2008 WCOOP Events #13 & #14 Preview

Those of you who have noticed the conspicuous lack of a post about the mixed hold'em second chance will most likely have guessed that I came up short. I had my starting stack of 4,000 up to 14,000 at one point, but two big missed draws and an AK losing to KJ after flopping a K did me in. I guess I'll have to live with being 3 for 5 in the second chance tournaments!

My starting bankroll of $10,000 currently stands at $10,671 after some satellite success and some main event duds.

Event #13 is $215 NL Hold'em with Rebuys. For those of you who aren't familiar with rebuy tournaments the way they work is whenever you have below a certain number of chips you can buy more during the rebuy period. The idea is if you go broke you can just buy more chips and try again! For example, in tomorrow's tournament the $215 entry fee will get you 2,000 chips. Any time you have 2,000 chips or less you can buy more for $200 (There is no house fee on the rebuys!).

Those of you who are very astute will have asked yourselves "If you can buy more chips anytime you have 2,000 or less, can't you buy more right away?" The answer is yes! And that is exactly what I'll be doing as soon as I sit down. So while it's technically a $215 buy in tournament, I'll be in for $415 right away.

But there's more! After the first hour of play you can do a special rebuy called an add on. Everyone can buy more chips at this point regardless of the number of chips in their stack. And to encourage this addition you get more bang for you buck. Specifically, in tomorrow's tournament you can buy 4,000 extra chips for $200 on the first break (after an hour).

So this means for someone like me who wants every chance to go deep it's going to cost AT LEAST $615 to play this tournament. Of course there's a fair chance it might cost $815, $1,015 or even more if I run bad during the first hour.

The benefit is the house is taking their cut as if it were a $215 tournament (only $15) while in practice it's going to have the prize pool of a $600-$1,000 tournament. While this might not seem like a big deal, if you play a great deal of rebuy tournaments this small difference really adds up.

More importantly for this one specific occasion, because of the rebuys we'll all be starting with a HUGE chip stack relative to the blinds. More chips means more play, and more play means more time for the skill/luck balance to swing more in the direction of skill (a big advantage for me of course).

Event #14 is $320 7-Card Stud. You know who play stud these days? NOBODY! That's why this is the only 7-Card Stud event in the entire WCOOP! Hell there are two 2-7 lowball events and only one 7-Card Stud event! What's that all about? No one would have seen this coming 20 years ago when stud was the most popular poker game in the world!

Anyway I got a pretty good amount of experience playing stud when I was prop player at the Oaks club. I've played one stud event at the WSOP and a few WCOOP events in stud with no cashes. But that's not going to stop me here!

I think it's great that everyday I write these previews and it's something different. It's not just $215 NL hold'em, and $320 NL hold em, and $530 NL hold'em. It's really great for someone like me who knows how to do it all, but rarely gets the chance to. As a pro you have to follow the money and if that means playing nothing but NL hold'em tournaments that's what I'll do, but it's nice once a year to get a chance to play all of these other games for some real money. Even better is the fact that since it's something special I get to play against weak players!

I might fire up a satellite or two in the morning and expect to play both second chance tournaments so it's going to be a busy day. Also given the stakes of the rebuy tournament and the fact that the second chance rebuy is $162 with rebuys (a minimum $450 commitment) it's going to be my biggest day so far dollar wise. If I can do anything in the $215 with rebuys it's going to be thousands not hundreds in profit!

I'll keep you posted.