Quote Originally Posted by BCR View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Dan Druff View Post

Not when there's big money to be made by Caesars raking each one of those 50s dudes $100 on their $1000 buyin, and letting them buy in up to 4 times

Record field of 7188 entries this year. Fastest growing event in poker. The majority of the field looked 50-59, from my observation. It played way different than I thought. My guess was that a lot of the field would be straightforward and passive. While there was some of that, for the most part the players had a clue, and generally understood tournament strategy.

However, many of the playstyles were just bizarre. I was at a ton of different tables throughout the event, and the only consistent thing was the fact that each one had at least a few players with super strange playstyles and almost random, non-standard lines. Took me two bullets to adjust, and then I made my third bullet stand. (I also ran awful with the first two bullets and ran well with the third, so that was also a big factor).

When it was all said and done, I went into the final 2 hours of Day 2 with a stack which was about 1.5x average, ran it up a bit further, and then lost two big hands which ended my day. The first was a super-standard QQ overpair situation running it out against AdJd with a flush draw, and the As hitting the turn. The second was a squeeze attempt out of the BB over 4 limpers, holding AdTd, where the first limper oddly decided to limp JJ from early position. So he snapped me, and I didn't catch up. Went out 263rd for $4122. Blah.

I am very disappointed, as I felt I had a good feel for the players and had a fairly nice stack going in the late stages. I'll definitely be back next year.
I’m not that surprised the fields are way more competent than you imagined. Even old seventy year olds are not nearly as bad as they were 10 years ago live. They make plays and bluffs even a lower stakes games. Not all, most are holding what you think, but some will surprise you.

You figure we were only 30ish when online took off. There was a whole lot of guys like us who started playing a whole lot. Most haven’t had your success, but many have kept playing recreationally for over 20 years now. Tournament strategy isn’t beating 5/10 online. It’s fairly straightforward for the most part, and that group has $, so with $1k buy in, they’re going to mix it up. You’d see more passivity if it was a higher buy in like $5k.

You still had a nice run.
I think Druff was saying they were incompetent in unexpected ways.