*** OFFICIAL PokerStars MTTSNG Suggestion Thread ***

[gregt18]

+1 to higher rebuy 180

[Pokernubz]

15 min late reg, to the 180 turbos

[Lol 7%]

Originally Posted by Pokernubz

15 min late reg, to the 180 turbos

Was just about to post this. What number of players was it over in FTP Rush games that the game used to kick off? Was only like 45 or 80 or something.. Then late reg saw anything from just over 100 players to 400+ with an average over around 200 iirrc. That would be an idea but would 180 players want that huge adjustment?

An idea: Stop the $3r 180's, switch to rebuy 90m instead which has a late reg as long as FTP rush was, can't remember the exact time period, pretty sure it was longer than 15 mins though. The games would probably end up with 180+ players anyway but they're starting sooner so regs are getting an even bigger edge over late regging fish.
And also a higher buy-in but anything double figured would probably deter alot of players (I know I wouldn't like to rebuy that amount too many times) but $3's a bit weak. So I would suggest a $2 and $5-$6 version.
I actually think it's an awesome idea myself

[OzDave]

Could Sngs not start during the 5 min hourly break? Annoying when tourney starts while you are taking a piss.

[PS Walmsley]

There are various suggestions in the thread along the lines of "please add buy-in $X for (insert number of players here)-man". Before I address any of the individual suggestions I would like to tackle the issue of liquidity, which will affect all of them.

Liquidity is simply having a sufficient player pool for a tournament to run at all. For example, for 180-man Sit & Gos there needs to be a very large player pool to have a good chance of 180 players from that pool all online and willing to play at the same time. The more buy-ins we add for 180s, the more chance the player pool will split into different groups with no single group large enough for the tournament at their preferred buy-in to run.

As an extreme example, if we had turbo 180-man SNGs with buy-ins of $9, $10 and $11, different people might sign up for different buy-ins and you might not reach the critical mass for any of the tournaments to run. Even if they did run, they would run less often. I accept that there are some players who would simply sign up for all three but that isn't the case for the majority of players

Taking it to the other extreme, if we only offered a $1, $25 and $100, there are people who may not play because there isn't a buy-in that suits their budget. The ideal is to offer a range of buy-ins to suit different tastes while avoiding splitting players between too many different tournaments.

It isn't just buy-ins that affect liquidity though. Let's say we introduced a 135-man SNG. That may take players away from the 90-man and 180-man player pools and you would probably find that the total number of 90-man, 135-man and 180-man SNG that ran was less than when we just had 90s and 180s available.

In fact, the larger a Sit & Go is in terms of players, the more likely it is to be severely affected by a reduction in size of the player pool. As a good example of how large player pools are so vital for the larger MTTs, you would be hard pressed to find a site other than PokerStars that has a multi-table Sit & Go running (rather than simply available) with more than fifty players.

Finally, the available speeds can make a difference too. If you have a turbo and a hyper at the same or similar buy-in, that may split the player pool between the speeds. With smaller player pools for each, critical mass is achieved less often and the overall number of running SNG may drop.

In summary, that means when we look at adding a new Sit & Go we need to consider where the players of that Sit & Go might come from and how existing Sit & Gos would be affected. Sometimes, we will decide there should be minimal effect and sometimes we may conclude that adding the proposed Sit & Go would prove too disruptive.

Apologies for the long ramble but the above will underpin many of the decisions we make and it is easier to post this in one place than try to explain it in each reply.

[JD Klinkz]

What you say is very very true and running the risk of ruining the setup is something that should be a major consideration.

I feel that in terms of a slightly higher rebuy that the effects that it could have on the other games is the least in terms of adding new BI's to the roster. This is because there are some 180 players that prefer to play standard rebuys and there are some players that purely play the rebuys. The only negative effect that i can see is the players that play both, admittedly the higher percentage of players, possibly dropping 8s from there games to accommodate or at least not regging everyone. This has both positive and negative impacts on the 8s. Positives being that they will be softer which will be better for the recs that aren't getting hammered constantly at a higher BI than 2.50 and negatives of them having a slightly smaller player pool.

In addition, a higher BI rebuy could well pull in some more players from the MTT pool. If it were to be a 7r then the ave BI would be ~24, which would create a first prize of ~1300. This is significant enough for an MTTer to possibly start regging these games, as they can do with the 35s. This will draw extra players during the peak hours to the games and increase the pool much more over the weekends.

I'm sure that PS has the numbers for what percentage of players cross over and play different games other than their normal ones so it will be easy for you lot to predict what percentage of MTTers would play these higher rebuys and all the other calculations that we can only guess at. I think that it could be something that can at least be tested for a week or two and if a leaderboard is implemented for 180s+45s then that can boost the traffic pretty easily.

[PS Walmsley]

Originally Posted by 18m beast

I don't think 27 and 90m is ever going to work without hugely affecting 18, 45, 180s. I would suggest bringing in 27m and dumping the 45s altogether ( I think this is how it is on .it), the volume would be massive and they'd run better in quiet times.

Originally Posted by mckrogh

Nah dont drop 45man. They are quite popular.

Originally Posted by 18m beast

They'll be less popular with 27m though, $15 and up.

I've chopped the quoted posts down a little to remove the part about buy-ins. I'll tackle the 45 vs 27 question first and look at the idea of changing buy-ins in a different post.

It is true that 27-mans are very popular on PokerStars.IT. However, we need to look at why that is the case before taking it as a sign that 27-mans could be a lot more popular on .COM.

Pokerstars.IT has a smaller player pool than .COM, which means careful consideration has to be given to the liquidity issues I described in my long post. Therefore, PokerStars.IT has a multi-table SNG offering that suits that player pool. There are no 18-mans at all on .IT and the highest buy-in 45-man is €5, because the player pool isn't large enough to support higher buy-in 45s that would run regularly. Having a higher buy-in on the basis it might run occasionally isn't a good idea because it can be very frustrating for players to register in Sit & Gos that don't run.

In effect, that means that 27-mans are the main MTT-SNGs on .IT and the only choice above €5. Even at €5 and below the 27-mans run far more often because the smaller player pool means it is a lot harder to achieve the critical mass necessary to run a 45-man.

Now lets compare that to .COM. 27-mans have to compete with an equal range of buy-ins for both 18-mans and 45-mans. Not only that but the .COM player pool is much larger so 27-mans don't have the same advantage in terms of liquidity. Overall 45-mans run a lot more often than 27-mans, although I accept that is influenced by the fact that there are no turbo 27-mans.

The main point though is that in terms of avoiding a split in player pools, an 18-45-90 progression seems more appropriate than an 18-27-90 progression, especially as the 18-man and 27-man will directly compete for players.

[mckrogh]

Good post Walmsley. That makes a hole lot of sense to me. Agree that 45mans runs pretty well.

One question tho, u say 18-45-90 progression seems better? But do 90man really go off that quick, to me it seems like it takes forever to load up a 90man KO 7$regspeed?

But i guess the demand for regspeed is why u keep the 90man that way? U havnt thought of making more 90man turbos?

[PS Walmsley]

Originally Posted by Lol 7%

This is likely to be said to just about everything. imo these threads are pointless because you lot never listen anyway and when you do change something it's something that not one person has mentioned anything about! ie $300 18m...like wut??????

I just wanted to pick out this section of this post because I know players may wonder why we recently added a $300 NL Holdem 18-man and a $30 NLO8 18-man when those particular SNG will only appeal to a small number of players. BTW the $300 18-man was requested in the thread on max number of registrations in the STT Strategy forum.

When we have to make a decision on whether to add or change one or more SNG, the greater the potential impact of the change, the more involved the decision-making process. Conversely, if a SNG will only affect a tiny proportion of the player pool and won't have an impact on other SNG, it is usually an fast decision.

We prefer to make those fast, straightforward decisions on subjects that affect a small number of players and implement them, rather than delay that minor change because we haven't made a much more difficult decision on a major change that will affect a lot of players.

[j00hndayton]

Originally Posted by fightingcoward

def need a higher rebuy 180!!

+1

and mttsng leaderboard

and $20 regspeeds 180's

and $60 45's back, not sure why these were ever dropped they slowed down over the years but always still ran a bunch, with the insane popularity of the mid-high 18's I bet $60 45's would run more then previous few years.

[Vrilya]

+1 more regspeed 180's
lower end rebuy 180's ($1-2)

[huesos]

I think another 180 rebuy turbo is a great idea. During peak hours, the 3+ 180's run consistently and while I understand your point about game liquidity, I think a $8+ 180 turbo would be a great success. It would definitely run more often than a huge percentage of the sngs you offer currently.

Thanks for listening!

[Camzace]

There doesn't seem to be much of a downside when it comes to adding $35 180s to the MTT lobby, does there? The games are already waaaaaaaay too reggy as it is

[TeamTrousers]

Originally Posted by Camzace

There doesn't seem to be much of a downside when it comes to adding $35 180s to the MTT lobby, does there? The games are already waaaaaaaay too reggy as it is

They are already there.

AFAICT, all the MTTSNGs with >90 runners are already in the main MTT lobby except

1/180 hyper
10c/360 turbo

Any reason why these two aren't though?

[Camzace]

Only 8s/15s/4.40s are under Tourney/All, I assume you're talking about Tourney/Regular