PokerStars: The only sensible choice for HORSE

I continue my slow learning curve for HORSE, playing basically one $11 single-table sit-and-go tournament a day. (I reported on my early success here, and plan to file another such report when I get up to around 100 of these events under my virtual belt.)

The vast majority of these have been on PokerStars. But in the last couple of days I looked around at other sites to see what they had to offer that might be similar.

The answer is: not much. As far as I can tell, there are no HORSE STTs available on UltimateBlecch or Absolute Puker (which would be the sites of choice if you like having opponents look at your hole cards while you play), Doyle's Room, Poker Host (and, by the way, the software for those two sites looks suspiciously similar; I suspect they are skins for the same underlying site, though I haven't looked into that to confirm it), Carbon Poker, the Cake network, or Bodog.

So basically your only choices are PokerStars and Full Tilt Poker, on which I have played two of these suckers. Which is the better offering? No question, hands down, it's Stars. I can't post the entire tourney structure here (or, to be more accurate, I could, but I can't do it with an easy cut and paste, and I don't feel like bothering to type out the whole thing), but you can get a sense of the difference from the screenshots posted above (FTP on top, Stars underneath).

Both sites start you with 1500 in chips, and the progress in blinds, level for level, is fairly similar. The crucial difference is the length of the levels: 10 minutes each for Stars versus just 6 minutes for FTP. That means that at the end of an hour of play, on Full Tilt you will be starting Level 11, 300/600 Hold'em, in which one big bet is costing you 40% of what your starting stack had been. After the same amount of time on Stars, you will be starting Level 7, 150/300 Omaha Hi/Lo, in which one big bet is costing you 20% of what your starting stack had been.

The Stars structure is vastly better, and skill is given a far more decent chance to outrun luck. You get a lot more play for your money, and if you're one of the better players, you have more of a shot at coming out on top. I mean, if I wanted a turbo event, I'd sign up for one. But I don't. I want more playing time, more time to be patient and wait for a strong hand, more time to recover from a bad beat before the blinds and antes gobble up my chips.

After looking closely at the difference, I won't play another one of these games on Full Tilt, and, frankly, I can't see why anybody would.

Actually, there is one other potentially interesting and worthwhile choice, from an unexpected source: Bugsy's Club. They start you with 2500 in chips, with the following structure:

Notice that the levels are 12 minutes long, meaning that after one hour of play, you will be starting Level 6, 500/1000 Hold'em, in which one big bet costs 40% of what your starting stack had been. It's not clearly better or worse than Full Tilt; you just go through the games half as fast, and whether you think that's good or bad is basically a subjective determination. In terms of total game play, though, Stars still comes out ahead.

As you might guess, the huge disadvantage to Bugsy is the lack of opponents. I still haven't played a tourney there, because I can sign up and wait hours without getting even a second person registered. It's a lonely place.

I'm thinking that it might be getting to be about time for the long-promised second private readers' tournament. And I'm thinking that it might be HORSE, and might be on Stars. We'll see.