As an update to my last blog post, last night I came in third in the Peppermill’s $235 NLH Fall Poker event. I’m really upset by the finish just because against my other two opponents I feel like I should have won or come in at least second more than 70% of the time. Maybe even 90%. Now I’m not trying to say they were bad poker players, but it was obvious to me that they were unaccustomed to playing severely short handed. So what went wrong? Well, the structure of the tournament beat me really.

You see when we were 6-handed at the final table the average stack was 120,000 and blinds were 3/6k with a 1k ante. That’s fine. But the next level jumped huge to 5/10k and then to 7/15k with a 2k ante. Just like that we were down to three and the average stack was about 15 big blinds. That’s pretty short. What made it worse was we only got maybe ten hands at this level before the next jump in blinds to the truly ridiculous 10/20k with a 2k ante. So when we started playing 3-handed in earnest the stacks were 260k, 240k (me) and 220k. Such short stacks infuse a huge amount of luck into the game and really hampers the serious tournament player.

Now imagine if we weren’t so short handed when these mega jumps came. By going from 5 to 3 players, the average stack essentially doubled. But if the field had been deeper than the 60 that played yesterday, these absurd levels could have come very near the bubble and at a time when the average stack was staying relatively constant. For instance, if we were down to 15 players, we wold have to elliminate players at three times the rate to keep up with the blinds.

So what’s this all mean? Well for me it means that except for the occasional limit tourney, I’m done playing the Peppermill. Because as much as I love the people and facilities there, it just ain’t worth it. I plan on talking to Mike Gainey [Peppermill Reno Poker Room Manager -ed] and hopefully the structures will be fixed. But if they aren’t, I’d suggest you stay away too. That is unless you aren’t good at playing short handed or when reads mean something. In that case the Peppermill may be just the luck/crap shoot you’re looking for.

Updated 5-Nov: A final note on the Peppermill. After busting from today’s HORSE tourney, I had a long talk with Billy V and Mike G about structures. They were both very open to my concerns and readily accepted my input. So while nothing is set in stone, they are committed to improving the late structure for the remaing NLH Tourneys. Way to go guys!

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