MatchPoker_typo+imagelogo+subline_4cIn Paphos, Cyprus on Saturday 13th and Sunday 14th April 2013, 14 national teams battled at Match Poker for the inaugural IFP European Nations Cup.

The four 3-hour+ sessions of play contained 51, 65, 71, and 72 hands respectively (259 hands in total).

As in all Match Poker events, the same order of cards was used at all 14 tables, dealt electronically to players’ smartphones and the tables’ community devices. The “seat draw” dictated that teammates played on different tables with one specific player from each team sat in each of the different seat positions, and that all teams were split evenly across the tournament tables. Over the course of a hand, therefore, each team received each set of hole cards in the same positions. A team’s collective skill in playing these hands and consistently outperforming the other teams determined their finishing position. In no way did the quality of the cards a player or team received influence their chance of winning the tournament.

Team chip-scores were compared each hand with a linear 14-1 points structure applied. After 259 hands scored this way, the top 6 teams qualified through to the IFP Nations Cup Finals at the end of November 2013.

The final scoreboard was as follows:

Scores_FINAL

Additional individual prizes (Player of each Seat) were also awarded. In essence there were 6 mini-contests going on between the sets of 14 players in each seat position (based on total tournament chip-count). And finally, the “Player of the Tournament” award was given to Ireland’s Michael Graydon – the Seat Winner whose total chips minus the average for their seat position was greatest.

Here are the complete individual standings:

Seat 1Seat 2Seat 3
1France
(Hicham Chelot)
Ireland
(Michael Graydon)
United Kingdom
(Barny Boatman)
2SpainSpainDenmark
3UKPolandIreland
4IrelandRussiaRussia
5NetherlandsSerbiaEstonia
6HungaryNetherlandsSpain
7LithuaniaCyprusLithuania
8SerbiaDenmarkBosnia
9CyprusBosniaPoland
10RussiaFranceFrance
11BosniaUKCyprus
12EstoniaEstoniaHungary
13PolandHungarySerbia
14DenmarkLithuaniaNetherlands
Seat 4Seat 5Seat 6
1Netherlands
(Jorryt van Hoof)
United Kingdom
(Barauskaite/Mahrenholz)
Cyprus
(Xaris Zittis)
2RussiaPolandSpain
3HungarySpainLithuania
4FranceIrelandBosnia
5EstoniaNetherlandsPoland
6UKRussiaDenmark
7BosniaHungaryEstonia
8LithuaniaSerbiaFrance
9SerbiaBosniaHungary
10PolandFranceUK
11IrelandDenmarkIreland
12SpainEstoniaSerbia
13CyprusLithuaniaRussia
14DenmarkCyprusNetherlands

 

IFP’s new ‘Match Poker’ technology allowed for the first time ever to collect data from four 3-hour+ sessions of play containing 51, 65, 71, and 72 hands respectively (259 hands in total).

Here are some interesting and amazing findings we’d like to share.

Go the UK

The UK’s most common points score was a maximum 14 (achieved 25 times).  They were the only team to perform above average in all 4 sessions and the only team to win two ‘Player of the Seat’ Awards (Seat 3 – Barny Boatman, Seat 5 – shared by Daiva Barauskaite and Karl Mahrenholz).

The charge of the Russians

The Russian team admitted that they hadn’t done their homework and arrived with no clue as to how the scoring was being calculated.  After session one, however, the penny dropped, and this proved to be their only below-average session.  They subsequently went from last place and over 90 points behind the leaders, to 2nd overall and just 13.5 points from being crowned the first ever European Champions.

The last 10 hands

Denmark made a valiant last stand scoring a whopping 110 points in the last ten hands alone (9 of those a 10+ score).  On the flipside, France who had enjoyed the lead for most of the weekend, and who were still 4th going into the last ten hands, suffered their worst spell at the worst possible time – netting just 43 points from the last 10 hands (a 23-point swing and 31-point swing against the eventual 5th and 6th placed finishers Estonia and Cyprus, respectively).

Mixed results for the maniacs

Denmark and Spain were the only teams to win over 300 pots from just 259 hands (329 and 324 respectively).  Bosnia managed only 169.

How’s the cricket in Holland?

Champions Ireland earned 0.63 points per hand more than last place Netherlands (an average strike rate of 7.79 vs 7.13)

Win big, lose big

Lithuania achieved the largest average pot won (1984 chips), the lowest being Serbia (1304 chips), but also featured highly in the average pot lost category too (-398 chips), the best being Bosnia (-190 chips) and worst being Denmark (-535 chips).

Name and shame

The best and worst performing teams per session were as follows:

BestWorst
Q1FranceRussia
Q2BosniaNetherlands
Q3RussiaHungary
Q4CyprusBosnia

 

RZ_EU-NationsCup-LogoThe International Federation of Poker (IFP) is set to hold its first event of 2013.

To be hosted in the beautiful surroundings of ‘The Annabelle Hotel’ in Paphos, Cyprus, on 12th-15th April 2013, the European Nations Cup will be the very first official IFP tournament to be conducted without physical playing cards and dealers. The event will showcase a whole host of brand new IFP Match Poker technology. Not only will players receive their hole cards on individual smartphones, but also every single action on all 14 tables will be logged and openly available for replay and analysis via the “IFP Player”.

The 14 participating Nations are as follows: Cyprus (host), Bosnia Herzegovina, Denmark, Estonia, France, Hungary, Ireland, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Spain and the UK. The top 6 will qualify through to the IFP Nations Cup Final later in the year.Match Poker is the mind sports version of poker promoted by IFP. By borrowing the basic concepts of Duplicate Bridge, it offers a way of organising individual and team poker tournaments completely free from the “luck of the draw”. Match Poker tournaments are unique in allowing a fair assessment of the skill of the players without any influence of the random deal of cards.

ENC Banner

The qualification stages for the 2013 European Nations Cup are now less than two weeks away. Montessino, in Vienna, will soon gear up to stage the Match Poker contest that will send ten teams to the finals in London, in March of next year.

As those who have seen it played with gusto with agree, Match Poker is an innovative format of the game, pioneered by IFP, which provides a better examination of the skill involved in poker, diminishing any element of chance.

For the spectator it also provides an enthralling insight into the game that is hard to replicate (duplicate?) outside Match Poker conditions – the opportunity to put various players in an identical situation and determine who played best.

It presents boundless opportunities to examine each scenario, at length. All that’s needed (as we found) is the play-by-play transcript and someone as obsessive as you who will listen. We’re happy to report that the nerd-like joy is practically endless.

It also throws up some pretty fascinating circumstances and, when unleashed on a standard issue poker professional, generates debate almost immediately. Even in the trials prior to the 2011 finals, some players were already talking of how to maximize strategy and, when it came to the finals in London, more than one team employed tactics aimed specifically at gaining an advantage over other teams.

Were they successful? It’s hard to be sure what methods were adopted and by whom. But the German team, who came first, and the Brazilian team, who finished second, both claimed to have used premeditated strategies that led to success. How much the game has evolved since then will become obvious when play starts in Austria.

For more details of the Vienna event check out the IFP website.