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 he Guardian Poker Column |
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| Victoria
Coren |
| Friday March 24, 2006
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How to play poker
(How to play has been running from issue 16) |
Last week, I talked about the rise of tournament poker,
the modern dream of playing fast games for huge jackpots, and the corollary
risk of spending fortunes buying into tournaments without getting a good
result. That is where internet poker comes into its own. The most valuable
contribution the net has made to amateur poker is the provision of
"satellites": cheap online tournaments where you can win seats at bigger
events. Instead of buying into the World Series for $10,000 or a European Poker
Tour event for €4,000, you can win entry for as little as £10. A
good player, with the patience to wade through thousands of online competitors,
can chase the tournament dream at an enormous discount. Competition between the
websites is now so fierce that most of them offer "packages": if you win an
entry ticket, they also pay your travel expenses and hotel
bill.
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That doesn't necessarily make it cheap. In
my experience, players who win international tournament seats spend hundreds or
even thousands of pounds playing the "side games" that are offered alongside
the main event.
A savvier proposition is to play tournaments
conducted completely online. In the unlimited arena of cyberspace, you will
often find 5,000 runners in a multi-table tournament - which makes the prize
money huge in relation to the buy-in. And no overheads! Although you will still
need enormous patience to outlast all these opponents, you can win thousands
for £10 investment. Indeed, supreme value at the moment is the "Million
Dollar Freeroll" on Paradise - top prize $1m, and entry costs nothing at all.
You have to open a real money account to be eligible - and win your way into
the tournament - but you don't actually have to pay anything.
The
other cost-cutting method involves sticking to the £20 event at your
local casino. The prize money is smaller, but it's relatively cheap and easy to
win. It may be more exciting to aim for the £500,000 prize in a major
tournament, but what good is that kind of money to you anyway? You'd only spend
it.
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