The payouts for the GIANT will be based on the $365 deepstacks from last year on day 1. So if you had say 1000 entries on day 1, and when play ended only 20 were left, then the current payout would be $1779. You will then get paid right away. That way, your winnings will not be tied up for a month. The next payout would normally be $2164. So when you come back in July for day 2, if you bust right away in July, you would get $2164-$1779 = $385. This might not be exact but is probably a close approximation of what will happen for this event.

15% payouts should be based on total entries not uniques. If you have to fire 3 bullets and then min cash and still lose money, you should not think not think of "oh I cashed and still lost", but rather think of each entry as a separate tournament. So you really played 3 events, min cashed once, and had a net loss. Nothing unusual about that. If you were to only pay 10% of the field in a reentry event, then those who only fire one bullet have to beat 90% all stacks rather than only 85% if it were a freezeout. That is unfair to them. And the chip stacks do not care or know if the player is a unique player or a reentry.

17.8% takeout on "The Giant" - Good grief, loan sharks have better terms than that!

I'm confused on who they are targeting with The Giant. The buyin is too low for serious pros looking for serious money. While the buyin is appealing to rec players, especially if they're on a budget, they'll have to come back again a month later or so to play Day 2 if they make it that far. For rec players who work and/or have families, that's not a viable option. The whole event just seems odd and out of place, especially for a tournament series which prides itself as the best of the best.

it's a copy cat of the Aria500 tourney that they run.

Does Aria take out nearly 18% also?

Is 18% a lot for a live $365? Seems standard

I agree that each bullet should be viewed as its own tournament. I see players doing idiotic things all the time like not firing another bullet at a huge juicy multi entry $365 because "I have too much in that tourney already" and then fire a small field turbo $365 the next day.

My point is that 15% of entries payouts in fields like the DDS make the tourney not attractive to fire in the first place because they make so many payouts so small.

The come-back-in-a-month and low buyin appears to be targetting locals. Who else could they be targetting?

I don't think you understand how turbos work Plus they have a 12 hours a day policy apparently nowadays, so you're guaranteed to not play deep in the night anyway. If you don't make day 3, you have a full day to rest for 1C.

If you make day 3 (final table basically given 40 minute levels), and you win it, then you can still sleep for a good 12 hours and register with 200 big blinds in the main event. If you make day 2 from 1C of the ME, you have a full day off to rest.

I fail to see the issue sincerely, it's actually well thought.

Pretty sure there's going to be people coming in the weekend for Monster, or Mili Maker that will play it (they'll fly into town late Friday night) and they'll decide to come back if they make day 2, or they have already planned to come back for the ME.

Then why make the buyin so low? Those people would rather have a higher buyin and a bigger prize pool. It seems like they thought low-roller recs like me would like it, but as soon as I saw it I knew I wasn't interested. Hell, Vegas is only an 8 hour drive for me, but I'm not going to take a second trip and maybe have to take time off work for what might amount to a couple hundred buck payout even if I last quite awhile into day 2.

+1. I find myself agreeing with a lot of your posts and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

Clearly 1C was by far the biggest field, but does anyone have a strong opinion of strength of starting says for the main last year?

Because not all tournaments have to fit your schedule
Just like the aria $550 got a ton of entries, this one will get too. Plenty of regs that will fire this, plenty of amateurs too. I like the idea and the scheduling of it. I wish they went with 40 minutes day 2, and then 60 minutes day 3 though.

Are you going to play it? There sure isn't much buzz about it and you're the first one I've heard to express any interest whatsoever in the event. The Giant will be a flop. Yes, they'll have a couple thousand (unique entries) play but it will be far from "Giant." The need to come back for a day two narrows the potential field size too much.

Not every1 can afford $1k+ buyin tourneys....With that many flights they should have a 1 million dollars prize pool.

This is 100% true but recs don't think this way and we need to cater to the recs. Anything that makes recs more likely to re enter is good for the game.

Hit on soft 17 is bad for players, but 3/2 blackjack is becoming more and more scarce, while hit on soft 17 is nearly ubiquitous.

I imagine the last day of this tourney will play quite late. And my only point is its scheduling makes things less convenient for those who intend to play the ME, one way or another. Again, I realize playing this tourney is not prohibitive for entering the ME. It just makes things more difficult.

That being said, it would seem like this event is really geared towards rec players, given its pricepoint and weekend schedules. And since rec players still have an opportunity to play the Friday ME satellites if they like, I suppose this makes sense to restart on Sat.

I was wondering where are there satellites to the WSOP Main Event besides in Vegas two days before the Event.

That's all fine, but your math is representative of a scenario where a player makes it through 98% of the day 1 field. Its hard to say how accurate your $1779 figure is, or if any of the day 1 flights will get anywhere near 98% eliminations. But even if your figure is very accurate, I think players would like to know how much day 1 min-cashing would be worth, and this doesn't tell them.

This is why the Aria event played down to certain percentages instead of a prescribed number of levels. You knew if you made it through 88% of the day 1 field you would get X amount, and 90% you get Y amount and 95% you get Z amount. This causes about a 1.5 level disparity in play between starting flights, which is certainly a potential source of consternation for purists (myself included). However it makes sense and allows players to know exactly what their upside is on day 1, which I think is important for a tourney which places such heavy emphasis on day 1 payout upside due to its scheduling irregularities.

Foxwoods in CT typically has $1100 satellites in early June, but I'm sure there are many others in other locales.

The Aria event two years ago was a huge success. I'm not sure this one will be as successful given the variety of alternatives, but I doubt it will be a flop. One thing they are not doing, which was likely a large contributing factor to the Aria's success, is putting out a big guarantee. That is what really drives rec numbers. Frankly, designing an event geared towards recs and not putting out a guarantee is a bit self-defeating.

Where do you live? There are a lot of casinos that do satellites to the main.