You make an interesting point with regard to the non-flop games. That's worth examining; thank you!

As for two-day Events, it's quite likely that a majority of WCOOP Events will be two-day Events. 57 of 70 Events (81.4%) in WCOOP 2015 were two-day Events, and I expect that ratio to hold steady or increase in WCOOP 2016.

That's an interesting idea, though the 1/100th seems to me to work out much better in many/most cases. For example, in the case of a $109 WCOOP Event, having a $5.50 Mini-WCOOP Event puts it at only 1/20th, which is way too close. In any case, I think that the 1/100th with a cap is good and consistent for the majority of Mini-WCOOP. As I've mentioned throughout the discussion, the point of Mini-WCOOP is to enable players who have no realistic chance of playing in WCOOP the opportunity to experience the type of play that exists in WCOOP, not to build huge prize pools.

Yes, this is a bit of an issue, as the nomenclature on the main schedule has changed a bit. Having said that, it wasn't too much of an issue during SCOOP, as the knockout amounts are displayed clearly in each tournament lobby, and the main schedule nomenclature had already changed by then. I believe that they changed the nomenclature in the main schedule because pretty much all knockouts on the main schedule are super-knockouts.

As I mentioned in the early discussion thread which I started quite a while ago, we decided to bring back some of the $320 Events which played in WCOOP 2014. Bringing them all back would have expanded WCOOP 2016 to 90 Events. There were versions of WCOOP 2016 which were that large, but ultimately we decided not to expand by 20 Events from WCOOP 2015 to WCOOP 2016. So, in the end, we decided to bring back one genre of Events in the $320 range for this year and to evaluate the success of the returns before considering further expansion and returns for WCOOP 2017. FL Omaha Hi/Lo wasn't run at $320 in WCOOP 2014, it was run at $530, and we haven't decided to bring that one back, as we already have the $1,000 FL Omaha Hi/Lo Championship.

WCOOP 2015

$700 NL Single Draw: 134
$700 NL Draw: 118
$700 Badugi: 113
$700 Triple Draw 2-7: 189

$700 Stud: 138
$1,050 Stud Hi/Lo: 185
$1,050 Razz: 184

As a genre, stud was more popular than draw by quite a bit with Triple Draw being the outlier, while Stud hi was the outlier in the stud events.

Having said all of the above, if we were to abandon bringing back a genre instead of individual Events during the push to bring back just a few niche games at the $320 level, I tend to think that we'd replace $320 Stud with $320 FL Omaha Hi/Lo, not $320 Triple Draw. It's an interesting point to consider; thank you for bringing this up!

Thanks as always for the feedback; please keep it coming!

Most of the limit tournaments starts at 16:00 ET. The only tournament which starts early is 2-7 triple draw. Why is that? There will be an 8game tournament on 15th September at 16:00, and the next day, the first tournament is the 2-7triple draw (1k$ at 10:00). I think 80% of the 2-7 players will play in the 8game as well. Please move the 2-7 tournament a little bit later, at least to 13:00 ET from the 10:00 starting time. The same is true for badugi, it starts way too early at 7:00 ET. Can you maybe move all the limit tournaments to same starting time, if possibly to 13:00? I think 16:00 starting time for this is too late in general.

Event 44: $700 Players’ Choice Event #2 (non-NL Holdem): what does this mean? How will you decide the game(s)?


I also agree with the others: if you have two buyins for HORSE (320$-2k), 8game (320$, 10.300$), stud games (320-1000$) then please add 2-7triple draw and omaha high low also there. It’s only two tournaments and these games are very popular. I see your point that you dont want to add badugi-5card draw pl tournament, but these games should have 2 level of buyins as well.

+1 for only 1050$ Supertuesday and Thursday Thrill for the second week
+1 for less PSKO. You said that only 15,8% of the tournaments are Knockouts. But you also counted the limit tournaments…Way too much of NLHE/PLO tournaments have knockout formats, please reduce this

+1 to 20 more events please

I dont think 1/20 is too close. Do you really think someone will play a 109$ buyin if they do not have a choice to play the 5$ one? I'm pretty sure that they will fire both if they can play the 109.

104$ its a lot of money, and ur logic do not make sense, i cant understand why do you think having a 5$ tournament will stop people to play the 109$ one, people who can pay 109$ will play regardless the big one, and people who cannot play, will not. They can take a shot a 5$ bucks sat, but i'm pretty sure they will deposit 10$ just to be sure.

And thanks for all the replys Bryan, cant wait for wcoop!

Moar, always!

I think it would make more sense to have sort of themed weeks by variant.
Something like:

PLO
O8
Mixed

or

PLO & Mixed
O8
Mixed & PLO

Maybe you could put HORSE games together in mostly one week... or 7Stud games... many possibilities. O8 is a good bridge, because the majority of variants have strong resemblances to PLO... and LO8 is part of HORSE and other mixed games (along with the PL/NL variants in mixed games). So players that can't play the whole series can fit in the maximum number of tourneys they want to play in X weeks/days. This would be good for both the players and Stars (a rare opportunity). They aren't far off from making a good schedule an excellent one, but it would require some minor tweaking IMO.

Bryan, do you already now the structure or the gtd price pool of the Mini WCOOP Main Event? An will the Mini WCOOP run in place of the 2nd Chance Events or additional?

Apart from that, great schedule, even though the Events with a greater buy in than 320$ are too big for me.

Mini-WCOOP isn't running in place of the 2nd Chance tournaments, no.

Having said that, there will not be 2nd Chance tournaments this year. We have considered removing 2nd Chance tournaments for several years, and this year we're finally doing away with them. Realistically, once we had late registration in the way that we've had it for years, 2nd Chance tournaments really weren't necessary in any real sense. With 82 Events on this year's schedule, we've decided against running 2nd Chance tournaments.

$100 for him/her who can tell even ONE GOOD reason why there should be more than one 9-max NLHE or 6-max PLO Event - or any other game more than once in the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS' schedule!

Hmmm...this is tough. It's 50/50 between:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL_pRiXov7Q

and

http://i.imgur.com/91sn32Q.jpg

Because the majority of players wouldn't be interested in the series and it would be epic failure. Please ship to Vingtcent on pokerstars.

The $100k is the day after a high stakes reg's wedding, and ~7 players will miss it due to being in the US that day. I think on the scheduled day it would get less than 15 unique players.

I think the following weekend would be better, and I agree with DPeters that $100k is somewhat restrictively big and that the $21k was a huge success.

inb4 skip wedding to play 100k

Really don't understand why you choose re-entry for the main event. Fact is, it will keep many "i'll take a shot":ers away.

Sure, the re-entry will probably ensure that you will surpass the guarantee. But what's with the "we just HAVE to break the previous years's WCOOP main prizepool" thinking ? It will only make things problematic for the series in 2017.

The main event of both WSOP and the WCOOP has historically been very special events for everyone. If you now change this (to a re-entry) this special feeling for WCOOP will be gone. It will make the main event regarded as any other of the higher buyin event of the series. I fear more or less only regs will play it - if not this time around then next year's.

We've been notified of this in private communications, and I'd say that it's pretty likely that the $102K will move as a result, as at least eight players are likely to be at said wedding.

Many of the above thoughts have been taken into consideration, I assure you... and were taken into consideration before we applied a single re-entry to the SCOOP 2016 Main Events. Having said that, the application of a single re-entry to the SCOOP 2016 Main Events was very successful, and gave no indication of any harm to any of the Events. Players who wanted a second shot at the Event(s) from which they were eliminated were able to take that second chance, and the Event(s) were enormously successful. I believe that we'll see similar results with the WCOOP Main Event.

If players have been "demanding" 6-max PL/NLO8 , why do you think it is that the WCOOP prize pools have been declining for PLO8 since switching to 6-max?

As a control, FLO8 WCOOP prize pools have been in steady range of $196.5k to $214.5k over last 4 WCOOPs.

Meanwhile, $320 PLO8 WCOOP prize pools were in a steady range of $272.1k to $284.1k from 2011 to 2013. Once it was switched to 6-max, it declined to $242.7k in 2014, then to $194.7k in 2015 (although some of the decline in 2015 could possibly be due to addition of $1,050 PLO8 event).

This would seem to contradict the statement that players are "demanding" 6-max. If it's uncertain (let alone if it's clearly false), one would think you would at least offer one FR and one 6-max for PLO8 (and probably NLO8 as well). This also would allow you to track participation in each variant (FR vs. 6-max) until it becomes more certain which variant is in higher demand.

Also, +1 to offering a lower buy-in FLO8 event. You went from $530 and a 2nd chance event to only a $1,000 event? Similarly for FL27TD. It's a bit dismaying that the tradition of these games (as played in COOPs, regular MTTs, and/or WSOP events) is being abandoned for questionable or undeclared reasons, but of course that's up to you and your overlords.

I know I'm a broken record, but it would also be great if you could group variants according to similarity, at least more than you are currently. Moving the $1k PLO8 championship to Sunday Sep. 11 would allow us to play 4/5 of the PL/NLO8 events over a 3-day weekend, rather than having to take a couple of weekdays off just to play one event (and therefore skip it in many cases).

/Rant

^horrible idea to move a PLO event to a sunday, a lot of nlhe players who otherwise might play will skip it as a result

You may be right, although not sure overall entries would suffer and there already 2 PLOs and an NLO8 event on other Sunday. How many NLHE players would play PLO8 event, but not on a Sunday? I honestly don't know. Perhaps moving it to Mon. 9/12 or Tue. 9/13 would be better?

nice schedule.

I know the subject is not about Mini-WCOOP mainly but i want to say few words about it:

DON'T forget Razz like u did on MicroMillions.
And: More Fixed Limit and No Limit, not the Pot Limit versions with insane huge fields.

I appreciate.

Peace.

The Mini-WCOOP schedule will mirror the WCOOP schedule precisely in terms of which formats will be played at which times.

After reading your post, I spent about an hour taking an in-depth second (or third, fourth, fifth... pick one) look specifically at Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo in both WCOOP and SCOOP over the past six years. In looking at the data, I noticed two things which stand out quite starkly:

1. Participation in PL Omaha Hi/Lo declined significantly from 2009 to 2010, then (corrected for Black Friday decline which affected everything) leveled off from 2011 to 2013 - even rising a bit.
2. Participation in 2014 (when the $320 was changed to 6-Max) dropped sharply, then dropped again in 2015. A similar, though much less severe drop was seen in SCOOP in 2016 when the change to 6-Max was made.

As a bit of a control, I took a look at how FLO/8 did in WCOOP over the years. From 2013 to 2014, it dropped by 7.5% (while not changing format at all)... while PLO/8 dropped 19.8% when the format changed from 9-Max to 6-Max. This seems significant.

I also took a look at NL Omaha Hi/Lo, which is relatively new to the *COOP scene, first appearing in 2013. In 2014, both 6-Max and 9-Max were offered within the same series, with 6-Max having more participants. In SCOOP 2016, three 6-Max NLO/8 Events were offered, with each tournament within those Events outperforming the tournaments within the 9-Max version offered in SCOOP 2015. To be fair, two of those Events were offered in very popular formats (PSKO and Zoom) and the third offered re-entries, however the fact remains that the prize pools were all higher than the previous year's version and it was quite clear that the players' appetite for 6-Max NLO/8 was large. Before SCOOP 2016 started, many questioned the fact that we were running three separate NL Omaha Hi/Lo Events, but in the end we generated $1.8 Million in prize pools in those Events.

Having said the above, it's not a definite thing that there will never be another 9-Max, 8-Max, 4-Max, etc... NL Omaha Hi/Lo Event. We're always open to feedback, and if it seems that there is significant demand for a version of an Event which we're not currently offering, we're certainly open to change. That's why I'm here with threads such as this one.

From my perspective, I think that it's pretty clear that we need to look at changing the PL Omaha Hi/Lo Event to 9-Max, or perhaps to 8-Max... and I'll be bringing this up in our scheduling meeting next week as we look toward finalizing the schedule. Thank you very much for bringing this up.

As always, thank you for the feedback, and please keep it coming! We'll be finalizing the WCOOP 2016 schedule early next week. Please make sure to reply over the weekend with whatever feedback you'd like us to consider! You can reply to this thread, send me a PM, or write to us at wcoop at pokerstars dot com... however you'd like to reach us, all feedback will be considered! THANK YOU!

Hi Bryan,

Do you have any details about the sats that you will be running for WCOOP?

Could we please have sats -> into sats. I'm sure this has a name. For example, for a $109/$215 event, it would be nice to have $5.50/$11 sats into $27/$55 sats, if this is not too much work?

Thanks

feeder sats i beleive they are called, and +1

Beginning a while ago now (WCOOP 2015, if I'm remembering correctly), I've made a habit of running a Round 1 satellite to pretty much every satellite with a buy-in of $7.50 or higher. This has been very successful over the past year-plus, and I don't have any plans to do away with this habit/plan.

I'm also considering running significantly more Round 1s for WCOOP 2016, as far as that goes, particularly as the Events get closer, the idea being that the direct satellites can have higher seat guarantees if they run less frequently and have more Round 1 satellites to them. For example, whereas in the past with two hours to go until a target, there might have been 12 direct satellites to the target, with each one guaranteeing one seat. I'm thinking that it might make more sense to trim that down to 4 direct satellites, each one guaranteeing five seats and with each of them having extensive Round 1s pointing at them. This isn't definitely going to happen, but it is being considered.

Well I hope it does because I love the idea. Give lower stakes people like me more chance to play sats. Since WCOOP is so big (for me) even the sats are out of my bankroll & I'd love a chance to fire some sats!

Kind of disappointed with the schedule.

- Way too many KO and PSKO.
- A lot of the vanilla NLHE mtts are just the same as on the regular schedule, probably the GTD wont even be (much) higher. With the second chances being gone there not much extra tournaments really. I already know I will skip a bunch of days because there is just not many exciting tournaments to play.
- The new 1575 buy-in is probably a good idea and I think it will create good fields.
- Why no variable levels? I think a lot of people like it, especially for the events that start pretty late for Europeans.
- Love the addition of win the btn, would have liked to see it as a 6max though
- A mini version of the 100k would be nice

Thanks for doing a detailed analysis of the O8 games, Bryan.

Iirc, part of the reason there was a decline one year was due to the late 5 pm EST start time and not choosing it to make the event a 2-day event. A lot of the Euros, who would have played it if it started earlier or was a 2-day event skipped it. The start time and 2-day don't seem to be an issue this year.

In general, i think you want a mix of 6-max and 8/9 max for both big bet games. Would you consider making the 1k Championship events 6max and the 320 9-max?