DoylesRoom Bounty Tournament

I played in the DoylesRoom Bounty Tournament last night. It is a $25+2.50 buy-in that has three Pro's in it with a bounty for knocking them out. If you knock out more than one you get an even bigger bounty, and if you knock out all three, you get 25k. Also if a bounty player wins you get your buy-in back. DoylesRoom has a promotion that lets you play in your first bounty tournament for free (via rebate) just for signing up, and this would be the first tournament I have played on the site. Before I get into what happened, let me make a few comments on DoylesRoom, and hopefully Doyle you are out there somewhere listening. I am a little spoiled, having been raised by PokerStars and their quality tournaments and tournament interface. On PokerStars, right in the tournament lobby is all the information you could want to know about a tournament. It shows the blind schedule, the time between levels, what the payouts are currently, and what they will be if more people sign up. Unfortunately, this information is a complete mystery on DoylesRoom. There is no blind schedule or time between levels to be found in the lobby or anywhere on there site (believe me, I looked everywhere). It does show the current payout schedule, but does not show how it is derived. After some searching the site I did find a page that explained the payout structure based on number of entries, but this info is not in the tournament lobby, and not that easy to find. Now Doyle, would you sign up for a tournament without knowing what the blind schedule was or how fast the levels would increase? I guess to get this info, you would need to email support on a tournament by tournament basis which is pathetic. The only other site I have played which does not typically show this info was bodog, but that was for S&Gs only. The MTTs had this info available. Anyway, since I was going to be freerolled in this tournament, I went ahead and played it blind to the blind schedule. I did see that they were only paying 27 spots out of 517 entries which is a little light. It turns out that that is the most spots they ever pay, even with 999 entries.

You get $2000 to start the tournament with the blinds starting at $20/40 and going up every 10 minutes. Mike Caro, Todd Brunson, and Mihn Lxxx (sorry cant spell the last name) were the bounties. After getting cold decked for the first 2-3 orbits and not seeing a flop, I got in from the blinds a couple of times with marginal hands and stone cold bluffed down a couple of pots to get slightly up. The third level was 50/100. You get to that level in 20 minutes on DoylesRoom vs. Like an hour on PokerStars, so clearly the levels are just flying up, and you don't have time to start making moves like you would on Stars. I pick up my first real hand of the tournament (AKo) in MP. A guy in EP who just lost most of his chips the hand before pushes all-in for $700. This reeks of tilt, and I am sure my hand is probably good against this guy who wants to end this thing. The guy to his left is thinking (probably what I am thinking), and just calls. OK, this guy knows the all-in was weak, so he did not need much of a hand to make that call, so it folds to me, and I just call as well. My thinking is lets see a flop. If I catch the A or K it is mine. If the caller checks the flop to me, I will probably try for the steal. Well the guy to my left pushes all-in for 3k+, and now I am in a little trouble. Initial caller calls, and it is my turn. I already have 700 of my 2k committed, and am looking at close to a quadruple up if I can make a hand. As long as I am not against AA or KK, I should be OK. I don't think the first two guys have that kind of a hand, but the guy behind me who just pushed in might. I hate taking coinflips for all my chips early in a tournament, but with the levels flying up, and only 5% of the field getting paid, I had to take a shot here so I called. Tilt boy flips up AJo, first caller flips up 55, and all-in to my left flips up TT. Not too bad here. I have 5 outs to the best hand if no-one improves which is slightly better then 50/50 with the entire board to come. There are only 4 outs in the other hands that will better mine if I hit so this is a pretty good situation. Well the board comes down with two Js and no A or K, and I am eliminated in 350th place. TT won a nice side pot. I got to believe I made the right decision, but just got a bad result. A quadruple up would have put me in good position to make a run to the final table, so it was worth the shot. Todd Brunson eventually took 7th place.