The Super High Roller event was new ground for the APT in Brisbane. To date the buy-ins have all been $330 or below so the popularity of an $1,100 event was completely unknown. This event would be run as follows:
- Three day event
- Start stack T100,000 starting at 100/200
- Blind levels 40 minutes
- A ‘Big blind ante’ format was followed
- Unlimited re-entries
The total field consisted of 92 runners (including 5 re-entries) making a prize pool pool of $92,000 – top ten paid and $27,500 up top!
The ‘Big blind ante’ format, as the name suggests, requires the big blind for each hand to post the ‘big blind’ plus the ante, effectively for the whole table. The introduction of this format for posting the ante was well received by 95% of the players, there were some schools of thought around making the ‘button ante’ for some well thought out reasons. We may discuss this at another point in time.
The big blind ante used was equal to the big blind – which makes life simple – small blind 100, big blind 200 and big blind ante also 200. Perhaps I am a little old school but I feel the Big blind ante used was too high and would have preferred to see it around 70% of the big blind, for the following reasons:
- This was an eight handed event
- At 70% it allows for times when tables are out of balance
- Later in the tournament the Big blind ante at 100% of big blind becomes quite expensive and defending from this position much more important.
- Value in general for the players, especially when you are looking to provide a relaxed structure over 3 days
This would have to be my favourite event for the weekend with respect to structure, price point, prize pool and the APT will lock this in for the future. Almost 100 runners in the first ever event of this size, dealer dealt, relaxed blinds all things considered this event was a great success!
See the Day 2 and 3 updates in future blogs, i will post a photo album shortly.
The Prince