Festivals.
When I first started playing poker, I was excited by 'festivals' - those week-long programmes of daily tournaments culminating in a 'main event'. The first one I ever saw was the Victoria casino's 'Octoberfest' in autumn 1995. The main event was won by David Gardner, father of Julian. It cost #500 to enter and first prize was about #20,000.

The next one I attended was the Master Classics of Poker in Amsterdam. I loved it and didn't want to go home afterwards. In recent years, the number of festivals has increased enormously and they are taking place in locations as far away as the Ukraine, Estonia, Slovenia, Australia and Aruba (a Caribbean island). They can still be fun, but increasingly I think that they are becoming a distraction, not just for me but for the casinos that host them.

At the Master Classics for instance, the casino now adds about ?80,000 to the prize pool and spends a fortune on broadcasting equipment so that viewers can see the finals from TV monitors. What does the casino get back? It gets more punters in the house for an otherwise quiet week in November. It gets some very rich players who might lose a lot on the pit games. But does it get much else? I think not. The high-stakes players don't come back at any other time of year, as the games aren't as big as they are in Vegas or London. The mid-stakes players like myself don't come back because the rake in the cash games is ludicrous. So instead we all just come along for the annual jaunt and leave afterwards without returning to play in any of the next 51 weeks of the year. How exactly is this a showcase for their poker games? The Master Classics seems to serve no purpose other than to be bigger and better than the previous year.

There is another concern I have, which is that the increasing number of 'main events' with buy-ins in the #1,000 region sucks money out of play. When someone wins #5,000, they are likely to play with it in bigger cash games or comps, but when they win #50,000, they are likely to use it to change their lives. They might buy a car or do some building work on their house. This is all very sensible but it's a lot of money lost from the poker economy. It is made worse by the growing number of satellites, which further increases the amount of money that is sucked out of the pockets of the many into the hands of the few. This idea has already been covered by Andy Ward in his diary, so I won't labour it (see www.pokersoft.co.uk).

I am also noticing a lot of festivals that are not festivals in the sense that I used to understand them. I don't consider a series of comps starting at 9pm with no afternoon cash action beforehand to be a festival. How can you justify the expense of going somewhere and paying for hotels when there is nothing to do before 9pm? Not now when you can play 24 hours per day online. My ideal festival is one where I can play cash in the afternoons (or mornings in the US and Austria), then either play the comp in the evening or just go out eating and drinking instead.

The migration of the top professionals to Vegas every spring brings to mind another point - that the calibre of opposition can sometimes be higher in the festival week than during a normal week. My friend Dominic says the best time of year to be in the Vic is when all the great players are in Nevada for the World Series. You can play the recreational players all by yourself! Because of this I coined a phrase 'Festivals are great value, provided that you don't go to them'. I have missed many this year. I quite enjoyed the summer one at the Vic, as there were #250 hold'em games several times during the week. The autumn one had no such games, so I didn't go in as much.

The week before last, Brighton had a festival. I had told everyone beforehand that it would be a big week for me, as I intended to stay in a hotel there and play most nights. When it came to the crunch, I only went twice. On the first night, the organisation of the cash action was so bad that I considered not coming back. The game I got into was far worse than the usual line-up there. I was looking at several other professionals who had all been eliminated early from the competition.

I've decided that I am only going to this year's Master Classics in Amsterdam for three nights. I will take a shot or two at getting into the biggest event (?3,000 No Limit Hold'em) through the one-table satellites and if it doesn't work out then I will treat it as a purely social trip and go out with friends from Europe and America. I can't see the point of playing the pot limit omaha cash games, even though the standard is poor, as I can't face seeing the house take ?20 out of every pot. Once you have gotten used to the lower rake and faster pace of online play, you feel that you have moved on and don't need to be conned like that any more.

The ultimate manifestation of this was when I was at home playing on Pokerstars and found myself playing David Colclough. Nothing strange about this, except that I knew for a fact that David was in Dundee for its festival. I asked him how he was playing online while up there for the festival. He explained that he had taken his laptop to the hotel and was able to pay a fixed fee for internet use. I asked him why he wasn't playing the cash games in the casino, which was 100 metres from his hotel and he replied 'I can't bear getting only 12 hands per hour any more'. I can't think of anything that illustrates the futility of most festivals than that.

I still want to travel around to play. My mind needs variety, but I hope that the clubs start to realise that they need to get better at generating cash action during the festival weeks. Most do a bad job of it. Amsterdam is terrible. You need to hire a private detective to find the person who is managing the cash game lists. Empty seats go untaken for ages or are taken by people not on the list who merely happen to be passing by. It's a total joke.

So there you have it. I'm sceptical of their value. But if you want a change of tune and to read a love letter about the tournament circuit, check out www.pokerpages.com, www.pokerineurope.com, www.thehendonmob.com or just about every other poker site in existence.