2008 WCOOP Event #23 Preview

Event #23 is $530 NL Hold'em with 1 rebuy and 1 add on. This tournament is going to provide an insane amount of play. We started the $1.050 NL with 15,000 chips (which is a ton), 30 minute limits, and 25/50 blinds. In this one the buy in gets you 4,000, the rebuy gets you another 4,000 and the add on gets you another 8,000. The limits are still 30 minutes, but the blinds start at 10/20! These are some deep stacks if I've ever seen them!

A normal online tournament will start you with blinds of 10/20 and generally the same blind increases, but only 1,500 chips and 15 minute limits. That means after two hours you've gone up 8 levels and the big blind is 20% of what you started with. Clearly if you haven't gotten any hands you're done by this point. To contrast, after two hours in tomorrow's tournament you've only gone up 4 levels and the big blind is still less than 1% of what you started with. After 4 hours in the normal tournament the big blind is 200% of the stack you began with, while in tomorrow's event it's less than 2% of your starting stack! By 6 hours in the first scenario even if you've finished first you've had enough time to chill the champagne and call your friends while in the second, you're still an hour short of the money.

This is why the WCOOP is so great and why I've been able to do so well. It's all about having the time.

Since this is the most money I've put on the line in any WCOOP event so far this year I'm certainly happy that it's going to take a long time. More time means more decisions and more chances for me to out play my opponents. Also with so many chips, unless two mega hands clash it's tough to lose all of your chips on one hand early.

Another thing is since the buy in is so big and it's on a weekday I think we can expect somewhere between 500 and 700 entrants. That means I should have a better chance to make the final table than in any of my previous tournaments and no matter how many players there are, when you play online, all the real money is at the final table!

Also tomorrow's second chance tournament isn't going to be small potatoes either. Even a performance just into the money could make it a big day and two duds could make it a pretty crappy day.