UK News: 'Poker Practise - Home Games, the GSOP, and the Amateur Poker Association'

While August and September saw the same familiar faces wandering between Luton and Bolton via Brighton to play in the seasonal festival events, the unseen hive of poker activity in the capital and around the country continued, and an interesting experiment was running for the second year at the Gutshot Club in London.



The Gutshot Series of Poker (GSOP) promised the structure of the World Series main event for about one-twentieth of the price: £300. The full works were provided – starting stacks of 10,000 in chips, two-hour clock, and dealers enviously overseeing the full four days of the event, which attracted, in the end, 187 runners. While the combined prize pool for this event didn't equal that of the Luton main event (won by Luke Patten, with Dave Courtney and Tracey Dell coming second and third, respectively, for £30,000 each), it attracted different sorts of players for different reasons. From top-50 World Series finisher Richard Gryko to the less well-known Jamie Lillywhite, who ended up taking the top spot, there was clearly something attractive about this event for a lot of people.



At least half of them, I would guess, were qualifiers; there had been regular satellites leading up to the event for the princely sums of £20, £15, or even £5, ensuring that more than a decent handful of regular lower-limit players would get to try a tournament structured like those for which one generally has to cough up five figures. It was met with great enthusiasm by those players I met on day one, whose excitability was often paired with a restlessness that made the quick shortening of the field rather unsurprising. With around one-third of the field left after the first day's play (five levels) finished, it was clear that the excellent structure may not have been being treated with the respect it might have received had it cost $10,000. Dealer and tournament veteran Jimi Sotimehin said, "The hardest thing for inexperienced poker players is that they don't know how to pace themselves," and it did look like styles of play perfected in the £10 rebuy event were being transferred (with varying degrees of success) to the GSOP.


This is where the "beginner circuit" of home games, ranging from the purely social to the obsessive groups of fanatical learners, fast-tracked via the Internet link in; the dream might be to appear on TV in the World Poker Tour or European Poker Tour, but the reality is that online play and most "affordable" tournaments do not prepare you for the marathon big buy-in events, the highly edited conclusions of which finally make it onto the TV screen.



PokerStars has responded to this professed thirst for "proper" structures with its deep-stack online tourneys, with small buy-ins and the play of much larger comps, but there's nothing like experiencing it live. More and more players want to test the theory that longer levels and larger stacks make for fewer cries of "crapshoot." Often, one of the literally hundreds of home-game tournaments quietly producing new players will turn their usual £20 tournament into a satellite for a bigger thing, and send one of their regulars out into the world of casino poker.



The APAT – Amateur Poker Association and Tour – aims to make this transition easier and more affordable by setting up live events that are the sole domain of the amateur (defined as "one who does not make his sole income from playing poker"). For under £100 (£10 individual membership to the Association included), a 10K starting stack and, as the press release states, "a structure designed to encourage creative play throughout" will be available to first-timers and recreational players, with the added bonus of an EPT or WSOP entry to the winner.



A couple of potential problems with the venture spring to mind; they may not be ready for the sheer scale of interest in something like this. A niche for the legions of players wanting poker practise may end up being a pretty large sort of niche, and with cardroom capacities around the UK being no more than around 200, there may be those who are disappointed by the first-come, first-served registration system. Also, the policing of who is and is not a "pro" is likely to be as difficult to perform as the boundaries between professional and recreational player are to define. So many people now seem to "supplement their income" online to greater or lesser degrees, and someone with a paper route who plays online nine hours a day is strictly still an "amateur" as they derive income from other sources.



There are unlikely to be many sour grapes, though, as the buy-in looks to be low enough to be under the radar of the sponsored players, and everyone would recognise Patrik Antonius in a fake moustache, anyway. The whole thing does seem calibrated to attract the demographic they're aiming at, and with English, Welsh, Scottish, Irish, UK, European, and even world amateur championships lined up, a number of players of many nationalities will get a chance to play in the events. The main question to be answered in the next six months is whether demand for them will outstrip supply.



Jen Mason is part of http://www.blondepoker.com/. She is responsible for its live tournament coverage in the UK and abroad.