so how much are those outside of the top % paying in terms of BB/100?

it depends on the stakes you play.

- since the value of the tournament entry is arguable, and whatever value it does have diminishes by the day (since the entry is a fixed amount), I have omitted it for the following estimates*:

25nl: ~1.2BB/100
50nl: ~0.8BB/100
100nl: ~0.4BB/100
200nl: ~0.2BB/100


*these estimates are based on a single data set and the current Beast leaderboard payouts. multipliers applied over tens of thousands of additional hands will skew some of this. payouts changing over the course of the participation period may also skew this. And, obviously, the position any person has on the leaderboard will affect the BB/100. thus, these are estimates that do not carry much weight. I put them up simply to demonstrate what it looks like based off a single data-set from a player somewhere in the top 10% of the leaderboard.

**to calculate, I took the total jackpot contribution paid - the current payout from the leaderboard based on that contribution, converted that to BBs, divided it out by the total number of hands played where 4 or more players were dealt * 100 to produce a BB/100

finally, the promotion is bad for the game. it is bad for almost all of the regulars that generate games, it is bad for the low-stakes recreational "fish" (this is skinning...not sheering), and therefore bad for the growth of the site - which is bad for the game yet again.


***Also. I think the promotion should be modified, replaced, or simply eliminated. That said, it is here. In the future I fully intend to play the volume necessary to get to a profitable slot on the leaderboard. That's poker.

If I felt I wasn't able to make The Beast profitable to me, I would examine the overall profitability (winrate + VIP - Beast) and re-evaluate where I play.

I would very much suggest for anyone who can't pump out the volume to make it profitable, do the same evaluation.

In any case, it's bad for the game but it's here and so I'm going to use it for profit starting with the next period. All the while hoping they do away with it altogether...

So it seems as though the conclusion here is if most of you spent your time working on your game rather than complaining about the Beast you might actually be able to make it profitable. Correct?

I think so. Make it to the top 20 or don't play. Simple formula.

Hey Milwaukee. Of course, you're right. I shouldn't have used an example in an unfinished month. Looking back at September's results, it seems most guys with $0 and a ticket put in around 1k points. Which is probably about a wash.

Those figuring their stuff right now should look at previous months as well.

Hi Mirage. Thanks for your contribution. Did you play in a previous month so we can have your results from a completed competition?

Thanks.

I think he's saying the value of the ticket is worth 55.

Also B- on the trolling in general you can improve to an A- troll by not saturating the same threads with tons of posts.

man, you should charge people for your advice. total gamechanger

I played on WPN before the Beast existed (on a different skin with a different username). Back then the site was extremely small. However, the games that did run were normally quite good—especially during football season. Obviously a lot of tables these days are filled with 4-5 of the same guys. However, it seems to me the number of fish has increased. However, the number of fish hasn't increased proportionally to the number of increased tables. Therefore, table selecting is more difficult.

No, I don't think stopping the beast will improve the quality of the games. You'll simply have fewer games.

Please stop insinuating I'm being disingenuous. People are saying the beast is killing their profitability. I'm saying I don't see numbers indicating this is the case. I do not care if people accept the beast. It's here, I'm taking advantage of it while it is. If it disappears, I'll evolve as I've done for 9 years as a poker player.

Unfortunately I only recently moved money over to ACR and have no data for September. I will post data upon completion.

I actually didn't know anything about the Beast when I first hopped on. I was at non-JP tables only and wondered why they were receiving such traffic. So then I started reading the ACR website...

u do not care if people accept the beast which is why u create a thread essentially begging people to accept the beast?

story checks out

I'm guessing this network has around 20,000 unique players a month.

Regs are saying the Beast is hurting their bottom line. I researched the claim. I've not yet found it to be true.

I'll not defend myself further. Have it whatever way you like it from here.

I've been mulling this one over the past couple days. I'm not sure how strong the correlation is between skinning fish and the growth of a site.

ok i will. i think you're smart enough to understand the ridiculousness of your arguments in the face of the logical fallacies that are presented by them and the damage it does to game selection

i think this is nothing more than a self serving effort to preserve your equity

Two things with the showing of contribution.

#1. I think if they put it in the rewards section, most casual players will never see it.

#2. The contribution from most players is so small, I doubt they'll care. As I said, I think most are around $5ish.

As far as the distribution being top heavy, I can only guess what their thought process was in its creation. I'm thinking they were looking to create a huge race for the big prize. I know that has worked in months in which I didn't participate. I took the summer off, and I remember seeing one months where dult and cellar door played all day every day. This action begets more action and we find a lobby packed with tables. It's not uncommon for me to start over a dozen tables in a session.

Even if it wasn't a wash, unless the cash game players are allowed to sell the $55 tournament tickets, those tickets are of little actual value to the players who don't like or haven't the time for tournaments, like myself. Pay the cash game players in something they can actually all use. If someone is charged $20 (or whatever) for something he doesn't want, it's not such a great bargain.

I'd also like to mention that getting recreational and casual players to pay a higher rake than the regs is a really bad idea for obvious reasons. We want to keep those players on the site, not treat them like second class players and drive them off. As much as we would like to think of poker money as coming out of thin air, it doesn't. It comes mostly from people who work for a living. None of it comes from people who only play poker for a living. The people who work usually don't have the time to put in a lot of hours at the table. Both you and the Beast seem to have a complete disregard for that.

Ah, OK. Well, historically the amount of play on the site dies down dramatically through the last two weeks of the competition (the is the first time the competition only lasts two weeks). So, what tends to happen is placements get rather cemented. So, people keep their same placement while the prize pool is still building.

I'm not sure if this round will act the same way or not. I'm guessing WPN changed the competition to 2 weeks in order to reduce that effect. In any case, I'd love to know your contribution/prize at the end of the two weeks. If it's only 69%, I'll concede my OP is incorrect.

Agreed.

I'm on the fence with this. Still trying to think it through and wish I had more data from the poker industry. Historically, fish coming to NLHE crash and burn in a hurry. It's part of the beauty of playing this game over other formats. Having fish last longer just means we get less of their money since more of their pots get raked.

I'm sure there are pieces I'm missing in this equation. I've never worked in a cardroom or anything like that.

Well, it's not actually a shared contribution. They give points to everyone who contributed. However, the person actually contributing is the person who won the pot. His pot is 25 cents smaller than it would be if the Beast didn't exist.

Something that CarbonRyan mentioned a number of times, which I pretty much agree with, is that when rec players lose their money quickly they tend not to redeposit, whereas when they lose their money slowly there is more of a tendancy for them to redeposit.

That seems like a good way to calculate it overall. It does miss your contributions to the Beast when you did not win the pot, though... but if you are just trying to find out if the promo was profitable, and you aren't profitable here, you won't be profitable by adding in the additional losses from your contributions in the pots you lost.

If you were in the top 10% I guess I didn't profit either... I was somewhere between 80-90th place.

IMO if they made the promotion proportionate then I would be in favor of it, as it's just one more way to make $ off the fish and they will keep coming back for more anyway.

The way it is now is just not fair, like I said... QTip got paid 118x what I did, for 10-15x the work.

I understand it's a big sacrifice to be able to play that many hands in a month, but when you can win more money from the rake race than from playing your best A game of poker, there is something wrong.

Interesting.

I think sites are interested in good players NOT playing their A game. The closer the players skill levels, the more players break even with one another and only the house wins.

I don't really buy in to the argument of sites not wanting winning players. Winning players generate big pots, which means more rake. They also start games that otherwise would not be going on, which generates more rake.

Even if the argument is true, a player who wins 17K from "The Beast" is probably more likely to withdrawal a large chunk of money than a player who won 17K playing their A game... because "The Beast" is probably just icing on the cake for their bankroll (since they only need a micro stakes BR), where a player who won 17K playing their A game is more likely to move up to higher stakes without making a withdrawal.

Yeah and he's wrong

It's just weird seeing him first of all tell me the $55 ticket is $55 dollars in my pocket, then when this is challenged he says well no I guess it's less than 55, but the original still gives the same "explanation" of the beast

He was told to post here by acr