Let's make side events fun again

Barry Carter is going to The Festival this month - a rare event that has affordable side events in niche formats, something low stakes players have missed for a long time.

 

My next poker trip of 2023 is going to be The Festival at Dusk Till Dawn in Nottingham, which starts on February 12. It's a £450 Main Event with a £200,000 guarantee - exactly the sort of thing you expect at DTD.

Take a look at the schedule yourself, what do you notice?

Plenty of No Limit tourneys of course, but I also see a heads-up tournament, 8-Game, PLO, Round of Each, Open Face Chinese, PLO 4/5/6 and Short Deck. All for £200 or less.

Low-stakes players never get to play these formats live. It is usually too expensive for an operator to put them on for low stakes and with, perhaps, an expectation that the numbers will be low. You also struggle to see many of these formats online, meaning any low-stakes player who wants to play them has Vegas as their only option.

Side events need more novelty

Realistically if every festival put on side events like this, they would get low numbers. This is why most side events are No Limit, it is giving the market what they want. But there needs to exist events like this for players who fancy playing these formats occasionally.

There is also a blackjack and a roulette tournament on the schedule. This is certainly not for everybody, but as a once-a-year bit of fun, I think they will be lots of fun for those wanting to blow off some steam.

What all these events offer is novelty. It actually would be nice for a lot of players to sit down in a blackjack or 8-game tournament and not know exactly what they are doing. The good players get to adjust better to the format than the bad players, the bad players won't get crushed like they do in No Limit. Nobody will take it too seriously, which is refreshing from the cutthroat world of poker tournaments.

They also put on social side events for their customers like bowling and pool. Again, a very simple way to make the event more memorable. Back in the day in Vegas the Ladbrokes Lounge had a pool table and it was one of the surprise hits of the WSOP.

I don't think every schedule should be like this, but it would be nice to see a few more risks being taken and a few events nobody has played much of being in the schedules.

Let's make satellites great again

Something else the Festival does which really appeals to me and recreational players in general is their satellites. Many of their satellites award not one, but two, Main Event tickets. 

I can say from experience that there is not much worse than qualifying for a tournament, traveling to it, busting the Main Event then being stuck somewhere for a few more days and not being bankrolled to play the other events.

In hindsight, it is also short-sighted by poker operators not to offer this sooner. Two bullets, or one bullet plus a side event buy-in, keeps the customers at the venue for longer. Rather than a mass exodus once all the Day 1s are complete.

Low and mid-stakes players have lots of choice these days, lots of affordable events with big guarantees. There isn't that much to make the event fun beyond the poker though, it's all about putting as many butts on seats as possible.

The Festival seems like the ultimate 'once a year' poker trip for players on a budget. The sort of event where you would want to spend the entire weekend there, rather than just your time in the Main Event. Ultimately I think most players want No Limit main events with lots of starting days, then No Limit side events. But there is no doubt a market for the variety offered in this series too.

Qualify for The Festival

Most of the satellites have ended, but there is still time to qualify for The Festival and you can win a package or just your seat.

• Unibet host €25 rebuy & add-on satellites on Tuesdays at 20;00 CET. This is to win a £450 seat only.
• partypoker also host seat-only satellites on Thursdays at 20:00 CET, which are £33 to enter.
• You can also win a €1,500 package on partypoker on Sundays at 20:00 CET for £109.

If you like the look of this event but can't make it, stay tuned for the next Festival event in Malta in May.

What would you like to see change to side event schedules? Let us know in the comments: