Planet Mark's Blog. Thoughts, News And Strategy For Poker Tournaments Of All Size

The SCOOP / FTOPS Grinch!

I'm coming out today - yep I've decided I'm the SCOOP Grinch! And of course - so as not to be biased to just one site I'd better declare the same grinchiness for the FTOPS, ECOOP, UBOC and so on too (would include the Bodog one, but that is just too pathetic even for my grinchiness).

Well, why? (i hear you all ask in unison).

I almost played the SCOOP1 events yerterday, came very close in fact with the tournament lobbies for the low and medium event 1's open and my cursor hovering tantalisingly close to the register button... in the end I said to myself 'Mark, do you really want to spend the best part of Sunday battling through the fields of 10,000+ players - is you idea of fun really to have to dodge 100's of bullets, cold decks and win flips for 9 hours just to double your money?" Sure those prizes.... they were great - but tournaments with 5-figure fields - is that actually fun? Yeah, fun.

I like to win money the same as the rest of you - but if I'm going to give up a liesurely Sunday evening I'd like a little enjoyment in return.

Nope, 17000 opponents ranging from the clueless to the table professors is not my idea of fun.

In fact it got me thinking about which kind of tournaments I do actually enjoy, and you know what it is the mid-sized ones... the 250 to 400 players for a lower to mid stake ($30ish) where the money does not matter but the prize pool is big enough to be worth fighting for. I enjoy a tournament which will be over in 4 of 5 hours tops, where there is enough play to let skills show but not so much as to allow the nits to get too far. Playing for 6 hours to bust for a min-cash is no longer entertaining for me... I'd rather have a final table in sight, a real possibility - online tournaments have grown too big. And the SCOOP / FTOPS / ECOOP / UBOC are just more excuses to hold overly large tournaments. One more parting thought, for the first 2 events Pokerstars made almost $600,000 in rake. How about that. Right, off to try and qualify for the next events...

GL at the tables, Mark

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