i dont know if this has been mentioned yet, but the new chip sets are reaaaalllyy bad.

the one that was used in the 2k side (i think its the "black-dotted" side event set) has very similar looking 500 and 1000 chips. dealers as well as players made bunch of mistakes which caused a bunch of floor-calling, pot-reconstructions etc. after the 500 chips were raised out a dark green 25k is introduced which then was almost not distinguishable from the blue 5k chip. maybe its the weird LED lighting of the tables, but this has been a concern during the whole tournament. same thing goes for the old "eureka/ipt/estrellas" chip set, where the dark blue 5ks and the black 100s are very similar looking.

prolly nothing is gonna happen from this post since nobody really cares anymore, but well. it sucks. it sucks big time.

Hi all,

Apologies i haven't been able to catch up between Prague, Christmas and Bahamas. I'll reply to what needs replies later this week. As always, any urgent situations, remember to email/facebook/tweet/etc. PokerStarsLive.

In the meantime as an FYI to the community, as part of the change to PokerStars Championship and PokerStars Festival we will be closing down the LAPT and UKIPT threads and renaming the EPT thread to refer to PokerStars live events in general.

Cheers,

Neil
PokerStars Live Events Specialist

Thanks for the updates Neil!
Would be super cool to know more about the Festival schedule. Currently, it's Rozvadov in March and nothing else (what about Belgium, France, Germany, Italy?).

Dear Mr Johnson,
I’m a recreational player in his early 40’s from Paris, and since last year, I can confess I became a fan!

You introduced paying 20% of the field, and I find this great, more people get a bit of their money back, and while for “sharks” it’s a disappointment because they have lost X hours to mincash for me it’s a source of satisfaction and the money is immediately reinvested on the next event!

You introduced the PokerStars Championship / Festival, because you wanted to bring the “EPT” experience worldwide. I almost felt a connexion when you said you were “excited to bring the PokerStars Live experience to new places like Panama or Macau so people could have great poker holidays”.

At this point I was that close to hanging your poster of my hall of fame above my desk.

Because let’s be honest, when I plan a poker holiday I have to admit, I’ve never been too excited about the idea of going to Hamburg or Edimburg in the middle of November … While going to Panama, Macau or Manila seems like a lot of fun and guaranteed heat!
The highlight of my recreational poker year, is playing what I call the “main event low” , the FPS Monaco, the Estrellas in Barcelona, the Eureka Prague, a few satellites for the EPT, and other 1K~ish side events.

The standardization that seems your key word in a recent pokernews interview meant that finally my good friends from PS Macau will – finally - have decent events structures and something better than 2K chips satellites with 10’ levels.

As a supportive silent fish I booked my trip to panama…

I checked the updated schedule (published today Feb 8th, 2016) and what do I see? You’ve turned my beloved 1K “main event low” into an abomination. First, it’s an unlimited rebuy tournament now, and you can do a regular day 1 and day 2 with 60’ or a turbo day 1 & 2 with 30 levels and a super turbo day 1 & 2 with 15’ levels …

The 1K event which was like a mini EPT, is now at best a “Macau Millions” like tournament…

Why would you touch your best selling product, look at FPS Monaco, Estrellas Barcelona or Eureka Prague attendances, always superior to the “real” main event. Changing your best seller, would like like Chanel changing the formula of n°5 , a “faute de goût” as we say in French.

As a silent fish I am ok to donate my money to the ecosystem, but I need to at least enjoy my time at the table… Will I enjoy this tournament when the first day 20 something kids with a six digit BR will take every “spot” and go all in every orbit because their plan is to busto or rebuy during the first day! Clearly not! I am planning on spending 5K in a week not 5K on the first day! For fishes like me everything is about the user experience! I’d like to feel like I’m playing a (cheap) freezeout championship not the midnight express.

It’s also about sportsmanship, I don’t want on day 3 (if I even survive that long) to give my hard-earned stack after 16 one hour long levels, to a guy who arrives fresh at the table because he only spent 4 hours at the table and has won a few flips …

I can certainly understand that you have to please different crowds, the High roller guys, the young pros trying to get their lucky at the 5k main event, but you also need to understand guys like me.

We are a key ingredient of your recipe to make an attractive event that will make the trip to Panama or Macau “EV+” (as the kids say).

So much about standardization. But on the bright side I can see that the “National championships” in Macau and Monaco seems to be like the old ones …

Can you also tell us more about your position on satellite? In the past there were many sats, for both main events, for the 2200€ “high roller”, for the 10K HR , etc … in Panama you are running sat only for both main events. Any particular reason?

On a side note regarding standardization, satellites still have (very) different structures, in Panama the main event sat have 10K starting stack and they are 1 in 9 sats at 650$ , while macau starting stack are 5K or 7K and are 1 in 5 sats for most of them. I’ll give you that Macau is coming back from (very) far regarding satellite structure.

But don’t worry I still think you guys deliver the best value for money, and the safest environment to play but please don’t forget that without the poker lumpenproletariat I’m part of , you’re just left with 100 high stakers and about as many qualifiers.

Mr. nobody, a loyal customer.

This is a sarcastic post or? Isnt it?

I think Macau is the perfect place in the world for big Highrollers at the moment, given the wealth there along with poker booming in China in general. Think a bigger Highroller like you run in Monaco/PCA would do well there. Plz consider running a 800k or 1m HKD (semi turbo) event with re-entries. Hope this is the right thread, now that the EPT is no longer.

Thinking about the Panama stop.. especially in light of Bahamas and having a hard time seeing it not be a fail.. Hoping I will be wrong though. Has there been a large spin n go push? How about regular satellites? How many people have won their way in through satellites compared to how many at Bahamas? I play live MTT's all over the USA- and have heard 0 mentions about this stop- given the pokerstarsNJ live tournament fail- how is pokerstars going to do a better job getting the word out to USA players. Given geography- I can't imagine it succeeding without them

I saw the monaco 10k 6max has been changed to a 5k. Think its a really bad switch for this venue. Might actually get less overall runners. Locals have deep pockets and prefer a bigger sweat. I would actually likely skip it now, as I guess it means ~20% payout instead of 15 as its a lower buyin. The 5k hyper turbo 8max should def be a 10k also for the same reasons. Im fairly there is not a single hs reg in the world who would not prefer the change

+1

As a recreational player / Poker tourist i had a lot of fun going to PSC Panama and then to PSC Macau. Clearly for me it was so much more fun than going to Dublin in February, or to a Madrid casino located between a DIY hardware store and a brothel along a motorway 30km from madrid city center.
PSC Panama was nice there were a lot of 300 ~ 500 USD events with descent structures (like 15K stacks and 30’ levels) and the 1K event was a success attracting more than 800 players which is descent even by European standard.
Of course the main event was a bit of a disappointment attracting 350 players but that’s the first time a 5K main event was held in this region …
Regarding HS , I have no idea, but from an outside POV it seems to be a limited scene and I always see the same faces at all events (o’dwyer , Haxton, Greenwood etc …)
The dealer were good willing for the most part, but hardly any spoke English that was a problem. They came from all SA countries, brazil , equador , panama … For the bigger buyin events PS used dealers from the European tours which I recognized from previous events.
Cash game was ok despite a quite high rake and and 5% tax when you cash out … so the trick was to cash out only once on the last day to avoid paying the tax multiple times or sell the chips to another player. I didn’t really care about that as I don’t play cash during EPT’s.
So overall I’d give Panama 4/5 stars for the fun part (visiting the canal , etc) and 3,5/5 stars for the tournament with some room to improve for next year.
Macau was another story, while Rex the local PS live TD is a great guy, his dealers are the worse in the world. If you combine that with the poorest structures in the world you end up not really enjoying yourself …
Unless you are a high staker, the tournaments really sucked. Who wants to play 2K USD event with a starting stack of 10K. Who wants to play a turbo sat with 3 ou 4k starting stack? The only semi descent low stakes tournament was the poker Asia tournament à 5500 HKD (~700 USD) which was a 15K starting stack and 30 minutes levels.
The Pokerstars open & Cup could have been descent too if they had longer levels.
Some days I only played for 1 hour or so, and busted due to poor structure and had nothing else to play/do.
If you consider how many hands a Macanese dealer can deal per hour, it’s just not acceptable to have tournaments with 20’ levels… Another problem is that dealers ignore the rules of poker. The levels should be at least 30% longer compared to European structure. Only Macanese residents can deal in Macao, I get that, but the structures should take this into account.
I was joking about that with the European TD which was present, and I hope he notified PS Live executives about this problem …
Another problem is that the poker room is located across Macao’s Hard Rock Café, I can let you imagine the decibels on a Friday night! That’s tilting : ) This is a good stress test location for noise cancelling headsets!
So overall I enjoyed Macao great hotels, great casinos, great city 4,5/5 but poor festival offer and poor structures I’d give it 2/5 and it’s generous considering how frustrated I felt all week! It’s such a shame as Macao has such a great potential.

Regarding previous comments about SHR's, it's my understanding that chinese players can't import huge cash amounts into Macao like they used to, so now chinese junkets have diverted a part of their VIP action from Macao to Manila, and that includes poker as Poker King Club organize events in Manila with HKD buyins that only attracts the macao "scene" , as no Filippino players take place in those events. Later this month a 1 million HKD (~120K USD) will be held in Manila during APT.

I also played the PSCMacau, but as opposed to how seriallooser puts it, I felt that the structure is better compared to any other times of the year! Haha we have been fed the worst structure in Asia all these times and PSCMacau seems to have struck a chord with myself and other frequent players of Macau tournies.

A standard Macau main event of $2K buyin will have 20K start stacks, 40 mins blinds on Day 1, and omission of the levels 75/150, 250/500, 1,200/2,400.

The tournies that the Asian Poker Tour ran has so much better structure, but those are often held in Manila and has the absence of the Chinese players which means not so great turnout.

ah yes you're right PSC Macao was an improvement from many Macao events but could it be worse? (ie : i remember playing a macao main event a year or two ago, with a starting stack of ... 7500 chips)

but imagine how must have felt the "EPT crowds" who are coming to asia for the first time when they saw the structures?

the 8,800 HKD (1100 USD) event with a starting stack of 25K was the best value for money tournament ever held in Macao. it attracted more than 800 players, i hope Rex and the rest of the team will do more of those

However the side event were really bad

Did you share my opinion about Macao dealers?

Value wise prolly the $15K Red Dragon main is the best in Macau with over 1k runners consistently and its a freezeout.

For something like PSC, the dealers are mostly part time croupiers so cant really blame them..

Please consider running a 10k turbo/hyper satty into the 100k on the evening of the 27th April

why did you remove the 5k+5k ko turbo on last day ? Idk if that happened to panama/macau too since i didnt attend, but wasnt it a very good attendance and appreciated tourney?

there was no such tourney in Panama or in Macao.

So I saw on the PSC-Prague website regarding the Hilton Casino Atrium Prague that the Dress Code says "Casual, but no Sportswear".

Can someone please define for me what exactly "Sportswear" means?

Normally no joggers, tank tops and so on.
Dont look like a gangsta rapper (except your one ) and it should be fine.
Even sneakers should not be a big problem. If there where black, even better.