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Lame
Monday, May 05, 2008 I got in to Atlantic City at about 12:30 a.m. late Saturday night (technically Sunday morning). I tried to register for the next day's tournament (the Deep Stack--the one I came to town for), but naturally Borgata closes its tournament registration at midnight. It reopened at eight the next morning. At about 8:15 a.m. I rolled over in bed and thought about running downstairs in my pajamas, registering, and then going back to sleep. Instead I just went back to sleep. At 10 a.m. I got a call from my friend Ed. The registration line was ten-fifteen minutes long, and did I want him to wait in line for me while I made my way downstairs to register? "I haven't showered or anything, so I'll be more than ten minutes." I said. "It's not gonna sell out, right?" "No," he said. "You just might miss some of the first level waiting on line." "That's fine, I don't care about that." At 10:25 a.m., showered and ready, I went downstairs and got on the registration line. To reiterate, I was there a solid 35 minutes before the scheduled start time of 11 a.m. The line went out of the poker room, all the way to the Wolfgang Puck restaurant down the hall. The following pieces of information soon became apparent. 1) About 700 seats had already been sold. 2) They only had tables to accommodate about 700 people (they had been expecting 400-500--how they came up with that expectation I don't know). 3) I was about 90th in line. 4) There were at least another 100 people lined up behind me (and that's being conservative). A little after 11, the tournament director started handing out alternate tickets to those of us in line who hadn't yet paid for seats. I got alternate #70. The tournament started, and a funny thing happened--a bidding war broke out for the alternate tickets. Alternates 1-11 were seated immediately because the director made one new table. We'd been told they were going to try to open a few more tables once the tournament got going (at least ten tables were being used for cash games), so it looked like my #70 had a real shot of getting in. Ticket #13 was immediately sold for $850. (The buy-in for this event was $2,150.) #31 went for $400. I was offered $200 for my #70, but declined. #78 went for $150. The buyers reeked of gambling addicts desperate to be playing poker for the next three days. I get pretty sick just thinking about paying juice. These guys were willing to pay almost half the buy-in on top of the juice, just to have the right to buy in to the tournament. After two hours of this, I asked around to see if they were going to break any of the cash tables, as we'd been led to believe they would. They didn't. And we were only on alternate #17 (meaning only six people had busted--not too surprising given the 600-big blind starting stacks). At that point I knew I had no shot and kicked myself for not taking the $200 when I had a chance. Of course, everyone who's heard this story says I would've been crazy to take that $200 at that point, and I agree. So even though it was a bad result, I think it was a good decision at the time to pass on the money. When all was said and done, I think #43 was the magic alternate. The guy immediately ahead of me in line (#69) bought #25 for $800 and got in. On the one hand, I'm glad I wasn't one of the throngs of gamblers so desperate to play this tournament that they were willing to pay $800+ just for the privilege of buying in two hours after the event started. On the other hand, it was pretty damn annoying to travel all the way to AC and not play a hand of poker. I was actually looking forward to playing this thing! In Borgata's defense, they did a lot to help the players. They went 11-handed, and they allowed alternates for three levels instead of two. I think their failing was in their severely restricted registration process. If they'd had registrations open at more hours for more days leading up to the event, they would've had a suspicion they were getting closer to 1,000 players than 400, and they would've had more time to figure out how to deal with that. On the day of, they couldn't secure more room, or fight to get more cash games broken. Pretty unfortunate. I'm officially alienated, and I wonder if I'll play there again. I mean, don't advertise a Deep Stack tournament, and then turn away 20 percent of the people who show up to play it. I'll probably end up playing there at some point in the future, but right now I'm annoyed. Oh well, good thing another FTOPS starts up this week! I know I won't get shut out of those!  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© 2004-2006 by Matt Matros | All Rights Reserved |
