Begone with the Double Guarantees

Well, Double Guarantee week has mercifully come and gone on full tilt, and I for one will be looking forward to getting back to the regular number of donkeys running in the nightly mtts instead of everything featuring hugely inflated fields with many players running up to four different entries at once in each tournament. I mean, don't get me wrong -- I loved the chance to play for hundreds of thousands of dollar prize pools any night of the week for not a crazy amount of buyin, and I took full advantage, playing tournaments like the nightly 75k -- 8pm ET with a $165 buyin -- that I do not usually participate in due to my bankroll restraints just to get a few shots at what was a 300k+ prize pool basically every night of the week.

But, given my analysis before the week began and the nice work of CK and some other bloggers who ran across the multi-entry mtt feature in their travels last week, I stuck to my guns and never bought in more than twice to any of the multi-entry double-guarantee events over the last week. In fact, I actually never multi-entried them at any time, as I only used the multi-entry feature (when I did use it at all) as a rebuy option instead, on two or three occasions buying back in to a tournament after an early elimination. As a result, I did not fall victim to what probably a great number of players in these events did, as their ROI plummeted due to the multiple buyins, turning their couple of min-cashes from net profits to net losses in the tournament as a result. This is one of the most insidiously deleterious effects pointed out about multi-entry tournaments in general, although I would argue that in the hands of the right player -- say, a Shaun Deeb for example -- having the ability to run four entries in a single mtt is over the long haul a profitable as opposed to a losing proposition. But for the vast majority of mtt participants on full tilt out there, multi entries will just equate to multiple buyins lost when you are not one of the lucky ones to make it to the final two or three tables out of the 2000+ and 3000+ person fields commonly out there all this past week on full tilt.

That said, by playing only one entry at a time in these vast-field multi-entry events, without a doubt I put myself at a huge disadvantage in terms of being able to make deep runs. Not only was much of the competition in these tournaments playing four times as many entries as I was, but even in comparing individual entries, you can "play them off of each other" when you have more than one simultaneous entry in much the same way you can play two adjacent blackjack hands off each other to derive an extra benefit on each merely from the fact that you are playing two hands against the same dealer and the same dealer's cards at the exact same time -- if one entry has already amassed a big stack, you can play faster and looser with the other(s), and vice versa. And my insistence on playing at this level of a disadvantage -- not wanting to hack away at any chance at a net profit by ponying up three or four buyins just to sit at a table in a 3000+ person mtt -- really showed in my results, and in general in the results of those people that I follow who play full tilt mtts with any regularity. Twoblackaces had a nice four-digit score in a $2 multi-entry Rush poker tournament early in the week, but other than that, I don't know anyone I pay any real attention to who exactly killed it this week, or really had any big cashes at all. Personally, I posted mediocre cashes in the 40k/80k twice over Double Guarantees week, once in the 75k/150k, and once in the 35k/70k, but none of them were deep enough to make it worth my while, or ultimately even to get all that exciting to be honest. Even though none of these were min-cashes and I managed to get through roughly a third or a half of the field of ITM players in each instance, in the end I was barely picking up a full buyin of net profit on the deal, making it nothing worth noting as far as actual tournament success goes. I was very, very close to making a nice run to a cash in the 150k two other times this week -- running QQ into AA and JJ into KK both near the cash bubble in this big tournament that featured around a 350k prize pool all week long -- and I also survived about 85% of the field in Sunday's 1.5M guaranteed multi-entry tournament, before slamming headfirst with AK into AA on a predictably Ace-high board in a heads-up pot. But that is exactly the kind of thing that makes surviving these massive donkeyfields to get into the final few tables so difficult in the first place. With that many people to outlast and outplay, it is just that much harder to avoid running into that inevitable pocket Aces, or to get donked by some poo-flinger, in particular by one of his poo-flinging entries that he is purposefully playing fast and loose with because he's already amassed a top-25 stack with one of his other entries in that same tournament.

I enjoyed Double Guarantees week on full tilt. But a week was more than enough exposure for me to Multiple Entry Land. I am confident that my ROI will be better with single-entries for most of these tournaments, and now I'm just left hoping the site doesn't read a mandate into the extreme popularity of their tournaments last week basically from start to finish, and start making some of my favorite nightly mtts multi-entry for good.

Massive Prizes in Multi-Entry Double Guarantees Week on Full Tilt

Holy shipe! What's the opposite of overlay? Underlay? Whatever it is, that's the one word to best describe what happened on Monday night on full tilt, for the start of the site's Double Guarantees Week. As part of the introduction of the new multi-entry tournaments I wrote about last week, full tilt is running a promotion all this week in which every one of the nightly guaranteed prize pool mtts on the site is, for this week only, a multi-entry event, and the guaranteed prize pool is doubled from what it usually is to reflect the larger number of expected entrants into these tournaments as a result of the whole multi-entry thang.

And it looks like full tilt might have slightly underestimated the interest in checking out what the multi-entries are all about. Check out just the tournaments I regularly look into playing on a nightly basis these days on full tilt during the early evening hours east coast time:

6pm ET: The $26 buyin, 32k guaranteed is this week a 64k guaranteed. This tournament usually features around 1700, 1800 runners. On Monday night, with multi-entries in effect? 3,747 runners (entries). Total prize pool: $89,928. But this was just the beginning of the effect, as us east coasters weren't quite home from work enough yet to really start jumping in and fluffing up the prize pools.

7pm ET: This is where it starts to get good. The $75 buyin 40k guaranteed is this week an 80k guaranteed. This tournament usually features between 600 and 700 runners. On Monday night, it got 2,101 runners (entries), for a total prize pool of 144,969! $75 buyin, and a shot at a 145k prize pool. I would say you can't beat that in terms of value, but look at some of the other tournaments below and you might beg to differ. I was in this tournament, and actually ran pretty deep, surviving over 90% of the field despite being dealt zero pocket pairs, and having to fold JJ and TT preflop each once during the night, before I ran into Aces -- my specialty lately -- and busted in 96th place. It was a crazy tournament, far fuller than I've ever seen it even come close to before, with nearly three times the normal number of entries, which really showed in how this thing played out. It was a pushfest from about the second hour on, and I was lucky to last as long as I did.

8pm ET: Here was another incredible value. The $150 buyin 8pm ET tournament is usually a 75k guarantee, and this week is a 150k. Instead of the usual 500 or so runners that this tournament brings in, Monday night saw it attract 2,302 entrants with multi-entries in effect, for a total prize pool of $345,300! Again, if you're looking to play for a shot at a massive prize pool -- first prize in this thing was something like 80 grand -- for a relatively small buyin, this was as good a value as you almost ever see in online poker outside of the massive annual or quarterly tournament series.

Also at 8pm ET is the $26 buyin, 35k guaranteed that is this week a 70k guaranteed. Normally this tournament ends up with somewhere around 2000 runners, but on Monday night, it had 4,333 runners. This made for an awesome prize pool of $103,992, all for a $26 buyin. Again, if you don't like to play too big but love the thought of making a run at a 20k+ first prize, this was your chance.

Now, if you do like to play big, Monday night also featured one of the most amazing values I've ever seen in a regular nightly event. The 9pm ET Monday 1k ($1000 buyin) mtt, which usually features a 300k guarantee these days was bumped up to a 600k guarantee with multi-entries in effect. While attracting around 300-400 runners on a normal night, Monday night saw this behemoth tournament lure in 1,454 entries, for a whopping prize pool of $1,454,000! I'm not generally into buying in to one of the toughest tournaments available anywhere, for a grand a pop at that, but if I were such a person, my lord a 1.5M prize pool on a normal Monday night? This is like what the FTOPS ME used to be just a few years ago, and now it's the regular Monday night 1k tournament's prize pool? Simply incredible.

Lastly, I will mention the 50-50, which is a $50 buyin tournament that runs at 9:30pm ET on full tilt, and typically attracts somewhere around 1100 or so runners a pop. On Monday night, it swelled to 2,045 entries with the multi-entries in effect. This made for a lofty prize pool of $147,500! Again, a nearly 150k tournament for a $50 buyin? That's really awesome value if you're looking to make a nice bang for your buck.

And these were just the guarantee tournaments on display during the regular times when I am normally looking to play online poker in the evenings nyc time. I imagine it was much of the same throughout the day and night on the site, as everyone and their mother seemed to be flocking to full tilt to see what all the multi-entry hubbub was about. Now, don't get me wrong -- these prize pools were huge, but you were playing against a bunch of guys with up to four entries into each tournament, so if like me you only played the usual one entry for one buyin, you were at a massive disadvantage in terms of running deep. And also, the play in these things was looser than usual, in particular in the earlygoing, as players played them -- predictably -- much like monkey hour in the standard online rebuy events, and while loose play early might sound good to someone like me in terms of making it easier than usual to double up (which I did), it also makes it far more likely than usual that some poo-flinger will pick you off early (I did that too). Please don't read this post as me taking back any of what I said in my post on Friday about this new multi-entry phenomenon -- I'm not a fan, and I hope they don't make the multi-entry feature a widespread thing on full tilt going forward, because it doubtlessly bastardizes the game and turns these tournaments into more of a poker gimmick than they already are as a rule. But damn, if you're looking for some excellent bang for your tournament buyin buck, a week of these things here may be right up your alley. You're certainly not going to find much better value than these anywhere on the planet in terms of low-buyin, high prize pool tournaments.

I am hoping to play some actual multiple entries myself in these one or two nights this week just to see how that all plays out -- that 8pm ET with a $96 buyin for four entries, giving four shots at winning a piece of a 100k+ prize pool looks particularly compelling to me -- but for now I will probably continue taking my one shot in a few of these while I play some more of the UBOC events on the side as well. But double guarantees week on full tilt will certainly spice up the excitement a bit, and if nothing else it keeps me off of pokerstars for the week. Suddenly a $27.50 buyin with a "mere" 30k guarantee on pokerstars just doesn't seem all that exciting at 8pm ET, even if I have taken more than 10 grand out of that mtt just this month so far.

Multi-Entry Tournaments at Full Tilt

I really can't believe these new "Multi-Entry Tournaments" at full tilt poker. I suppose my opinion could change after I have some time to see these things in action, but I am really, really surprised at some of the decisions involved in enabling such a feature on the site.

For starters, it looks like each multi-entry mtt will have its own limit on the number of multi-entries you can have in the event, but in the example they show on their FAQ page for this new feature, the drop-down menu goes to what looks like 30. Now, they are clear that you can never have more entries than there are tables remaining in a tournament -- for obvious reasons, since it is unfathomable that the same person can sit at the same table as themself -- but otherwise, is there really a need to allow people to buy into the same tournament 25 or 30 times? What is that accomplishing, really, other than of course dramatically increasing full tilt's rake from these tournaments? Yeah, they can tell themselves that it "gives people a second chance" if they bust early for some reason, but any seasoned tournament guy -- in particular one who often plays rebuys -- can tell you with confidence what's going to happen here: it's going to change the way these people play. When a guy knows he's got two entries, let alone four -- and I don't even want to think about when he's got 16 or 20 entries -- they're going to play these tournaments like aggrodonkeys.

These tournaments are going to play at least as bad as a standard rebuy, only probably worse, since multiple-entrants can be playing 15 or 20 entries simultaneously, instead of just knowing they will have to start over with a fresh buyin stack if they lose. Think about it -- once one of these clowns amasses one top-25 stack with one of his 20 entries early in some 2000-person field, he's going to play like an absolute maniac with his other 19 entries for the most part. There's definitely an incentive to, anyways. Whereas, in a rebuy if you're lucky enough to amass that big stack early, the better strategy is going to be to play it smart and try to make that stack last through monkey hour. Much like my feelings about Rush poker, I just can't see this as being anything but a negative development for the players in the games overall, and it will surely make me not want to play them just as much as you won't find me often in a Rush poker tournament unless I feel like donking around. I mean, would it have been so hard for full tilt to limit multiple-entry tournaments to, say, two or three entries per person? Did they have to go and let people play 20 different seats in one event?

The other aspect of the multi-entry tournaments that I read about on full tilt's FAQ page that I just can't quite accept is what they do when a player is left with more entries remaining in a tournament than there are tables remaining in that tournament. Since nobody can sit at the same table as themself for obvious reasons, full tilt's patent-pending program will automatically merge two of your entries in such a situation. But in so merging, they will literally "combine" the entry from the table being broken with the smallest stack you have remaining in your other entries in the tournament. And in so "combining" the stacks, they will actually add the chips from the two entries together for the new, merged entry! While it's smart I suppose to combine with the smallest remaining stack, I can see this creating a number of scenarios that could be really frustrating and just generally unfair (in my opinion), or more accurately, just wrong the way I see it. It's wrong in much the same way that I think stalling the final table of the WSOP ME for four months before resuming after seven solid days of hardcore playing in the summer to reach that point -- it's just not natural, and it's not right to someone who really understands what winning large-field mtt's is all about.

Think about this scenario. You've been sitting at the same table for the last 2 1/2 hours of a big-field online tournament. You're well into the money positions now, say there are four tables left with 9 players at each table, out of 2200 who started some 6 or 7 hours ago. You've waited patiently while the guy to your immediate right has slowly but surely whittled his stack away, you've reraised him a few times when he's been going for a steal, and otherwise you've literally sat next to him and waited for the right hand to take his stack when he inevitably pushed allin due to his short stack. You've got say 50,000 chips and he is now down to 9k, his lowest in hours, with blinds of 800-1600. Clearly, he is finally down to push and pray mode, and you are set to benefit from your patience these last couple of hours as you know he basically has to push allin any time the action folds around to him before the flop, with basically any two cards. It's a great situation for you.

Then, just before his big blind, something strange happens. All of a sudden the word "MERGE" appears over his name, and the next thing you know, his 9k stack -- the one that you have patiently waited out and made some thoughtful folds to over the past 200 hands or so next to him -- suddenly becomes 109k. Why? All because on some other table where he had a 100k stack has just broken, and this 9k stack is his smallest stack of the entries he has remaining in the event. Suddenly all of your patience has been for nought, and why? I mean, sure this happens all the time in poker tournaments, someone new moves to your table, or you get moved to a new table, and while you were a pretty big stack at the old table, suddenly you are stuck sitting with a bunch of huge stacks. But the difference there is that it's not the same exact guy at the table, who was not eliminated. There's just something unnatural about it, something wrong, and I'm willing to guess that most seasoned mtt players who are accustomed to making deep runs would agree with me, just like I'm sure they do about the whole WSOP Main Event delay thing.

Ultimately, other than promotional weeks like next week's upcoming "double guarantees" week when full tilt is going to turn every single one of its weekly guarantees into a multi-entry tournament to see just how high they can make the prize pools, this won't really affect me much. Why? Because you won't find me playing these sorry excuses for "poker tournaments". But it just bothers me that every time full tilt invents a new and original structure for online poker -- and markets it as such to us players -- what it really seems to come down to over and over again is just another greedy money grab.

But it's all about the rake, baby. It's not about poker, and it's certainly not about the customer. It's all about the rake.