Here is the Tournament schedule from Doyle's Room Poker. Doyle's has a lot of guaranteed poker tournaments to lure business to their new site. When the guaranteed amount is large compared to the number of entries, these poker tournaments provide a significant value added opportunity.
Doyle's Room does a lot of thing right, but the Poker Tournament Schedule is not one of them. It is easy to see that we are playing Holdem and the tournaments shown here are all No Limit (NL), but can you identify the 8 free tournaments listed?
2 x Bonus $5 Freerolls (I won one of these, the $1.35 didn't go far.)
5 x $2 Giveaway - Speed
1 x $500 Freeroll (Note, there are only 187 players registered.)
Look at the number of players in the third line, $35k "Guar't'd GF Speed." There are only 148 players with a $36+1 buy-in. In a Re-buy Poker Tournament most players re-buy twice on average. So the actual value of the entry fees was 148*3*36=$15984, with $35k guaranteed that is a 20K overlay. You're getting into $85+1 for only $36. That is a great overlay.
Look at this Tournament schedule for ParadisePoker . Compared to the Doyle's Poker tournament Schedule it looks rather simple and straight forward, but look a little closer, This tournament schedule not only uses a different set of abbreviations, it also omits some rather important information. Now you can go to the poker tournament lobby and get all the information on the poker tournament but I prefer the to do one stop shopping. Since you can register directly from this screen the omitted information can be crucial. At least Paradisepoker refunds your money if you choose to withdraw from any poker tournament:
The tournament name is pretty clear. You might want to know that R&A means Re-buys and Add-ons allowed. Those with additional information give prize indications like $10,000 or $35,000 guaranteed prize pool, and the Legends WPT has a limited sponsorship to the World Poker Tour and the main prize.
Next is the type of poker. In this case Hold'em, Omaha , and O H/L8. Now it doesn't take much to determine that O H/L8 is Omaha Hi/Lo 8 or better to win low, but I know many people that do not know there is such a thing as Omaha High only. When they say Omaha , They mean Omaha HI/LO. Notice, that there is no indication of the betting structure. Are the games Limit Hold'em or No Limit Hold'em? By clicking on each tournament additional information is provided that gives the structure, but you have click on each tournament for the information. Often when sitting in a Limit Hold'em Tournament, my chat box has filled with s*** and f*** as the No Limit Hold'em players find out too late that they didn't pay attention to the structure.
Notice that the price is then listed as a single amount. Paradise list entry fees as a total and then takes a percentage of the entry fee. Most sites list the service charge separate. For example: The highlighted Parrot is listed as $5. On most sites it would be $5 +1 or $5 +.50 depending on what the service charge, or viggorish, vig, juice, or gouge is.
Next: Like Doyle's Poker Room, Paradisepoker has several guaranteed tournaments throughout the day. A quick check of the number of players sometimes yields excellent value added poker tournaments. At Paradisepoker this seldom happens though. They predict the prize pools in their poker tournaments very accurately. |
