October 4 marked the beginning of the Absolute Poker College Challenge or the APCC. And the resurfacing of the said tournament, along with its $30,000 worth of prizes, made waves in colleges and universities all over.
The Tournament
Students greeted the tournament with much enthusiasm, signing up readily with high hopes of winning the pot. The tournament’s mechanics are pretty simple. Each day, there are three qualifying tournaments that are held. The first one is a freeroll, the next is a $0.25 buy-in, and the last is a $5 buy-in. Anyone who finishes in the top 9 in these events will automatically be included in the freeroll for the next day. Then, if you manage to make the top 15 for that freeroll, then you’re automatically a candidate for the weekly main event. The weekly main event is a big thing, as it has a prize pool of $200. Also, the winners of the weekly main event are advanced to the Main Event, which will be held on November 30.
And here’s the kicker: the Main Event’s top 6 finishers will play at a live table that will be broadcast by BLUFF – it’s a college’s student’s much coveted claim to fame. Who knows, after winning the ACPP, he might just find himself at another final table, sitting with all the biggest pros in poker at next year’s WSOP. Furthermore, the winner will receive $10,000 for his tuition fees as well as a spiffy championship ring to show off to his college buddies.
For a Good Cause
Absolute Poker’s Matt Vengrin attests that this tournament is a “fun and easy way for college students to compete for an alternative way to pay for tuition”.
A testament of this is the winner of the first APCC, Derek Dilberian, a 24-year old law student from the University of Florida. He clawed his way through 4,000 other competitors and nabbed the prize, earning himself free tuition for a whole semester.
This year, Absolute Poker expects that there will be more participants as the popularity of the game ballooned over recent years thanks to all the publicity it has been getting.
With hope, the tournament will do what it’s meant to – that is, keep kids in college – and not the exact opposite. Let’s not forget that Tom “Durrrr” Dwan, one of today’s biggest stars in the poker world, found that playing poker for one day could earn him more money than he could make in ten years of working in the profession he was studying for and subsequently dropped out of college altogether. But let’s face it – Dwan is in a league of his own and we really shouldn’t look to him for guidance.
Thankfully, by choosing Matt Vengrin as the consultant and representative for this tournament, Absolute Poker surely made the right statement: that College Education is and will always be important.
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