Thursday, April 17, 2008

Just about a new circle

Just when you thought things couldn't get any lower in the BBT3, they do. I just got caught up reading about the Skillz series. I didn't realize how the Stud8 had gone down.

Hoy bought a seat?

WTF?

Is that what this has become? Forget the thrill of accomplishment. The joy of victory and the agony of defeat is meaningless when you shoot your opponent a couple extra bucks and have them fold every hand so you "WIN" and are handed a TOC seat.

Even more ironic that he got the seat (yes, I win not use the word win) in the Skillz game. Skill? What skill, typing? Because that is what it was. He used skill to get heads up and then used the skill of typing for the supposed victory?

We all know Hoy is better than this. He is a damn good poker player. He could have won it outright and most likely would have. I don't understand why he felt the need to cut the deal.

And what is with all those people congratulating him on buying a seat? You people are foolish. There was no win. None. Having an opponent fold to you is not winning. It is bullshit.

What started out as an fun way to get some bloggers into the WSOP has gone horribly wrong.

The spirit of these tournaments is officially dead.

RIP.

18 comments:

Schaubs said...

Well said.

What about those who will win a seat by writing in?

Julius_Goat said...

All due respect, but this is foolishness.

I'm pretty sure Hoy did not ask for a chop, but was offered a chop. Correct me if I'm wrong about this.

If that's the case, come on. I'd have broken my damn neck to accept that offer.

Poker is a game about understanding the stakes and the odds better than your opponent, and taking advantage of it. If somebody offers you a deal where you are getting by far the best of it, you take it. Immediately. I'd say with the value of the chop, Hoy got somewhere in the neighborhood of 400% ROI.

Would it also have been the death of BBT if Tom Jefferson had pushed all in and Hoy had called way ahead?

In either case you're dealing with somebody getting their money in with the best of it.

As for people who win a seat by writing in, they are scum and dead money, and not even worthy of our pity.

BWoP said...

I was railing the final table (as I had just busted out), and Tom Jefferson offered the chop to Hoy. He said that he didn't care about the TOC seat and would be willing to cut a deal. Hoy asked him what his price was, and Tom Jefferson suggested $225 for Tom, rest to Hoy ($181).

If the TOC is valueless to Tom Jefferson, what's the big deal with him offering it to the second place player in exchange for a shade under first place money? (First place paid $245).

The players weren't too far apart in stack sizes, and the betting levels were huge at that point. Also, with it being a limit split game, the HU match could have gone on forever.

If someone offered you the same deal, would you say no? Would you *force* your opponent to keep playing?

mookie99 said...

I don't think he bought the seat, it was given to him. A TOC seat + $181 is a generous gift.

No way I turn that down in a million years.

CJ said...

I'm with StB on this... the seat wasn't won. IF they want to chop for money, do so. The seat should have gone to the winner.

Shameful.

smokkee said...

if i get HU in another one of these and someone wants to chop and take 1st for the seat, i would consider taking 1st, 2nd and 3rd place money.....


....then say no.

win it like a man.

Julius_Goat said...

Yeah, right on, Smoke. If somebody offered me cash for a TOC seat, I'd laugh.

Except that's not what happened.

You are postulating a scenario in which somebody gets HU and offers you money in exchange for a seat.

Hoy didn't get HU and ask for a chop in which he'd get the seat.

He got HU and the other guy offered the seat for money. And not much money either.

Entirely opposite scenario.

That's other guy's choice to make. If it's offered why would you turn that down? Is chops is a part of the game, or is they isn't?

I am genuinely confused by this. But let's try to at least be outraged by the thing that happened, not some other thing.

SirFWALGMan said...

I said something similar but since your an A-Lister it will mean more coming from you.

I also agree with everyone that if I was given that offer I would not pass it up. It is too valuable to let go.

Hoy is a pussy is also a good point.

Alan aka RecessRampage said...

If someone offered me cash for the seat, I'd give it to them, assuming they are giving me $600+. Someone told me that the TOC is basically a $550 buyin tourney. So, if they want it, they'd have to pay me that amount plus the premium. But, assuming that they will, I will gladly take the cash instead of locking up another seat. If I didn't have a seat, I would never offer or ask for a deal to give me a seat because like you said, I want to win it. As a matter of fact, I am stupid enough that I would probably turn down an offer to give me a seat because I would want to win it outright. But that's just me. Pride and ego, getting in the way of a sensible decision.

change100 said...

I think the spirit of these games has been dead for a long time. That's why even if I wasn't traveling, I wouldn't be playing them.

It really makes me sad what all this has come to. So I just do my own thing and play what I want, when I want to. I wish I cared whether or not Hoy "bought" his seat. Something like this was bound to happen in the new poker blogging uber-competitive dog-eat-dog A-B-C list BOOOOOM in the chat box and i'm the superior player, fuck you donkey for sucking out on me world order.

And you know what? It'll probably happen again. Anyone care to make odds on the next "bought" seat now that the notion is out there?

change100 said...

Oh, I forgot to mention that the prospect of writing in for the seat is even worse. Not the idea of it, we are bloggers after all. The sick thing about that freeroll is that the $2,000 you're playing for isn't even a WSOP seat. It's travel expenses to get you out to Vegas so you can blog for Full Tilt for FREE at the WSOP. This may be appealing to some, but I'm sorry, I don't work for free. And neither should any of you.

Give the write-in winner a $2K seat and the travel if you're going to make them work for free. Seriously, what's a hotel room in Vegas to Full Tilt anyway when they already have massive blocks of them for their qualifiers?

The more I think about this whole thing, the more I believe we're all being taken advantage of.

StB said...

Let me clarify some things. This Tom guys is to be held accountable as well. This player isn't even listed on the tournament board and shouldn't be playing if they have no interesting the TOC.

Second, I can only go by what is in Hoy's post.

Third, you can only makes assumptions on what Tom was thinking or the value they put on the seat. To have a player fold every hand to you is despicable.

It isn't about whether you would take the deal or not. Hoy's post makes it clear that they only way he was chopping was if he was getting the seat. Money was secondary to getting the seat. They negotiated for the seat.

Chopping is fine. But the seat should never be part of the deal. Not in a blogger tourney. CJ gets it. Smokkee gets it. Change100 gets it. Too many just don't.

bayne_s said...

Is A-list position really that money has sullied blogger poker?

My H-list (eighth letter of alphabet) position is chops are ghey.

Since most of poker decisions are math based if offered something I perceive to have a value of $500 for $64 I have to accept because the math demands it.

BWoP said...

I've read a lot of posts from people who are saddened / angered by the fact that these blogger tourneys have morphed beyond "let's get some friends together, play cards and have some fun."

I have no idea who Tom Jefferson is, and from what I've seen, this was his first blogger tournament. Perhaps he likes Stud-8. Perhaps he just wanted to see what all of this blogger tourney stuff is all about. But these tournaments are openly publicized by many of us, as well as Full Tilt, so there are plenty of people who have made their way into the bloggerments through various means.

To say that Tom Jefferson shouldn't be playing in the tournaments because he doesn't care about the TOC seat is a bit harsh, don't you think? Rather than extending a welcoming arm, we as a blogging community are attacking him.

If Tom Jefferson had won the seat, I'm sure that someone would have written some post complaining about all of the "interlopers" who just show up for the BBT3.

The BBT3 has brought out a lot of ugliness on a lot of different levels. But in this case, I don't know how you blame Hoy for agreeing to a generous offer from a guy that we don't even know.

Stb said: "Third, you can only makes assumptions on what Tom was thinking or the value they put on the seat. To have a player fold every hand to you is despicable."

I think that's a bit critical given that we can only make assumptions about what Tom was thinking.

Let a nice gesture be treated as such.

Twice now, a gesture of kindness (rather than a cut-throat attitude toward the game) has been criticized and attached to some unsavory motivation (collusion in the first instance, despicability in the second instance).

F-Train said...

Sorry StB, can't agree with you on this one.

Back in the old days, when the WSOP was still downtown at Binion's, SNGs ran pretty much round the clock at various price points. At the $125 level, the prize pool was all to first place - $120 in cash and two $500 lammers (think of them as tourney dollars, redeemable only at the WSOP).

When a SNG got down to heads-up it would often chop, with one player taking the cash and a small payout from the other player, and the other player getting both lammers. Nobody raised an eybrow at it because the prize pool belonged to the remaining players, to chop as they pleased.

As far as the BBT goes, the TOC seat is part of the prize pool. The remaining players decided to discuss a chop of the remaining prize pool. One player agreed to take $225, with the other agreeing to take the remaining cash ($180?) and the seat. Because the seat isn't transferable, they agreed to end the tourney by having one player repeatedly raise-fold to ensure that they could make their agreed-to chop a reality.

This is THEIR CHOICE. It is THEIR PRIZE POOL. The fact that the prize pool includes a non-transferable non-cash prize does not change this. It is completely within the "spirit" of how every other poker tournament on earth is played.

StB said...

FTrain, you cannot compare live SnGs at Binions for the WSOP with this series. They have an unlimited number of seats to give away. This is a set amount. Apples to oranges.

You are correct that it is THEIR prize pool. My point is that it is not in the spirit of blogger tournaments to sell the seat. Blogger tourneys have never been like regular tournyes. But now with backer and selling seats, I guess it is.

bwop, I wouldn't call it a gesture of kindness. If so, Hoy would have given first place coin in response to said gesture. As Herm Edwards said, you play to win the game. Why play if you don't care about the real prize?

BWoP said...

When the deal was offered, Hoy asked Tom Jefferson what his price would be. Tom offered $225, which was incredibly generous given the prize pool. Hard to pass that up.

I thought the spirit of blogger tourneys was to play and have fun. If it were only about winning, *everyone* would be way more cutthroat.

Joaquin "The Rooster" Ochoa said...

During the Vegas gathering that I won...cough!cough! I was nice enough to press for a chop for the top 20 to get paid. Serious, I didn't have to do that knowing that I was going to win. To top it off everyone thought I was a nice guy for doing as such...I didn't even ask for money from people that I helped cashed...I should have, but I thought it might cause friction. With that being said, that is why I don't like to chop. When it was down to six people I was told that I should chop, and I said no, only because I had chopped once before to let the pour souls get some money. When it was down to three I wasn't going to chop either but Otis agreed that the 1st place finisher should get a bit more. To be honest, the money didn't matter to me...I wanted bragging rights and to bring the hammer back East to where it belongs. I wasn't going to say...hey, you can have the money...I want the trophy...pifft. I would have been insulted if Otis would have folded for me to blind him off...it would also have been an insult to Kuro-Kitty. Can you imagine if we were playing like that and everyone was looking on...serious, utterly embarrassing. I play to win and deserve to win. There is no money that can buy, The Rooster. Sorry. Just my one cent into this matter. Buying your way into a tournament and having someone lay-down for you. B-Listers