UPDATE: Announcement at the start of play that the 60-minute dinner break will be after Level 6 of the Main Event instead of Level 8.
When I got news yesterday that ’70s (& ’80s!) pop star Eddie Money passed away at the age of 70, my thought was of the only time I saw him in concert, at the first-ever concert held at Eugene’s Autzen Stadium, which had The Grateful Dead and Santana as headliners, with country-rockers The Outlaws and newly-minted star Eddie Money as opening acts. Kind of sobering to think that when he did that concert, he was half my current age.
Some high-school buddies and I decided to go. Checking back on the date—41 years ago in the summer of 1978—I’m not really sure if I needed to convince my parents to let me go (I was about to start my senior year in high school and I’m pretty sure it was my first rock concert), but maybe the fact that it was in the daytime and an open-air stadium worked in my favor. My buddies Chris Lee and Jon Pitchford were there, I was wearing a red t-shirt with a metallic silver unicorn applique on it (I was there for the Dead) from the science-fiction and fantasy book/game shop where I got my Dungeons & Dragons stuff (and which would be my employer for four nears starting the next spring). Somewhere I might still have the photo of the crowd that ran on the front page of the Eugene Register-Guard where I think I was able to spot the red dot of my shirt amongst the sea of people.
Nobody I knew listened to Eddie Money (or The Outlaws, for that matter) but his first album was ubiquitous that year, in a way that music really could be before the streaming era, MP3s, MTV, CDs, or event the Walkman, which didn’t come out until a year later. So you knew the standards by ear even if you weren’t listening to them. Anyway, RIP, Eddie!
I busted out of Event #22 $40K NLHE just before the money in a hand I misplayed. We’d gone to dinner break with just under four tables, and I’d nearly doubled up just before the break to an average stack We had about a dozen players to go before the money. Our table was seven-handed, and when it folded to me on the first hand after break, I opened [qc js] to 10K from UTG2 (big blind was 4K). Everyone folded. So far so good. 100K in my stack, 25bb.
The second hand I picked up [ts tc]. UTG opened to 10K. I should have re-raised, but I was trying to be cautious of the big stacks behind me. UTG didn’t have me covered by a lot, but some of the players left to act were several times my depth. So I just called. First mistake. Everyone else folded.
The flop wasn’t horrible: [qx 9x 6x]. Don’t remember suits, just that it was a rainbow. UTG checked and I checked behind. Second mistake.
The turn looks great: [td] UTG bets, I shove and he instacalls with [kx jx] of course. All the luck in the world will not get the board to pair, and I blow out in 29th place, just eight spots from the cash. So aggravating.
Anyway, the only event left on the schedule is Saturday’s Event #24 $250K GTD NLHE Main Event.
Starting stack is 40K (including the optional $25 10K dealer appreciation chips). Levels are 50 minutes on Day 1, with breaks every two levels. Breaks are 15 minutes long, except for the third and fourth breaks. Registration ends (no re-entry) at the end of the 30-minute break 3 (after Level 6). There’s a 60 minute dinner break after Level 8.
At the end of registration is a $200 addon for 30K in chips.
The first level starts with everyone 400bb deep, with the starting stack decreasing to 200bb in Level 2, 133bb in Level 3, then for Levels 4, 5, and 6: 100bb, 66bb, and 50bb, respectively. With the relatively large addon, A fresh starting stack will be 70bb.
One thing I like to do is compare the rate of increase in the big blind, or cost of level. If you figure the cost of maintaining at a particular level relates to the amount, you can see the levels where the structure ratchets up the pain for the short stacks. Below is a chart showing the structure from after the addon (Level 6) to after dinner on Day 2, including comparisons of how fast the big blind increases compared to the increase of the cost of a round (CoR).
An increase of 25%—33% is typical. I’ve highlighted the areas where the increase is greater than that. You can see that in Level 8, even though the big blind doesn’t increase all that much, the CoR jumps up by 50% (from 2,400 to 3,600) because of the ante increase. If you assume two minutes per hand and 25 hands in each level of Day 1, that’s 400 chips per hand on average, or 10,000 chips to blinds and antes for Level 8. If you came in with a 70K stack (starting and addon) at the beginning of Level 7 and didn’t play a hand, you would be down to about 54K.
After dinner are another couple of levels with slightly-larger-than-average increases, but the surprising one is the lullaby at the end of Day 1, where Level 12 smooths out, increasing by only a sixth of the previous level’s CoR.
The tournament today doesn’t have re-entry, so be careful out there! After this, it’s back into semi-retirement for me!
Level | Ante | BB | Cost of Round (CoR) | BB rate of increase |
CoR rate of increase |
|
7 | 100 | 1000 | 2400 | 25.00% | 14.29% | |
8 | 200 | 1200 | 3600 | 20.00% | 50.00% | |
Dinner | ||||||
9 | 300 | 1600 | 5100 | 33.33% | 41.67% | |
10 | 400 | 2000 | 6600 | 25.00% | 29.41% | |
11 | 500 | 3000 | 9000 | 50.00% | 36.36% | |
12 | 500 | 4000 | 10500 | 33.33% | 16.67% | |
End of Day 1 | ||||||
13 | 500 | 6000 | 13500 | 50.00% | 28.57% | |
14 | 500 | 8000 | 16500 | 33.33% | 22.22% | |
15 | 1000 | 10000 | 24000 | 25.00% | 45.45% | |
16 | 2000 | 12000 | 36000 | 20.00% | 50.00% | |
17 | 3000 | 16000 | 51000 | 33.33% | 41.67% | |
18 | 4000 | 20000 | 66000 | 25.00% | 29.41% | |
Dinner | ||||||
19 | 5000 | 30000 | 90000 | 50.00% | 36.36% | |
20 | 5000 | 40000 | 105000 | 33.33% | 16.67% |