Ideas for increasing Full Tilt traffic and I think ultimately saving Full Tilt...

1) Merge the FTP VIP program into the Stars' VIP program so it doesn't matter if a player plays on Full Tilt or Stars, they will still get their same Stars' VPPs and FPPs and rewards or at least, have this option for players to choose this. Maybe you want to keep them totally separate for some reason but I think this would be a good idea for the short-term or on a trial basis. I really can't believe you have not done this already.

2) Instead of lowering the guarantees, have overlays and more overlays and consider them marketing expenses.

3) Move the Warm-Up or some other Sunday major tournament (but keep the same guarantee) to Full Tilt once per month or so.

4) Have FTOPs and MiniFTOPs every month or every other month.

5) Especially after #1, bring back the 90-man KO SNG's and Rush SNG's with reduced rake in the short-term or something to make them more appealing. These are great for grinders to add to their MTT schedule.

6) More advertising, more pros, TV shows, sponsored tournaments, etc. It seems like every time I turn around Full Tilt is cutting or reducing something or basically, doing things to save money rather than make money. Has this worked so far? This has to end or Full Tilt will continue its decline until you shut your doors not too long from now.

7) Get rid of the silly avatars or at least, have the option to have no avatar. If you wanted to keep the animation stuff, give the player to upload their own animated image or even a photo and then you could run a program like Adobe Illustrator, etc. that would animate or semi-animate them.

8) Good luck in the new year. You are going to need it if you don't do something significant and fast.

Where has the $26 5k Gtd. at 4pm CET gone?

Really sad 26$ 10k has gone

Hi guys. I admit I haven't read back, way too many pages!, and this is a direct copy paste from elsewhere, but I was hoping you could help quicker than waiting for support...

Anyone had any experience of this?

I know we are only talking a few cents, but I had $14.06 in my account. Sat down with 80c putting cash at $13.26.
Left table with just under $2 but didn't get added to account.

I just requested account history, it is showing me not playing at all today, though I definetly did, both on laptop and mobile.

Any ideas?

shyam posts here about once every 3 months and i'm pretty sure he won't be able to help you with that issue as he is just an mtt guy. keep sending emails to support is probably your best option mate.

Can't reach my PC right now, I wonder what has left?

@ LizardKing

Ideas for increasing Full Tilt traffic and I think ultimately saving Full Tilt...

1) Merge the FTP VIP program into the Stars' VIP program so it doesn't matter if a player plays on Full Tilt or Stars, they will still get their same Stars' VPPs and FPPs and rewards or at least, have this option for players to choose this. Maybe you want to keep them totally separate for some reason but I think this would be a good idea for the short-term or on a trial basis. I really can't believe you have not done this already.

If the goal was to make both sites the same then what's the point of having two sites and the overhead that comes with this. Having Full Tilt become more successful at the expense of Pstars doesn't do much for Amaya besides splitting the player pool which hurts players.

2) Instead of lowering the guarantees, have overlays and more overlays and consider them marketing expenses.

Although this sounds good from a players POV it doesn't do much for the bottom line of the site. Building a decent satellite program would alleviate overlays and in time would lead to higher guarantees.

3) Move the Warm-Up or some other Sunday major tournament (but keep the same guarantee) to Full Tilt once per month or so.

How would this benefit Amaya? If it's Full Tilts gain at the expense of Pstars then it is no gain at all besides annoying customers who may not like multi siting while multi tabling.

4) Have FTOPs and MiniFTOPs every month or every other month.

They've done this and FTOPS has become as relevant as a typical week on Pstars. The FTOPS (a nice flagship series) needs to have its relevance restored. To do this it needs to be deemed special. Having it every month would make it seem like no big deal, which is precisely how many players deem it today.

5) Especially after #1, bring back the 90-man KO SNG's and Rush SNG's with reduced rake in the short-term or something to make them more appealing. These are great for grinders to add to their MTT schedule.

I agree with you here. Stars caters to the 180 mans so there is a niche market to be fulfilled for 90 mans. Reducing rake is a no go as when it inevitably gets raised should these tourneys take off players would feel pissed. A better method would be increased FTP's or make them 'Golden' as part of a promo.

6) More advertising, more pros, TV shows, sponsored tournaments, etc. It seems like every time I turn around Full Tilt is cutting or reducing something or basically, doing things to save money rather than make money. Has this worked so far? This has to end or Full Tilt will continue its decline until you shut your doors not too long from now.

I agree with you here in part. Full Tilt's marketing is near non-existent besides what they run on the Stars client. It's a vicious circle... with less revenue the less marketing and the less marketing the less players and the less players means less revenue.
They've dabbled in all of the areas you mentioned above but pulled the plug on them and in some cases perhaps prematurely. I expect Full Tilt to start their own Series of Live events this year and if done right and in the right markets could be a big plus for the site.

seems like is all back, just was cut for new years i suppose

I saw some "skins" in few videos (like ones from DC). Are these still working ? If so where to get them and how tu install them ? Thank u !

Yeah. Did the same for Xmas Eve and Xmas day. NYE and NY day had some guarantee drops too. All back to normal now.

@Sect7G

Ideas for increasing Full Tilt traffic and I think ultimately saving Full Tilt...

1) Merged VIP programs...

If the goal was to make both sites the same then what's the point of having two sites and the overhead that comes with this. Having Full Tilt become more successful at the expense of Pstars doesn't do much for Amaya besides splitting the player pool which hurts players.

Not saying make the both sides the same at all...just saying put them under the same VIP program at least temporarily until it gets a better established player pool. It is a lot different than having the same tourneys and merging the sites. Yes, it might cost some money but it could keep more players playing on Full Tilt and Stars by making it more attractive to play on FTP rather than going to 888, Party, iPoker, etc. because they are losing (and have lost) customers to them right now. This is about growing Amaya's overall player base, revenues, and bottom line and not trading one site for the other to play at.

2) Overlays...

Although this sounds good from a players POV it doesn't do much for the bottom line of the site. Building a decent satellite program would alleviate overlays and in time would lead to higher guarantees.

Yes, absolutely the satellite system is a great idea but it has to be combined with guarantees, tourneys, and other reasons (like a merged VIP program) to make players want to play at FTP in the first place. I think are more important to put these in place first (combined with the satellites obviously but the first things first are these X factors) and I think things like overlays, etc would do just that and then the satellites would attract even more players and get more players into the tourneys and ultimately reduce or even eliminate the overlays. However, I just don't think satellites are ultimately the solution if the attraction to play on FTP in the first place is not there. Basically, all the satellites in the world are not going to attract people to play something they don't want to play in the first place.

Also, these overlays are just a temporary solution meant to build buzz up like DraftKings' NFL fantasy draft when they started out. They started with huge overlays and they were getting smaller and smaller and when I did a search for the past month, I didn't see anything except for very small ones on one of their NBA products. However, it appears in ~6 months that those NFL overlays are gone. I have no idea maybe they changed it and greatly reduced the guarantee (which is what FTP could ultimately do, too) but it appears that maybe they have increased them which seems to be an indication that they have eliminated their overlays...

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...ith-draftkings

Basically, for FTP, it is a way to create a buzz and attract players they have lost and new players to the site to get them into the habit of playing on the site. Once they get in the habit, FTP will have a better customer base which returns to play on a regular basis. People are a creature of habit and I want them to create that habit and spend some money (over some months or even a year via overlays) to do it and then tweak the guarantees to their new customer base. Also, I am saying combine this with my other suggestions (along with more and better satellites) which should attract players to FTP and that will help reduce those overlays also. I think running MTTs with overlays for ~6-12 months and then adjusting the guarantees (if they have not self-adjusted by then) to remove all overlays would be the way to do it.

3) Move the Warm-Up or some other Sunday major tournament (but keep the same guarantee) to Full Tilt once per month or so.

How would this benefit Amaya? If it's Full Tilts gain at the expense of Pstars then it is no gain at all besides annoying customers who may not like multi siting while multi tabling.

Just trying to add another thing that will get people in the habit of playing on FTP. I think it is very plausible that while they are playing the Warm-Up or w/e there, they might register something else especially when they see the overlays or potential overlays rather moving onto 888, etc. to see what are on those sites. This is just another way Amaya to get players onto FTP and keep them in-house. I think it is best to look at these suggestions combined together and the synergies that are created between them. I meant this as a temporary strategy for like ~6-12 months also.

4) Have FTOPs and MiniFTOPs every month or every other month.

They've done this and FTOPS has become as relevant as a typical week on Pstars. The FTOPS (a nice flagship series) needs to have its relevance restored. To do this it needs to be deemed special. Having it every month would make it seem like no big deal, which is precisely how many players deem it today.

Sorry I just meant this as a very temporary solution (and I should have mentioned that) especially with the other overlays they would have to get people into the habit of coming to the site so they would see that FTP has not given up and actually has some good tourneys with solid guarantees and once they have done that, they should return this to its normal schedule. I definitely think they could just do this for ~3 months or so along with my other suggestions which I think should last longer.

Also, anything that PokerStars does for Full Tilt could be treated as a debt to Stars and hopefully these types of ideas and similar will greatly increase the number of customers that play on FTP and could be paid back at that point. Stars already advertises FTOPs and many other things for FTP so they have shown that they are willing to help FTP possibly at the expense of having some players play something on Full Tilt rather than Stars and so I believe that I am just asking them to up their game a bit in this department which I think could greatly help the industry and Amaya's market share in the industry and in turn, increase their profits and stock price. However, it all depends on Amaya and if they want to spend the money and time to do it or if they deem strategies like these are too risky.

If they are unwilling to take some very aggressive action very soon (which will come at some risk and expense) then maybe they should just close FTP's doors or sell it because I think the way they are running it now that will be the ultimate outcome the way things are going. And, even if they are even making profits at this point, I am assuming they are not making enough on their assets right now to justify continuing business well into the future because they are definitely not growing them and seem to be incapable in growing them with what they have attempted thus far. And, the one thing public shareholders hate is continuing with operations that are not growing the profits of the company so aggro marketing strategies, close, or sell are the only ways to go and Amaya must decide which is the most optimal for their shareholders, but I think aggro marketing strategies that I outlined should be attempted before giving up.

What's the deal with 15 minutes of seating in some MiniFTOPS Events? If it says "Jan 04 19:30" in the Main Lobby I expect the tournament to start at this particular time. Tilts the sh*t out of me. I mean if this should be mandatorily required just start seating 15 minutes prior to the stated starting time. Thank you very much...

Also do we really need a turbo thirty alongside a turbo multi-thirty?

playing here for the first time in a few months and thought it had to be a mistake...

Why's there no BGOTW satellite on sundays 18.02 ET?

Any news on the Hotkeys intergration progress?

not multi enough

such a joke that the turbo 30 isn't a re-entry.

no sync break in mini ftops zzzzzzz

Haven't gone through all the responses but looking at FTP their sat schedule needs to be fixed. Anyone offer any decent suggestions as to what they should do??

remove the flipout tab from the main lobby and replace it with the old satellite tab for starters

First time I've ever known FTP player to player transfers to be down

FTP-$>Stars down also

Hi all,

As mentioned in my post last month, here's the big January post about the upcoming tournament buyin (and related) changes. Apologies in advance for the length, there's quite a bit to go over.

Also note that the below represents the current plan, and the plan can change at any time. So treat the below as very likely to happen, but by no means set in stone.

Why are you making these changes?

This project started last year with a pretty simple goal: Bring satellites back to life on Full Tilt. The trend of falling satellite participation has been an issue for a long time, and it got to the point where almost no SNG satellites were ever going off, and our scheduled satellites were struggling to stay alive. So we knew we needed to do something fairly drastic (having already tried all of the non-drastic ideas).

So we came up with a number of ideas to help satellites, which will be detailed below. The idea with the biggest impact, though, is a complete revamp our of tournament buyin levels. With that change (and the associated changes that stem from that change), we hope to breathe some life into our satellites (and therefore guarantee participation), simplify the full tournament offering (making it easier to see what the offering is), and consolidate a few stake levels (bringing some extra liquidity there, especially in SNGs).

What are the general buyin changes?

So here's what our buyin levels currently look like:



And here's what they'll look like when the update happens next month:



For SNGs, you'll notice the $20, $25, and $60 levels have been consolidated into just the $25 and $50.

There is also a more consistent progression from one stake level to the next. Skipping one level is always a 4x or 5x increase, skipping two levels is always a 10x increase (both of these facts will be important when we talk about SNG satellites).

And not to be ignored: The numbers are prettier. It seems silly, but this should make the entire lobby look "nicer."

What are the Sit & Go specific changes?

• Other than the buyin levels changing in most places, not all that much will be changing for SNGs. The rake will mostly be a "best fit" from the old level, so while it won't be exactly the same at every level (although it will for many levels), it will be pretty close.
  
• The Matrix and Steps tabs (and games) will be removed. The Satellite tab will be coming back.
  
• Finally, and probably most importantly for this project, all SNG satellites will become "generic" and award tickets instead of T$. The offering will look like this:

So every 1 table SNG will award a ticket to first place and exactly your money back for 2nd, and every 2 table (12 man) SNG satellite will award a ticket for first place and exactly your money back for 2nd and 3rd. You can then take that ticket and use it for any tournament across the site with that buyin, which will now include SNGs (including another SNG satellite, create your own steps!) *and* MTTs.

For those of you doing the math at home, yes, this also means there will be no rake on these satellite SNGs. This is more to make the math work and because it makes us more comfortable giving tickets instead of T$ than any other reason, but if it brings more players to the satellites because of it, we won't argue. Note that like any offering, this is all subject to change at any time.

What are the scheduled tournament specific changes?

• Rake changes to regular speed scheduled tournaments will be very small overall. Nothing will be exactly the way it was, but for the most part it will all be within 5% of what the closest fit old buyin used to be. The main exceptions are the micro stakes tournaments which will be going from (for example) $1+$0.10 to $0.90+$0.10, which is about an 11% increase.
  
• As part of this restructuring, we took the opportunity to separate out the rake structure of regular speed MTTs from turbo speed MTTs. So all scheduled turbo tournaments (with the exception of the $0.50) will now have approximately 10-15% lower rake than their regular speed counterpart.
  
• Super Turbo rake won't be all that different from where it currently is, with the exception of the micro stakes which will now be 10-20% lower than their turbo equivalents (previously they were the same as even regular speed).
  
• In addition, all scheduled satellites will now charge 20-30% lower rake than their non-satellite counterparts. So, for example, a $10 turbo guarantee might break down to $9.20+$0.80 (8.7% rake), but a $10 turbo satellite would be $9.40+$0.60 (6.38% rake).
  
• We will be removing the Cash and Live Events tabs in the browse area of the lobby, and bringing back the Satellite tab. Cash is mostly a useless tab since you can get exactly the same functionality by simply unchecking Satellites from the All tab (and most people just want to look at Guarantees anyway, and the Guarantees tab will still be there). We may bring the Live Events tab back someday, but for now when we're only doing 0-2 live events at a time, it's not as important to have a separate tab.

What are the other related changes?

• We will be eliminating Super Turbo satellite "sniping". By this I mean the unsportsmanlike behavior of finding a super turbo satellite that pays out 4 spots and has 4 players remaining, and then waiting for someone to be all-in and looking like they're going to bust, and late registering at the last second (so they now get 5th place and you "snipe" the money position). This will no longer be possible, as we will end late registration before the money bubble (we will be able to control how far off from the bubble it ends, so we'll experiment to find the right balance between letting late reg continue and making sure it can't be gamed).
  
• While it won't be ready with the same release as the rest of the changes, we will also be implementing a system where if you satellite into a tournament that's already running, you will be automatically registered for that tournament (just like PokerStars currently does). In the future there might also be special tournaments where if you satellite in you won't be able to unregister (although there are currently no plans for this).
  
• Instead of separate Sit & Go, Jackpot Sit & Go, Steps, Avatar Tournaments, and FTOPS subsections within the FTP Store, we'll just have the generic tickets, Game of the Week tickets, and a couple specific tournament tickets (like The Sunday Major and eventually the FTOPS Main Event). The average price of these tickets will be going up. You'll still find the best deals with tournament tickets (The Sunday Major and FTOPS Main Event especially), but they won't be quite as out of line with the rest of the offering any more.
  
• The $2 Jackpot SNGs will be changed to $2.50 (since we no longer have a $2 SNG level). At the same time, the $1 and the new $2.50 Jackpot SNGs will go from 5% effective rake to 6% effective rake. Not great news, I know, but it is still the best rake for that format around.
  
• We'll also be tweaking the games offering a bit here and there, removing some games and formats that simply aren't being played right now (this mostly applies to SNGs).

Thanks for the wall of text, now make it longer.

The only thing I haven't mentioned that's for sure changing is the tournament schedule itself. That's mostly because it's not finished yet, but also because there are a number of questions still outstanding. The biggest question is exactly how much we want to mess with it. On the one hand we can simply adjust all of the buyins to be a "best fit" with the new buyin levels and make minor guarantee adjustments based on that, and on the other hand we could go all out and with a complete revamp. My personal preference is somewhere in between. I think we'll take a look at what a "best fit" schedule looks like, and adjust from there based on player suggestions and what's been working best.

To that end, here are a set of decisions we're facing that I'd love some input on:

• The Sunday Major will be going from $215 to $250. Does anyone think this is terrible?
  
• For the Sunday Brawl, there's a choice. The "easy" choice is to simply go from $255 to $250, but part of me likes the idea of the Sunday Major being the only real $250 for the week. If given these choices, which would you pick:

1. $250 buyin, same guarantee
2. $100 buyin, half the guarantee (side Q: what should the KO bounty be?)
3. $100 buyin with 2xMET, same guarantee as current

(Note I don't expect many votes for #3, but it's worth offering as a choice since it's still a lower total buyin than #1 if you play both entries, and would for sure allow more players to play in something that has a bigger guarantee.)

• For the next FTOPS, our Main Event buyin choices are $500 or $1,000. Pick one and explain why. We're already leaning towards one of these, and once we get some feedback I'll chime in and say which and explain our reasons.
  
• The T-Rex will be going from $162 to $100, which will obviously bring with it a lower guarantee. It also means that it will be much closer in buyin to the new $25 Triceratops. Does anyone think they'll eat into each other (ugh, pun) too much and should be separated by 30-60 minutes, or are all 3 fine to leave together?
  
• Rebuys:

We're planning to do an experiment with rebuys. We want the rebuy to cost the same as the initial buyin, so that players (eventually, when some more technical work is done) can use tickets for their rebuys. In order to do this and still collect rake on the initial buyin, this means that less money will go into the prize pool for initial buyins than for rebuys and addons. So to make this a little more fair (and hopefully promote more action during the rebuy period), we're going to try something. Instead of a "standard" rebuy where you get 1,500 chips for the initial buyin, and 1,500 for each rebuy, we're going to give 1,000 chips for the initial buyin and 1,500 chips for each rebuy.

We're also kicking around the idea of making the "threshold" 2,500 chips instead of 1,500, which would allow you to make 2 rebuys right away (but only ever 2 at a time after that). So the question is, does anyone like this idea? If so, do you prefer being able to rebuy twice right away (for a total of 4K chips) and thereafter only being able to do double rebuys (for a total of 3k chips as usual), or would you rather keep it to one initial rebuy (for a total of 2.5K chips) and normal double rebuys after that? Or even crazier, set the threshold to 3k and allow for 4K chips right away and 4.5K chips after that (triple rebuy always available)? If all of this is deemed too crazy, we may just start off experimenting with the ideas in satellites only and leave the guarantees alone (but I'd rather we went a little crazy here, to be honest).

That's probably enough for now. I'll pop in to answer quick questions if and when I can, and I plan on making another post next week that hopefully has more details about how the schedule is shaping up (and to ask more questions I'm sure).

Let us know what you think about all of this, and if there are any major questions or concerns about any of it.

Where we're going, there is no tl;dr.

Yesterday during a rebuy on Pokerstars I was thinking "Man, rebuys should give more chips than the first buyin to stimulate action." Rebuys, in 2015, are so much nittier and boring than they used to be. So massive +1 on giving extra chips for rebuys. Small change makes gambling less punished.