I played in this tourney this past Saturday. Top prize was 40% of the prize pool and a WSOP seat. $75 buy-in, max 240 people. Not bad you say? I didn't think so either. But I should have looked more closely at the structure.

You start off with $500 in chips. Blinds $15/20. Then 20/40, 50/100, 100/200... every 15 minutes! It was like an online tourney but you get $1000 less chips. PLUS unlimited re-buys for $50 for the first hour. I shouldn't have gotten involved. Especially since I wasn't willing to cough up more than the inital $75 buy in. But the allure of a WSOP seat drew me in.

As you would expect with unlimited rebuys, people were playing fast and loose. A lot of all ins with crappy hands. Then people would just bust out the money for a rebuy.

I made it about an hour. The blinds were 100/200 at that point and I had about 500 in chips. At that point I could only go all in. I did so, four times in a row. A/J, A/J (won the blinds), A/Q (someone called with A/10 and hit their 10's) and finally Q/10 suited (hit 2 pair but lost to a set of A's).

To add insult to injury, our dealers were HORRIBLE. They couldn't count chips, didn't know how much were in sidepots. Terrible.

The only plus? I sat for a hand with Men "The Master". He came over and played. I wasn't in the hand with him but he lost all his chips to big slick (he had Q/J).

Overall, a poor experience. I'll stick to better, more organized tourneys in the future.