PartyPoker released a beta version of HellKat Poker last week. What is HellKat? It’s a time based SnG. Instead of playing until one player has all the chips (or until you bust out) the tournament lasts a specific time period (say 15 minutes). At the end of 15 minutes any active hands are played out and then the top three chip leaders are paid out on the normal SnG scale.
So the idea is that if you have a few minutes to killl and want to get some poker in you can pick a SnG that ranges anywhere from 5 – 30 minutes and be assured that the game will actually be over.
To thwart time wasters at the end, their are two types of time based tournaments; fixed time and random time. The fixed time is obvious (15 min = 15 min) but the random time tournaments could end at any time within a certain window. For instance, in a 15 minute max time tournament the tournament could end at 13:30, 15:00, or any point between.
While it might sound like the perfect strategy is to collect a bunch of chips and then sit back and coast into the money I was involved in one HellKat in which I was in 2nd with less than a minute left. Fourth and fifth place both pushed all in and the winner bumped me from second into third and third into fourth so you still have to protect yourself unless you have more than 50% of the chips.
Interestingly you see some pretty strange plays that make you scratch your head and wonder if people actually understand the point of the game. Last hand in a fixed length match and a guy in fifth place folds!!! Any two cards are worth pushing with!!!! The game is over unless you double or triple up into the money.
It’s still in beta so all of the various time limits are yet to be released and it’s currently only offered in the $3 and $6 SnG’s but it’s worth checking out. Hell, go play in a few play money one’s just to try them out.
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Hi, my name is Bill Rini and this is my poker blog. I've been blogging about poker and the poker industry since around 2003-ish. Like most people I started out playing poker as entertainment in home games whenever we wanted to sit around and smoke cigars, drink beer, and eat pizza, and needed a good excuse. I started playing online shortly after the first online card rooms opened and it wasn't long before I was playing 20, 30, or even 40 hours a week or more. One day I received a phone call about a program manager position at Tiltware which was the company that consulted to Full Tilt Poker on software development and marketing. After Tiltware I spent about 2.5 years working at Party Poker where I was the poker room manager.
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Sounds interesting. I feel like this is becoming a new thing. Sort of like duplicate poker. Maybe it’s the online poker rooms trying to capture more of the market?