***OFFICIAL Stars 2015 MTT Discussion Thread***
01-01-2016
, 07:02 AM
Quote:
Good little read there. I remember when I first wrote about getting earlier antes in mtts there were a bunch of people who were against it. Change is tough, but looking back it's hard to imagine playing on Stars @ 100/200 and no ante. I've actually been thinking about the same topic recently. Mostly about the Bigs.
First, do you know why Stars MTTs start with 3000 chips? Because in the beginning of time they used to start with only 1500 just like SNGs, with special GTD events starting with 3000. 3k is the standard because of decisions and adjustments made before nearly anyone played online poker, before being an online MTT player was even a real thing.
Then back when the Bigs started, they were Star's adjustment to Black Friday and to make the schedule more Euro friendly. They introduced their first earlier-ante structure, put a big red label on it, and called them the BIGs.
But in the time since 2011, that structure is now standard. In fact, nothing about the BIGs is different from any other MTT on Stars. I feel like that is part of the reason the field sizes have been decreasing in these games and why they don't really inspire people to play them. They just aren't very special.
Why don't we change that? Let's actually make them BIG.
This doesn't require a huge effort. All we need to do is make a slight adjustment to the structure and we have tournaments that are unique.
Increase starting stacks to 5k
Remove 10/20 and 15/30
We do a few things with those small changes. We give the Bigs an identity they haven't had. We accelerate into some more interesting levels and we give players more chips. And, importantly and often overlooked is we give player slightly more room to lose at the start and not feel like they are out of the game. Starting with 3k chips and losing you way down to 1800 right off the bat feels bad. But with this new structure you'd still feel OK with 3800.
Because of the nature of the blind escalation, this won't increase the time of the tournament by a significant margin. Instead of the bubble bursting between 400/800 and 500/1000 it would happen between 600/1200 and 800/1600. This is only an increase of 0-10 minutes to reach ITM and the rest of the tournament would play out the same from there.
And, as a cheeky way to promote the BIGGER series, you could do 6k-10k chips as a way for the tournament to actually stand out on a Sunday.
Small change but impactful.
First, do you know why Stars MTTs start with 3000 chips? Because in the beginning of time they used to start with only 1500 just like SNGs, with special GTD events starting with 3000. 3k is the standard because of decisions and adjustments made before nearly anyone played online poker, before being an online MTT player was even a real thing.
Then back when the Bigs started, they were Star's adjustment to Black Friday and to make the schedule more Euro friendly. They introduced their first earlier-ante structure, put a big red label on it, and called them the BIGs.
But in the time since 2011, that structure is now standard. In fact, nothing about the BIGs is different from any other MTT on Stars. I feel like that is part of the reason the field sizes have been decreasing in these games and why they don't really inspire people to play them. They just aren't very special.
Why don't we change that? Let's actually make them BIG.
This doesn't require a huge effort. All we need to do is make a slight adjustment to the structure and we have tournaments that are unique.
Increase starting stacks to 5k
Remove 10/20 and 15/30
We do a few things with those small changes. We give the Bigs an identity they haven't had. We accelerate into some more interesting levels and we give players more chips. And, importantly and often overlooked is we give player slightly more room to lose at the start and not feel like they are out of the game. Starting with 3k chips and losing you way down to 1800 right off the bat feels bad. But with this new structure you'd still feel OK with 3800.
Because of the nature of the blind escalation, this won't increase the time of the tournament by a significant margin. Instead of the bubble bursting between 400/800 and 500/1000 it would happen between 600/1200 and 800/1600. This is only an increase of 0-10 minutes to reach ITM and the rest of the tournament would play out the same from there.
And, as a cheeky way to promote the BIGGER series, you could do 6k-10k chips as a way for the tournament to actually stand out on a Sunday.
Small change but impactful.
somebody start a 2016 thread please
01-01-2016
, 08:04 AM
01-01-2016
, 08:28 AM
01-01-2016
, 02:02 PM
Update on the investigation into reports of lag during the Sunday Majors:
First, we apologize for the disruption this is causing those players who are experiencing the problem. Second, it is a top priority for the developers and has a high level of visibility with management. So we know it is happening to a number of players, and we are urgently working on finding the source so we can resolve and eliminate it.
We are looking at everything: the servers, the client software, the database, networking issues, log files, etc. Your reports on the forum and through support are helpful, as are the log files you send. Thank you for your comments and logs.
At this point the team has a lead on a possible source, they are running tests in our QA lab but as yet we don’t have anything definitive that I can report. It will be most helpful to receive more log files from this coming Sunday with the debug modifier (see below for details).
============
Based on the aggregate reports from players (both on the forum and through Support) as well as on our own monitoring and analysis of servers, game play and network, we can say that the problem is not experienced by everyone, it does not occur on all tournaments and it doesn't appear to be constant throughout the tournaments in which it does occur (the majority of reports indicate something happening at the quarter-hour intervals).
============
Several players suggested this and it was discussed and considered by the Poker Room Management team. In the end, the team decided against increasing timebanks to compensate for the lag because of the additional disruption it will cause players who are not experiencing it, and the fact that the lag is mostly experienced during seating and shortly thereafter.
We recommend that players concerned about the lag register 3-4 minutes after tournaments begin.
============
We are asking for more log files with debug on
The investigating team received a few log files from last Sunday. They were helpful, but we would like to get as many more as we can.
There are two important differences this time:
First, the "Message Trace" value should be increased from "1" to "10". (Last time our instructions asked for 1, so this is an edit to that).
Second, after editing the user.ini file, you have to close the client and restart it. A couple of players didn't do that so the Debug lines didn't affect the log files they sent. This was my fault for not specifically asking for a restart in the instructions, and for that I apologize.
So, here are the new instructions for players to modify their user.ini files to collect some performance stats and submit logs collected during the upcoming Sunday major tournaments:
Go to Help > Log Files, add a note to say "LAG DURING SUNDAY MAJORS" and describe the nature of the lag as you experienced it, then click Send Log Files.
Again, we are hoping that this extra measure of diagnostics will help us identify the source of the problem.
Many, many thanks to those players willing to take the extra steps to help us, and apologies to all that this is taking so long to resolve. We know how frustrating this is for all affected players, and we are doing our best to resolve it.
=============
First, we apologize for the disruption this is causing those players who are experiencing the problem. Second, it is a top priority for the developers and has a high level of visibility with management. So we know it is happening to a number of players, and we are urgently working on finding the source so we can resolve and eliminate it.
We are looking at everything: the servers, the client software, the database, networking issues, log files, etc. Your reports on the forum and through support are helpful, as are the log files you send. Thank you for your comments and logs.
At this point the team has a lead on a possible source, they are running tests in our QA lab but as yet we don’t have anything definitive that I can report. It will be most helpful to receive more log files from this coming Sunday with the debug modifier (see below for details).
============
============
We recommend that players concerned about the lag register 3-4 minutes after tournaments begin.
============
We are asking for more log files with debug on
The investigating team received a few log files from last Sunday. They were helpful, but we would like to get as many more as we can.
There are two important differences this time:
First, the "Message Trace" value should be increased from "1" to "10". (Last time our instructions asked for 1, so this is an edit to that).
Second, after editing the user.ini file, you have to close the client and restart it. A couple of players didn't do that so the Debug lines didn't affect the log files they sent. This was my fault for not specifically asking for a restart in the instructions, and for that I apologize.
So, here are the new instructions for players to modify their user.ini files to collect some performance stats and submit logs collected during the upcoming Sunday major tournaments:
Then play the Sunday tournaments as usual and, if you experience lag effects again, please send your log files to Support. Please do this shortly after the affected-tournament play concludes. (If you wait a few days before sending logs and play other tournaments or games, then the pertinent information from the affected tournaments might be overwritten with data from later play).
Open Windows client
Help -> Open My Settings folder
Open “user.ini” with Notepad
Add the following lines at the end of the file:
------------------------
[Debug]
MessageTrace=10
------------------------
Save and close user.ini file.
Close the poker client and restart it.
Go to Help > Log Files, add a note to say "LAG DURING SUNDAY MAJORS" and describe the nature of the lag as you experienced it, then click Send Log Files.
Again, we are hoping that this extra measure of diagnostics will help us identify the source of the problem.
Many, many thanks to those players willing to take the extra steps to help us, and apologies to all that this is taking so long to resolve. We know how frustrating this is for all affected players, and we are doing our best to resolve it.
=============