There are two public poker rooms in Edinburgh: the Circus Casino near the center of the city, and the Maybury out near the airport. I decided that after three sessions at one place I should at least visit the other. I heard from some of the cash game players at Circus that the Maybury had an uncharacteristically large tournament on Saturday night that started at 7 or 8 PM. Though it was the night before I was to leave for home, I figured that this would give me the best chance of sampling what the room had to offer. I was right.
This really is no place for cash games. Though they spread $.50/1.00 no limit hold'em, the game does not consistently run during the week. It is always available, I was told, on the weekend when there are sometimes $1/2 games as well. Even so, the game is no bargain, with the pot being raked up to a $6 maximum. With Circus in town, charging only $3 for an hour of play -- about 1/5th the amount taken from the Maybury game -- is there any doubt where players get the better deal?
Tournaments are another matter entirely, however. Both places spread them -- and the house takeout varies wildly. You'll have to check for each event. But the Maybury event was very player friendly. It was $165. And the casino added $2,500 to the total prize pool. With 56 players or so that raised the prize pool from $9,000 or so to about $11,500.
Sadly for me, however, the tournament started not at 7 or 8, as I had been told, but at 5PM -- to accommodate the very deep stack of 12,500 in chips. Though I thought I was arriving especially early at 6:45, in reality I was there nearly 90 minutes late (they delayed the start by thirty minutes hoping for more entries). I was the last one to enter -- and happy to find out that my stack was not blinded off at all. "That's not the way we do things over here" I was told. Who was I to argue.
The structure was very slow. 30 minute levels, 25/50 to start, increases to 50/100, 100/200, but then 150/300, 200/400, 250/500, 300/600, 400/800, 500/1,000. They started 25 antes at the forth level, but even so, I knew that this would not be the typical three or four hour tournament. If I was lucky, I'd be in for a long night.
The length of the tournament was also a product of the speed of play by the players. Though things didn't slow too much during the first three hours, when the tournament got down to two tables, at about midnight, the pace of play became glacial. I am not exaggerating when I write that I clocked two hands in a row at over 5 minutes each. I went one hour with only 14 hands being dealt.
The level of play was fairly high. Players tended to be tight and aggressive -- with a couple of guys playing loosely and aggressively. It was rare indeed for a hand to go by pre-flop without a raise. There were many three bets pre-flop. Players tended to be aggressive after the flop as well -- and hands rarely went to the river. I judged myself to be no better than in the top quarter of players -- perhaps just the top third. And I didn't see more than 2 or 3 complete fish.
My performance was enhanced by a couple of great pieces of luck and some solid play. The single best decision I made was on the flop in about the seventh round, when I had about $20,000 in chips against a much larger stack. I was in the big blind with Kd3d -- normally a hand I'd discard. But everyone had folded to me, my image was extremely tight, and I thought I might win if I took a stab at the pot. So I raised 3X the BB. The small blind folded but the big blind, a loose and erratic player, called. The flop came QhJd3h. The BB checked. I bet roughly the pot. My opponent check raised me all in! I thought and I thought. What might he have? If he had a Q or J I didn't think he would have been so tricky. I thought he probably would have bet. If he had two pair or trips, I think he would have just called my bet and perhaps try to crush me on the turn. But the check raise shove made me think that he probably had some flush draw. Sure enough, he revealed a couple of middle hearts. Neither the turn nor river helped him and I doubled up -- at just the right time.
I tightened up for a while and saw the number of active players diminish to about 25-- playing at three tables. I then decided, based on the nature of my opponents, that I needed to get much more aggressive. Partly this was because I thought that I needed to build my stack or perish in the process if I was going to make the money. But, admittedly, I was also eager to get back to my room so I could get a few hours sleep before leaving for the airport. As it was, I found myself, on three occasions, shoving for my tournament life when I was at least the slight underdog. On all three occasions I hit the cards I needed and either doubled up or won a significant amount in the process of knocking someone out. These hands allowed me to stick around until the final table.
Ironically, when I got knocked out(at 2AM) I did so as the heavy favorite -- with an AJ against a K9 -- only to have my opponent, who had me covered, spike a King on the flop. Even so, I took home a prize of $300. It wasn't the kind of reward that I would have liked for my 7 hours of play.
A few more comments about the Maybury Casino. It is a much more upscale and glamorous place than the Circus Casino. It reminded me of the more stereotypical European casino -- with the dark colors, the rich fabrics, and the attentive staff. Circus had more of a honkey-tonk circus feel to it -- a workingman's night out more than a rich man's club. That kind of stuff doesn't matter to me at all. I play poker where I think the poker game is best. I'd play in the back of McDonalds if I could get a good game there.
The dealers were trained by different casinos -- and they did not even shuffle the cards consistently. Their quality was generally better, I found, than that of the cash game dealers at Circus -- but that could have been because they came into town especially to deal this tournament. Perhaps the casino was more highly selective for this particular event than they were for their cash games. For all I know these same dealers might deal tournaments over at Circus as well. I'm really not sure.
The chairs were not uncomfortable -- padded nicely. But they were not adjustable -- a major drawback for a fidgety someone like me. The lighting wasn't great -- but it was better than Circus. And the free cookies were a nice little touch that I appreciated.
All in all, I'd recommend any tournament here where the house was adding $2,500. But I don't think I'd come out here for the cash games unless my hotel was within walking distance. The other players all agreed that the place to play cash was the Circus Casino -- and I agree with them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment