I played a $50 buy in Spee10d Tourny at the Luxor, my first experience and wasn't what I expected.
When the tournament started, there was enough people for 3 tables, about 29 people. We all started with 250 chips...with the option to add $3 and get another 50 chips.
I've played home tournys, lots of them...we always set our own arbitrary amount of start chips...usually between 1500-2500....so needless to say, getting 250 chips made you feel a little short chipped, even though everyone was starting out the same.
At $50 buy-in, 30 people, 250 chips, and top 6 getting paid out with $1500 between them...it didn't seem worth it. It was my first live casino tourney I didn't know what I had signed up for.
With so few chips, the strategy would seem that you had to be fairly aggressive because your chip count was going to go down real fast. Since you already didn't have that many chips to begin with, you also almost needed to have a little luck (ie. have decent pocket cards dealt to you so that you had something to work out with)
My pockets were okay, not great...didn't get alot of face cards, just low suited connectors or non-playable cards like 9,2 offsuit, or Q,4 offsuit.
I managed to make it to the bubble, came in 7th place..I basically got blinded away and on my last hand, went all in on A,9 offsuite. someone had K,10 and called my all in bet...it was right for him to call, only asking him for $200 more. He caught his K on the turn and I was out.
In my next experience at a tournament...I don't think I'll never sign up for a speed tournament...I forgot to mention they raised the blinds every 10 minutes. The point of this tournament was to have a winner in about an hour.
If you want to be able to at least use some skill and have time to build your chip stack, a speed tournament is not where to be..
