pros may not show up until the UKIPT is done and dusted; they will be keen to play the EPT main event. Unfortunately this year I will not be donating my annual £5,000. The tournament clashes with my beloved Cheltenham Festival and so the horses will win this particular battle.
I’ll definitely be staking any of the Black Belt Poker guys that wish to play satellites into the main and we’ll probably put a few in it, so I'll obviously be following with great interest. Looking at the side events, I could easily be saving myself £15,000. Maybe I should find one horse in the Champion Hurdle and have the lot on!
Feast to FamineThe following week London will go from feast to famine. I’m not sure how many London players will get the train up to Newcastle for the latest Genting Poker Series event after so much action in the capital, but I’m sure they'll do OK without too many cockneys, who probably all will be broke by then anyway.
I’ve been invited to play The Big Game, which will be filmed for Sky TV. In past years that has meant the chance to play for 12 hours, then 24 hours, and then 48 hours with some great players, but also some people you would happily catch a plane to play.
This time round I reckon it’ll be a very tough line-up. It’s in Austria and the game only lasts for 12 hours, with no guarantee that I'll get to play for the whole time.
I think I’ll stay at home.
Out in the OpenThe final event for me in an action-packed month will be The Irish Open. I may have to win it to get even on the month. The entry this year has been dropped to €2,000, which seems pretty sensible in the face of the tough times that the Irish economy has suffered.
Some people have complained to me that dropping the buy-in will take away from the prestige of the event, and I would definitely hate that to be the case, but I think the trophy and the title will always be special and I’m sure the winner will still be pretty happy. There has also been the suggestion that travelling players from the UK and further away are less likely to fly-in. I agree with that, but I would say that in the last two years the number of these kinds of players coming has really dropped off anyway.
It looked like a choice between keeping the dwindling number of foreigners or really boosting up the number of locals playing, particularly those coming from satellites.
I think they made the right choice.
WPT National The EPT festival finishes on the 16th and the WPT has decided to try and benefit from all the travellers by holding the London Leg of their new “National Tour”. This £1,500 event has the option to re-enter and it'll be starting on Friday 15th at Aspers in Stratford. Again, I wish the team there all the luck with this one and I hope the National Tour takes off, generally. I do worry, though, that the bigger players will all be staying around the Vic and the Europeans and Americans may not really know how to get to Aspers, or they might not fancy the trek.
The EPT has three £1,000 buy-in side events plus a £500 buy-in starting that day and they can’t all get large fields.
I believe the last horse race ends at 5.30pm and the £500 NLH at the Vic starts at 6pm, so that is probably me sorted