Free Poker Tournaments Pt. 3

The Problem with Free Poker

Part Three

In Part One I discussed a few of the leagues offering Free Poker Tournaments around Houston, their shared histories, and the problem that can occur by lockstep following that which came before. In Part Two I covered some of the criteria that I look for not only in free poker tournaments but all tournaments including freerolls.

In Part Three, the final installment, I will discuss my opinion of the Pros and Cons of three free poker leagues. I will also mention another free poker league that I intend to visit in the near future.

PART THREE

I stated that I try to avoid tournaments that feature poor structures, poor application of generally accepted rules, and poorly run tournaments. As I share my views in the following paragraphs it may seem that there are contradictions. That may be but I will lay out plusses and minuses of three as I see it.

Snowman Poker League

http://www.snowmanpokerleague.com/

Founded in 2005, Snowman Poker League promotes itself as “… an entertainment company specializing in Hosting Free Texas Hold-em Poker Tournaments in the Texas Gulf Coast Region…”  And, “Our games are geared to be competitive, fun and as close to a real casino experience as possible. Playing in our tournaments offers you the opportunity to gain experience, learn accepted poker etiquette, practice and improve your skills and knowledge of the game.”

Snowman served as my introduction to free poker tournaments.  The venues that I have played at were run by hosts/TDA’s that were knowledgeable of Snowman’s way of doing things.  They also did a good job of keep things moving, resolving disputes, and managing the myriad things that come up during a tournament.

Some of the “house rules” they use are chipping down, half bets allowing reraising, Having to “complete the bet” when someone in front of you goes all in with less than a full raise (See Part Two for more information about these).  They do not come very close to a casino tournament experience in my view. 

Snowman holds regional tournaments and an annual event with bigger prizes. Participation in these events are for qualified players only.

Big Slicks Entertainment

http://freepokerinhouston.com/

From their webpage, “BSE™ is a FREE-TO-PLAY Poker League where you can compete in Tournament Style Poker Events at local Venues.” They don’t mention when they were founded.

Like Snowman they have “house rules” which includes chipping down, half bets allowing reraising, Having to “complete the bet” when someone in front of you goes all in with less than a full raise (See Part Two for more information about these).  They do not come very close to a casino tournament experience in my view.  But to their credit they don’t promote an experience like a casino would offer.

At the venue I have frequented the host/TDA does a good job of keeping things moving.  He administers the rules as he understands them to be and does some interesting pot splashes which are fun and innovative.

Again from their web page, “BSE™ is a Poker League where members compete in free-to-play Tournament Style Poker Events at local venues. The top 16 players in each tournament receive points and are ranked at the Venue and Regional Levels. At the end of the quarter, the top players at each Venue qualify for the Venue Championship. The quarterly venue championships are $300 Freerolls held at your favorite venue.

Top players also qualify for the Annual Regional Championship. In the Annual Regional Championship the winner gets a $10,000* seat to the Main Event at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. Winners in the past have been offered a reduced cash alternative if they did not want the seat.”

Big Stack Poker

http://www.bigstackpokerhouston.com/

https://www.facebook.com/BigStackPokerHouston/info

Big Stack Poker (BSP) was founded on August 1, 2012 in Houston, Texas by a couple of former Snowman poker league hosts.  This is from their web page:

“Big stack poker (BSP) offers free Texas hold ’em games and offers you a chance to win prizes every night of the week.  Another difference from those other guys is we offer free pot limit Omaha on Sunday’s at one of our venues for you Omaha lovers.

We are the player’s league: we believe in you the player. You will never be a just commodity in our league.  Feel free to voice your opinion.  We will listen to you and try our best to implement it in the league. You will never, never, never pay a membership fee in our league.  It is always free to play and open to anyone, anytime, anywhere. All big stack poker venues have prizes for the top 3 finishers. BSP will also have a monthly, quarterly and yearly points event for top point earners in the league.”

 

In terms of tournament structure Big Stack poker (BSP) offer the best play of ALL the free leagues in which I have participated. It is not unusual to new entrants into any industry to be the most flexible and innovative in their approach. While BSP does enforce some of the rules you will only see in free poker leagues and that don’t apply in casino tournaments, it also does some interesting things.

They earn their name.  They offer the biggest starting stacks that I’ve seen: typically TWICE as big as other leagues.  They also have longer blind levels.  This makes for a better poker experience in that you have the time and the stack to really play poker, learn some of your opponents’ tendencies, etc.

They have generous bonuses, promotional items, and their payouts are the most liberal I’ve played at. Like most free poker Leagues, these bonuses end at the end of the break. Unlike the venue support at other places, however, BSP offers additional chips with almost every purchase (food and drinks). They also offer a premium number of chips on certain special alcoholic beverages.  This is one point of contention with me (although I understand why they do it). 

There are a surprising number of players that don’t drink alcohol for one reason or another.  Some are recovering alcoholics, others have their own reasons.  My opposition to this emphasis is twofold; 1) BSP makes no allowance for a non-alcoholic alternative for a patron to buy in order to get the same number of chips as an imbiber and; 2) It really encourages drinking quite a few drinks being consumed in a relatively short period of time.  These “specials” are aggressively promoted and encouraged.

For now I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and attribute these things to growing pains.  After all they are just barely over a year old. We’ll see. But I do want to mention one of my favorite things they do. Each month they raise money for a different charity and it benefits the players as well.  Players may buy up to three charity chips for $5 bucks each. That money is given to the featured charity. For each charity chip they purchase (up to a max of 3) the players get 5000 bonus tournament chips at time of purchase.  They then get 3000 bonus chips per charity chip for each tournament the remainder of that month.

Comparison of the three leagues mentioned.

Trap Holdem League

http://www.trapholdemleague.com/

https://www.facebook.com/trapholdemleague

I have not played in the Trap Holdem League. I mention them now because I am intrigued about their potential pay out structure on some of their tournaments.  They have posts that mention a $500 back-to-back prize. I emailed them asking about it and below is the reply.

“The tournaments are FREE and here are the parameters on the $500 Back2Back offering:

Win the 7 & 10 p.m. tournaments at Molly's Pub (Kingwood)

1. With at least 25 players in each tournament to win a $100 Visa gift card

2. With at least 35 players in each tournament to win a $250 Visa gift card

3. With at least 45 players in each tournament to win a $500 Visa gift card

They also offer the following according to the email response.

“We send players to major poker tournaments around the country ever 3 moths at our quarterfinal tournament including the WSOP in Las Vegas.  Our most recent trip was to the $100,000 Guaranteed Card Player Poker Tour Tournament at Choctaw Casino in Durant, Oklahoma.

We host a monthly $250 TRAP Monthly Challenge tournament, A TRAP Venue Challenge 2-4 times per year and many other special events.”

They will be the next free poker league I visit. I will write about the experience when I do.

I hope you enjoyed this series.  If you have any comments or questions I welcome them.

See you around the felt!

Free Poker Tournaments Pt. 2

The Problem with Free Poker

Part Two

In Part One I discussed a few of the leagues offering Free Poker Tournaments around Houston, their shared history’s, and the problem that can occur by lockstep following that which came before.

PART TWO

In this part I cover some of the criteria that I look for not only in free poker tournaments but all tournaments including freerolls.

I try to avoid tournaments that fall into basically one or more of three criteria: poor structures, poor application of generally accepted rules, and poorly run tournaments.

First, I try not to play those tournaments whose structure benefits or favors luck over skill.  Common characteristics are small starting stacks, short blind levels, and rapidly escalating blind levels.  The problem with any and all of these is that they do not allow for actual poker to be played for the most part.  It becomes more of a crap shoot. Now I understand why this is.  The leagues typically have to finish their tournaments in a very specific and constrained time frame.

This forces the tournament organization and by extension the tournament director (or Host as they are commonly called), into doing things such as changing the length of the blind levels on the fly, chipping down, artificially pushing the action. This, by its very nature, reduces the importance of skill and luck is more likely to impact the outcome.

Secondly, I find tournaments that deviate very far from real poker rules as being tedious and ill-informed. Particularly since most of these leagues state that educating players on proper play and improved play are parts of their mission.  I will cite some examples.

The blinds are 50/100 and the flop comes out.  The first person to act throws out a 500 chip and says nothing, at Da Pub that is considered a bet of 100. They cite the rule about a “single oversized chip”. This is a gross misapplication of the "single oversized" chip rule. That rule applies only when facing a bet or raise.  If no action has occurred that rule does not enter into the equation. Look up the WSOP rules number 92, last sentence. “After the flop, an initial bet of a single oversized chip without comment will signify a bet equal to the size of the chip.” Nuff said.

Another horrible rule is the killing of a hand if one or more cards are exposed.  WSOP rule 105 states quite clearly that a player exposing one or more cards will incur a penalty at the end of the hand. But they will not have a dead hand (emphasis added).

Another rule that is misapplied is what should happen when a player goes all in with more than the previous bet but less than a complete raise. For example let’s say the blinds are 300/600. After the flop the first player to act bets 1000. The next player to act goes all in with 1550. In no limit holdem subsequent players facing no new action may call the 1550. At most Free Poker Leagues subsequent players must at least call an amount equal to or greater than what a “legal’ raise would have been. In other words since the minimum legal raise would have been 1000 more, making the new bet 2000,  a player after the player going all in would have to fold or bet at least 2000. They would be allowed to raise if they wished.  If all the players who didn’t want to bet 2000 folded, the original bettor would be allowed to call for only 550 more.

The problem here should be obvious. In case it isn’t, this situation gives an advantage to the last player that acted before the all in player.  They can call for less than all of the other players that folded.  One of the beautiful things about Texas Holdem rules (and in fact most poker rules) is that they are primarily constructed so that NO player shall have any advantage, other than their skill, over any other player(s).  Now you may say that house rules allow for some of the deviations. Well that is possible but several of these leagues have their rules posted on websites.  They often don’t follow their own house rules. All of these situations lead me to my last point: poorly run tournaments.

I will admit upfront that this applies less to Free Poker Leagues than one might think with the exception of the aforementioned objections. But in general poorly run tournaments are often the result of people in charge without the necessary training. This leads to defensive responses when they may be questioned on a point by those having more knowledge than they do. The necessary training should start with a good knowledge of the rules and lead to some instruction on dealing with players.

I find this often the case in allegedly professionally run clubs. In Part Three, I will compare some of the Free Poker Leagues. I will outline some of the pros and cons.

See you around the felt!

Free Poker Tournaments Pt. 1

The Problem with Free Poker

Part One

I play some of the free poker tournaments around town. I also tend to avoid others. What is my thinking and what are the criteria that frame my decision on where I play? And more importantly why I choose to play where I play? i will discuss these below.

My opinion is that there is no such thing as free poker so it is somewhat of a misnomer.  Why do I think this? There are a few reasons but in the simplest and most rudimentary sense there is the opportunity cost of such activities.   That is to say the time (sometimes 2-4 hours) spent is time unavailable to spend on other things. There is also the factor of expected outlay of money, usually called “venue support.”  And if you “support” the venue you can get extra chips for the tournament. If the venue support is not there then no extra chips.  So now we see that free poker is not necessarily on an even playing field.

There are three parts to this post.  The remainder of this part will provide some background history of several #FreePoker outfits and ending with the first problem with these particular groups.  Part two will be what I look for and what I tend to avoid when considering a “free poker” tournament to play. And the third part will be a partial list of some leagues with what I see as some of the pros and cons each.

PART ONE

One of the earliest purveyors of free poker was the Amateur Poker League or APL .  There are two groups that were started by former “hosts" of APL: Snowman Poker League and Big Slick Entertainment (AKA free poker in Houston). A third group is Big Stack Poker.  Big Stack is the newest member of this fraternity.  This league was founded by two former hosts of Snowman Poker League.

Big Stack has the advantage of being the new kid on the block.  They are (so far) more flexible and open to suggestion.  They also seem hungrier.  But none are without issues.  One of the biggest issues with these three is what I refer to as the #legacyeffect or the effect of blind traditions.  These go hand in hand with the view that “we never did it that way before.” This is sometimes referred to as the last 7 words of a dying organization. Don’t take my word for it, Google it. I didn’t make this up.

Let me illustrate.  I heard of a man walking through his kitchen one day as the preparations for a big Sunday family dinner was being carried out.  Just as he was passing through he noticed that his wife had cut the ends off of the ham and thrown the ends away before putting it in the oven.  He was shocked that this seemingly perfect food was just being wasted.  So he asked his wife why she had done this. Her explanation was that that was always the way her mother had done it. So he went into the other room where is mother-in-law was setting the table.  He asked if it was true that she would cut off and discard the ends of hams before cooking. She confirmed this and he asked her why. To which she replied that her mother had always done it that way.

So he goes into the living room where this sweet elderly woman was sitting.  He asked her about the ham and she said that, yes, she had thrown away the ends.  When he asked why she told him that Her oven was too small for the ham. Since there were no refrigerators for keeping uncooked items available in those days she had no choice but to discard the uncooked portion.

There are several things that these organizations do simply because that is what they witnessed in the leagues they descended from: APL . In the case of Big Stack they were descended from Snowman which descended from APL. No rhyme or reason for much of what they do other than tradition or legacy.

In PART TWO I cover some of the criteria that I look for in not only free poker tournaments but all tournaments including freerolls.

Welcome Houston Poker Players!

Welcome to my blog and thanks for visiting. I will write about the Houston poker scene as well as issues and things I believe would be of interest to Houston area poker players. I look forward to hearing from you too! Send your stories and experiences.