Do you think 50 spin and go qualifiers at the skill level of a trained monkey is good or bad for your ROI?

Guess my post must have been a bit confusing - there were something like 50 EPT Main Event packages given out during the introductory round of EPT Spins. Then for the next round, it seems like Stars offered them for a shorter period of time - so for Barcelona, there might only be around 12?

Cliffs: It seems like Stars is actually trying to reduce their satty offerings, for whatever reason - and appears to be hoping that flattening out the payout structure will make up for it ... so it appears to be an attempt at like a substitute measure, and not a supplement?

Hmn ok, my bad.

Hey, are you the 'Raging Fish on a Heater' (from the PG&C section)? Congrats on sattying into the EPT Main Event!!

Sorry my posts have been confusing - guess am just trying to figure out what's going on ... and the whole 'Stars as Robin Hood' narrative just doesn't seem like it's likely the whole picture? Maybe because that's the story they used to try and justify cuts to the VIP program at the beginning of the year ... and we're all still waiting for those awesome promos they were promising ...

Like when Stars takes from 'the rich', maybe it's not be to give to 'the poor' ... maybe it's to give to Stars?


Are there lots of online recreational qualifiers who are likely to use a min-cash from the EPT to play on Stars? If not, maybe the changes won't stick?

GL with the EPT ChanY - hope you take it down!!

I'll put in my 2c

I don't think its a big deal unless they keep increasing the %

I think anything above 20% would be bad though, 20% seems like the max reasonable ITM % IMO

It would be really bad if the mindset of recreational players goes from "I need to play some hands, win some chips, getting to 10% of the field is a long long ways away" to "damn, I can fold to the money."

They rolled back to 15% payouts for the high roller events only due to player pushback.....

"11am: Important information about payouts in the Super High Roller
Official information released by PokerStars today:
"After collating data and feedback from players on the recent expansion of payouts, PokerStars has decided that for events of this nature (this event and event #33, the €25K) last season's payout structure of 15% will be used. We spoke to Neil Johnson for more information on this latest update:
"We want to thank all of the players who have given feedback over the last two days in Barcelona about the change in EPT payout structure. We've received a lot of valuable feedback from players, and this, alongside data collected on the expansion, has backed up the decision to increase payouts to 20%. While the change has been really well received overall, it's clear that our highest buy-in events have unique characteristics. For that reason, PokerStars has decided to use the previous season's payout structure of 15% for Event #16, the €50K and event #33, the €25K at EPT13 Barcelona.
"We're always looking to make the live poker experience as positive and enjoyable as possible for as many players as possible, while making sure our event champions are well rewarded for their efforts. We want to get more feedback from our €25K+ players so we'll be running a survey with the players in both of these events to gain even more insight into the type of payouts that would best suit special events of this nature in future."

Participation trophy, no more , no less.

''For example, 220 players bought into a €1,000 Hyper at Barcelona last year. The winner collected €45,134 and 31 players were paid out with 31st getting €1,878. This year, the winner would collect €38,028 but 47 players would be paid out with 47th getting €1,238. That same 31st player would get €1,921.''

shaving 7k off top is a bit too much, esp in a field of only 220. maybe only have 20% payouts for fields of 500+ or maybe €2k+

Since we're talking about live donkaments, the 'skill factor' remains at near-zero, as does the number of strong players.

no the only reason they do that is that have more people min cashing and using that small score to buy in the next EPT , therefor getting rake a second time and to ensure people coming back for the next event... lets say a fish takes a one shot in an EPT , some of them will min cash and get their cash back with little profit and benefic only pokerstars and the greedy amaya

I was one defending paying 20% of feild but payouts are realy apsurd and ridiculous..
how come in 2k estrella hi roler from 2,3mil prize pool min cash is 2300 (buy in the s 2200) and first place its not even 300k
Who's idea was this payouts os realy ***** ******ed or had never played tornament poker, is apsurd to cut big % of yop 3 spots abd spread all that money in the mdle of the payoits and making min cash almost the buy in ( fun is free and we can all buy 1 banana with profits from min cash because we as poker players and customers are bigest monkeys for participating in this money grab and robery)

I am still ok with paying biger % of field but not the way they are doing, mn xash must be min 1,5 buy in and top 3 places must have at least 35% of the prize pool,top 3 and min cash shouldnt suffer, and money should be reduced in midle payouts ( for ex finishing 27 or 45 shouldn't be qute big pay jump, imo it can even pay same money from 45-27, and that way mtt will speed up and progres faster from 45->27 and last 3 table will player deeper)

Any way lomg story short new payouts are ******ed, and if they dont change it, it will happen the same thing that happened when day change payouts on stars, lots of people just stop playing on stars and online games cant recover even after 3+ months, and fixing payouts a litle bit

Some is trying really hard to kill pokerstars and kill all the games, and he is doing good job so far

Never thought about that. Good point.

This is the reason, dont believe their PR bull****

Min cash €2200 HR was 2270, min cash in the cup was exactly the buyin. Zero profit

+1 theyre majorly f***ing up the MTTs

I support this, but think they should actually make the min-cash smaller, like 0.2x the buy-in.

The people who really suffer in a lot of pay-out structures are those in the middle. You can outlast 97% of the field and still only make 3x the buy-in, because the jumps in the middle of the structure are so insignificant.

I think a general principle of tournament pay-outs should be that every jump is larger than the previous one. But for some reason, the jump at the bubble is often the largest jump until deep into the final table. E.g. there is often a jump from 0x to 2.0x, and then the next jump is from 2.0x to 2.2x. This is absurd. Make the first jump from 0x to 0.2x, then 0.5x, then 0.9x, then 1.5x, then 2.5x, etc.

Everything stars does is about squeezing winning players more and more...15 percent payouts are aweful 20 percenters are even worse...the goal of 15 percent payouts is to get more people their buyins back so they play the tournament the next day...

Let's talk to the people who finish in 15-20% and see if they like or dislike the new structure. I'm pretty sure a lot of them are very happy about cashing in an EPT tourney. We need happy amateurs to keep the poker economy growing.

Played estrellas main and everyone was bummed about the mincash which gave you the old zero euros profit

Not a single player I talked to liked it and I asked quite a few

First three payjumps were 1100(bi)-1700 (!!)-1770 (?????), you could make a better payout structure doing something like this:

Wouldn't it save time to give Fedor 50% of the prize pool, and divide the rest up between everyone else?

Large majority of the people who min cashed and got their buy-in would have made nothing based on a 15% payout.

Payouts from the Estrellas main: https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/e...-pool-an.shtml

3,447 players, so 15% is 517 players. 695th-512th received their buy-in back, 511th finisher received €1,700 which is nearly 1.5x buy-in i.e. close to what a min cash was when paying 15%.

Only 517th-512th lost value in the bottom part of the payouts.

Even with the effort to payout more places with a smaller mincash, the payout jumps in this structure have little logic.

The pay-out bump between 695th and 696th place is the largest bump until the pay-out bump between 39th and 40th. This first bump is $1100, while the bumps from 500th to 120th are all less than $200.

Every increase should be larger than the last. But somehow no one can get this right.

This is an interesting point worth discussion.
Stars wants big Live Event turnouts.... but not on their dime so to speak.

A likely reason they don't want Live qualifiers from rec players is the loss of potential rake. Having recs battle for an EPT package isn't good for revenue as the winner is likely to not cash in the EPT and even if he does who's to say that he'd inject that money back onto Pstars. Stars is much better off having them grind off their deposits to rake or god forbid to a winning player. The increase to 20% is in the hopes that players continue to recycle rake but I don't think its going to be very effective and all it does is piss off EPT regs who are needed to bolster the prizepool which makes it look good on TV.

Regs being pissed isn't new. The move to 15% had people believing it was the end of their world. They will get used to the 20% as well and I would bet that this change will not have anywhere near the negative effect on their ROI that they believe it will. It's simply a smart move that ultimately benefits PokerStars, but also benefits all the players too.

This makes absolutely no sense and is a horrible assumption based on very little information. There are lots of reasons why they didn't run Spin satellites for EPT Barcelona as long as they did for Monte Carlo.

It could've clashed with another promotion, they only had X number of hotel rooms left, something as simple as human error as we've seen with some other PS tournaments and they forgot to deploy them?

No, it's not.