The WPT Bellagio and how that Vegas showcase hotel describes its acclaimed event:
"Exhilarate with hand after hand of classic poker action. Our Las Vegas poker room is one of the stops on the famed World Poker Tour. Within its 7,000 square feet are 40 tables and two high-limit areas, the most prominent of which is Bobby's Room - an exclusive two-table enclave named in honor of 1978 World Series of Poker Champion and MGM MIRAGE Chief Design and Construction Officer, Bobby Baldwin. For your ultimate enjoyment, this smoke-free Vegas hot spot also includes 24-hour table-side dining, complimentary beverage service, safe deposit boxes, a full-service cashier cage, overhead state-of-the-art music system, eight 32" television monitors, and 11 42" plasma screens. To further inspire your game, the walls are adorned with artwork depicting past Bellagio tournaments and World Poker Tour events, as well as a LeRoy Neiman-commissioned painting of high-stakes poker greats."
Now enter poker pro and phenom Daniel Negreanu, who has a different take on the WPT Bellagio despite admittedly playing at the hotel's card room just about every night.
"I used to love staying home now I am at Bellagio every night," he gleefully admits.
But he's not so fond of the WPT Bellagio structure changes as evidenced on his blog.
"Bellagio used to always have really good, sensible structures, but kind of out of left field they have made some totally random tweaks that are just plain stupid and unnecessary and bad. Aside from the gimmicky addition of 4x chips they've made antes significantly smaller at several stages. The 4x gimmick is really starting to get out of hand now. I always thought it was foolish to give 2x chips, then 3x was just LOL, but now they are going all the way looney with 4x. At this rate, in the next Bellagio event you will get 20k chips and start with 200k in chips with blinds at 50-100. They'll then go to 200-400 and 1000-2000, but whatever, 2000 big blinds to start is so awesome right???
"Now the tournament starts with 60,000 in chips and 50-100 blinds. A little much? Absolutely. Right off the bat the structure is stupid with the first few levels:
50-100
100-200
100-200 (25)
200-400 (25)
"Now let's look at this laughable start. The ante in the 200-400 is 50 in pretty much any event you are going to play on the WPT, but they decided to randomly just chop it in half! Not only that, we have the absolutely useless 50-100 level instead of a level that makes just a ton more sense, the 150-300 with a 25 ante. If you are going to start with 60,000 in chips, and you want level 4 to be the 200-400 level, this is better:
100-200
100-200 (25)
150-300 (25)
200-400 (50)
"I would bet my left testicle that if you polled a panel of rationale people, no one would think Jack's blind jumps are better.
"I think the biggest flaw made with the structure is ante size across the board. It's another foolish gimmick, falsely trying to sell the idea of "more play," when in fact, the way you add more play to an event, is by adding levels NOT lowering the ante by 50%. That just makes for a less interesting game of NLH.
"They've totally lost it. If they want to add play, the way to do that is by adding in the 2500-5000, 25,000-50,000 levels back into the mix. The current structure sees 50% jumps throughout the tournament because of the omission of those levels.
"Don't let yourselves be fooled by this absurd gimmick of "more chips means more play" because it is a flat out LIE! Matt Savage actually wrote a column not too long ago that I was in complete agreement with in relation to the new phenomenon of "deep stacked tournaments." Don't be a sucker, and think about it. You get TOO much play early, but you only get that because levels are being omitted from the later stages of the event.
"I love Jack McLelland and think he is a great guy. Having said that, these new structure tweaks are just plain garbage and I'm genuinely shocked by the logic."
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Ace King, Gambling911.com
