I have a few suggestions to improve the SNC(not SNGs themselves lol), and I'll get right to them:

1) Either remove happy hours altogether, or at least reduce the multiplier to 1.5x or 1.25x and add more total hours each weekday. Removing them altogether is easily the most fair option tbh because people will always find a way to min-max any happy hour system. Yeah they generate extra traffic for a few hours a day, but honestly it's coming at the cost of losing too much traffic in the hour before and after the happy hour and just in non-happy hours in general. Also bombarding the server with traffic for only a few hours each day certainly can't be good either, nor for the staff who help to maintain the integrity of these games.

2) Add more payout tiers. You're hurting your own traffic by not having way more payout tiers, or a payout system similar to the way an mtt pays out but much less top-heavy of course. You really (really, really, ad nauseum) don't want the majority of players competing for spots with negligible pay jumps or the whole system won't work optimally. So it would probably be best to shoot for a system somewhere between the one we have now and the average mtt payout system. Someone else can work out the exact numbers and take a vote or something fair, idk lol. As it stands now, people just hit a certain tier and feel far less motivated to play much for the rest of the week.

3) Remove the cage satty seats. The ticket promo has already done it's job, we're all well aware of the cage and it's satties now. All it's doing currently is artificially skewing the snc payouts(look at the numbers on the 50+55 ticket tier as evidence). This money would be much better used in making the actual snc payouts look more attractive. Or you could also put it towards a monthly snc leaderboard to help prevent people from min-maxing their schedules to grind hard one week for max benefits and then taking the next week slow, and repeating this cycle. With a monthly snc pool on top, players would still be motivated to play no matter what day or week it is in order to score in the monthly pool. Also a monthly pool would make the total SNC pool look quite large towards the end of the month

If anyone has other good suggestions/improvements/whatever then post away since it's a bit late and I may have forgotten something. All of my suggestions are very easy to implement, will have a positive effect on total traffic, and try to be fair to all players who put in a reasonable weekly/monthly volume. I maybe should've made a poll, but I figure we can just gather opinions for now. Some of what I listed may also work for the beast promo(with some tweaks of course), I'm really not sure about that thing and any input from beast grinders would def be appreciated also...because I know it could be improved a bit too from the looks of it.

Edit - Sorry LeGerr...still <3 u tho

I agree that the payout tiers are extremely detrimental to games running

Friday seems to be one of the lowest volume days because by then most people are already set in their tier, should be one one of the highest volume days for people to push past another place or two for a proportional increase in their payout, but that is not the case with the current system. The current system actually encourages players to stop grinding once they reach whatever tier, instead of grinding for a proportional increase by beating the next person

Also agree that the satty rewards should be removed and that money should be returned to the main prizepool. It's a nice gesture but I can't count how many times I've opted to simply not play it because real life got in the way, and the majority of times I have played it, I'm just sitting at a 9 person table with 6+ people sitting out because they chose to do something else, clearly the majority of SNC players do not support it. You could claim that they are foolish but not everyone involved in the SNC should be required to show up at X time, just to give us a reward for our week-long effort

Ty for noticing and helping to confirm. Also if you can, try to check the traffic in the hour or so before/after a happy hour and see if it's hurting or helping the traffic for the games you play too.

1) I like the happy hours, but that is because I am available to play them I understand how they could skew or hurt other players though.

2) Pretty much agree with almost everything in this one. For twenty plus years, I either run red hot or red not. When I'm good, I love the payout structure, but I do think the OD games, as a whole, would generate more interest/new blood, if the payouts were a little deeper. I can attest to the fact that some people stop or slow their play down when they fall out of contention and will cram in an extra couple if I see a crowd breathing down my neck.

3) I like the satty seat feature, BUT if there was an option to take those funds and put them into a monthly prize for the SnC LB....I'd be 100% for that. It would likely increase the OD and SNG game participation until the last several days at the very least.

There's obviously gotta be an optimal snc payout scale that would generate the most traffic. And it's in WPN's best interest to find out what it is and apply it soon as possible so they can make more $$$ and players can have more consistent games running. I'll even give a tip for the WPN math guys, they prolly should use the points from previous weeks and scale them to a rough $ amount (or % of the snc prize pool) compared to the total snc prize pool that week and adjust it from there as needed. It won't be perfect because those numbers were from people min-maxing the old system, but it's definitely a start

Honestly if they offer any snc point bonuses at all, instead of easily abused happy hours - if anything it should be given to those actually starting the games tbh.

edit - oops didnt read your post clear enough lol

Pretty strongly opposed to monthly rake races. One of the great draws of ACR for me is weekly commitments. As someone that has to travel a lot it'd be hard to plan around full month chases. Unless it's completely flat pay jumps you also strongly disincentivize people from starting mid month.

One idea I had that I'd like to see implemented is pushing back the last happy hour an hour or two. The last happy hour is the strongest hour of sngs usually all day, if you push it back an hour or two you probably get similar traffic but potentially extend peak hours for sngs by an hour or two.

I was under the impression from the OP that the 'monthly' aspect would be the money otherwise spent on the satty seats, the incentive to stay with it if you fall too far back on a Wednesday evening as an example.

A month is a long time for a contest to run every month, in my sometimes humble opinion

Yeah the monthly thing was just an added random idea and isn't necessary at all and could actually end up being just a broken system itself. I guess it could have fairly flat tiers though if needed, and it wouldn't be too big of a deal to miss some of the month since the whole monthly prize pool would only be equal to a week's pool roughly...besides everyone misses days or weeks here and there so it kinda evens out over time. As dewd said, it wouldn't take away anything from the weekly snc $ pool, it's just using the ticket money to bring in more snc traffic on a monthly scale to help supplement the current weekly scale.

But anyway the main focus is adjusting the payout tiers and happy hours a bit in order to encourage more traffic throughout the week. Instead of three 2x happy hours each weekday, it might be better to have six hours of 1.5x...or even 12 hours of 1.25x idk lol. 2x is a pretty damn powerful multiplier when it comes to a rake race.

Real powerful and real helpful but a good point. The 6 hours of 1.5x is awesome for those of us that spend too much time playing. Those points will rack up quick, too.

I do like the idea of the second prize thing. Take the money for the satty seats and make it a monthly tournament for all the players that averaged XX a week. Something achievable with not too much difficulty, like 150-180 points. That will keep players grinding every week even if they fall off the cash level of the weekly.

Then we run into one of the same problems as before, people not being able to be on for the tournament.

Might be a good opportunity for WPN to draw attention to the new tournament ticket system and give away monthly ticket packages to big GTD mtts that need the help like the big sunday mtts, HS Wednesday, OSS events, and such. Since we would helping WPN avoid their biggest overlays by far, maybe they would be nice enough to help kick in some extra value to the monthly ticket prizes to help sweeten the pot

That works too, tourney tickets.

I think that most people that attempt the SnC are somewhere close to the 150 points. Kind of hard to include those that end up with 100 points in the discussion, although there is further reason to keep playing if there is an achievable bonus in the future. Even if they lowered the min to 80 points every week, a monthly SnC tourney would have 500-600 players most likely. I doubt anyone that has 50 points is actually paying attention to the LB race.

I'm not religious with competing in the SnC due to life happening and having a big family, but if there was a monthly goal, I'd definitely pay attention to all month long.

What about maybe 11am-3pm EST and 11pm-1am EST at a 1.5x multiplier? Or adjust times as needed of course. It's kinda okay for the late one to be a bit stronger volume-wise since the early one would be twice as long. And it provides more incentive to play during non-happy hours (and weekends!) as the multiplier disadvantage isn't nearly as bad.

I don't know why you would change anything about it..

I agree its prolly one of the best promos ever, but the payouts and happy hours could use a few tweaks. You can honestly say the current payout structure and happy hours are 100% perfect for getting the max traffic?

ok most of this has been covered already, but here are my thoughts:
-1.5x points 11am-12pm, 2pm-4pm, 11pm-1am. You will get more afternoon traffic and sustain traffic past midnight when it usually currently drops dramatically.
-More tiers for payouts including more on the low end. Having a $5, $10, and $25 tier would encourage more micro grinders to go for snc bonus and you would get a lot more traffic in the $1 and $3 on demands.
-Scrap the cage satty tickets and add to cash payouts, or just keep a few for 2nd tier and add 115k sunday special tickets to top tier.

With the ticket system in place now, do you get a ticket or still cash if you pre-register for the SNC tournament? If it's a ticket, can it be used for SNG entry?

Opinion: give SNG players tickets to SNGs. I, for one, don't care for my rake going to subsidize MTTs. Strong opinion: **** this $55 entry for a 4-seat satellite to a $1k cage.

I agree with some of the suggestions in this thread, but when you scream into the void long enough you just give up.

Wondering what people's thoughts are having step sngs say with the final step being a $215 buyin? If done with a little thought tickets at any level could be used for any tourney/sng entry. I personally would like to see 6max turbo games.

They're only marginally popular on other sites.

pre-reg and bag the cash, easy game

Thanks! !anted to confirm you get cash and not a ticket forcing you into a later week.

Rough guess when we receive the tier money from
Last week?

Imo this because most formats are not thought properly and/or the ticket system they use is not very versatile. If the tickets for each step could be used for a variety of games and the games themselves are 6 max turbos or hypers plus the count towards rakeback/ SNC I think they might do well.

yep, this pretty much sums it up...I haven't even bothered playing many sngs/on-demands here lately. Tbh I'd rather swap my funds out and play elsewhere except for a few mtt/series here + of course hitting the 50+55 tier when I have time and there's nothing good going on other sites.

Oh sweet jesus so much this +1.

Aside from all the other reasons, it also penalizes non-NLHE players.

I can tell you one thing. The award to the sat will not be going away