(Note: Current "almost live" status on hands can be found at http://hands.wrgpt.org)
From: Jeff Woods (jeff@telix.com)
Subject: WRGPT: End of Round & Redraws
Newsgroups: rec.gambling.poker
Date: 2000/11/20 In article <48gS5.2835$A26.128839@sjc-read.news.verio.net>,
zorak@best.com says...
> >The last hand at my table (a65) ended over an hour ago, but a new hand
> >has not been dealt. Anyone know why? Dax.
>
> We're waiting to redraw seats. If you look at the bottom of the last
> hand summary you got, you should see a message along the lines of:
>
> Table finished, waiting to redraw seats, xx/97 table(s) still playing
Correct. For those who are playing their first-time event (and others
who missed last year's changes regarding this), here's how the event
works:
The dealer can automatically combine tables in "live redraws", just
like
a real life tournament. You will sometimes see a table "waiting for
live redraw", meaning that the table is being broken, and the players who
were at it re-seated at empty seats at other tables. For WRGPT, that
means "holding up" the tables with empty seats, until every player
is re-
seated.
Now, unlike a "live" tournament, where they just keep breaking tables
until a winner is declared, WRGPT stops every so often, and re-seats
EVERYONE. In past years (prior to WRGPT 9), this was the ONLY way
tables were "broken". All tables stopped, and then everyone (every
single person in the event) was re-seated at a full table. The
threshhold for this has always been when any one table has five empty
seats, then everything stops and everyone re-seats. In past years,
this means that (especially about four months into the event, when they
start dropping like flies), sometimes you spent more time waiting to be
reseated than you did playing hands -- NOBODY got reseated until that
LAST table finished its hand, and sometimes you were reseating every two
weeks!
Starting in 1999, Ken Anderson re-coded the table breakdown to permit the
"live redraw", to prolong rounds. Now when there are 30 empty seats
(I
think that's the number), it breaks up three tables and fills those empty
seats. This tends to make the rounds longer, since you can't get down
to a table with five empty seats if you're constantly filling empty
seats.
However, there's a drawback. Let's say you're stuck at a table with very
very very slow players, or one staggered with UK, USA, and Australian
players, so that play proceeds slowly at your table. In past years, you
wouldn't be stuck there forever, as the round would invariably end soon,
and you'd be at a new table.
Now, however, with live redraws, you COULD be stuck at table-from-hell
for the life of the event -- we could have had live re-draws to the
final table, with round "a" being the only round. To get around that,
we decided on a hybrid. Live Redraws will PROLONG a round, but not
indefinitely. A live redraw only happens in the first 30 days of a
round. After that, players are permitted to be eliminated, without
tables being combined. Once a table reaches 5 players, every table once
again stops, and everyone winds up at a new table.
At your NEW table, it will be round "b", instead of round "a",
you'll see
nine new faces at your table, and we start over again, with live redraws
for the first 30 days of round B. Eventually, round B will end, too, and
we'll recombine and re-seat everyone in round C, etc...
In 1998, we got up to round N or O, I think, without live redraws.
In 1999, live redraws were only used toward the end, and I don't recall
how many rounds it "saved".
This year, we expect the tournament to take almost as long (June or so),
but we shouldn't need to re-seat past round G or H at the most, and we
might even wind it up in round F. That's an awful lot of time saved
"waiting for redraws".