2008 WCOOP Event #24 Preview

Event #24 has not been on my schedule, and I figured it looked like a good one to skip. Event #24 is $530 No Limit 2-7 Single Draw Lowball. This is a game I have never played before. In fact it's only been on pokerstars for the past two weeks and even now the biggest stakes they offer it at are $1/$2 blinds no limit (and there's only 1 game going right now).

So why in the would would I play a tournament for $530 in a game that I've never played before? Well pokerstars has guaranteed a prize pool of $200,000 and right now there are only 54 people signed up. They need 377 players to meet the guarantee and even that would make it a juice free event.

Also while I've never played this game before, NO ONE has played this game for any amount of time because it's brand new! OK maybe some of the old timers played some NL lowball back in the day when people played lowball, but we're talking 20+ years ago. I played a pretty good amount of A-5 single draw lowball at the Oaks club (one of maybe a dozen places in the country that offer standard lowball in person), but it was limit. While this makes is pretty drastically different I'll know a hell of a lot more about what's going on than the hold'em, stud and Omaha players who try to make the jump. Even the triple draw lowball players might get a little screwed up.

Anyway if it looks like there are going to be less than 300 players at game time I just can't pass up the value. If there are 200 players, for example, it would be like getting into a $1,050 tournament for $530. Hard to pass up no matter what they're playing.