My New Topic

[MintTrav]

Are you still in?

Fraid not - the dream is over. I quickly went from 5k to 2k. Then spent over two hours scrabbling to get back to starting stack. By the last break I had finally found some traction and got up to just under 10k, just outside the top 100 of 400 survivors from 640 starters. I spent the break congratulating myself that I had twice as many chips as KidPoker, GeorgeDanzer, M.Staszko, CharismA3, Donald & j.thaddeus.

The game resumed; bish bash bosh and there I was - out before any of them. Got into some big hands that meant glory or bust. It wasn"t glory. Finished about 320th, almost exactly in the middle, but the position didn"t matter compared to giving myself a chance to take the opportunities that came. Didn"t work out - back to the day job.

[suzanne]

Triple stud...sounds exciting. I may have to dabble a little.

[MintTrav]

Yeah Baby! I just won an $11R satellite into WCOOP-49 Razz $500+$30. Second got $500, so once we were HU we had banked $1,000 between us and were playing for $30! Third got nothing, which was pretty harsh.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I don"t know what to do now - play it or cash out as tournament $? I wouldn"t ever pay $500 to enter a poker tournament, but isn"t playing it the same as paying to enter? On the other hand, I did just win a 37-runner Razz tournament and have won a few before and I could think of it as a freeroll. It"s not a freeroll though, cos effectively I have $530 that I can bank or invest. On the other other hand, I could win a few thousand or more than a few. Or I could lose it all.

I"d be grateful for advice from anyone who has been down this road before (or anyone who hasn"t). It"s not until the 18th, so I have time to think about it.

In the meantime, I need to go wheeeeee!

[nosey-p]

A bit of both, sell 50%  

Simples

[KarmaDope]

A bit of both, sell 50%  

Simples

Play it and sell 50%.

[MintTrav]

A bit of both, sell 50%  

Simples

Play it and sell 50%.

You"re a pair of geniuses. It"s obvious when someone else says it, thanks.

Please send your 25% each to my PokerStars account.

[Waz1892]

Congrats on the sat win!  

As you say, you"d never pay to enter a $500 tournament, so why not treat youself and have a crack at it.

You maybe be in a position to achieve a very nice result if you play - Nothing ventured and all that.  Assuming you entered the sat in the first place to get into the tournament in the first place, why stop now?

By banking the $500 you"ll never know what you could have done, and assuming you balance isn"t zero, you have your bankroll to do as you wish anyway.

Think of it as a bonus, and roll with it

Carpe Diem

[AJDUK]

What was your plan when you entered the sat? Being a top poker player you had a plan right?

Another option would be to take the T$ and sell them at around 85-90% or whatever the going rate is these days on those sites that trade T$. Dull, but money in the back pocket.

Or just use the T$ to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win, then take the T$ and use them to bag another sat win etc. There"s peeps who make a decent return out of doing just that and selling the T$ or using them as a bankroll for a future focused run of events.

GL and WP!

[MintTrav]

Triple stud...sounds exciting. I may have to dabble a little.

You should Suz - Stud, Stud Hi/Lo & Razz. All the fun bits of HORSE without the boring bits.

[AMRN]

FFS John, play the Razz tourney!!  Even at $530, at least half the field will be relatively clueless at Razz - great opportunity....

[fandango]

Nice score John! I haven"t looked at schedule, but perhaps why not use the T$ to play more than one event?

Good luck whatever you choose may you run well..

[AAroddersAA]

Really easy snap take the T$ for me.

They exist, they are basically the same as real money (assuming you were going to play tournaments on there anyway) and you will make more than the $530 by playing them. The razz event may well be soft, I would not know, but it sounds like to big of a shot (depending on your bank roll, I don"t know what that is).

That"s just me though gl with whatever you decide.

[MintTrav]

So that"s that decided then. I"ll either:

- Play the game for full value, as Waz & Steve said
- Play it and sell half, as Wayne & Adam said
- Bank it and use it to play a number of events, as Andrew, Carl & Rodders said
- Sell the T$ at 80-90% value, as Andrew also said

Thanks for the input - it has helped to clarify things for me. I"ve now got more options than I thought I had to start with. It would have been simpler if I came second and got paid in real withdrawable beer tokens instead of this, cos I wouldn"t have considered buying in.

One thing I know is, I ain"t selling them at a discount. I think I"ll go the staking route, if I can find anyone who wants to come along. This is kind of a combination of all the options, as I get to play with the grown-ups and to find out whether my star would have soared in this event and I still have a possibility of a good payout, albeit a percentage of what I might have won, though with less concentrated risk, but I also get to spread my buy-ins over more than one tournament.

I might test the water to see if I can sell part of the Razz, say 60%, which would use $200. There are a few $300 + $20 tournaments I would like to play, ie Stud, Badugi, 2-7, so if the Razz sells, I might spread the rest across those and try to sell the balance (or 50% if that is too much).

[Denis67]

Very well played John and good luck whatever you decide to do

[MintTrav]

Dear John

I"m worried about how to beat boredom during those long live poker afternoons. I was watching the Damon Hill lookalike on my left at the ECOAP last weekend, and he seemed to have a desire to lean back and balance chips on his forehead, but clearly got it very wrong. Do you have any thoughts on how to improve the tilted forehead chip stack balance for future weekends?

Thanks

Bored of Worcestershire

Dear Boring

You may have heard the expression "Old accountants never die - they just lose their balance". Well, I earn my keep in the accounting trade and I have clearly lost mine, as the waterfall of chips demonstrated.

I used to have no problem balancing untold quantities of chips, as you can see below, but that was before the old-timers disease kicked in.



Chip-balancing is a skill developed by experience. If you wish to develop this skill for yourself, I suggest that you try to go deeper in tournaments in the future than has been your usual practice. That way, you can build a large stack of chips, which you can then practice balancing.

Now, what was I doing?

John