yes ... Seems like the more success many pro's have the more they lose any self awareness and begin to believe that the poker world revolves around them and owes them continued and increasing win rates.

I have alot of respect for the work that Pros put into achieve success, but they are here and exist because of this GAME, be thankful. help support and promote it, vs promoting clearly self serving topics.


also agree here. 1.1 or 1.2x min cash leaves me a little uninspired as a rec.

I read these threads, and some posters opinion on what pros are/do is so wildly out of place from pretty much everything I have experienced myself.

I expected these changes to come online before live.

The more players that cash the better for poker rooms, because then players will re-invest their min cash back into another tournament, creating more rake for the poker room.

The notion of "more winners" is Bollox. Nobody wants to win 1.2 x their buy in for outlasting 80% of the field.

Min cashes should be done away with and prizes should be much less top heavy

Hey Roger Mainfeild A.K.A big raaajjj

I know you're implying this because of what I wrote above.

I also saw how you just snap deleted the 1st post you made and replaced it with this comment. Solid ninja edit or delete and replace there Moddie. What makes you think everyone who posts here is just some unaware, or not 'PRO' minded participant, because some prefer to use forums to have fun, voice opinion etc. and are not trying to drum up legions of fanboys which often skews peoples perception of how good they really may or may not be in the first place.

Dont fool yourself and assume because you are a MOD on this site and likely are close with some of these 2+2 Favorited ones that it makes their opinions or yours are any more valuable than the vast majority of the rest. Who also play and enjoy poker and want to see it sustainable and viable for as many years as possible. And Ill answer the question you tried to level at PTLOU above, before you removed it and replaced it with what you have above (Mod powers lmao).

In a zero sum game everyone's seeking an edge, better or more than the other so why wouldn't you think everything wrote above is exactly correct. And so just because some players do not agree with the 'cool kids' around these parts (often with completely self serving ideals) of how things should be that doesn't make their opinion any less substantiative then you're 2+2 legion of online poker twerps

please enlighten the rest of us to what you think is being misstated then big raaaaaj

This is great news for tony cousineau , his wish has come true . Look for him to play a heavy ept schedule

Anyone can edit a post within 30 minutes, I have no powers in NVG. I don't understand how protesting changing from the status quo, a structure that has been around forever, is some incredibly self serving idea. There should be a range of payout structures, so everyone can play in a tourney with a structure they like. But adding another tourney to an EPT festival is quite different from changing the structure of the main event, and changing it in a fashion that hurts the most skilled players, and rewards people who haven't worked as hard, while also indirectly rewards Stars, isn't something I find appealing.

Blaming pros for the decline in online's popularity is just absurd to me too, it's sites that have the ridiculous 3rd party software rules. It's sites that allow you to sit wherever you want, and with rake so high, ensuring that predatory seating is the only way to win. It's sites that are allowing 10's or 100's of millions to get taken out of the economy by bots every year. It's sites that have software 10+ years old with terrible servers. It's incredible to me that nothing has been done about seating or software since the inception of online, and yet somehow professional are to blame.

QUOTE=JohnNashJr;50612730] What makes you think everyone who posts here is just some unaware, or not 'PRO' minded participant, because some prefer to use forums to have fun, voice opinion etc. and are not trying to drum up legions of fanboys which often skews peoples perception of how good they really may or may not be in the first place.[/QUOTE]

Legions of fanboys? That's the exact opposite of my experience in NVG the past couple years. The anti-skilled contingent, with motivations I don't understand at all, are extremely prolific posters, and have succeed in making it so unpleasant to post anything that remotely supports poker as a game of skill that you can work hard and win at, that most people who think that way have stopped bothering to post here.

FYP

FYP


love ya Dougers but Im gonna have to agree to disagree

Edit: if it were up to me , I would have min cash be your buyin back + some gas money... pay more of field and flatter payout structures FTW Imho

appreciate the candid response here big raaaaaj this may be lengthy so bear with me please

I honestly disagree with much of it mainly the where you implied some peopel dont deserve a min cash in theory and that is taking away form the more deserving ones who should be more greatly rewarded finishing higher in the Event..

Who are you or anyone to say this person, or that demographic who cash in the lower % of a Live MTT are just by default people who havent worked as hard as the ones you think should be finishing higher in an event. That is flawed logic not true and a lot of what people have issue with in the 1st place. When you say it rewards ones who dont deserve it and so they in theory must be taking away from ones who do (in you're opinion ofc) I am blown away by this and got a good lol at of it this AM so thank you for that much. This is just opinion stated as fact by you and harps back exactly to my issue. Whos job or right is it to just say oh that guy or lady I dont know, shouldn't be Min cashing because they are not deserving or havent put in the hard work the people I know have. That is what you are saying there.

The OPs issue is most likely EPTs are far away and with no Pokerstars satellites easily accessible for low risk/high reward entry anymore it makes the EV of traveling (COSTLY) alll the way to Europe to play some Live MTT that is not as Top Heavy worth it anymore.

If the events are less lucrative for the Live MTT chasing crowd they arent dumb and wont be able to sell it to backers so easily which I think is the main root of the OPs issue here and others who dont like this. Flatter structures with less opportunity for online satellite into means Stakers arent necessarily going to love the Maths involved for them. And paying all them expenses, travel, hotel etc for these so called Pros who mostly play staked to reduce their own variance in the first place. I dont think the vast majority honestly even care, the ones who do are the very ones this is designed precisely to negatively affect.

And lets not pull wool over anyone's eyes. Its well known these little syndicates of Live poker groupies/friends swap percentages, soft play one another in MTTs at certain points anyway so the hate it even more because again when you swapped a fair amount of action in a flatter payout structure that rewards more people for their participation. the ones who practice these arguably nefarious tactics are the ones even more mitigated especially if they traveled from far away to play like the U.S.

whats the likelihood of a thread being started that discusses, in depth, exactly this toxicity ya think?

or even the fact that this exact pieceof****ness is seemingly practiced everyday 24/7 by pieces of **** that frequent almost every room on this planet <<<<<edit : oh wait, theres threads on this one, nm

hey big raaaaj can you please expand upon this please



truly a remarkable statement and honestly am curious to hear the logic behind this

Strange that you cite Colossus seeing as it wasn't as much a success 2nd time around when they added the cashing on day 1 and gave average joe less poker than before with a stupidly fast structure.

Clearly many professional poker players suffer from entitlement. These tournaments are not designed to ensure pros can make a substantial living from them. They are used as a marketing tool to bring new players on to the site. The more people that leave a winner, the more likely they are to come back and play again. The more likely they are to keep at least some of that money on the site and play online with it.

Not all, but too many pros are solely focused on how they are getting screwed, but the reality is, no one owes them a living. If you think you have a suitable edge to play, great. If you don't see an edge, then choose not to play.

The people who put on these events that pros can take advantage of need to think about their bottom line and that's not always aligned with what is best for top pros who believe a flatter payout structure is costing them money.

If the organizers feel such a move will help with their desired goals, then throwing a tantrum and acting like a baby is just an example of unwarranted entitlement.

this

this thread will quickly evolve into same arguments/posts as in all the threads when Amaya made all the online rake, game choice decisions.

Most Regs didn't like changes

Most Recs liked changes


Its really hard for a poker product (live or online) to serve both camps at the same time. Operators will decide which market better serves them and act accordingly.

All the above has been independently verified, so cannot be disputed

I think in live mtts is nothing wrong to pay out bigger % of the field (playing live vs playing online expenses ainec/ for live you have travel,accomadations etc) as long as all those money dont come totaly out of top 3 spots, and min cash is more then 1,5 buy in.... I mean for ex you can take some money from top and some from middle and expand % of people that get payed and i assume most players will be happy

Also the big difrence betwen live and online mtt is that when you bust one mtt you have simular mtt to reg in few hours, or cople simular difrent buyins in next hour, when you bust main ept you need ~3 months for simular mtt ( + obv traveling and acomodation cost, like for ex wcoop main was 5000+200 and ept main is 5000+ 300 + travel + acomodation which is min 500-700 )
Also obv more players/ people cash more games will be played cos more people will have money...
so yea i suport bigger % of field geting payed but as i said if money come some % from top 3 and biger % from middle payous

Yeah, remember seeing this in the MTT thread, about how Stars has been trying this out online. So it's a trend that's affecting a lot more than just the top tier players at EPTs.


Would tend to think that if these changes really seemed like they were going improve the player pool, then people would be on board with them. So perhaps resistance to the changes is a sign of skepticism about their efficacy?

Just thinking back to what used to motivate me to play the occasional tourney, the three things that probably mattered the most were:

1. accessibilty
2. affordability
3. the chance to run hot like the sun and win a big prize!

Wonder if maybe doing things to increase the accessibility of affordable satties might have a bigger impact on the popularity of tourneys, then trying out the different payout structure?

Am personally playing the Storm *a lot* less this year, now that those $3.65 hyper-turbos are only available a couple of hours before the start of the tourney.

Guess for the EPTs, did it help to have those EPT Spins? Or maybe would other stuff like having the EPT in Germany instead of Malta make a difference in attracting more local participation?


Don't know too much about the EPTs lol But guess it sounds like there's that same issue across the board of trying to think of ways to make poker seem more interesting to more people ...

i dont' know

I disagree with a lot of the hate for the pros going on in this thread. The ecosystem needs pros for at least a couple reasons.

First off pros provide a consistent rake for the house, and as much as it seems the general consensus is that the money they put up doesn't matter, it still does. In many tournament fields (particularily smaller and higher stakes ones) without pros the size of the fields would be 1/3rd what they would be otherwise. Many recreational players like the oppurtunity to win a large amount of money, and this means playing in fields with many entrants

Second, the existence of pros lets many recreational players feel they too can become pros and thus play more tournaments. There are a fairly large pool of players that I would call "Semi-Pro" if you will, because they play poker a decent amount and probably make small margins from playing. These players are also important to the ecosystem. As far the strictly recreational players go, a lot of them are not stupid people. If they realized that the game could not be beat, many of them would leave the game.

I am not sure where this attitude in the thread of "Don't like the changes huh? Well **** you little pro" came from. It seems we are a far cry from the NVG of old that glamorized the idea of becoming a professional. Would FTP have become as big as it did if people didnt see their favorite heros battlinng it out? Would poker be as big today if Durrrr/Isildur did not run up bankrolls from nothing?

The point of the matter is that as much as the sites/tournaments do not owe the pros anything (We can all agree on that), it does not mean that they shouldn't care of the dream of playing poker professionally. That dream is what inspires many people to throw their hat into the ring, and as that dream continues to die so will the ability to drive new customers moving forward.

All fair points. One in particular I would like to address. In my opinion, you are grossly overestimating the impact that Durrr/Isildur had on the decision for the vast majority of customers on the site. I agree wholeheartedly that they helped entice aspiring pros to put in more volume, but that group represented a very small percentage of their overall customer base.

Lastly, the idea that changing the payout structure to pay 20% of the field crushes the dream of the professional poker players doesn't seem fair. In fact, with tournaments being inherently high variance this change will help stabilize the bankrolls of the grinding pro. They are going to cash WAY more often! Not for as much granted, but don't be surprised to see the best players cashing close to 40% of the time. Seems absurd, I get that, but it's not much of a stretch at all. Breaking even or showing a small profit well over 1/3 of the events you play with the added bonus of having a chance at some big scores when you do.

The dream is not dead my friend. Certainly it isn't going to be destroyed as a result of this change.

"All changes that are good for the "ecosystem" are also good for the operator" -Said at a Live event in 2012

This is just another version of the game which is called keep the money in the air longer (more rake) before it gets cashed out by a "winning player".

It is true that recs' money will last longer... but it will last longer with the player having less fun since the possibility of getting your buy in back isn't very appealing.

Stars has made this move because their game plan from now on is to reduce the offerings/guarantees of online sats to future EPT's (where withdrawing players grind) and replace them with an increase in Spin'n Go's (where losing players play). This player type is who they are making this change for... as this type of player pays way more rake and obviously isn't very good at poker if he's playing Spin n Go's at 8% rake. Perhaps getting his buy in back seems appealing as he won the 7k package via lottery.


If pro players who grind sats for EPT's had any backbone they could easily screw up the offerings but if there's a chance at a quick dollar to be made at the expense of even themselves in the long run some will surely take it.

don't like that ruining the game with this **** like when pokerstars decided to pay 27 in 180mans

well said WCGRIDER! gl on br challenge run it up

Hello Doug

No hate (well honestly I do kinda hate your hello kitty avatar but thats another story), and I don't think anyone said pro's aren't needed or aren't loved.

As a rec, its alot of fun to sit and play with named pros, (except Mike Leah, hes a nozzle )

But, asserting that this change is the death of the dream or will change much pro behavior is a stretch. I predict that around zero pros change any meaningful behavior

20% payout is a pretty minor change... probably slightly worse for pro's, probably slightly better for recs.

Smart tourny players will just adjust.

Best Wishes

Lou

Paying more people by redistributing the wealth to those who don't deserve it. All you Hildabeast and Bernie supporters should love this idea!

This is not accurate. EPT is expanding payouts from 15% of field to 20%. Currently those finishing 15%-20% get zero. If they now get their buyin back and break even, that will be a lot more fun/appealing to the average player than getting back zero knowing they had a freeroll at a final table score, but at least came away without losing any money.

pay all keep the rake