OK…apparently, I was full of crap on my last post. The same problem occurred right after I posted the last article. This time, I am confident the problem has been fixed.
On the plus side, I have plenty of article ideas in reserve and I think a few of them will get everybody’s attention. I should be posting the first one in a few minutes. Keep your fingers crossed.
Thanks for your patience.
As many of you may have noticed, at least I hope you noticed, The Grand Slam Poker Source did not have any new posts during the last half of March. That was due to some technical difficulties with the service providers. That problem has been fixed and we will be resuming normal posting frequency in the very near future. In fact, we anticipate posting an article from a very special guest writer today.
Thank you for your patience during this trying time. I guarentee you, it will be worth the wait.
Well, it’s that time of the year, when everybody has one eye on the 65 teams entered into the Men’s Basketball NCAA Championship Tournament and the other eye firmly set upon their brackets. It’s March Madness!!! So, between games, we here at The Grand Slam Poker Source have created a little diversion for everybody; the first annual TGSPS March Madness - Poker Players.
That’s right, we’ve created a 64 poker player bracket to determine the most polarizing poker player in the world today. We’re not necessarily looking for the most popular poker player or even the best poker player, but the poker player who evokes the largest emotional response in poker fans.
Do you hate Phil Hellmuth? Do you love Phil Ivey? Well, do you hate Phil Hellmuth more than you love Phil Ivey? If so, vote for Hellmuth. If not, vote for Ivey.
We seeded 64 of the greatest poker players in the world today and placed them into four divisions named after all-time greats who are no longer with us: Stu Ungar, David “Chip” Reese, Johnny Moss, and Puggy Pearson. To seed the players, we used a little help from the Internet by looking at various statistics, but it was still a somewhat arbitrary process, too. If you do not see some players on here whom you believe should be, please remember, this is not a scientific survey and just for fun. For a complete list of the players and their seeds, click here: Poker Brackets
To take the survey, simply click on the button below and answer all 32 questions for Round 1. The survey is simple to take and will only take you a couple minutes to complete. Round 1 will be closed at approximately 11:59 p.m. (Eastern Time) on Wednesday, March 26, 2008. The winners of Round 1 will be announced on Thursday, March 27, 2008. The second round brackets and survey will be posted on Friday, March 28, 2008.
If you experience any problems, please send an email to: webmaster@grandslampokersource.com.
Over the next several days, I will be writing a series of articles on the most common pitfalls of home game tournaments, including dealer errors, rule issues, player behaviors, tournament director responsibilities, etc. I hope you will enjoy it. The series will start “pre-flop” with a look at inviting players and reserving seats; it will continue “past the river” by wrapping up the series with an analysis of how to end the night; and hit many, many topics in between.
When completed, I hope the series will give home game tournament directors a short manual on how to run a home game tournament and avoid the most common pitfalls that plague and ultimately destroy many home game tournaments.
I hope you will visit often to read the entire series; however, if you miss an article, don’t worry. They will be archived on the Tournament Support page. Just click the “Tournament Support” link at the top of the page to read past articles.
Until next time,
KC
The Grand Slam Poker Source is proud to announce the grand opening of The Grand Slam Poker Source Forum. To better serve my readers, I wanted to provide them with a place to exchange their own thoughts, ideas, and opinion. I hope The Grand Slam Poker Source Forum can provide that for everybody, including me.
I wanted to get this project off the ground and running early. I hope by doing so, membership will grow at a good pace and I will be able to keep up with the demands of the forum while learning on the job and improving the forum with additional features.
I encourage everybody to jump in with both feet, join The Grand Slam Poker Source Forum (for free, of course), bookmark it (http://bb.grandslampokersource.com), visit it often, make many posts, and provide me with as much feedback as you can. Try it out and give it a test spin. If you have any problems with it at all, please email webmaster@grandslampokersource.com.
The Grand Slam Poker Source is proud to offer the trial version of the CCT Equity Estimator - Version 1.1 at no cost.
The CCT Equity Estimator uses the Independent Chip Model (ICM) to help players identify a reasonable split of the payout money if they wish to chop at the end of a tournament. The ICM is the fairest way to chop payouts and the CCT Equity Estimator is an easy to use Microsoft Excel tool that allows players to calculate the split without needing online access. (To read more about ICM and fair methods to chop payouts at the end of a tournament, read Poker Quiz II - Final Table Deals - Results, published February 21, 2008.)
The CCT Equity Estimator - Version 1.1 (Trial Version) will calculate a chop for up to four players. To download it, simply click the button below. No instructions are necessary for installation since it is simply a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Just download it into any directory and start using it.
Click Here to Download the CCT Equity Estimator
©2008 - The Grand Slam Poker Source
As with the first poker quiz, Poker Quiz: Pick Your Poison (published on February 1, 2008), the answers I received to questions in Poker Quiz II: Final Table Deals (published February 13, 2008) were very well-reasoned, well articulated, and all over the place. For those of you who do not remember, the quiz gave three final table scenarios and asked readers to determine an equitable deal (chop the prize money) for all players based on their chip stacks. The scenario questions were:
Assume the payout structure for all questions is:
The scenarios were:
Welcome to the new and improved Grand Slam Poker Source. We’re still working on some of the updates and themes for the new site, but we wanted to transition to it as soon as possible. The new site will give us more flexibility to provide information, commentary, opinions, and anything else poker related. So, please bookmark the new site at http://www.grandslampokersource.com.
If you have any comments, suggests, or problems with the new site, please feel free to drop us a line at webmaster@grandslampokersource.com.
We look forward to providing you with updated information and a lot more news, opinions, commentary, and fun with the new site - including guest writers (who wants to hear my opinions all the time), interactive polls, and theme changes to increase the readability of the site. So, keep coming back and don’t forget to update your bookmarks (http://www.grandslampokersource.com). The old website is no longer active; however, it does provide a link to this site.
Until next time,
KC
If you have a poker-related question you would like answered, please visit the Ask TGSPS!!! page by selecting the tab above and following the easy instructions. I will answer your questions as quickly as possible, and more importantly, give you the most honest and best answer I can. Please give me as much detail as you can about any question you have, rather it be a tournament ruling, hand analysis, or anything poker-related that is on your mind. I look forward to hearing from you. In the meantime…
I’ve found that I’m very good at limit tournaments [such as] HORSE, Omaha O/8, and even Hold‘em, but when it comes to NL [No Limit] I seem to have many more problems. I’m not sure if it’s just because I play more hands and suck out in the limit games (I don’t think I do), … but I don’t cash nearly as often in NL as I do in limit. Any idea why that might be?
Here’s an example of what happened the last time I played NL. I was rockin’ along, we were down to the final 5 (with 4 paying), and I wasn’t the shortest stack, but I was on the short side. I had about 17K in chips with the blinds at 1K/2K and a 300 ante. UTG [Under the Gun] limps and I look down to see A7 suited. I raised it up to 10K. Should I have gone all in? UTG saw the bet with Q4 and when the flop was 744, down the hole I went. So, what should I have done? Continue Reading »
Chopping the payout money is a fairly common practice in the world of tournament poker. Many times, especially in fast tournaments, by the time there are only three or four players remaining, the blinds have reached such high levels that there is not a lot of poker playing left to be done. As experienced players know, this is often the time that your chip stack and luck become your best friends.
Basically, when there isn’t much play left in the tournament, the person with the best cards often wins. The only way to offset this phenomenon is to have a large chip stack that will enable you to withstand a bit of bad luck.
To combat “the luck of the draw”, players will often reach agreements to chop the payout money so that everybody gets a “fair share” and doesn’t have to worry about bad luck sending them home short-changed. Of course, this begs the question: What is a fair chop?
Not withstanding the skill level of the players, the most fair way to chop payouts is based on chip count; however, even that can prove to be a bit tricky and players will often disagree on the equity they have in the tournament. So, here is a little quiz to get you thinking about chopping pots.
Before you take the quiz, please note that there is not a wrong or right answer to the questions below; however, I believe there are answers that are more fair than others. I will discuss the results of the quiz on Thursday, February 21, 2008. Please leave your answers in the comment box below.
For all questions, assume all players are of equal skill and only chip counts are considered in equity. Also assume the payout structure for all questions is:
Please come up with the chop you believe to be the most fair for the following three scenarios. Let the fun begin!!!!
Remember, to get full credit, you must show your work!!!
Until next time,
KC
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