Calling chipfire

Its a hard call to make. We have had a few people complaining that its too expensive, others complaining that it goes on too long, and others not long enough.

I won it ( fortunately ) last week and got $100 plus the $120 ticket, so $220 for 3 hours work isnt a bad return, but I can appreciate people who play higher stakes finding the payouts rather meaningless.

My original thought process behind the Sunday Community Game was quite simple, I wanted to get our community players a chance to play BF Live Events. People kept saying they were well run and a lot of fun, but the buy ins were maybe not within everyones price range.   

As it stands currently every Sunday night the winner of the Community Game gets a BF Live sat ticket worth $120. Last week we had 22 runners, this week 26, so statistically speaking your chances of winning one are pretty reasonable.

The $120 satelitte itself runs at exactly the same time as the Community Game, and they share a synchronised break. Last night it had 24 runners, the same as last week, and there are 2 packages to Prague worth $1400 guaranteed. Last night those 2 packages were won by Rhino and Eachie. From memory at least four of us played both tournies last night.

If we are putting a Community player into the BF Live sat every week, and they have a one in twelve chance of cashing, then in theory at least, at every BF Live event across Europe there should be a BF Community player present, on a package won via the $11 Community Game. Thats the theory anyway. In theory you should also be able when you are playing the Community Game to keep an eye on the Sat running alongside it to see how "our" player is doing, and obviously should they qualify to chart their progress in the live event itself via Thrappers blog. Eventually we may even get someone winning a BF Live European event who has come through the Community game.

Having said all that, we also want the Sunday game to be light-hearted and generate some Community spirit. Certainly myself, rubyalfie, and Drinkie, got a bit carried away with the banter last week, to the point where I forgot about the cards from time to time. It is nice on a Sunday evening to have a laugh with your virtual poker mates.

Obviously if we got more numbers the prizes would increase and we may get more from Betfair. As it stands 120 added to a 260 pool is decent value. And of course if we raised the cost of entry this would do likewise. My only proviso has been that both the Community Game and Satelitte finish at a reasonable hour so as not to exclude those who have work on Monday. I think our game finished at about 11 last night and the sat finished at 12.

I'm open to any suggestions and would be interested to hear what others think, though of course the final decision will always rest with BF.