Mixed Fortunes ?

Tomorrow I plan to play in what might well be the last live tournament of the year for me.

It's the EPT London festival at the moment. The EPT (European Poker Tour) has been a roaring success since it was conceived just a few years ago.

I'm not playing the actual EPT main event itself (which, this year, turned out to be the biggest ever tournament staged in the UK). The event was way too expensive at £5,250. I did have a half-hearted attempt at qualification, but without troubling the scorers.

Like all these large events, there is a whole raft of side events - eg: a £1,000 NLH today - but in fact the event I picked out weeks ago is the European 8-Game Championships (£500).

"8 game" is a bit like HORSE in that it is a mixed game - several different poker disciplines played in rotation. The 8 games are (I think !)... the HORSE games (Limit Hold'em, Limit Omaha Hi/Lo 8-or-better, Limit Razz, Limit Seven Card Stud and Limit Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo 8-or-better) PLUS No Limit Hold'em, Pot Limit Omaha and Deuce-to-Seven Triple Draw (played as a limit game, I believe).

It's mad really !

There was a £2k version of the same tournament last week - Joe Hachem (2005 WSOP Main Event winner) won it. I imagine it was a field solely comprised of high-stakes pros to be honest.

I am not quite sure who will play the £500. On the one hand there are people like me who like the mixed games but are not wiling to shell out £2k. On the other hand, some of the big names probably cannot be bothered to play for the £500 stakes. And we are drawing to the end of the massive season of festivals in London, so quite a few pros that are not still in the EPT will have started to head home.

There were 60 runners for the £2k event. I suppose on balance I would expect a similar number for the £500, but who knows !

I've continued to play a few HORSE tournies on pokerstars - I cashed in one last night (24th, the lowest paying place in fact: made a bad call in Razz) - so I feel I just about know those games.

Obviously I know NLH and PLO although I cannot quite get my head around how they gel with the limit rounds. This leaves "triple draw". I have never played this, so I am reading up on it in Super-System 2. Daniel Negreanu wrote the chapter, so hopefully it is intelligible.

Overall strategy wise, I am thinking I may go for super-tight. Despite the presence of NLH and PLO in the rotation, the event is primarily a limit event and I know it is right to play very tight in limit tournaments.

Presumably the structure is OK (it's a 2day event), so I reckon I need to really go out of my way to play extremely tight (but aggressively when I have a hand).

I think the 2nd best choice might be very loose (and hope to get lucky), but I'm going to try very hard to bite the bullet and become the H-rock. Tight players can get lucky as well, after all !