Doyle's Room

At this time of morning before Senator Frist sneaked an amendment into the Safe Port Act (the Unlawful Internet Gaming Enforcement Act) in an attempt to stop online gaming, I often found myself up because of trouble sleeping. I often found myself playing tournaments at Doyle's Room.
Each day on an almost hourly basis, Doyle' Room would have several small and micro buy-in tournaments. These tourneys were great because under the tourney structure used on the site at the time (5 minute blind levels) and coupled with the fact that the tourneys would attract somewhere between 25-70 players, the tourneys could be played to completion in about an hour and a half.
I was surprised when Doyle's Room left the American market after passage of the UIGEA. I was very happy when Doyle's Room re-entered the market and began accepting American players again. Unfortunately, the time away has really taken away a lot of what made playing at Doyle's Room appealing.
The number of players has been down. The tourneys which offered many chances to play at the lower limits, whether in hold em, Omaha (both hi and 8b) and other forms are mostly gone. A site that had many choices for the tourney player earlier now has almost no selection now. These tourneys were offered without guarantees so I am surprised with the site's decision to cut back on the schedule drastically.
I have a lot of respect for Doyle Brunson and always root for him when he is playing. I know he doesn't run the site but it is sad to see the site he is associated with make decisions that do nothing to make the site better.

TranquilChaos and Mathclub roll through tourney fields!

Friend of the blog Tranquilchaos cut through the field in the UltimateBet Sniper 10K Guaranteed on yesterday. He won the tournament and earned $2350.00 for beating the field of 628.
As many of you know, TC is Devin Porter who has made multiple final tables on the WPT and a final table at the WSOP. Don't let this picture fool you, he is definitely a threat to take down a bracelet at the WSOP this year.
Congrats on a fine effort Devin!

You can read his blog here: TranquilChaos

Our New Zealand friend, Mathclub, had another great evening on the virtual felt. On PokerStars under his screenname jakehekejnr, he won Tournament 86799589 in the early hours of 05-02-2008. For outlasting 156 other players, Mathclub won $1083.31. He also made the final table in the $33 and $5rebuy on FullTilt. Another great evening for a really good guy! Awesome job sir! I wouldn't be surprised to see Mathclub take some expensive jewelry home from Las Vegas this summer. However, he may have a disadvantage since he'll only be able to play one tournament at a time.

UltimateBet's new tournament schedule

UltimateBet was my first site. I have been playing tournaments there for almost four years. I played there before the software change drove away a ton of business and have stayed there while the customer support and management have, at times, seemed to have been trying to get rid of the rest.

UltimateBet recently decided to let Poker Pro Annie Duke revise the tournament schedule for the site. One of the most attractive features of the site, and often cited as the attractive feature of the site, is the tournament structure. I will give credit to UB for not messing with the structure. What I can't understand is how the tournaments which had been attracting a steady increase in players on a nightly basis can just be moved. If you want to add new ones fine, but keep the ones that were drawing well. It appears that the lower buy-in bounty tournaments have been elminated, moved to a different time, or will be offered on a less than nightly basis. It makes no sense. When I first started at UB almost 4 years ago, there wer always between 400-700 players in a nightly $5 tournament without a guarantee that ran around 9:00 pm EST. During a previous tournament schedule change, this tourney was moved to an earlier time. After the software "update", these tournaments were lucky to get 200 entrants.
Before the most recent update, there as a $5.50 tournament which started around the same time as a $6.50 bounty tournament. There were always 300-400 more players in the bounty tournament.
I will have more on this later as I try to find tournaments at my level on a place I have long considered to be my home site and I have always continued to play there in spite of the pleading of many friends who play online. Now I'm beginning to think that they may have been right all along. Peace.

Final Tables for Wein

Poker fiend and pocketfives.com star Wein made two final tables last night (04-25-2008). First off, he made the final table of the $25K guarantee $109 NLHE MTT on PokerStars. For his fine effort, Wein was rewarded $1165.00 for finishing 8th out of 466 players.

On FulltiltPoker under his screenname ChasingIdiot, he finished 7th of 399 in the $150 $65K guarantee MTT for a cash of $2,112. WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Congrats Wein! Fantastic effort in a couple of tough tournaments.

Wein has a really good blog that you can read here: Wein's Blog