I love me a good controversy. But better than a good controversy is a stupid controversy. And this past weekend, there was one heck of a stupid controversy surrounding a poker tournament that took place at Running Aces Harness Park in Columbus, Minnesota.
The tournament was organized by Check Shove Poker, a training site that just launched its own poker tour, aptly named the Check Shove Poker Tour (CSPT). There is nothing particularly notable about it; the inaugural event was not known to most people outside the general vicinity of the casino. But over the weekend, a poster wrote the following on Two Plus Two:
Check Shove Poker is having their inaugural tournament series in Minnesota at Running Aces Harness Park. Their Main Event is a $750 100k GTD over three starting days. The first two day ones drew about 60 players total. As of a few hours ago today, the overlay was nearly $40k. That’s when I noticed Hunter Cichy, owner of the brand, trying to buy up action in his own tournament to try to cover the overlay. Clearly unethical and shady. The tweet has since been deleted (for obvious reasons).
Sure enough, the screen shot of the tweet clearly showed Cichy offering to “buy half of anyone’s action in the $750 CSPT Main Event” that day, Saturday, April 4th.
The reason Cichy put the offer out there is that he and the CSPT had guaranteed a $100,000 prize pool for the event and prior to the Day 1C start, they were far from having enough entrants to meet that guarantee. The CSPT was about to have a healthy overlay to cover. We don’t know how much of a fee came out of the $750 buy-in, but if there was no fee, 134 registrations would be necessary to avoid any overlay. Since there was likely a fee, that number was probably even higher.
So why the controversy? On a basic level, many feel it is unfair that players who registered within the last few hours before the beginning of the final starting flight received a discount. The bigger problem, though, is how they got the discount. By staking last-minute players, Cichy was able to reduce the overlay essentially risk free. At first blush, it looks like he is risking $375 per player, since he is paying half their buy-in, but he really is not. If that player would not have registered without Cichy’s deal, Cichy and the CSPT would have been covering that player’s buy-in via the overlay, anyway. This way, Cichy still has to pony up some money, but now a player is covering the other half. And on top of that, the Cichy now has a stake in the player, so should that person cash, Cichy would get half his winnings.
One could argue that the offer was a smart move, a wise business decision. And sure, it probably was, but it just doesn’t feel right to a lot of people. Additionally, some players who registered before the offer was made may have only signed up because of the overlay. Having it “artificially” reduced or eliminated would not have made them happy.
As it turned out, there was still an overlay and the CSPT covered it. It is unknown if anybody took Cichy up on his offer.
