9 hours for 600. Meh.

You're right, but there are tons more "Canadians" now, and before you'd see the rare Brazilian, but now there are many "Mexicans" and "Central Americans." That's just the more obvious one, but I'm sure a few moved to Europe and Asia also. I've seen them in the mid-stakes MTTs and SNGs. Maybe they are O8 cash grinders and/or play mostly NLHE, I don't know, but with much smaller fields it is significant. Certainly the weaker players didn't move, so it doesn't help.

With top heavy payouts and small fields, you generally need to play higher risk to make anything. One of the bigger improvements I've made is in shorthanded play, mainly due to more SNG experience since BF. However, most seem to agree that shorthanded has more variance. That's another reason the dynamic is different, you are often shorthanded (5-6 players each on two tables) before you even get ITM.

Countervailing this factor, you can bust out 50th in a 180 player tournament, but you can't bust out 50th in a 45 player tournament.

Another way to put it: You don't have to worry about lower-variance longhanded play in a smaller tournament because effectively you've already survived it. Getting a "bye" into the later stages of a tourney is much lower variance than having to survive to get there, although of course it's offset by the fewer places played. IMO being assured in making the last 45 of a 45-man tourney where 5 are paid is much more lower-variance than getting to play more longhanded tables in a 180-man tourney where 18 are paid, but I don't know how to prove that.

I greatly suspect your memory is overweighting your experiences in the last couple of tables and underweighting the difficulty of getting to the last couple of tables. To improve decision-making at poker, theory should trump experience because variance is high and selectively memory gets all of us. The guy who plays 96 because he flopped a full house once doesn't remember the times he missed. I stay in bad games because I keep pretending it's two hours ago when the same game was fantastic. We all do this something like this, not just the fish.

In any case, I'm quite certain that smaller tourneys drawn from a similar player pool are lower variance, but I can't question your subjective interpretation of your experience and I'm not doing a very good job articulating the theoretical case for my position so I'll just leave it there.

I def. agree that we all can suffer from selective memory. However, I try to be pretty objective about it. If it was a small difference, I would chalk it up to randomness. I just find everything is worse than BF. The exception might be the micros, which still see some decent size fields and plenty of room for skill edge.

As far as lower variance in a smaller field. That may be technically true in general, I'll trust you on that one. However, it could still vary by player/style. I'm a good player, I know we can all get better, I've made adjustments, but I'm sure I can make more. However, given pre/post-BF stats for other players and their shared experiences, it seems there's a bit of a disconnect between live/cash players and those who actually did and are playing these MTTs on stars. My fault for not finding the game sooner I guess.

big o8 fields my long term ROI will be way bigger than small fields. ROI is all we care about right. Thats if the player balance is the same too.

but yes ofcourse smaller are lower variance ith similar player pools

I dont know of one serious O8 grinder who would not prefer to have the US back playing on Stars. Personally I prefer playing with smaller field sizes from an enjoyment stand point as I prefer playing shorter sessions but as far as being able to make the most money obv it would be easier with Americans playing and its not even close.

that is proof of the weakness of the field, that a player can utilize that style to take down tourneys and his opponent's don't have the ability to make him not play that style.

Also, you need to ask yourself, "do I know what my opponent has before I see it at showdown," b/c you might not be hand-reading well enough if you can't find a larger edge on somebody who reraises you with the 6th nuts. u have to know what type of hands your opponents play certain ways.

So general feeling here seems to be it is tougher to maintain the same ROI post BF in PLO/8 fields.

Is the general feeling the same for PLO as for PLO/8? How about mixed gfames and holdem?

Billy should have a good general idea about these. My guess is PLO isn't harmed as much or at all, because it was already very swingy. It's difficult to even find MTTs for FLO8 and other non-HE games at most hours. NLHE may have gotten more difficult, since more pros have moved to keep playing, unless the increase in Euro/Russian donks make up for that, but there should be plenty of info on NLHE.

I guess just looking at preflop equities we can figure that overaggro/spewtards can make it more difficult in plo8 compared to other games:

top 10% top 20% top 30% vs random hands
holdem 66.6 62.6 60.3
omaha 63.5 61.2 59.9
omaha8 60.8 58.9 57.5

If we factor in folding some of our range, plus factor in that (even though they are spewtards) they don't have random hands

today I heard FT is launching money games in 1 month, with a one million dollar freeroll or something...
a $1 buy in for $1million...

ft suckas, im loyal to ps... but i might pop in for a 1million freerolll

.^sc

I had a quick look around and I can't see this reported anywhere - where did you hear the rumour?

this post needs details

Ok,
I apologise about this... a friend was telling me about it...
and I did not do my own research...
I guess if yous are not hearing about it, then it must be a good story

.^sc

Did this friend happen to step out of a Delorean before delivering this info?