I just wanted to say that the situation has been handled perfectly after my post. Thanks to the rep I was promptly contacted and weirdly enough there was a problem with my bank (despite successful transfers in the past). I quickly validated another bank account and the transfer was successfully processed. The thing is - they couldn't contact me because they had to delete my account - therefore it was missed that there's no communication with me. Thanks Winamax and I'll miss you.

Hello winamax. I like your site. I also like playing a lot when big series are on. Series like wcoop. Power fest. Xl Inferno. I would like to have a winamax series to play in September.

September.

NOT August. August is Barcelona time. Or vacation. Or literally anything.

Please make a series in September when everybody and their mother is playing poker and not in August. Thank you

A concerned yet enthusiastic customer

^^ I would say that is very likely considering past 5 years it's always been in september , january and april.Maybe we should start asking now to plan the spring series in may instead of april.

Ye i just assumed it was somehow not when stars equivalent is happening which is just a massive punt by the site given worldwide poker traffic. If it's just the spring edition that s good at least

These Zone30 tournaments are the biggest AIDS ever. They are literally worse than anything GreedStars has ever invented. And now Winamax has replaced their dailies with these?!? Most good normal tournaments are gone and are now 30BB hypers with 10% rake and re-entries. RIP Ring, RIP all the different deep stack / deep run MTTs, RIP Booster, RIP Joker. RIP Winamax if they don't come to their senses

I love Winamax but my daily volume there has been cut in half, and it's very worrying that perhaps the most legit/less greedy site ever has chosen to go in Stars' direction. Or that's actually an understatement -- this is so bad that I'd rather play on Stars and that is a lot said.

Please guys stop this madness and give us our normal tournaments back.

+1. Such a good site and nice schedule, but with this zone tournaments, they realy kick in the dark. Do not follow P*, be better.

I kinda like the idea to be honest, but it'd have to start with 100bb and be 50bb avg or something. Especially if any of these are 6max it's just way too turbo-y...

Hello Chuck Bass,

ZONE 30 tournaments are far from being hyper tournaments. They last roughly the same amount of time as a classic deepstack tournament. Even though the gameplay has a faster pace to begin with, the late game is slower and more comfortable for the players thanks to the 30bb average. We feel this format fits in well with our current MTT offering, as it gets rid of the more boring first levels and stops you from having final tables with a 10bb average. Besides, the feedback we are getting from the French forums is excellent.

Our Ring/Booster/Joker tournaments (which had already been replaced by a Win the Button) were quickly losing interest, and thus we decided to replace them with Zone 30 tournaments. For example, the Booster usually made around €2,000 in prizepool money and lasted around 5 hours, whereas the new €10 Zone 30 tournament which replaced it makes over €2,500 in prizepool money and lasts around 4 hours.

There are only 5 Zone 30 tournaments per day for the €10+ buy-in, amongst an offer of over 100 tournaments, therefore making your argument seem rather exaggerated.

However, we are not excluding the possibility of coming back on certain changes depending on the success of the format.

Rep addresses criticism within 2 hours

I added those numbers above for clarity purposes.

I also really appreciate that you guys are responding to 2+2 threads, please keep it up

Onto the points...

1) The length of the tournament is a bit of a moot argument, it's one way to twist things (this is also something that Stars loves to do). How about "playing experience length on average per rake € paid"? Obviously that, either, isn't the perfect metric, but neither is the one you offered. The main problem as far as I can see is that since generally X amount of field busts very very early on, the starting stack basically becomes 20BB before you even notice. And you don't get to re-enter with 30BB (obviously) either, so you're paying 10% rake to often re-enter with like 12BB. This is why you basically have to be there within 5 minutes of the tournament starting OR you're making a huge mistake paying insane robbery rake to get a 10BB starting stack. So essentially these are tournaments that you more or less can't late reg and that last a very short time, giving most of the playing field a short, terrible playing experience that they pay extreme rake for.

FWIW I don't hate the format at all, I don't think it's great but if you had a few of these *on the side* I'd reg a few every day. So I'm not complaining about the format really, obv you over-rake them like crazy, but that's not the main point. Which is... the fact that there are barely any regular tournaments left to play. Zone30 is a format that very clearly should be a side format to enrich the schedule, not dominate. I don't know what drugs you need to be on to replace most of your main schedule with these but I'd like access to them. Before the changes I had ~10 Winamax tables on average and now I have 2-3. Why? Because there is literally nothing left to play but this Zone30 crap

2) I get that if the aforementioned MTTs like Booster and all the Deepstack Hold'em etc stuff weren't thriving, you want to try new stuff and replace them with something. Sure I get that. But what you have done now is replace them with stuff that lasts like 15-30 minutes for most of the players most of the time. And once you bust, what are you going to reg? That's right, nothing because there's nothing in the schedule I used to always start my session around Ring time since you had all the deepstack holdem, deep run etc stuff as well. Now I'm not going to start that early because there's just the 3.30PM GMT Zone30 and the super mega stack with 50k chips which will be my only tournament by 4PM GMT like 90% of the time. What you should do is trial these Zone30 things around peak time, and make sure you have regular MTTs with regular structures at all time. What I mean by this is 200BB starting stack, 10-15min levels, full ring type stuff. That's the most basic offering for any poker site and you currently basically don't have it at all. The FIRST thing you put on the schedule is one of these every 30-60 minutes. The you start adding random stuff like Win the button and Zone30 etc for flavor and to cater for all kinds of preferences. Now you just have a bunch of cherries but not the actual cake.


I'm literally in a 5€ 150€ gtd 6max turbo right now because there is nothing else left to play (I normally play ~18 ABI). It's mindblowing to me that you still have all the 4max tournaments with 40-60 player guarantees and turbos with 30 player guarantees. THESE are the tournaments you chose to keep and you ditched that ones that got 700 runners every day? Seriously? Had you got rid of these ones that have been in your schedule for like 3 years+ and that have never ever gotten more than 60 runners and replaced them with Zone30s my reaction would have been "that's cool, maybe those will get more runners!". But instead you ****ed up the entire schedule by removing the bread and butter stuff and only leaving tiny turbos and zone30s.


3) Wanna make 10% of your schedule Zone30s? Sure. No one's complaining. But we currently have something like 3% actual playable tournaments. That's the problem.

PS. I have no idea why you replaced Joker with Win the button. I have nothing against WTB but that tournament starts at the peak of all peak times. WTB takes insane focus. You could have trialled it in any timeslot and you pick the one slot/tournament to replace where no one can actually play it? This is very much similar idiocracy as these Zone30 changes.

PPS. I'm not going to pretend that I'm not posting for mostly selfish reasons; Winamax has long been the site where I cash out from the most and obviously my motivation here is mostly my own interests. But I also 100% honestly think that your schedule is currently extremely flawed and nearly the worst out of all sites with these changes, and if I were a poker site manager I would make some changes as fast as possible. I do get that the format must look lucrative to you, as idiots do the 10-15BB re-entry and still pay 10% rake again, losing money much faster. But this is exactly the kind of crap that Stars tries to pull and very very greedy. If Zone30s became the norm everyone would just go broke superfast and the games would die.

Thank you for your very constructive and helpful response. We will indeed be making changes very soon to ensure we have more deepstack tournaments back on the tournament schedule. We are reinstating the 16:30 CET Ring tournament as of today. Please do not hesitate to offer any other suggestions for the rest of our tournaments schedule. Cheers!

Snapregging Ring now, nearly came in my pants when I saw it back.

FWIW I think the Zone30s would actually be great replacements for some of the MTTs that really fail to draw big numbers (I could make a list, but I mainly mean the 5-10€ turbos and 4maxes that get ~50 players only). Changing some or all of them for zone30s would almost certainly get bigger numbers, and more rake for you hence the re-entry possibility as well.

Just make sure that oldschool guys like myself have enough "normal" MTTs to play

How about zone35/40s? It'd be great if the average stack was actually higher than in your normal 6max tournies, you have more time with a smaller starting stack after all.

I like the concept but think it needs the following improvements: start them a bit deeper, like 45bb and don't let the levels increase at all until about 40 minutes into the mtt. This allows for late registration without getting fisted into the bootyhole as mentioned by chuck. I think overal maintaining an average stack of 35-40 bb would be much better throughout but I def think the no increase for x time would help a lot with prize pools as well

I wanted to add my contribution about which tournaments would (imo) potentially do well as Zone30s, and where we need some regular freezeouts. Times are in CET (GMT+1) for clarity's sake

4-5PM
Ring being back is good. We need to have a regular decent-guarantee freezeout to kick off the day around this time

5-6PM
The 5.30PM 20€ 6max turbo could be a zone30? It's 400GTD currently and barely gets 20 runners.
There used to be a 5.30PM 10€ deepstack holdem that's now gone it seemed to never attract more than like 60 runners for some reason. I think you could maybe put a regspeed rebuy here (since it's quite early on, a bunch of people would late reg it towards the end of late reg and it would get more runners that way). I definitely think there should be something else here than just the 5.45PM 5€ monster stack because it starts so deep and goes on forever but no one wants to actually reg it before like 7PM. Again it's really really bad to not have a normal freezeout in the 5-20€ zone during this hour. If there was a proper MTT here people would also reg zone30s and whatever on the side.

6PM-7PM
The 6pm 10€/200gtd 6max regspeed would make for a great zone30. Same for the 6.30PM 5€/100gtd semi-turbo. Both of these are completely pointless tournaments as is and can't get any worse

7PM-8PM
The 7pm 5€/500gtd regspeed fullring is nice, please don't change it or if you do, replace it with something similar and not a zone30. The 7.15PM 5€/300gtd 6m turbo would be another zone30 slot candidate, same for the 7.15PM 20€ 4max 400gtd. It's a bad time to have a 4max MTT, too much stuff going on which is why no one plays it (4max takes lots of focus).

8PM-9PM
You have a bit of a problem slot here because you are missing a proper nice full ring MTT. Just do a 10€ or 20€ xxxx€ guarantee regular speed full ring, nothing fancy needed. I like Kamikaze (the 5e 6max rebuy) but I don't think this is an optimal slot for it. The rebuy period goes on so long that it's pointless to have this MTT in this timeslot and that's why it doesn't get a lot of players. I think Kamikaze would do better 1-2 hours earlier. I do hope it won't get taken off the schedule though as I like it 100x better than zone30s.

9PM-10PM
Even a bigger problem slot here. Please get rid of the 20€ win the button (if you want to have WTB, put it earlier/later in the sched) and give us a 10-20€ freezeout. Joker was great, something like that pretty please? I know it failed to get huge numbers, and honestly I'm very puzzled why that was. Everyone I know played it and loved it and it was one of those mtts we always really looked forward to. If I would've had to choose a favorite tournament on a weekday, Joker would have been very close to the top of that list. When the WTB started everyone stopped playing it. Similarly Booster was great. We really really really need normal (may it be KO or not) stuff here, BADLY. It's epicly terrible to have zone30s here and not flagship primetime regular tournaments. This is the timeslot that needs fixing the most. Also the 9PM 5€/300gtd halfturbo 6max would be a good candidate to be changed for zone30 as it's a pointless tournament for a peak timeslot.

10PM-->
I think later into the schedule is a pretty good time to trial Zone30s again.

Basically, tl;dr version:

-You need more normal freezeout tournaments during peak hours. Your schedule is currently very weird in that regard. You have all kinds of weird stuff, and very little normal mtts
-You have too much weird filler-like the stuff, which are mainly all 6m turbos or semi-turbos with 30-40 player guarantees. Like the 9PM 5€/300gtd is just a completely absurd and pointless tournament at the peak of all peak times. If you want to put zone30s in the sched, these are the tournaments you should target to change
-Not that important compared to the other points, but I think some sort of rebuy regspeed MTT at around 6-7PM GMT+1 would do really well. Either way we are really missing a normal freezeout or rebuy or whatever (regspeed, fullring) at around 5.30PM-6.30PM. The monster stacks don't help as they only actually "start" like 1,5 hours after their start time.


All of the above is what I would honestly do as a poker site manager as well, I'm not posting from a maximizing profits point of view at all

Forgot to add that the 180mans also haven't really ever attracted players on Winamax for some reason. Maybe change those for zone30s?

Hey winamax rep, didn't get a response to my email, so trying here. I won a GPL high limits leaderboard last month, and got an email that my account has been credited with this:



But i have only received 2x 1000€ online tickets and 850€ cash, so something's not right here? Will be waiting for a reply and thanks for running such a great promotion!

this guy knows what hes saying!!!
zone30 should not be the breat and butter mtts
booster should come back and u can change some random 5€ turbos or 5-10 180s to zone30... maybe u can also change the 5€ 800 on i think 5pm to a zone...and thats fine.

additional u can put 1-2 between 1-3am ...

also a bit lower rake of the zone30s would be fair, cause the avg reg take more reentries then in normal reentrie mtts cause the short starting stack

Can you please improve the Monster Stack's structure?
For example try to go from 8/10/12 to 8/12/15 mins?
It's really sick to play the late stages with 20/25bb avg
I know recs love to play with a big stack and this way u can have a long late reg period, but the playability lacks deepness later

Is it impossible for a canadian to open an account on this site? Do you have to travel to the EU to open a bank account in order to play?

Hello,

Our support team has now replied to your email.

If you have any more questions, please do not hesitate to contact us at: support@winamax.com

Cheers

Hello,

You are welcome to play on Winamax from any location where the local legislation permits you to play on an online poker site licenced in France.

Unfortunately, we cannot supply you with a specific list of these countries, but this information is made publicly available and can be found through Internet research or by contacting the relevant government body.

You must own a payment method supplied by a payment service established in a member state of the European Union or a state which is a party to the Agreement on the European Economic Area (including France) with a clause in the agreement for administrative assistance to fight fraud and tax evasion (including France).

You should verify with your bank whether your country fits into these parameters.

Cheers.

https://www.winamax.fr/en/winamax-series

this schedule is perfection. thank you. cant wait to paly every day bc of you

Agree with blakkman RE Winamax Series, very good job!

I do have a complaint regarding something else though. Often I experience a very weird bug on the winamax client while playing.
The complete table freezes randomly and I don't even notice when having more tables up. This leads to me sitting out on winamax for very long periods. I have to click "close" main lobby and then it comes back immediately.

I'm pretty sure I lost a lot of equity in quite some tournaments because of this. Not sure if anyone else had this problem before.

Yes have the same problem every now and then. Also another problem i sometimes have is really short disconnects. For example the clock in the top shows 4:12 until next level, it freezes and jumps to 4:05. No big Deal but sometimes weird when it looks like other people are on the turn of one hand, table freezes, comes back and you face a situation in the bb vs an open. Bascially a siuation out of nowhere. I am playing from germany and evrything else works fine.

Another thing, can you change the min player necessary for a PLO tournament to 4 from 5. Maybe even 3? Your 20€ in the evening sometimes doesnt runs but when it does it always gets 25-30 runners.