I agree with all of this and would just add that, anything I take interest in, be it poker, or golf or whatever... if I'm going to be spending any significant amount of time doing it, I like to do it as well as possible. I don't think I'm alone in that regard. So, learning about all the various aspects of the activity goes directly to becoming better at it, and also aids in the enjoyment of the activity along the way.

I don't think I would ever claim that all recs want this or that. Excuse me if it came across that way. "Recs" are not a monolith, any more than any other group are. However, I do think there are some general characteristics which the majority of recs share, and these primarily revolve around the place poker has in their lives compared to regulars.

As for the MS, a single tournament does not prove or disprove anything. However, this tourney was really popular because it broke the mold for $1500 events at the WSOP. It appealed to both recs (as I have defined them), and regulars. I suspect it will not be as popular this year because of the scheduling change. And frankly, those regulars or others looking for the slowest possible structure could and probably should gravitate towards the marathon, so that too may take away from the MS this year.

As for me, like I said I am not a typical rec. My occupation affords me a great deal of flexibility and time when it comes to traveling to Vegas, or posting on 2+2. However, I don't play poker for a living. I guess I'm somewhere in between. Nevertheless, I do gravitate towards tourneys that I feel will have lots of recs in them. I feel like this is beneficial both from a competition standpoint and also from a prize pool (ROI) standpoint. I feel like tourney schedulers should do everything in their power, all else being equal, to make their events attractive to rec players. Unfortunately, I see that many TDs have begun doing the opposite, and attempt to make up for lost revenue by introducing concepts like unlimited rebuys. If they didn't make poor scheduling choices, they wouldn't have to resort to such tactics.

And lastly, I don't see why one has to be for slow tourneys or fast tourneys. I am certainly not a proponent of fast tourneys. I don't believe I have ever paid more than 250 for a single day tourney, and I never play turbos. I feel like 30 minute blinds and skipping of multiple traditional levels for buy-ins $500+ is borderline criminal. That being said, I don't think playing for two full days before the money is reached in anything but a "special" event like the WSOP ME represents a good use of anyone's time. Fortunately, there's a happy medium which can be achieved. Tournaments can easily be structured so that players start with a good amount of chips to avoid early pitfalls, and play reaches the money in 1.5 days or less, and the tourney wraps up in 3 days or less.

Gah, currently have a 2 queen, non-smoking room at The Linq for 7 nights at $388. Just saw that I can get a 2 queen, mountain view suite at Rio for $373.

I plan on playing some at the Rio but also will be cruising some traditionally worse 1/2, 1/3 games plus some different poker series'. The suite at Rio is much nicer I'm sure and the price is on point but I just don't know if it will be worth it if I spend 4-5 of my 7 nights hanging on the strip

Hell if its only about room costs, Circus Circus is cheap 😂

Lololol. I need to get an Mlife card so I can compare which one discounts better.

The quote I responded, and objected to was "A "rec" player will be willing to give up a little when it comes to structure in order for a tourney to both make the money, and finish in a shorter amount of time."

I think that is a broad overstatement, especially given how often I hear rec players kvetching about structures.

It may be an overstatement, but I do feel if given a choice, the majority of rec players would choose schedule over structure, with all else being equal.

I'm a rec player and if given a choice between a crappy structure but on a weekend or a great structure but during the week, and assuming same buyin and same level of prestige, I would find a way to take the time off during the week for the good structure.

In fairness, I do well financially and have a job that allows me the luxury to take a few weeks off so I would say I'm probably not the typical rec player.

Maybe so. But I doubt you would chose a good structure during the week over a pretty good structure on the weekend. The choice doesn't have to be between great and crappy, and in that sort of environment, scheduling matters a great deal.

Hmm....I guess it would depend on how different the structures are. If we're talking 30 minute levels to 40 minute, you may be right. 30 minute to 50+ minute and I'll take the 50+ all day long.

30 minute levels on multi-day tourneys should definitely be avoided.

I'm generally a rec player who plays 3-4 WPTs or similar main events each year. The only place I refuse to play is Borgata because planning on playing 2 days of the main (where I won't even make the money) requires 3 days off no matter what. It has one of the best structures and one of the best size fields, but alas. Scheduling matters folks.

I agree, obviously. And my scheduling flexibility is far greater than the typical rec player. There are a number of events I avoided this year, most notably the WSOPc Main Event in Vegas in March, because they changed the schedule to be less rec-friendly. That event got more than 22% fewer entrants this year compared to last year. Some of that can be attributed to variance, but I think a non-insignificant portion of the decline is due to the scheduling change. For some reason they decided to make the same scheduling changes to the weekend events this summer. I imagine the decline won't be as great, given the large number of people who will be in town for long stretches of time. But I'd be shocked if there were not a noticeable decline. And there's still the ever-present, and unanswered, question of why the WSOP has made these apparently poor business decisions.

You (sorta) talked me into it! Planning to fly out that day in time for the second flight. Even got another comp room for that night (wasn't expecting that!). Could play as many as 9 bracelet events, which is as many as I've played lifetime!

Glglgl

As a rec player who is coming out to Vegas this summer I had the choice to play a WSOP $1500 or Wynn Summer Classic $1600. I chose the Wynn Classic due to that tournament providing more play. If the all things were equal I'd go WSOP for the "prestige" factor, but as a rec who doesn't get to play these bigger tournaments often I want my experience to last a bit longer.

Actually you are EXACTLY the type of rec player that buys into $2,000+ buyin events at WSOP (with perhaps the exception of the ME.)

You've made my point. Not sure what the argument is here in the end.

If you're hunting the best possible HOURLY dollar amount, yes playing the marathon is bad. If you are looking for the best possible STRUCTURE, and a bracelet, you should play it. So regs concerned with ROI will (or rather should) avoid it, while recs that look for a deep structure will be very interested.

That's not why the event got less people. It was run the same weekend as LAPC WPT Main in LA, and a couple other $1,600s. That's why I didn't play it for example.

Also it was in the casino floor so people didn't wanna get smoked out. Not because they moved day 2 on a Monday. Lol.

Holding the event during the LAPC was weird, granted, but I don't think a competing $10K event (not sure what other $1600 events you are referring to) accounts for almost a quarter of the previous year's field. And if the location was an issue, then the numbers for the other events would have been down as well. I haven't checked every other event, but I did check the first 365and the 365 prior to the main and both of those had larger fields this year.

Maybe so, but I think the percentage of recs who are like me, and perhaps Dr. Meh, is quite small. Most recs do not have the sort of scheduling flexibility we do.

The WSOP is a bit of an anomaly and we won't really know scheduling affects of moving the weekend events to Day 2 on monday until next month.

Most regular weekend multi-flight tournaments are setup, Th-Sat day 1 flights, day 2 sunday and usually day 3 is monday and you are down to ~ 3 tables or so. For us working stiffs we justify this as, well if i make it to Monday it means I'm really deep and looking at a good score so if that happens no big deal getting out of work/burning a PTO day. Most of us won't do that simply for day 2 as even if you are in the money already, taking a day off of work for a min cash isn't optimal.

The WSOP though has a mix of pros and a good number of rec enthusiasts i'll call us who don't live close and take off a week to come out and play a few WSOP/Vegas tournaments. Pros don't have scheduling problems cause they don't have 9-5s and those of us that come out for 7-10 days it doesn't affect us much.

The group this affects are local LV working stiffs and those within driving distance who might come for the weekend, like california etc... Not sure what the size of this group is and how many will skip due to new schedule until we look at numbers post events.

I agree. I don't think the scheduling change will have as big an effect in the summer as it would otherwise. However,

1) Why make any change that makes these featured weekend events (which are geared towards weekend-warrior types) less attractive to weekend warrior types?

and 2) as for where players come from, I've had a hard time finding the latest stats. However, looking at this link from 2011, it appears that CA/NV make up ~ 20% of the total US participation in the Main Event

http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news...the-main-event

I don't see why that statistic would have changed a great deal since then. I also think we can extrapolate that those two states make up an even larger proportion of the US participants in the non-ME events since travel costs for those represent a much larger percentage of total cost to play.

Bottom line, the scheduling has an adverse effect on weekend warriors, which make up a significant percentage of the fields in these featured events. And I just come back to my initial question... why? I'm sure there's some explanation. At the moment, I doubt its a very good one. I'm willing to be proven wrong, though. I guess we'll see what effect the scheduling change has on these events next month and beyond.

Didn't explicitly say this but I agree I don't understand the need for schedule change either, almost seems like a negative freeroll where it most likely could only get less people than previous years. Why risk messing with tournaments that are getting 6k+ people each year. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

Well, day1a will certainly be relatively bigger for lots of events being on a weekend. Maybe the WSOP is hoping that more people will play the starting flights because they're both on a weekend than will not play because day 2 is on a weekday?

Having not previously worked a typical 9-5 job, how difficult is it to call in last minute to take a day or two off if you make a deep run? Is it as easy as making a phone call or do you have to pretend to be sick or something? (or tell them that you actually are sick -- sick with degeneracy!)