Are you all serious? push a fish to AT LEAST 100 games a week? i think 20 is already pushing it, try singletabling for 2 hours and see how many games you get in... then multiply by 3 and you have an already very dedicated fish...

the BoP thresholds should be LOWERED to be attractive to fish, but it does not matter because any number always favours the mass grinders because they have more opportunity to get lucky...

leaderboards are not enticing recreational players, if anything they get them excited at first and then frustrated when they see what incredible feats they would have to achieve to even place...

Either this or some kind of VIP level leaderboard type thing. Players that are bronze will be playing very few games. This will separate all player types pretty simply by how much they are playing. Leaderboard for bronze, silver, gold and platinum. Obv the bronze will have little money involved in it but like $50 for 1st is better than nothing i guess

this is amazingly simple and creative! love it, although i would think PS won't like it as it might make ppl stop playing so they do NOT move up...

maybe it should not be VIP level but average/total VPP over the last 12 months... therefore current volume will not influence it that much...

Thing is that the only people i would see that are concerned about losing LB equity would be regs and thus they would be hitting decent volume anyways. The bulk of a regs profit will come from the tables so i think that if they were to stop playing to just win/place on a LB wouldn't be +EV for them. In contrast, i could definitely see a rec that normally plays 30 games a week thinking 'hang on, if i play a little bit more then i could cash on this'. It not only encourages people to play more but also people to hit higher VIP levels ie. rake more.

In addition, it separates players by ABI too as someone who plays $8s will struggle to stay a bronze star as they are likely to play over 240 games a month (unless they are a total rec). The big grinders will be encouraged to really grind much harder as they would have maybe like $2k up for grabs for top spot.

I just think that it seems a really simple way to split up regs and recs, ABI's and skill levels without having to implement a complex leaderboard.

great idea, could just separate it by what vip level they were at the end of the previous month

+1 to that. But I'm not sure if it should be monthly or weekly. Monthly bronze level could be destroyed by a decent player coming back after a month away and shipping it with no problem. Maybe a system that will prevent this from happening perhaps :s or a weekly LB

imo should thrash this out and get it in place for a months trial in March

weekly would help that, also there will be thousands of bronzestars with a low number of tourneys qualifying. would need a lot of luck needed to win that leaderboard.

Yeh I didnt realised that the leaderboards were a weekly thing. Just divide whatever I said by 4 and give or take some games, ill stand by that.

There is POSTFLOP play??

On a more serious note: Of course those, who farm the SNGs want turbo to bring in more volume / h. Im just not sure if these the people who should be served most. IMO the games should serve those who love to play poker first, instead of those who want to generate money playing poker. (Not saying, that later dont want make money ofc, but the question is balancing toward volume ('farming') or actual play.

-> less turbo would slower the farming, and put the actual game into the focus.
IMO this is what should happen. Still unsure if the majority of players are farmers or pokerlovers though.

I'm sure the big-wigs at Stars completely agree with this and after your post will remove all turbos/hypers because all they care about is the pokerz and they already have plenty of money in this despicable culture of greed. Also, you're right, there's no skill in turbos and mass-tabling isn't a very difficult thing to get right either hence all players - serious or recreational - being break-even. Great post.

OFFICIAL PokerStars MTTSNG Suggestion Thread

Sometimes its better to keep quiet and have people think you're an idiot than express your views and confirm it.

... the grinders follow the fish, the fish play hyperturbos... if lots of recs would play regspeeds nobody would cry for hypers...

(the other side of the coin, of course, is that the lower ROI of the netwithdrawer the better it is for stars...)

A 45-man $3.50 turbo NLO8 is now available in the lobby. We'll see how this goes for a while and then look at the possibility of additional buy-ins.

Thanks again, really appreciate the quick replies + actions taken.

I like this idea but maybe it should be based on your highest VIP level achieved during the previous AND current month. So if you start the month as bronze and by the end have a gold status than you are considered for that leaderboard only.

Having said that, im not sure how the boards would look for the silver and gold status' as im not sure what volume of players are in those categories. Supposing this runs, I wouldnt mind taking a hit on the prizes for the leaderboards so the lower categories have bigger prizes (proportionally?). By having the big prizes for the bronze (and possibly silver leaderboards) it would encourage more competition between the fish for a decent reward and the grinders make the money from having more fish at the tables. Further, it would encourage the fish to try and make silver because there would be less competition for the prizes at that level.

This might be a horrible idea but just throwing it out there.

There have been several requests for additional 180-man buy-ins.

I'll start with the idea of a higher buy-in regular speed. We currently have a $4.50 regular speed. In the past we had a couple of higher regular buy-ins so I looked at data from January and February 2011 to see how they performed. At the time, the $4.40 was comparable to the current $4.50 in terms of popularity. The next higher buy-in was $11, which ran far less often. In fact the $4.40 ran about 25x more often than the $11.

While we could deploy Sit & Gos that hardly ever run, as a principle we try to avoid that. This is because it can be frustrating for players, especially recreational players, to register for Sit & Gos that don't run, even after several hours of waiting.

The next option is a turbo to fit in the gap between the $2.50 and the $8.00 turbos. The issue in this case is that the hypothetical new turbo would clash with the $4.50 regular. While it is true that not many 180-man turbo players also play regular, a good proportion of the 180-man regular players do play turbos. A 180-man turbo in the region of $4.50 could draw sufficient traffic away from the $4.50 regular to significantly affect the liquidity of that tournament. Therefore, for the moment we won't be adding anything in this area.

Option three is a turbo 180 with a buy-in higher than the current $35. This might run during peak times but very infrequently at other times, which means it runs into the same issue of potentially frustrating players. On the other hand, the higher we move in terms of buy-in, the smaller the likely proportion of recreational players. Therefore we are trying a compromise option. This Sunday, a $60 turbo 180-man Sit & Go will be available all day. We’ll see how it performs and decide how to proceed on that basis.

Finally, several players have suggested a higher buy-in rebuy. I have looked at several scenarios for trying to make this work without causing problems elsewhere but so far I haven’t found one. Firstly, because of the nature of rebuys they have to be judged as a tournament with a higher buy-in than their face value and their potential liquidity estimated on that basis. If we assume that a new rebuy might fit somewhere between the $8 turbo and the $15 turbo, it probably should be judged on the same basis as the existing $35 in terms of likely liquidity. This view is reinforced by looking at the popularity of the $3.50 and how it compares to the popularity of existing turbo buy-ins. So the first question is, how likely is it that a rebuy in the $10-12 range might have sufficient liquidity to run?

The second question is where would the players come from? The likely answer is the $15 and $35 turbos and possibly the $8 turbo and perhaps some scheduled MTT players. The $35 in particular would be vulnerable to any reduction in the player pool and the $15 could be significantly affected as well. Looking at a lower rebuy, perhaps around $6, runs into similar problems with the $3.50 certainly being affected and the $8 and $15 turbos suffering liquidity issues. I’ve reluctantly concluded that there just isn’t a place to put such a tournament without looking at our entire 180 offering from scratch. I really don’t want to contemplate that when the 180s in general run very well. In a sense, the success of the 180s means that any argument to change them has to be very compelling indeed.

All sounds good, I personally think your over estimating the amount of pull one game has on another but I could be way wrong. There are many players who would never even consider playing a 4.50 reg speed but alot who would snap play a $20 imo

Very nice and thoughtfull post. Nice to have some insight in ur thoughtprocess Steve!

Well done!

great! please dont forget to add a $60/45 at the same time. thanks!

I'm personally disappointed that you've decided against adding an $11 or $22 non-turbo as I'm sure the frustration factor for recreational players is reduced a lot by the fact that many of them only sign up when the thing looks likely to fill soon, but your overall reasoning seems sound and it's good to know you're taking the "if it isn't broke, don't fix it" line as a general policy.

How does this all "sound good"?
No higher rebuys, no rearranging the 180s, no word about the progress of introducing a leaderboard ( so complete opposite of good)

Thanks though Steve for your thought process. I understand the concerns but we cant make good proposals without the numbers obviously.
also i wouldnt only be looking for filling the gap between the 2,5s and 8 but maybe rearrange the complete buyin range.

Also +1 to you overvalueing the amount of pull one game has on another.
Still disagree with a higher rebuy of 7-9$ ruins the 35s and wont have as much traffic...

Also like the idea of a 60$ 180 (even tho out of my buyin range (: )

^^



vv?
jw if this was kicked around on your end as another approach

the 11 "on demands" strike me as providing micro mtt grinders with a meat and potatoes core game to flesh out their sessions and fill voids between high value but huge field size [therefore very high variance] mtts and providing 4 180 grinders a natural bridge between $4 reg speed sngs and lowstakes XX,XXX player field mtts


the 8 cubed turbos would just be a really sexy addition for any turbo mtt/sng player and any rec player who likes lots of chips to splash around with early but doesnt want to play a 7 hour mtt and would offer deeper play much like the 3 rebuys do providing those players with a next step up to move towards

Will the $60/180s be put in the main lobby? I think they will get a decent amount of new MTT traffic if so, if not then only sng regs and people reading this will know.

so now we've had the 180 man buyin review, please can we have a 45 man one?

reg speed 45's

$1, $5, $10

turbo 45's

$1.5, $3.5, $7, $15, $30, $60 for sundays

if u look you will notice that the player pool from the reg speed 45's is very different to the turbo 45's. not many players overlap blind speeds, but many overlap buyins

also for this big buyin sunday 180 how about have tickets for it incorporated on the new vip leaderboard!!