pls turn 35s into 27s. Woud help the traffic a lot and i guess if step tickets are allowed to register they woud also a bit fisihier then the current 35s are

How exactly do you survey more people? Via 2+2? or do you send emails out?

Antes right from the off would be amazing.

Stars always say Steps are mainly to provide a path to live events; aside from SCOOP, and the Sunday majors, Stars seem to want them to stay that way. A few posts up, PokerStars Steve seems to be indicating that they would prefer not to make a theoretical 27/180 a valid exit point for a Step 2 ticket.

But even if they did allow it, I think that everyone may be overestimating how much extra 180man traffic would be generated.

Take the example of a casual player who just makes Silver every month; he will take over 2 months to earn enough FPP to buy a single $27 Step 2 ticket. For the same 1,750 FPP he can both a hat and a t-shirt, branded with Stars' name and logo, then wear them to create an opening to tell all his friends about how great PokerStars is and how they should all play there. Frankly, I know which I'd prefer, and it's far easier to just buy in with cash.

As it happens, this week we're slap-bang in the middle of SCOOP, that one big opportunity Stars does allow each year to buy in online across the Steps range. Even now, and in the evening in Europe at peak time, only four $27 Step 2s are running. Looking more closely at the start times of those four, it averages out at quite a bit less than 1 player sitting per minute. Quite a few of those seats filled by are good MTTers I recognise; I don't know who the STT regs are, but certainly there are a couple of names I don't recognise who are in all of them, so it's probably a bit optimistic to assume that none of those unknowns are more grinders, meaning it looks even worse for Steps attracting the interest of casual players.

So, rather than get excited about ideas of a rush of fish donking off their FPPs via Steps in 180s, I think the question is simply whether the $8 reduction in buyin will attract enough extra players to offset the $1,300+ reduction in the prizepool per game; 1st place alone would drop by more than $400.

Think about it in terms of bums on seats: if you drop the buyin to $27, you need 30% more games to go off in the same timeframe, just to keep the exact same amount of money in circulation. To put it another way, that's an extra 54 seats. Just to stand still.

Whether a good player or a bad player, surely most people who would play a 27 are going to play a 35; in terms of what the money means to the player risking it, that $8 jump is nowhere near as big a difference as between, say, the existing $2.50 and $8 levels.

But just as introducing a $5 turbo in that gap isn't the answer, so higher 180 traffic probably won't take a quantum leap with a little re-shuffling of the buyins either. It's likely that something more significant is going to be needed; a really good and sustained promotion to both attract and keep attention on MTTSNGs.

Thanks for listening Baard. I wasn't aware of the distinction between earned and bought step tickets, and obviously as Matt pointed out I'd prefer if people could punt off their fpps as they saw fit. Regardless of that, I'd prefer it over the status quo and really think it would be a positive change for the players and the site. Call me naive, but I can really see 27 180s taking off. Also, any thoughts about the dropping the 60s for 82s? Again, thanks for listening and keeping up in this forum.

I'm also for introducting antes in earlier levels. Can't really see a downside to this one.

I'm currently becoming educated of this stance as per Steve's post above. I just became aware of the distinction between earned and store bought tickets. I guess my idea bears a lot more weight if stars is willing to change this, and offer more low stakes exit points in the steps system.

If not, I still believe that the volume would increase quite a bit. While I may be overestimating the growth in some regards (steps & tickets). I think you are underestimating the growth that will come from lower abi regs. I disagree that anyone playing 27s will surely play 35s. $8 is quite a lot, especially if its at the high end of players buy-ins. Furthermore, the 27s can be theoretically entered for much less, whereas you have to have $35 in your account to play one. I guess what I'm trying to say is that this exit point (among others, say an 82 180) could provide an option that will increase the volume of steps in general. Although, again if they are philosophically using steps as a path to live events, tournament series I guess it doesn't really matter. I don't have any hard data to back this up and of course may be way off but would love to see a trial run at the very least.

How many 35s go off in a day? Week? I am interested to know, to see if we could attain 30% more games in the same timeframes...

Lastly, I totally agree with you that mttsng's need some sort of driver. A good promotion, or leaderboard or something would go a long way in improving liquidity.

Don't antes = faster structure = lower roi though? On FTP the 45s used to be so crushable because there were no antes and you had more time for skill edge to shine

No, not at all, obviously some will be tempted to make the move up if it did drop to $27.

But I thought the idea of this was to try and get more casual players in above the 15s, not more regs. If someone is beating 3r/8/15s but is too cautious to mix in 35s, but might do 27s, is that really the sort of person you want amongst that extra 30% of seats you're needing to fill, at the expense of some fresh haddock and cod?



That would depend on how it was structured.

I'd be shocked if the number of $27s running per week didn't quickly double the current number of $35s. Of course a good amount of the additional volume will come from decent regs moving up, but not only will the current batch of low Steps grinders start playing them but there will be a gradual increase in the number of Step 2 tickets bought/earned specifically to play these games.

Replacing the $60s with $82s and welcoming Step 3 tickets would probably also work btw.

from a selfish point of view (off peak player) i'm for the change, as well as changing the buyin for 27mans and 45mans also.

Reason being $35/180s and $30/45s never run off peak, where as a $27/180 and a $27/45's would start running earlier / later in the day, running for more hours, giving me a chance to play them.

Let's just be careful what we wish for. Even though adding antes earlier would make the game simpler if it leads to a reduction in ROI this can only be bad thing surely? The idea that Stars regs have always had that antes are good for regs as we can steal more profitably has long been wrong from what I can see. I have no numbers to back this up I'm just speaking from experience but everyone's jumping in and making assumptions here and if they're wrong this could seriously damage our ROI.

Someone much smarter than me needs to do some number crunching or comparison of games with no antes, very early antes and the current 180 antes from 125/250 to see if this change would be beneficial. If we're wrong this could lead to more damage than any change Stars have made since I started grinding 180s 2 years ago.

From a really quick Sharkscope search for example in 2010 the top 9 winners in 45 mans in 2010 were on FTP where there were no antes. This could be down to many things including the buyins that ran (they regularly popped up to $75) or the quality of the players but it could be a worrying indication

http://www.sharkscope.com/#Leaderboa...e/Any%20Stakes

With (just like the STT thread) >90% of people supporting earlier antes, the only real debate is when to introduce them. I'm with chilin on this one, just get them going from the start, give the recs more play from hand 1 instead of what recs see just now which is nit-nit-nit-shove-shove-shove...

I also think making the $35 a $27 would be a good idea. Would be totally awesome if you either made all $30 SNGs into $27s and let people use step tickets to play them or made them all $30 and changed the step ticket to also be $30...

+1 plus

Has anyone actually run any numbers or have any mathematical evidence that introducing earlier antes is beneficial? I feel like I'm a lone voice here but I haven't seen anything that suggests they would benefit us.

Michty you say it would "give the recs more play" but with a faster structure and a lower M we would have less play not more. I'm really worried this will lead to a very significant reduction of ROI.

I'm with you, I think things are fine as they are.

Definitely worth thinking about. Certainly some percentage of a winning player's ROI comes from realizing the equity of other players knocking each other out in spots that are too marginal without antes. With antes from the beginning that would be eliminated.

So the question is would it be a net benefit given that we would hopefully extract more value in the spots we play because there are antes?!

At t100 I can't see how it can hurt much. Or do you think it would still increase variance/ potentially damage ROI?

I think the regspeed variants would benefit from earlier antes, but I'm not so sure about the turbos. Turbo grinders should be very careful before screaming for any changes to a blind structure that's worked so well for so long.

180 man questions:


-180 man leaderboard possible in the future(+monthly prizes to the most effective players)? Waiting for it for 3-4 years....

-What about the biggest timebank? +5s/10s would be great

You've got it completely backwards. A faster structure and a lower M requires more play. Antes create more action by creating larger pots, particularly 9 handed.

They would work well for both recs and regs because:
(1) Regs who play super nitty early rounds would lose more +EV spots. This discourages being a complete nit, meaning that recs can avoid sitting at tables where regs are often playing <10% of hands - creating more fun situations for recs in the early game (where they spend most of their time as, being rec players, they are less likely to see the mid-late game).
(2) Antes require more comprehension of stack sizes, stack depth and general stack math. This absolutely suits the better regs who can adjust to this. I would actually expect an ROI increase from the introduction of antes coming from (i) average regs who are too nitty early and (ii) average regs who do not adjust properly to antes.

If you're thinking of the long-term sustainability of the game we want to encourage action (so recs get to play hands, which they like) but, as you correctly point out, not too much to the detriment of our ROI. Antes are a very effective way of doing this as they create larger pots but only by taking a fraction of chips from every stack at the table, rather than through large BB increases which are way more detrimental to ROI. Most good regs understand this which is why the vast majority are in support.

After playing a bunch of them I am afraid they will end the same as the PLC.
This game like no other attracts very serious poker players that really dislike bingo.
They much rather play slow blinds, 8-handed and possibly even deepstacked.

Non holdem 45 or 48 mans are hard to fill anyway.
May be regular 24 mans (3x8) would be the ideal structure for NLC8 mtsng's.

For both bingo players and serious players a turbo rebuy would probably be great.

I didn't discover the wheel, so I hope you will figure all this out and NLC8 will become very popular.

When I said you get more "play" i didn't mean you had to play more hands without antes as that's obviously wrong. I meant that because we're deeper we play more post flop giving us a bigger edge.

If you think recs will enjoy this, the faster we get to shove/fold poker the more annoyed they'll be. Recs generally love seeing flops and hate "bingo" shove/fold poker as they call it. I think this might (emphasis on might) be a huge mistake. I'm not saying I'm right and you're wrong I'm saying I'm not sure and I haven't seen any definitive proof that you're right. This is a huge change and should be considered carefully which I dont think is happening atm

Huge yes to lowering the $35 180s to $27 - I think this would be beneficial to all players and Pokerstars

There is no reason why these games should not be massively popular, particularly with tournament tickets being allowed and the psychological factor of being (less than $30) at $27 makes it very attractive and affordable to recreational players compared to the current $35s.

With regards the antes - I also support as the first few levels are dead time for regs and recs, yes you still stack people occasionally but antes are not going to change that, only enhance it, and the average game time should reduce making up for potential roi loss through increased or same hourly expectations.

Yes to a 180 leaderboards/promotions - it seems wrong that we get nothing and miss out on all promotions when we contribute decent amounts of rake daily, and arguably act as a middleman between sng's and mtt's attracting/encouraging people to explore both formats.

I don't know about the ante thing other than to say it needs careful thought and perhaps testing before anything is implemented. I will say this. There's a lot of self-motivated magical thinking about lowering the buyin of the $35 to $27. Yes, dropping the buy in will increase the volume.

Will it do so disproportionately? The laws of economics say probably not. This is a classic demand curve. As price drops, more people are willing to buy into a tournament. That's self-evident. Is there any particular variable that would lead us to expect far more people to play than the demand curve would predict? I don't see anything. Do you?

I think PS needs to ask the question. What's the logic behind setting prices at the levels they are now? Answer that question and you re in better position to say whether reducing the price to $27 is advisable or not.

Steps tickets.