More doubling, sort ot

I've been continuing to play the Double-or-Nothing tournaments at PokerStars. One bubble and two more wins making me 6 for 7.

One thing here has started to bother me a bit. "Double-or-nothing" implies you walk away with double what you wagered or empty handed. That only happens here if you disregard the 8% tournament fee. If you're looking at this in a truly logical manner, you can't just ignore that fee. It's money that was in your virtual pocket before the tournament started and is no longer there once the cards fly.

In the non-turbo tournaments that 8% fee means you're really looking at winning 85% of what you actually wagered. That's not really "double-or-nothing". It's a bit better with the turbo versions since the fee is only 4%. There you're looking at winning 92% of your original wager.

Thinking about all this made me realize how PokerStars can afford to sponsor all those pros. The tournament fee percentage is relatively constant across all tournaments. In the deep end of the SnGs they're making about $80 an hour for server resource time. In the shallow end it drops to $4/hour or less, but I'd be willing to wager they're still making a tidy profit even at $4/hour for a resource that's shared among probably dozens of tables. In the deep end they're clearly making a killing.

In many ways, it would be far more equitable for the poker sites to charge a flat hourly fee for sitting at a table. But that would make the charge far more obvious than rakes and tournament fees do and would no doubt scare away a lot of potential customers.

As to the quality of play at the DorN tournaments, it continues to be quite horrible. With only two eliminations to go, two players on life support and a third with an M of about 3, I watched as the two big stacks pushed all-in against each other. Stupid, stupid move.

I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on these guys. I once pushed all-in on the bubble of a ticket tournament where I could have easily folded my way to a ticket. I had the penultinuts and figured the odds of the other guy having the nuts were slim. I was wrong. But at least I learned from that experience. Last night I folded AKo against a small raise ahead of me. I probably had the best hand, but with two eliminations to go, one guy with less than 2BB, another with just a bit more, and a third with less than half my stack, it simply wasn't worth the risk. My goal at this point is survival, not chip accumulation.

Too many of these players appear to be falling into the trap of wanting to build huge stacks. There's nothing wrong with that if it's early in the tournament. Late in the game, however, you don't want to take any unnecessary chances. Fifth is the same as first in these things. You don't need the biggest stack to win. All you need is to still be seated when that fifth player is eliminated. One of those big stacks I mentioned above threw away a win. He could have clicked "sit out" and made the money. Instead, he took a chance on increasing his stack and went home with nothing. Thanks for playing.

I'm going to continue playing the DorN tournaments as much as possible. The turbos are kind of nice because the whole thing is over in about 30 minutes. I usually don't bother even trying to play if I know I have less than an hour available. With these turbos I can probably play four in that time. (Two at a time.)

I only wish more players would play at turbo speed. Far too many players seem to be simultaneously playing on more tables than they can really handle. It makes action even at the turbo tables a real snooze-fest much of the time. Given that PokerStars has actively been courting this kind of non-action, I'm thinking they should really be called PokerSnooze. If you want to play 20 tables at once, I'm sure the action is coming at you non-stop. If you play just one or two tables at the same time, keep the coffee handy. You're going to be needing it.