Thursday, February 12, 2009 - smokin_aces
In last week’s ‘Ask a Pro’, we announced Annie Duke would be answering this week’s question.
Blog reader ‘Ulimate Poker’ asked this great question.
“I would like to know what factors you considered when redesigning the tournament schedule at UltimateBet?”
Here is what Annie Duke had to say.
“That is an easy question to answer because the main and most overriding factor in designing the tournament schedule is the players’ wishes. I truly believe that you cannot be successful in this business if you do not give the players what they want.
When I initially started reworking the tournament schedule I reached out to both the online pros associated with UB such as Debo and P0ker H0 and the Pocket Fives community to really get a bead on what the online poker community wants in a tournament schedule (balancing that with the size of UB and what tournaments it can realistically support).
One really successful example of this is the addition last summer of the $25+2.50 tournament at 9:20 pm eastern every night. That was a tournament that was completely requested by the players. The players practically petitioned for it! We started off at a $7500 guarantee and it has grown ever since now doing over $10K per night.
Another great example is the $1K weekly event. We started that off on Thursday nights with a $100K guarantee but had trouble making that guarantee each week. A bunch of the high limit players spoke to me and told me they would much rather have the event on Wednesday. Stupid me, I thought the $80K on Wednesday would interfere with the $1K but the high limit players told me they like to play more than one tournament at once and that they also like taking Thursday and Fridays off! So I listened to them, moved the event to Wednesday and now BOTH tournaments are doing better. The $1K did a record over $200K last week and the $80K broke $100K for the very first time.
Listening to the players is definitely a win-win. The players are happier and the site is happier too!”
Join us next week when we welcome back Scott Ian to Ask a Pro. Scott Ian, guitarist of Anthrax and talented Ultimate Bet pro has answered here before. So look forward to getting a one on one dialogue with the Poker’s Rock and Roll heavyweight, Scott Ian.
To ask Scott Ian a question, enter your question directly into the comments section of this blog.
ASK SCOTT IAN A QUESTION NOW!
GL
Aces
Tags: Annie Duke, Ask A Pro, Poker Strategy, Scott Ian, tournament structure
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Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - Annie Duke
I have been thinking lately about my days back in Montana when I first started out as a professional poker player. I am not sure why I have been feeling nostalgic about the old days lately. It might be because I have been playing a bunch of $10/$20 limit hold’em on UB lately and that is what I started out playing back in the day in Billings, Montana at the Crystal Lounge. I think it has been making me think about my start in poker when the $3000 or so I was making a month at the start seemed like more money than I could ever imagine spending. I mean my mortgage was $125 a month so I guess that I didn’t have a whole lot of money pressure on me. Of course now I kind of wish I could go back to a time when $3K seemed like more money than I could ever imagine needing or wanting.
But anyway, I was thinking about one of the funniest games I ever played in in Montana. It was at a bar in Helena owned by this guy Myron. Myron was renowned across Montana as not being such a good player and he ran a game out of the back of the bar. The structure of the game was hilarious. It was a $1 and $2 blind spread limit game where after the flop the spread was $2 to $50. This meant you could get in for $2 before the flop and bet $50 after the flop. It made it easy to price out any draws for sure. The thing was that the other players played the structure really poorly. If they flopped some piece of the board they would come for whatever bet you made. That meant that you could send the price to a flush draw at almost even money and get calls if you wanted. I mean there would be like $10 in the pot preflop then you could just come out with $50 if you wanted and you could get called by flush draws there. It was pretty sick.
Now the other players in the game didn’t get this from the other side and would let you draw cheap. Of course, if you were drawing cheap enough for the draw you had to call because the implied odds were huge since you could bet $50 after you hit. I basically played hands that flop really well like pairs and A and K high suited cards. I would get in very cheap preflop, see if I hit, then ram the pot since they were all pretty much calling stations.
So, I have great memories of this game for a few reasons:
1) I won my first big prop bet there. I played during the playoffs and at the time I was a huge Eagles fan. The Eagles had made the playoffs so I had just checked the paper to see when the game was. I knew it was at 11 am Montana time but when we sat down to play Myron insisted it was at 2 pm Montana time. So I bet him $500 (which was a huge amount of money to me) and he sent someone out to get a paper and, of course, I won and got paid. Sweet!
2) It was the first and last time I actually saw someone bang their head against a wall. Myron was an emotional fellow to say the least and after he lost a few bad pots he walked over to the wall and actually started smashing his own head against it. That was my first introduction to how, um, shall we say colorful? Gamblers can be.
3) I won a ton of money in the game (over $2500) and got paid in a paper bag full of FIVES! Remember I said Myron owned this bar. Well, the bar made most of its money from the video poker machines in it. Myron accepted checks from the players in the game but I didn’t live in Helena and I wasn’t about take checks from dudes I had never met. I insisted on getting paid cash so I guess that explains the paper bag full of five dollar bills from Myron. He must have emptied out every machine in the place that night to pay me.
All right. That is enough nostalgia for one day. Oh, except to say that I remember it was so freaking cold that day in Helena you have no idea. I guess I am glad I don’t live in Montana now that I think about it considering it was 75 in LA today.
Tags: $10/$20 limit holdem, Annie Duke, blind spread, new year, poker tournaments, tournament structure, ub pro, Ultimate Bet Pro
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