Do your run poker tournaments at home? Do you also play in these tournaments? If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to both questions, you know how much work it can be to keep track of time, blinds, and everything else while still trying to concentrate on playing poker. The Poker Ace Portable Tournament Director (PTD) will make your life much easier and make your poker tournaments more enjoyable.

The first thing you’ll see when turning on the PTD are two options:

• Start New Tournament
• Set Preferences

I chose preferences right away and was presented with:

• Backlight
• Brightness
• Contrast

Not a whole lot to configure as far as the preferences go. It took me a few button presses to figure out which buttons actually changed an option and which one moved to the next option. The button use here was actually very confusing and the opposite of what you’d expect it to be.

After selecting to start a new tournament you’re presented to choose from one of 10 structures. Eight of the structures are preset (but still editable) and two of them are for storing user configured tournament structures.

Once a tournament structure is selected, you’ll be prompted to choose:

• # of players
• Buy in
• Addons
• Rebuys
• Rebuys/Addons end of level

The next screen to come up is the payout structure, which is editable just as the tournament structure details are. Finally after everything is set you’ll be prompted to start the tournament. As soon as you press a button, the timer will begin and PTD goes to work. The screen displays the level, time remaining for the level, current blinds, next blinds, ante, and how much time is left during the rebuy period. During the last 10 seconds a beep will come from the device every second as a warning.

What didn’t I like?

I didn’t think the device is very user friendly. I mentioned the button use during the Preferences screen earlier in the review, but there were several times when I didn’t know which button to press. For example, when ending a tournament, the screen displays “Are you sure you want to end tournament?” but it doesn’t give any options such as Yes or No. Also, when I first was choosing a tournament structure I couldn’t figure out how to edit anything, so I had to consult the manual and found the Edit option was all the way at the bottom of a long list on the screen. This should be at the top. Using a device such as this should be as intuitive as possible and the manual should be a last resort, not required reading. A little more time spent on User Interface design and the manual wouldn’t even be needed.

The buttons don’t always bring up the next screen or change an option right away.

The beep used during the last 10 seconds of a level is not nearly loud enough. I tested the PTD by myself in quiet room and I could barely hear the beeping. If you’re playing a tournament with any kind of noise at all, you’ll need to have the PTD strapped to your ear to hear it.

Overall

The Poker Ace PTD – Portable Tournament Director is a great little device to use for your poker tournaments. The biggest challenges using the device are during setup, which can be done well before a tournament. The PTD runs for $49.99 at the Poker Ace PTD web site. I think it’s very good value for the time and hassle it will save you during a tournament.

As mentioned before, I was in Las Vegas on Friday night and early Saturday morning on a layover coming back from San Francisco. One of my college friends picked us up at the airport and gave us a ride over to Caesars Palace. We checked our bags and headed for the poker room.

The Caesars Palace poker room is definitely one of the nicest rooms I’ve played in. Dave and I were seated at a 3-6 limit table in the back corner of the room behind a divider wall. This kind of sucked because cocktail service tended to forget we were there. It also seemed to be a prime spot for the air conditioner to blow on us all night. I’ve never been so cold in a casino in my life and I was wearing a hooded sweatshirt the whole time.

There’s really not a whole lot to say about my play at the table. I didn’t get many playable hands. On the hands I could play I usually missed the flop. If I’d hit top pair, either all scare cards would come on the turn and river or someone would suck out on me with their 3-4 out draw. After awhile I started to play hands I know I shouldn’t have played. We played from about midnight until 5:30 in the morning when our table was the last 3-6 limit game and we lost our 5th player. I ended up losing $96 on the night.

We walked around the casino a bit and had breakfast in a cafe by the reservation desks. Took a taxi and got back to the airport about 3 hours early for our flight. I’m not sure why we didn’t try and get on an earlier flight by standby, but that’s a whole other story.