What will be interesting to see is if they add higher buy ins. If they do, 100s/60s regs will suffer a lot as fish will be driven away

3-6 would be a better # for this format. Forced all in would be fine if lower rake. Rake may be too high for this.

So the number of paid prizes is randomized too, 'cause I played a 5-handed one and only 1st place was paid... Only played one but there is defo an edge to be had for good SNG players. Kinda feel sad I've been only focused on spins the last 2 years...

Oh, btw, I did crush the 1 spin&go MAX sample

I agree on the too high rake, but it seems it's a path stars has chosen (Beat the clock anyone?).

The all-in is only enforced after a number of hands (which is probably also randomized). In my big 1-time sample, when there were 3 hands left before all-in we had two big stacks and 1 little one. I ate the little one and the hand before the all-in phase, villain went all-in on my A7o. Called, he had 63s and won the hand. Stacks were then 2470 vs 30. He then won 2 all-ins in a row and I was already thinking : what if he wins all the all-ins and wins this? How tilting would that be? Fortunately he never got that far

Oh, tip: if you win and have to choose from the 3 hidden prizes: take the middle one

What about those new 10$ Sit and go hero (3 handed) games?
Is there a way to find out how high rake is ? Also any idea if they are going to change to normal prizes instead of tourney entries ?

The people from the streets got their hero.

The future is here, gents!

c00n somehow understanding recreational players far better than the average reg. I haven't been this shocked in a while.

pretty sure they do this to separate fun players from stable regs grabbing all money in spins right now, this way fun players keep playing themselves in unbeatable game while regs battle each other in normal spins, win /win scenario for stars

Making 1/3 of your BI net profit for finishing first 7h. That sounds exciting.

No one argues with (most) of the stuff that cооn says. How he presents things and from what position I find pretty hilarious.

[QUOTE=Duncelanas;52681210]

This is beyond ridiculous! With only 33.3% chance of the winner getting more than 2nd place, heads-up players are mathematically encouraged to lose! How can this be good for poker in any way?

Not sure if serious.

Edit: while I do think that giving less to the winner than to the runner-up in some cases is too harsh, I understand why Stars did that. Their most value customers are risk-seeking, and for them, the rush they get from winning $110 (3 figures) more than outweighs the disappointment they feel when they get $20 (still more than their BI). If the 3 prize options were $90 (2 figures), $30 and $30, the EV of the thrill of such a customer would be less. That's also why the bottom prize pools are so small, in order to increase the frequency of decently big prize pools.

I'm a bit biased because I did win 12 BIs in one of my few today's games and end the day in black

To clarify my point using the example of the above Spin & Go, when the tournament is heads-up, the loser is very likely to make more money than the winner. I understand your point of a bigger payout being attractive, but this particular payout structure is absurd and should not even be possible. At the very least it should be $20 for 2nd and "$110-$25-$25" for the winner.

Well, $100/$25/$25 for 1st, $25 for 2nd would be a neater payout structure, but perhaps Stars has the $110/$20/$20/$25 one on purpose (I suspect that the poker managers did consult with casino psychology experts on the mental effects of various payout structures).

When I finish 2nd and see the winner select a smaller prize, I rejoice as I've beat 'that sucker' whereas the winner will also be glad that 'at least he had a shot at a big prize'. Psychologically, it must be rewarding for the winner to get access to a 'bonus round' (in slot terms) while the runner-up doesn't get the privilege of playing this round.

And I believe that even casino-type gamblers have the supernatural ability to open Windows Calculator, add up the possible 1st place prizes and divide by 3, so I don't think that anyone in their right mind will be dumping chips in the HU phase.

It's amusing how many 2p2ers are complaining about this inequality of payouts - I thought it would be a non-issue for regs and semi-regs, as they understand the EV concept better.

Poker is not supposed to give guaranteed paychecks like a real job. It's a high risk, high reward business where you're a sales manager and reckless punters are your customers. Get used to it.

Yes, but as an unstable reg who has never been good at HU, I was hoping for such a scenario, while I understand that it's hurting HU specialists a lot, sorry.

I was hurt when, in January 2014, iPoker deployed Twister which stole the fish from 6-man jackpot SNGs and benefited HU specialists. Now it looks like the tide has turned and my ability to study with a push/fold calculator in an advanced way is useful again

U gonna keep us up-to-date with your results or even open a PG&C?
Would be v interesting to follow and u could prove your point towards others, kinda nice feeling if u were right, wouldn't it be?

He has said in the past that results, strategy, EV blog is off limits. The rest is fascinating enough though.

Especially when he starts talking about things he has 0 idea about (stables come to mind), but it sounds like he is an absolute expert. The things that poker rooms do that are "great for him" while bad for those pesky "gto regs" are also pretty amazing always. A+ overall.

I'm not bighusla - I keep my longterm results private for business reasons so that the GTO regs be in the dark as to which games are actually unbeatable and which are being beat by a small number of silent early adopters.

(I highly suspect that those with small bankrolls or large life expenses will be better off playing Power Up than Spin Max. Power Up is going to be soft for at least a while and allow for thick edges even between regs due to the decently high number of Powers, while the sick variance of Spin Max may indeed be not to poor regs' liking.)

If I'm right, my bankroll is what will be making me feel nice. There's no need to prove anything to anyone when I'm not apt to make friends with people anyway (definitely not apt to run a stable).

Confirmed on purpose

I've been playing games with high short-term risk factor for my entire career and am not going to change the trend.

GL to you all with your grind in archaic poker formats - I'll try to focus on mine for the next 1.5 weeks at least. Bye for now.

wtf, gg i guess

Not for making friends, for the sole joy of showing ppl you were right.
Don't take this as insult, but you kinda sound like a maniac who was discovered the one big thing everyone else wasn't aware of
Coming back to reality: How many game types do you know from the history of poker, where a handful of "early adopters" are grinding out that sick profit while all the other regs aren't even aware that is possible? Zero? Me too. Guess there's a reason for that.

And as a bonus I'm gonna tell you the reason: Good poker players are usually pretty clever people, some of em even really good at math, and it's not exactly rocket science to calc the profitability of a gametype. So either u're wrong about those being a gold mine, or you won't be able to keep that little secret to yourself, sorry :P

I mean he's prob right that these games can be beaten. But there is no way that you can achieve higher roi in them compared to similar stakes normal spins. Plus it's obv higher variance too.

Not necessarily. He's banking on there being one very relevant difference between spins and smax (are people calling them smax yet? let's start a trend here), and while I'm not sure his faith is well-placed here (as to the degree of that difference), the playerpools for these two games aren't the same.

If players in smax are worse by a wide enough margin, it could be that smax games are more profitable ev-wise than spins.


Yeah, for sure.

I might be wrong, but based on his previous posting he plays (mostly) stakes lower than 15s. Let's say 7s and lower. In which case I am not sure how the player pool can get any more brain dead compared to spins 3 handed version, most literally don't know the rules. At meaningful stakes - sure, there won't be many regs and the regs will be clueless in a new format in a lot of spots.

In before all these gto regs at 7s, though.

Edit: time to catch up while he's self banned:

Didn't realise that I was that high up. Time to stop posting.

Don't be so hard on yourself, you've probably had at least 20 good posts out of those 93.