Boylepoker's IPO Extra Chips Incentive Under ScrutinyHead of Poker at Boylepoker Discusses Rationale Behind Extra Chips Strategy |
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This year’s Boylepoker.com International Poker Open (IPO), the largest poker tournament outside of the U.S., has generated a lot of controversy since it announced that by playing on the site in August and September players could add 2,000 chips to their 8,000 starting stack.
In a recent blog entry at the site, head of poker Paul Spillane discusses the rationale behind the event’s ‘extra chips for online play’ strategy…
Details have been announced of this year’s IPO extra chips incentive and unsurprisingly it hasn’t gone down well with everyone. It is a new (ish) idea and to that end I just wanted to answer a few questions that have popped up on various forums and also explain in a little more detail the thinking behind it.
The most common complaint is that the extra chips incentive is unfair. It’s unfair to those who don’t play on the Internet and/or don’t play with Boylepoker and I guess it depends on which way you look at it.
Years ago I used to pop over to the Merrion casino for the Irish Open and on my first trip there Luke Ivory explained to me how he ran his monthly tournament for cash game players. The idea was the more you played in the club the more chips in a monthly freeroll tournament you would start with and I thought it was a genius idea. You could play one hour in the club and still be eligible to play in the freeroll but obviously the more you played the more you were rewarded; this incentivised players to his club and rewarded loyalty.
The extra chips incentive at the IPO is based on that principle. You do not have to play on the Internet or on Boylepoker to play in the tournament but if you are a customer you are rewarded with extra chips and I don’t think that is unfair.
Is it fair to run a tournament where some players have more chips than others? Well it’s not the norm at the moment but the market is changing and again it’s down to one’s own perspective, but as a live player whenever I see something I think is unfair I simply don’t play. Harrah’s made the equivalent of third place prize money in every tournament they ran at this years WSOP which I think is too much, but I still played in one of the very well run events.
Ladbrokes recently announced details of its Killarney festival, and only allowed you to play in it by qualifying online at their site. I didn’t think this was unfair, it’s their tournament and they want their customers there for the main event, but I will still go for the side events and the craic as it’s such a superb event.
Pokerstars doesn’t run the EPT for anyone’s benefit other than its own. The Tour makes huge money for the company, unlike the IPO which is a loss leader for us, but again I don’t think that’s unfair, I think its sound business from the market leaders and its only the buy-in that prevents me from playing an EPT.
FullTilt recently took over sponsorship of the Poker Million and the first thing they did was to reduce the added money the previous sponsors put into the event. I have no issue with it as again it’s a premier tournament in Europe and with the amount of players FullTilt sponsors, it is already making a healthy contribution to the poker community.
The IPO is what it is because we pump so much time, effort, and money into it, and I think it’s agreed that last year’s was a dramatic improvement on the previous year. The total cost last year was a decent six-figure sum and will be again this year, and personally I commend my superiors for allowing us to spend that kind of money in a recession without a guaranteed return.
Some have questioned how much we will make out of the players from the accrual of the necessary VIP points to get the extra chips, and the honest truth is we cannot accurately predict. We set the bonus target very low based on the fact that all four of us in the team play online poker at small stakes and came up with a target that was reachable fairly quickly.
We estimate that the most expensive way to get the points is to be on VIP level 1 and play MTT’s, effectively costing $16 in August and in September. We are adding €25,000 to the prizepool, divided by 1,300 runners = €19. By clearing 250 ipoints each month players also release $5 of their first deposit bonus (if a new customer, obviously) and can enter into one of our many ipoint freerolls.
We hope that customers get to see how easy it is to attain and maintain a level in the VIP scheme and see how much we are giving back in tournaments as well as experiencing other bonuses, promotions, and our great service. No one was more cynical about this than our very own Matt Broughton, co-presenter of The Poker Show, but as you can hear through the archive on show 32, he accumulated the points very quickly and realised we are only asking for a nominal amount of play to entitle you to the bonus.
People have asked how we can administer the additional chips properly and I can assure you we have planned for this more thoroughly than any other area of the event. As it’s our first time doing this we cannot say there will not be issues, but as a betting man, I’m massively betting against it.
To clarify, you must play on the site to gain the extra points and there are no exceptions to this, including VIP’s, Boyle Pros, or anyone else. There is one group of players I feel this is grossly unfair on and that is the Dutch players.
Last year they turned up in their droves and added a lot of fun and colour to the event. Due to laws out of our control we are unable to accept Dutch players. Last year we allowed them entry without having to register and this year we are again making an exception for those that played last year, but unfortunately they are unable to accrue points to get the extra chips and this may well put them off attending, I really hope it doesn’t.
For everyone else you do have to register online for the tournament but we can assist with that if you do not have access to the web either by registering through one of our many shops, phoning us, or emailing us here.
We are a business and we have made a business decision. Last year we tried something new and it didn’t work; we added 20 percent of players rake net of bonuses to the prizepool and I thought it was an extraordinary generous offer, but it didn’t succeed for whatever reason (if it had we might have added €100,000 to the prizepool!)
We want to look after our regular players as well as encourage players to try our service but do not want to exclude anyone from playing the event. I do understand that it’s not for everyone’s tastes but how about coming and just play the side events where all the chip stacks will start level, I will even promise to buy you a beer and discuss how we can make the IPO 2010 even better.
As Stephen McLean succinctly put it, the tournament isn’t viable without the sponsorship and backing of an online poker room, and the IPO is sponsored by Boylepoker. More than anything we want to make this event a championship poker tournament available to every player in Europe. We have added money and are trying new ideas to make the venture more viable for us so we can constantly improve on it, I personally don’t think that’s unfair.
The Boylepoker.com International Poker Open hits the Regency Hotel in Dublin on Oct. 16 with $25,000 added by the sponsor. Last year’s winner was Ruairi Coy who took home €37,530 from a total prize pool of €205,000.
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