State of the Felt -- Matt SavageSavage Talks About the L.A. Poker Classic Tournament Series $10,000 Additions |
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In State of the Felt, Card Player will periodically bring you insights and opinions from some of the most influential players, tournament and poker organization directors, and other people that influence the poker industry. This is a place where the broad trends and forces that continue to shape the game will have space to live and breathe in open discussion.
This week, Tournament Director Matt Savage talks about his involvement in the 2009 L.A. Poker Classic.
Ryan Lucchesi: When did you decide to add the $10,000 H.O.R.S.E. and heads-up events to the L.A. Poker Classic tournament series?
Matt Savage: I was actually asked to come in a month and a half before this started. I always thought the LAPC was the second-biggest series of events behind the World Series of Poker, so I thought it could use a little bit more prestige. It’s already known for the live cash games being so big, and all of the tournament players who play both games play here all of the time when they’re not playing on the road. As far as cash games go, they want to come to L.A. and play at the Commerce. I thought bringing those players in a week early, we would have everybody in here and it would be more like a festival, like you might see at the World Series, and it worked out great. It was just a good time to have everybody here, and as you can see by the numbers, we’re really excited about the way it turned out.
RL: Do you think the opportunity to play three $10,000 events grabbed some of those players who were on the fence about traveling out to Southern California?
MS: It definitely did, and I even heard from a few people on the East Coast saying they didn’t want to make the trip because there was only a $10,000 event the last week, so I listened to those players. We added a $5,000 event the day before the main event, and we almost got 200 players for that, which is good. We want to accommodate everybody; we would like to see more people from the East Coast coming out to play the LAPC, and I think we got a few of those players, and I think they’ll be back next year based on what we’ve seen.
RL: Commerce Casino is definitely a place where you can take advantage of the huge draw the cash games produce on the side. Are there other tournament series in the U.S. that can benefit from longer schedules because of the cash-game action they provide?
MS: I think so; obviously there are some other factors here that they don’t have at other places. The size of this casino and the availability of tournament tables, the way the property is set up is perfect for this type of thing. I definitely think that others could follow the lead here and host some of these other events.
RL: The tournaments here felt the deep-stack structure of the blinds as play got late into the events. A lot of the players here have mentioned that they’re happy this event was a deep-stack structure event and not just a deep-starting-stack structure. What influenced your plan with the blind structures during this tournament series?
MS: I basically just followed what I usually do on the structures, but I really am against the deep-stack structure tournaments. They do appeal to the masses, it’s good for everybody to come in and see they have a lot of chips to play, but they might play for eight hours and lose one or two people, but then they’ve got to understand that if the tournament is going to last the same amount of time, then the structure is going to be hurt in other areas, which means it’s usually hurt in mid to late levels. In this structure here, you start of a little bit faster, not too much faster, but you have all of the levels, you have the 250-500, you have the 500-1,000, the 1,200-2,400, the 2,500-5,000, and it really gives players a lot of play all the way through. You’ll see that we never really went below 50 big blinds most of the way through the tournament, which is really a great structure, in my opinion.
RL: You are really the freelance tournament director, so you work in a lot of different markets with different casinos. Do you go into each tournament with a different mindset of how you want things to run?
MS: Definitely I do, I mean obviously here I had a little more freedom, because we can put up big guarantees, we can do the things I like to do, give them more play because we have the tables available, all the things I think are deserving of the second-largest tournament series in the world. I like to have different things we do at each different place, like at Bay 101. It’s a lot more unique with six-handed play and the chip leaders at the end of the day, the bounties, and the way the fans are up there is so great. I like all of those factors.
RL: Do you think that the fact that the L.A. Poker Classic main event produces a well-known champion the majority of the time has really increased the prestige of this event?
MS: I think it’s that and the cash games we have are the biggest part of it, but I also think that they’ve been pretty lucky to have such great winners here. You know, there are still a lot of great players left here today, but we’ll see where it goes. A lot of young Internet players, some people that may become the next superstars of the game may be in this room right now.
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