Ever go out of an online poker tournament just a few spots away from getting in the money? Or wanted more flexibility to exploit your opponents as everyone tightens up trying to squeeze in to the cash?
Enter the concept of “bubble insurance” – services that allow you to pay to insure against you going out of a tournament just before it gets in to the money.
Launched on Thursday, BubbleProtection.com competes alongside existing service Beat The Bubble to convince you to play it safe and take out insurance.
Billed as a “bankroll preservation” tool that claims to ultimately make poker players more profitable, BubbleProtection will – for an unspecified but “modest” fee – extend the 1-person bubble of any online MTT to 10% of the player pool. If you finish in these new bubble positions, your buy-in – including rake – will be returned to you. By widening the payouts, it will be easier to get into the “new” money which, the theory goes, reduces variance and frees a player up to exploit others who play tighter at the “real” bubble.
The site has launched with great fanfare, with significant PR coverage and the public endorsement of Chris Moorman, one of the biggest all-time winners in online poker MTTs.
Beat The Bubble, online since April this year, takes a more simplistic approach to bubble insurance. By paying a small fee, you can extend the bubble by 1, 2 or 3 extra spots. If you bubble in these positions, the service will pay you out up to 125% of the buyin.
As with all insurance policies, neither Beat the bubble nor BubbleProtection offer a direct +EV deal; but. the variance reduction may allow players to play higher buyin games with more confidence.
