Happy Holidays!!!!

To all three of you of read this blog, i wanna wish you all a great Holiday Season and a Prosperous New Year.

May all your rolls grow PHAT in 2006.

Skippin a major piece of news for another major piece of news...

Mga kaibigan. Apologies for the delay in reporting on the 1st Airport Casino Filipino Texas Hold 'EM Tournament. I'll do the full report when I get the pictures and official results. Suffice to say it was a blast, and 115 playas had a mondo good time.

Until then, here's a piece of BIG INFO:

Airport Casino Filipino has opened the country's very first in-casino poker room. Currently spreading Texas Hold 'EM, the room, on the second floor, currently boasts six tables, is fully staffed and is open from 2pm to 6am daily.

Currently spreading a 100/200 NL table with a 2K minium buy and a 20K max buy. Different stakes and limits will be spread on request.

They've got a Happy Hour, 2-4pm, during which you can enjoy your hands free of rake.

Look forward to announcements around daily tourneys and Saturday tournament events...

ACF management is committed to our game. Congrats to them, and to you...

Happy Holidays

Kudos...

Folks, I just gotta tell ya how impressed I am by the work that the folks from PAGCOR, and particularly the Airport Casino Filipino, are putting into the upcoming multi-table on Saturday the 17th.

As you know, we've been humping around from place to place for the greater portion of 2005 playing this tournament and that at this place and that.

But, as we all know, a poker tournament's natural habitat is either in a casino or a card club.

Well, the folks at PAGCOR get it now, and have spared neither enthusiasm nor cash to get things going right.

I've spent the greater part of the last two weeks there, meeting with the bosses, consulting with floorpersons-to-be, and being a resource person for dealers being trained in the the game. And the enthusiasm is something to behold.

Here are a few things I've witnessed:

PAGCOR has instigated a 10-hour a day, seven-day training regimen for hold 'em dealers.

The Senior Branch Manager has involved the *entire* staff, from custodial staff, to security, to dealer, to managers, in an all-employees texas hold 'em tourney to expose the whole organization to the game and the excitement of tournament play.

The entire management staff has immersed itself in learning the game and learning the business of the game.

The Branch has thrown a tremendous amount of resources into the tourney on the 17th, and are committed to running *regular* ring games in a permanent poker room beginning on the 18th.

So kudos to you guys; glad you've joined the party.

I truly hope to see all of you on saturday, whether you play or not. We are pushing to make this tourney the feather in the cap of the poker playing community here.

Registration opens at 11am Saturday the 17th. We seat at 2:00pm

Till the cards are in the air...

Getting in the Game

we can call this article Poker Venture Capital 101...

The reason for this post is the increasing reality of multiple tourneys and increasing prize pools. Tagaytay had a prize pool exceeding P1 million. This Saturday's Airport Casino tourney's gonna hit 750K, with a great chance at hitting a million. And we'll be staring a buncha bigger payout tourneys in the near, near future.

Of course, bigger payouts mean bigger buy-ins. No escaping that...

So how do we poor limited-bankroll schmucks get in on the action? Or will this be yet another case of only the rich getting (a chance to get) richer?

Well, there's hope boys and girls, if you fancy yourself a player with an edge, a chance, a snowball's hope in hell, well, you too can get in on all, or at least a lot, of that action.

Here are a few models of tourney fundraising i've seen work, and i'll describe the mechanics of these type of deals.

1. Satellites: We all know that getting into a big buy-in tourney often calls for you risking a significant proportion of your bankroll to get into a mathematically tough situation. Remember that a damn good tourney player's gonna be ITM about 1 in 10 times. So how do you reconcile cost with your bankroll? Well, playing single-table satellites is one way to do it. Say it'll cost 6K to get into a big multi...you can bet that somebody's gonna run a single-table tourney with a P600 buy, with the winner getting a seat. You now have a chance to get into the big one for 1/10th cost. The caveat here is glaringly obvious though...you know how tough it is to finish 1st in a field of 10? If you don't watch it, you may wind up paying more than the original big tourney buy-in in satellite fees...

I'd look for variants of this satellite model: such as those with bigger buy-ins but providing more seats, multi-table satellites paying deeper, etc. Always look for those satellites that favor you mathematically - or at least don't disfavor you too badly.

2. Loans: Yes, you can borrow money from mama, papa, sister. Well, this is a straight up "may i borrow money" situation. Offer interest if you wish. But be aware you're on the hook for it. You gotta pay it back. If you hocked that new celphone, you better play real well.

Upside to this deal? You don't need to share any winnings with your lender. You simply need to pay back the principal plus any interest you promised. If you lose, you can pay back over time.

Downside? You gotta pay it back regardless of your performance.

3. Stake deals: Alright. This is the Venture Capital part. Find a friend who believes in your game and get him/her to back you for all or part of the tournament cost. In return you offer your backer a proportion of any winnings. 60/40 and 50/50 splits are often the norm in these deals. For 60/40, you get the 60. This is a nice model and has worked well for people in the past.

Upside: You mitigate your risk. Your backer assumes all or part of it.

Downside: None, really, unless your backer has/had unreal expectations. Simply make certain that your backer is aware of poker tourney math and the risk he/she is taking.

4. Selling shares: One backer is one thing. But what if you've got a hefty fee and you wanna spread the risk around further? Well you can sell "pieces" of yourself to more than one backer. This is a little more complex, but you do spread the risk more widely. You are now behaving like a publicly traded company, selling stock in yourself. Formula? Pretty simple. Place a value in yourself (usually the cost of the tourney), divide that by the number of people you'd like in on your action, then sell for that share price. You pay back 40% or 50% of each person's investment in the event you cash in the tourney.

5. Trading Pieces: A little more complex, but a way to limit your downside and even increase your upside. Say you've got a few friends entering the same tourney. You buy in on your own, as do they - but you each commit a percentage of any winnings to a group fund. This way you "own" 20% of the group, as does the rest of the group. If one of you moneys, 20% of that is redistibuted to the group. A nice, socialistic arrangement.

So...just a few ways to finance your adventures on the felt. Please take what I've written above a simply a guide, and not recommendations. I believe it's always best to play with your own roll, and within it. Poker's the ultimate individualist's sport...you live and die by your own wits and skill - better if you lived and died by your own bankroll too.

What would this blog be without an announcement

psst...poker tourney

Airport Casino Filipino
December 17
Reg starts 11:00am
Tourney start: 2:pm
Buy: 5000+1000
Seats: 150+
Places paid: number of tables + 2

Register at Airport Casino Filipino, Paranaque, at the Concierge. For god's sake, register early. IT WILL SELL OUT

This will be the last blast for us junkies. Yours truly will be directing, with the very capable PAGCOR staff making things happen.

Giveaways, goodies, money, yeah baby...

Joyeux Noel - and a little retrospective...

Well the holiday season is upon us, and we do have a monster of a schedule taking us to the wire (of 2005). For many of us, 2005 was the "Year of the Felt", where we found our lives largely defined by the game of poker. Texas Hold'em Poker that is...that inevitable variant that has swept our shores.

In the beginning was the poker king challenge series, a multi-leg tourney that kicked off in the middle of the year. Held by the Poker Club of the Philippines, the early legs of the tour was a dealer's choice melange of seven stud high, holdem, and a local variant called hibok hibok. Rules were dodgy and unfamiliar to players accustomed to international rulesets. Well, we've seen 5 legs of this tour completed now, and the sole game in rotation is texas hold'em, using rules better aligned with international rules.

Then there were the home games...backyard tourneys became hotel tourneys (and many other creative places in between). My personal experience started with a 22-player birthday hold'em tourney with plastic chinatown mah jong chips (i remember walking the Ongpin street in search of chips). We progressed to larger fields with trained dealers and regulation tables. We actually succeeded in seating 107 players at the Mango in September, and now are culminating in a 150+seat extravaganza at the Airport Casino Filipino on the 17th. Whew.

Home games abound.

Charity tourneys.

The San Miguel Bar Tour

The 1.2 million peso guaranteed tourney at Tagaytay Casino Filipino

WPT (coming in 2006)

Jack Binion came to town

The Ray Ban Celebrity Poker Challenge...

Pro players

Sponsored Players

Bracelet winners...

goddamn...

who would have thought - but then again who could've thought otherwise?

I wanna thank the visionaries who drove all this...without this community we wouldn't be here (forgive me if i neglect a name here...i'm an old man, and don't sleep much).

Big Wally, Jardine, the boys from the BBC, FAPA, the Poker Club of the Philippines, the Kustom Kowboys, Bigslick Manila, Marco A., Eduard U., Solar Entertainment Corp., ABS-CBN, the visionaries at PAGCOR (JV, Dennis, etc.)

2006 will be a monster. Even at this stage, none of us can imagine what's in store for us next year. If you disagree with me, remember one thing...

I'm never wrong

heheheh