SNG leaderboard is back on Party and Borgata. Its only a modest 6K for the month compared to 20K on WSOP but the games are a lot less competitive and more enjoyable for the casual player. I am gonna help get the games started and hope that Party will increase the prize pool at some point if their take increases.

They are also said to be reducing the number of available games which should speed up how quickly the games load. This is a great idea, the quantity of games has really deteriorated since they have offered Stardard/DONs/Hypers. After all, what fish wants to play a hyper that lasts 12 minutes when it usually takes at least twice that long for it to load.



https://poker.theborgata.com/promoti...-february.html

Leaderboard looks good! Couple suggestions:

1. Keep at least 2/3 of the Standard/DONS/Hypers... these games will be attractive for people that want something different and play on WSOP.com

2. This leaderboard has a good shot to compete with WSOP.com... different payouts and different SNGS. I highly recommend keeping a different SNG variant that WSOP.com does not offer.

3. If this is successful I recommend slowly/steadily adding more money to the promotion. Many people are tired of playing the WSOP.com SNGs with their slow leader board updates, reduced prizes(due to POY), and $200 regs playing $5 sngs.

The good...

DONs are gone! This is great because who wants to play a game where cheating is sufficient to allow a poor player to profit.

Standards are gone! This is good since they never went and a cleaner lobby filters the recreational players to the games that actually go.

Hypers are gone (except micros)! I would love to play hypers but there was never enough liquidity for these to load in <20 minutes, why would a recreational player want to sit in a lobby for 20 minutes in a game that was designed to last 10 minutes.

The bad...

PLO gone except for $50 Hyper and Turbo. This is probably a mistake, they should have left a micro PLO if they wanted. The $50 level has never gone and with the 50BB structure, these are unlikely to be popular anytime soon.

No higher stakes have been added. We need the $100s back immediately. With the promo these will actually go again. I was playing ~8/night this time last year.

The uglies...

No doubt gonna be a vocal minority who think they should offer every variety under the sun but that has been a part of what killed off Party SNGs in the last 9 months. Nice clean lobby and a modest promo and there are more SNGs running now than I've seen at this point on a weekday.

How did you know they were about to reduce the number of available games? If you have some direct contact with management, I guess that is OK. And clearly you believe in this change. But it does strike me as odd as there was no public announcement I could find.

For the record, I strongly disagree with the strategy and timing of reducing the available variants. You may think you know how lower stakes players or "fish" think but you do not. And there are many good players that for various reasons want to play other types of games.

This is just another promo that will make things "look better" in terms of their metrics but actually will only further cannibalize the player pool. The main players who will be able to benefit from this will be those who have much higher bankrolls and no regular job, ie regs.

That is never going to organically increase the player pool. Once the promotion ends, the SnG traffic will go down to less than what it was before they eliminated half the games.

<----VOCAL MINORITY

Bishop you are not upset because you are not a reg Heads up Turbo Sit N Go Player like me who along with some other regs keeps the $2-$50 range busy all day.

I am viewing the $2-$20 games and there isn't more tables filled in the past 6 hours on. It's the same as always. This is unacceptable.

I guess they are okay with losing the regs who keep the fishes coming, and us moving over the 888, WSOP sites. All the major sites have HU Turbo SNG. It's really insane to move away from the small games like this.

1) Those who want a cleaner lobby only had to select which games they wanted to see with the many filters that are available.

2) Not surprising that in the process of eliminating a good portion of the games they also eliminate a version you thought should stay. Getting the perfect mix is difficult if not impossible the way that decisions are being made.

3) The "vocal minority" are actually here to speak for the silent majority. The recreational players many regs mercilessly bumhunt are never going to post their disagreement here. Somebody has to speak for them. And believe me, they were not generally thinking "wow, there are too many games to pick from!"

4) Just because there are more games running during a promo does not mean anything. Once again, I am sad to say I do not think this is organic growth. Once this promo is over, the artificial steroids that PP has jacked into this market will be gone. The games will sadly diminish to less than were running before this promo, and before they eliminated most of the games.

It was in the email from Party Poker regarding the leaderboard but not in the Borgata email or on the promo pages:

I have no contact with anyone in management or any affiliation with Party. Despite being the highest volume SNG player on their site, they have never reached out and any attempts I have made, I have never gotten past theirentry level mopes.

+1111111

I already loaded onto WSOP, and there $5, and $10 HEAD'S UP TURBO SIT N GOS ARE BUSY!! I guess they can enjoy the rake I pay. I was loyal to PP up until this. Goodbye until you people get som sense.

Thank you for posting that. I must have missed it.

Listen, clearly I disagree with you on some things. Still, if you are really the highest volume SnG player, it actually troubles me that you don't have any contact in management. Even if the results are things that I personally disagree with, management should definitely have your ear and you should have theirs.

I wasn't speaking about HU SNGs, I have no opinion on changes to them as I didn't even know there were changes.

This misunderstanding happens because all the changes are kind of lumped in together.

Just to be clear, what you are saying is that you believe that before there were too many single table SnG variants? In other words, you want more focus on the 6 max SnGs so that more of those will run? And you believe that previous experiments with 9max, DONs, etc. were mistakes? Is that an accurate reflection of your thoughts?

There were too many variants of 6-max games. I don't believe there is enough liquidity for >6max SNGs to thrive without a significant, constant promotion which would probably be unsustainable.

With regards to 6 max SnGs, your point makes a lot of sense. While I do generally believe that more variety is better, I concede that you could very well be right about the liquidity. I definitely did notice that they take a long time to fill up. Although ironically, the few times I did play them I noticed the DONs filled the fastest. That's probably due in part to the implicit collusion rings you kind of hinted at but did not specifically call-out.

With regards to the HU SnGs, I think the changes make zero sense. I can't imagine any reasons that are good for Party or the player player pool.

This is bull**** dons are gone.. Taking my money off party this week done!

Regardless of what you may think of the changes, they sure paid off on day one at least. At least 20 more $50 SNGs went tonight than on a typical night, that's an additional $500+ in rake just at that level and it's only costing them ~$215/day for the leaderboard.

Is that the reasoning?!!! I am really concerned about their security team then. They cant even detect collusion??!!! Poor excuse to get rid of a popular sng. Good payouts... but should have kept hypers and dons.