@c o on - pko sats are being tested now. You might be interested in playing those Search for 'test' in text filter

Because of the simple fact that the only reason the schedule is so over saturated with pkos is that Stars gets to rake and re re re rake money much more effectively if instead of 15% of the field roughly 40% of the field get money back, there a less money in final tables there a less importance in deep runs the correct strat in them is to gamble like crazy. They don't make good championship tourneys. They are good on the side but the whole premise just doesn't suit a big series imo.

FCOOP Main Event last year was 50% PSKO

E: BountyCOOP would be better than TCOOP. I understand why Greedmaya is pushing PSKO formats with ever increasing % KO, but I really doubt and hope they aren't ******ed enough to kill the biggest prestige tournament series of the year.

Thanks! They were available for a brief time, but now there are 2 running and none open for registration.

And I'm not sure if the PKO feature is significant enough to compensate for the bubble toughness (the turbo $0.55 sat will award 22 seats to $5.50 MM-70, the hyper $0.55 one - 9 seats). If you have one of the nine $5.50 seats almost secured, you're not going to risk your stack to grab a $1-2 bounty.

hey luke, any update on wcoop please?

man you got stamina

The champion stands out in a PKO even more than in a non-KO tourney (despite winning fewer BIs) because he's the only one who gets his own bounty. The 2nd-9th place finishers indeed get a lot less, but a championship is all about the 1st place

As for the correct strategy, it's not as trivial as you seem to think.

PKO God, grant me the patience to wait for a fatter value spot when I'm short,
The courage to gamble when it's worthwhile even vs tight ranges and potential overcallers,
And the wisdom to know the difference between the two scenarios.

Haha really like the prayer

How have WCOOP dates not been announced yet - I am making travel plans for September & October just guessing when WCOOP will start.
Please give us the dates!

yeah, we really need at least dates for WCOOP. People need to make their plans if pokerstars do not want us to miss it all

No doubt a pointless post but i'll proceed anyway.....

MicroMillions $5r and $3r got $233k and $109k prize pools respectively.

Bare in mind that the 3r which got 109k was at 7pm UK on a Monday night!

The regular $5r $3.5k gtd at 6pm UK time one hour before the MM generated a prize pool of around $4k.......

The current rebuy offering is essentially set up to be terrible, however it's still a format that players love and there is evidently still a huge market for a decent sized small/medium stake (3r, 5r, 7r or 11r) rebuy tournament on the schedule, whether it be a specific nightly or weekend special. All it takes is some effective labelling and jobs a gooden. It's basically a 100% guarantee to be a success. Remember the great 8r $40k gtd sunday edition as well as the 81r1a. It really is a simple addition to the schedule that would be a huge improvement.

Also: WCOOP dates please!

Can you please move the $5,50 deep stack at 19:15 CET to maybe 18:15 CET? It's just like one hour too long in the night/morning... This tournament just perfectly suits me so it's hard to ignore it, but one hour earlier would be the nuts

Luke's out of the office for a change.

Shock I know.

+1

Lol no way. It's good how it is.

Hey everyone,

Lots to catch up on! First of all, I'll be posting an initial WCOOP schedule both here and on our Discord server this week. There will be a small window to provide feedback, so make sure you take a look when the opportunity presents itself! WCOOP 2017 will run from September 3rd-26th.

Next up, a nice multi-quote…

Thanks mate, always appreciate the feedback. Apologies that I wasn't clear about PKO satellites. As Vincent mentioned, I was speaking in terms of what I thought was technically possible today. We ran some tests yesterday and they seemed to work as intended, ending when the seats were reached. We'll run some more tests in the short term, but here's a few considerations:

• If the target is $10 and we want to ensure that 3 seats are guaranteed, the guarantee on a tournament where 50% of the buy-in goes to the bounty prize pool needs to be $60. What will happen is that the tournament will be titled "3 seats guaranteed" but will show 6 seats in the tournament lobby. As players register, the number of seats awarded will go DOWN to exactly 3 before increasing again. This will cause confusion, and might be enough of a reason on its own to not do these (or at least a reason to not have guarantees).
• We need to determine what the optimal split between bounty prize pool and cash prize pool is. The two tests we ran were 50/50 and I feel that too many players finished outside of the money while still winning significant prizes. I think that the amount of money in the bounty prize pool needs to be lowered, probably to 33% or 25%.
• We need to communicate how this works! While most players love Progressive KOs, this format could be confusing.
  

If you have any thoughts on the above, please let me know!

For some short amount of time around Friday/Saturday, our SNG satellites disappear in order to allow time for us to deploy them for the next week.

Forwarded this on to the responsible person and had it fixed. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.

And the fjords were amazing! Seven days of standing on scary rocks, driving, and spending 24/7 with my lady was just what the doctor ordered.

Are you a fan? If so, why?

The above is a good explanation of how the filters work. If there’s a filter for a particular attribute, then unticking that filter means you won’t see anything with that attribute. In general, the filters cover most cases for the majority of our players. For those who want to dig a bit deeper, I'll always suggest the text box.

I've passed this feedback on to our SNG manager, who made the change to a $3.30 buy-in. I agree that in cases such as this one where it is only 5 cents from a standard buy-in, the SNG buy-ins should change.

This is a clever idea to get around the technical issue I *thought* we would have, but it doesn't seem to be needed! Thanks for giving it some thought.

It is never this simple! In addition to determining whether or not the feature would be a net positive, the requirements need to be written and it needs to be weighed against other development items and then, finally, prioritized. Once it is prioritized, resources need to be allocated from the pool of developers.

I would much rather put something in front of the players immediately and see if it is possible to tweak it within our existing framework. That is why I think Vincent's idea above is great. It isn't a detrimental experience and doesn't require development. All that said, I'm open to more ideas!

We don't have the ability to turn a tournament into a shootout after it has started, so we came up with this solution. Basically, it plays as Zoom until four players remain in order to ensure that the final two tables are heads-up matches leading to a final table of the two winners.

I agree that the NLHE Sunday Grand has been a subpar performer, but what would you do with the PLO? Change to $530 as well? Should they allow re-entry?

In order to determine what is best for the Bigs, it will take some extensive data analysis. We'll have to look at overall tournament length, participation over time, time slots, buy-ins, and much more. It is no small task to determine what to do with this product. I appreciate all the suggestions that have been made, but the Bigs are not going to be changing before WCOOP.

I like the Bigger/Hotter names, and I suspect you might be right that bringing the names back would, on its own, have an impact. However, I feel it would be disingenuous and would shortly remove the value from the special names. In short, I want there to be actually be something bigger or hotter about them.

This was a bug and is in the process of being fixed.

Some changes were made to the structures last week:

Regular speed: 12 minute levels when four tables remain and 15 minutes when two tables remain
Turbo speed: 8 minute levels when two tables remain
Hyper-turbo speed: 5 minute levels when two tables remain

Have passed on this feedback to our SNG manager, thanks.

Later this week. Back to the grind!

There is no Last Man Standing, but instead we have the MicroMillions Invitational which has $25K added. I like this promotion because even those who have limited time to play still have a chance to qualify. You can find it in the lobby under Events / MicroMillions / Invitational Freeroll.

I tend to agree with this. In retrospect, we should have had a cap on this tournament. Lesson learned for next time.

How would one random tourney be similar?

No tournaments have been added, we just changed the structure so that level times beyond the Zoom portion of existing tournaments are longer.

No, we're not waiting until after Barcelona. I should be editing it now instead of posting here!

The level times for MicroMillions are as deep as they can be for one day tournaments. They are not 8 minutes throughout - they change to 10 minutes once late registration closes. Many of them also have longer levels deeper in the tournament.

Thanks! And sick join date, btw.

I agree that changing the Sunday Grands would require more than just a buy-in change. We'd need to get in touch with players who used to play the Sunday 500, or more generally, high stakes tournament players.

What does your ideal Sunday look like? What else would you change? Although I know change doesn't come as quick as you like, providing the feedback gives us context when it does come time to dig into the schedule and make these changes. We're working hard on WCOOP so that we can attempt to get ahead of the curve a bit and back to focusing on the schedule.

Will you give a more thorough explanation as to what you don't like and how you would improve it?

The point about why we offer them has been discussed to death, but I do not disagree with the point about PKOs in major Series. This was a point that Team Pro Online brought up when they visited earlier in the year. SCOOP did not see a significant increase in how many PKOs were on offer, nor will WCOOP. I'll happily let you know what the year on year difference is once the schedule is posted.

Luke, thanks for changing the $3.25 shootout sats to $3.30 - I may play them (or the $0.65 spins again) closer to Sunday depending on the mood

I can't have access to Winamax currently, so I haven't had a chance to become a fan of Hit And Run sats, just read about them in the news and found that idea interesting. Forget about it.

Now let me complain about my biggest current pet peeve (again, this is an SNG matter).

Hand-for-hand play slows down $1 36-man super-KOs (where the blinds grow by 1.5-2 times every 2 minutes). This makes me want to move up to $3 24-man SKOs (where the bubble happens at the FT), and I pity those who can't do so. Either make the FT 7-max in the 36-mans or reduce their money zone from 6 to 5 players (the 6th place pays <1 BI as of now). I'm worrying about the negative user experience that the bubble with 7 players at 2 tables might be giving.

Sunday 500 has such a great reputation you don't really need to change much as it is a proven winning formula, like the warmup and million. Maybe advertise it as a rakefree tournament first week back 'The Return of The Sunday 500' and watch it get over 1k runners

You name them "Bigger" and "Hotter" on Sundays. You increase the guarantees for them on sunday. Thus they are bigger/hotter. Rocket science. Just look at the numbers from previous years when they were called Bigger/Hotter. I almost feel like you're working against us sometimes you know.

The aim is to get good structure, high field size, high prizepool tournaments. Stop doing things that are hindering this and start doing things that may facilitate it.

Also do not forget to sneakily increase rake like you did in Super KOs. It will make them bigger/hotter for sure!

I appreciate you posting in hereLuke, but have any suggestions been implemented? Seems you just ask more questions and that's the end of it.

Like the bigger hotter thing. Do you really need to collate all the data to make that change? You say is disingenuous to change the name without adding value. So just add the value. Personally the hots plays out fine but adding couple mins to bigs would be great. Even marketing them as special would increase participation, remember the Sunday edition mtts? They were huge just because of a label.

wasnt bigger / hotter bigger gtd and slightly longer blind levels hence the diff name?

How fast a suggestion is decided upon depends on many factors, such as the technical ease of implementation and the number of recreationals who'd be ready to play the proposed tournament(s). Vincent's (Re8uZ's) suggestion of PKO satellites has been tested surprisingly soon

I don't know what are you talking about... You changed mm events from 10 min to 8 and saying they are not 8 min. "they change to 10 minutes once late registration closes" - mark them as bubble rush then or turbo. Why you always trying to reduce the length? If people want to play a fast mtt - they will register some turbo or hyper mtts! A lot of people want to play mtts with a good structure! But I forgot that amaya does not care about poker...