Tournament Criteria

I’ve seen some recent Twitter threads regarding what are the best tournaments of the year and there, unsurprisingly, were lots of opinions being thrown around. I’ve been out of the loop on tournaments outside of Los Angeles and the World Series of Poker, but this is certainly a time when there are tons of incredible poker tournaments to attend all over the world. A sub-discussion evolved where some people were really breaking down what things made their favorite tournaments rank high on their lists. Many of the opinions shared were from the perspective of a traveling tournament professional. Since I’m no longer one of these, I can’t really speak to many of the tournaments that were being discussed. I can, however, discuss the things that I appreciate in the tournaments that I play.

Convenience

I have three kids five years old and younger. I have a wife who works as a civil engineer full time. I don’t have a reliable nanny/babysitter that we can have do part-time, on-call work. Therefore, travelling to tournaments is incredibly difficult for me. I can go to the WSOP because my in-laws live in Henderson. I can play the L.A. Poker Classic and other things at LA casinos because they’re all a one-hour drive or less from my house. I don’t go anywhere else unless I can find a way for my whole family to go with. It’s just not feasible for me to try to book child care for a week at a time on demand (not to mention that it’s insanely expensive to book care for three children). All of that makes convenience the most important thing for me.

Structure

One of my favorite things about the tournaments at the Commerce is the good structures, but all of them that aren’t the LAPC main are over quickly. For the same reason as above, six-day tournaments aren’t an easy option for me. I like the tournaments that have multiple starting days and are only two or three days long.

There is plenty of room in the structure to play, but it isn’t so long that I have to skip it because I have obligations on future days of the tournament. In my opinion, even though it’s the best tournament of the year, the main event at the WSOP has a structure that is too slow. Everyone there would be just as happy if they were 90-minute levels from the beginning and it was nine days instead of 13. I know people like to feel like they’re getting good value for their money, but longer structured tournaments also benefit the professionals more than they do the recreational players.

Field

Speaking of recreational players, obviously I prefer softer fields. I love when the Commerce schedules their smaller main events against very high profile events throughout the world. I would much rather play in an event against players who are inexperienced or not very good than the best of the best.

I played the World Poker Tour Tournament of Champions this year. My starting table was Shawn Buchanan, Stefan Schillhabel, Tony Dunst, Jarred Jaffe, Rainer Kempe, and Darren Elias. I got my fill of playing with experts in that event. I’ll take the fields filled with satellite qualifiers and people who have day jobs, thank you very much.
Varied Events

My favorite thing about playing at the WSOP is that I get to play games that aren’t hold ‘em for significant stakes. I’ve spent my career becoming proficient in a wide variety of games so that I could find the best games wherever I go. I’m more well-rounded than most poker players and that’s an advantage, but my edge against the field in no-limit tournaments has suffered some because of that. My favorite events of the year are all non-no-limit events at the WSOP and the only other place that I regularly play that offers good non-hold’em events is the LAPC.

These, of course, are clearly listed as my reasons for attending a tournament festival and I know that not everyone has the same ideas when it comes to the tournaments they would like to play. For some, all they care about is being able to fly in, get in as much volume as possible in a short amount of time, and fly out to the next destination. Others like to have tournaments that play for a long time with a very deep structure as shown by events like The Marathon and The Monster Stack. It’s obviously up to each individual person to decide which tournaments they would like to go to and for what reason. If you’re like me, however, I think you’ll find these factors above lead to finding some good tournaments in L.A. and Vegas. ♠

Gavin Griffin was the first poker player to capture a World Series of Poker, European Poker Tour and World Poker Tour title and has amassed nearly $5 million in lifetime tournament winnings. Griffin is sponsored by HeroPoker.com. You can follow him on Twitter @NHGG