Hey, poker playas!

Understanding the structure is very important. Although nowadays every player seems to want to play turbo-style poker.

Why is it so important?

To simply explain it. the better the structure the more room to be patient and make better moves. 

Today we would share a different story of a tournament that was held so long ago.

Enter the Philippine Poker tour.

In a time where if you want to play a tournament that had a good structure you have to really fork out huge money. A man with a dream challenge the norms.

Atty. Jojo Allado. A lawyer working at the Department of Justice had a dream.

He wanted to elevate the level of play in the Philippines. Before the PPT, blinds were 20 minutes long to generate more profits from the constant turnover of players. In the WSOP, they’re two hours long. Seeing how disadvantaged Filipino players would be abroad, Allado ruled that blinds would now be an hour-long

We would cover more details on this in a separate article.

So it was a 1 million PHP GTD with the buy-in of 5,500 PHP.  The main difference of the game was it would have a very good structure and an hour-long blind. 10 tournaments where each leg winner will face off in another final table. The winner would be able to play at the WSOP.

Remembering how it was.

Luckily one of our team was able to play in 2 of those legs and here is his story. However, the story will be more focused on why longer structures is actually better to play with. 

The story

it is sad really that records of those games are mostly lost. I was able to participate in the last leg, PPT had a great structure. I came in as the shortest stack at number 24. but at the same time. because the structure was so great. Even if I was at the shortest stack.

starting stack was 20,000, the last level to join was level 6. one hour per level.

I believe day 3 started out with level 16 2500/5000 with 500 ante. I believe I was less than 20 times the big blind. Ironically I never reach 150k for the whole tournament before I got busted out.

Because the blinds were so slow. All I was doing was stealing the blind from time to time.

The game will always change on the final day. 

No matter how short a stack I was, players were only raising 2x to 2.5x of the big blind. But due to the long blinds. players were more careful. at one point As I was the big blind. the small blind folded. As I peak at my card. Seeing Ace king, I revealed my card on the table and commented.

“damn, I would have shove”

one of the poker pros on the table commented.

“Your lucky, if I had pocket deuces, I would call you”

Mind game versus mind game

I knew he was playing mind games on me. luckily a friend of mine pass by and told him.

“man you cant scare him, he came in today short stack. He is already happy getting to the money. look at him. every time a player busted out, he is smiling so much”

The next hand. the pro raises 2.5x. luckily I pick up pocket 10 and shove all-in.

The blind was like at 3,000/6,000. he had more than 400,000 chips. while I was only a little above 100,000.

Although I was more or less 20 times the big blind. but a 100,000 can hurt him.

He folded and revealed pocket 7’s. I revealed pocket 10.

The next hand he raises again. as everyone folded. I had only Q2. but I knew I was already inside his head. I shoved He folded again.

Poker now!

Poker now is way different than it used to be. A lot more players are aggressive. A lot of the players now are looking for faster tournaments than slower ones. The truth is the hand that as written would most likely be called today.

Yet the biggest tournament in the world which is the WSOP still maintains its structure. 2 hours per level.

Imagine as the PPT happened around 2012-2013. Sadly before the lockdown. any tournament that is between 10-40k PHP buy-in. It somewhat became normal that the chip leader of the final table is only left with 10BB.

Although we do not judge it to be bad and there are still tournaments that offer good structure.

The world after the pandemic might change things around. Maybe faster tournaments will be the norm.

But it was more exciting when it was back then where players were relying heavily on other skill set to defeat their opponent than just cards.

stay safe poker playas