Ex-Official partypoker/bwin MTT Thread (No party poker support)
04-21-2018
, 04:07 PM
Quote:
When I signed with partypoker a couple of years ago I met with the bosses in the Mondrian hotel in London. They asked me a lot about what my visions were and why I was interested in being a "sponsored" pro. I quickly corrected that I really didn't want to be a sponsored pro, I didn't want to be given tournament tickets and obliged to travel around the world with a patch on. Going to Caribbean is cool, going to Vegas is cool, going to Rozvadov is even cool but what is really cool for me is making sure that MTT players (thats the player pool I represent and can speak for because I have a very good understanding of the whole MTT market spending 12 hours/day with no days off for the last 4 years there) get;
1) Fair treatment,
2) The dream that its still possible to be a professional poker player,
3) A site that is fighting for them and stopping the industry become monopolized
I did an interview with Lee Davy who asked me about my intentions and I was very honest. I didn't want to make partypoker huge and the rest of the sites to die. I want partypoker to be amazing, offer the best product, have the biggest games and ultimately make the most money, but as somebody who cares about the industry it is important for me that the other sites are just behind because this will (don't worry I'll stop the lists soon
)
1) Ensure there is no monopoly
2) Offer players a choice, partypoker and no site will be EVERY single players cup of tea, its important theres options for all players out there
3) Ensure that we make decisions that are FOR the poker players and not trying to cash grab at every opportunity thats so easy when you have a monopoly (think of the happy hairdressers analogy from yesterdays twitter poll
)
Internally at poker sites the pros are usually the guys who are pretty cool, all of the staff like them, they get drunk together at events, socialise a lot etc. My relationship with partypoker is probably a little different, I am known to be the guy complaining a little bit too much, I was perhaps a little gung ho, but now I at least start the sentence off with "Sorry guys but..."
I want partypoker to be the guys making decisions in the industry and other people following us. I want us to be bold. I want us to be brave, but most importantly, I want us to be fair.
Prior to joining partypoker there used to be knockout tournaments, lets take a $22 tournament, it was a $10+1 and then there was a $10 bounty on the side for the players. They were very popular, everybody else raked it this fair way so partypoker did too (we were more following the industry than leading it) Along came now the monstrous PSKO format of poker and somehow, the industry allowed the bounty part to just overnight be raked too. Wait what? WHy? Who? These questions didn't matter too much and naturally we followed the industry and started to rake these too. There are a lot of problems with this and even more so in a PSKO tournament than a normal bounty tournament. Let me give you an example.
You register a $20 tournament. There are 1000 players. The prizepool (after the $2 rake) is $20,000. $10,000 in the normal main prizepool and $10,000 in the other prizepool. You register on time and away you go. 3 hours later (some PSKOs on other sites offer up to 5 hours late reg) there is now 350 people left in the tournament. My Mum (shout out Mum <3) goes to register (she doesn't know the rake and its hidden from her on some sites) and now what does the prizepool stand at? $10,000 + $10,000? NO! 650 people have been knocked out, that means that the prizepools stand at $10,000 + $6000-$3500 (depending on the % of PSKO of course) so my Mother is paying the same rake for a tournament that she pays $22 and there is $13500 remaining whilst my noisy neighbour from across the street who gets there on time plays for $20,000? Wait, thats not fair, and I've just started...... There is a lot of other things to consider, my Mother registering late with 30bbs is going to be against average stacks of 50-60bbs, she will have a very poor chance of getting a knockout, her equity of that $10,000 bounty prizepool, oh no wait, $3500 prizepool is a lot lower than if she had an average stack.
The industry is pushing PSKO's very strongly, sites have their biggest tournaments in this format. I used to hate the format, but I've been sold, recreationals and regulars alike OBVIOUSLY like them a lot, but we as an industry and more importantly me as an ambassador have to stand up for our format and make sure that it is regulated fairly and correctly. We can't allow for sites to EXTEND late registration period and the bounty side of the prizepool needs to be QUICKLY slashed if not completely removed. I lobbied very hard with the team at partypoker, explained all sides, the pros, the cons (its v expensive!!) and showed from a players point of view that this isn't fair and I would certainly not feel comfortable representing a company that agreed with what I said but wouldn't change it.
partypoker have agreed to make the change of not reducing, but completely removing the rake of the bounty side of PSKO's, meaning there is a 40-60% rake reduction on a huge amount of games on the site. They have agreed to do this for 6 months and if the players support them and people support the site that now wants to listen to its pros and make decisions that positively impacts pros rather than their own bottom line then I think this will not only be a permanent change, but it will allow us to continue making positive strides and changes in this industry.
Today I am very proud to say I represent partypoker.
Read more fine details here:
https://www.partypoker.com/blog/part...powerfest.html
1) Fair treatment,
2) The dream that its still possible to be a professional poker player,
3) A site that is fighting for them and stopping the industry become monopolized
I did an interview with Lee Davy who asked me about my intentions and I was very honest. I didn't want to make partypoker huge and the rest of the sites to die. I want partypoker to be amazing, offer the best product, have the biggest games and ultimately make the most money, but as somebody who cares about the industry it is important for me that the other sites are just behind because this will (don't worry I'll stop the lists soon
)1) Ensure there is no monopoly
2) Offer players a choice, partypoker and no site will be EVERY single players cup of tea, its important theres options for all players out there
3) Ensure that we make decisions that are FOR the poker players and not trying to cash grab at every opportunity thats so easy when you have a monopoly (think of the happy hairdressers analogy from yesterdays twitter poll
)Internally at poker sites the pros are usually the guys who are pretty cool, all of the staff like them, they get drunk together at events, socialise a lot etc. My relationship with partypoker is probably a little different, I am known to be the guy complaining a little bit too much, I was perhaps a little gung ho, but now I at least start the sentence off with "Sorry guys but..."
I want partypoker to be the guys making decisions in the industry and other people following us. I want us to be bold. I want us to be brave, but most importantly, I want us to be fair.
Prior to joining partypoker there used to be knockout tournaments, lets take a $22 tournament, it was a $10+1 and then there was a $10 bounty on the side for the players. They were very popular, everybody else raked it this fair way so partypoker did too (we were more following the industry than leading it) Along came now the monstrous PSKO format of poker and somehow, the industry allowed the bounty part to just overnight be raked too. Wait what? WHy? Who? These questions didn't matter too much and naturally we followed the industry and started to rake these too. There are a lot of problems with this and even more so in a PSKO tournament than a normal bounty tournament. Let me give you an example.
You register a $20 tournament. There are 1000 players. The prizepool (after the $2 rake) is $20,000. $10,000 in the normal main prizepool and $10,000 in the other prizepool. You register on time and away you go. 3 hours later (some PSKOs on other sites offer up to 5 hours late reg) there is now 350 people left in the tournament. My Mum (shout out Mum <3) goes to register (she doesn't know the rake and its hidden from her on some sites) and now what does the prizepool stand at? $10,000 + $10,000? NO! 650 people have been knocked out, that means that the prizepools stand at $10,000 + $6000-$3500 (depending on the % of PSKO of course) so my Mother is paying the same rake for a tournament that she pays $22 and there is $13500 remaining whilst my noisy neighbour from across the street who gets there on time plays for $20,000? Wait, thats not fair, and I've just started...... There is a lot of other things to consider, my Mother registering late with 30bbs is going to be against average stacks of 50-60bbs, she will have a very poor chance of getting a knockout, her equity of that $10,000 bounty prizepool, oh no wait, $3500 prizepool is a lot lower than if she had an average stack.
The industry is pushing PSKO's very strongly, sites have their biggest tournaments in this format. I used to hate the format, but I've been sold, recreationals and regulars alike OBVIOUSLY like them a lot, but we as an industry and more importantly me as an ambassador have to stand up for our format and make sure that it is regulated fairly and correctly. We can't allow for sites to EXTEND late registration period and the bounty side of the prizepool needs to be QUICKLY slashed if not completely removed. I lobbied very hard with the team at partypoker, explained all sides, the pros, the cons (its v expensive!!) and showed from a players point of view that this isn't fair and I would certainly not feel comfortable representing a company that agreed with what I said but wouldn't change it.
partypoker have agreed to make the change of not reducing, but completely removing the rake of the bounty side of PSKO's, meaning there is a 40-60% rake reduction on a huge amount of games on the site. They have agreed to do this for 6 months and if the players support them and people support the site that now wants to listen to its pros and make decisions that positively impacts pros rather than their own bottom line then I think this will not only be a permanent change, but it will allow us to continue making positive strides and changes in this industry.
Today I am very proud to say I represent partypoker.
Read more fine details here:
https://www.partypoker.com/blog/part...powerfest.html
@everyone at this thread => now is time we should show our support to party vote with our wallet and play all our PKOs volume on party first and then maybe add some PKOs from other sites and tell all our friends to start playing PKOs on party vamoooo
04-22-2018
, 05:01 AM
Will echo what many others have said but I think one of the biggest problem with party is how much the lobbies and software works against you. It's impossible to resize both the main and tournament lobbies. Finding information in the lobbies themselves isn't always easy and the tournament descriptions leaves a lot to be desired (the mix max with day 2 being the best example). Also a sliding buy-in range would go a long way, pretty much every other site has this and it makes things so much easier to find. I miss out on a lot of $11 games I would have played because 1 cent games are taking up lobby space, and also miss most 109 games because i'm afraid I will misclick reg one of the many highrollers.
Also it would be really nice if we were able to change the color of a table with a right click like on stars, at the moment I find it pretty difficult to distinguish PKOs from freezeouts from sats.
I also think PKO is a format much better suited to shorthanded and turbos than FR and really long LR periods so I would love to see some of the 6-max turbos turned pko (and some of the pkos turned into vanilla).
Lots of great stuff happening on Party and it's great to see that you can play tournaments in the mornings with other humans now, keep it up!
Also it would be really nice if we were able to change the color of a table with a right click like on stars, at the moment I find it pretty difficult to distinguish PKOs from freezeouts from sats.
I also think PKO is a format much better suited to shorthanded and turbos than FR and really long LR periods so I would love to see some of the 6-max turbos turned pko (and some of the pkos turned into vanilla).
Lots of great stuff happening on Party and it's great to see that you can play tournaments in the mornings with other humans now, keep it up!
04-22-2018
, 01:12 PM
04-22-2018
, 01:26 PM
04-22-2018
, 07:02 PM
04-22-2018
, 08:00 PM
04-22-2018
, 08:09 PM
04-22-2018
, 09:09 PM
Quote:
Will echo what many others have said but I think one of the biggest problem with party is how much the lobbies and software works against you. It's impossible to resize both the main and tournament lobbies. Finding information in the lobbies themselves isn't always easy and the tournament descriptions leaves a lot to be desired (the mix max with day 2 being the best example). Also a sliding buy-in range would go a long way, pretty much every other site has this and it makes things so much easier to find. I miss out on a lot of $11 games I would have played because 1 cent games are taking up lobby space, and also miss most 109 games because i'm afraid I will misclick reg one of the many highrollers.
Also it would be really nice if we were able to change the color of a table with a right click like on stars, at the moment I find it pretty difficult to distinguish PKOs from freezeouts from sats.
I also think PKO is a format much better suited to shorthanded and turbos than FR and really long LR periods so I would love to see some of the 6-max turbos turned pko (and some of the pkos turned into vanilla).
Lots of great stuff happening on Party and it's great to see that you can play tournaments in the mornings with other humans now, keep it up!
Also it would be really nice if we were able to change the color of a table with a right click like on stars, at the moment I find it pretty difficult to distinguish PKOs from freezeouts from sats.
I also think PKO is a format much better suited to shorthanded and turbos than FR and really long LR periods so I would love to see some of the 6-max turbos turned pko (and some of the pkos turned into vanilla).
Lots of great stuff happening on Party and it's great to see that you can play tournaments in the mornings with other humans now, keep it up!
04-22-2018
, 09:11 PM
+1 for removing at least 1 digit from starting stacks + blinds. Keep 100k starting stack for Powerfest etc. if you wish. I guess this so called "players advisory panel" advocated the change. The one LittleGoliath is part of and supporting the decision, I guess from his post. Still wonder if that advisory panel knows they're nothing more but being rubber stamp blessing pads decisions.
I guess all promotions are out for upcoming serieses. 7k$ worth of freerolls for monster series and same promotions except the one that had some merit and interesting structure (Last Man Standing) from January for upcoming 40M$ Powerfest. Hopefully there will be bit more and better satellites than current offering coming up before powerfest though.
And I have to ask, because I just opened one random lobby from Powerfest tournaments.
Is this real and upcoming structure? 1-day tournament?
Last blind level would be lvl 81 with 725k/1,45M / 175k. 100M chips if it gets even 1000 runners and it would mean if heads-up ends like 35bb deep when that last level starts... after 18h 40 min of game time (calculate breaks and that's over 20 hours. And it could just go on and on.
If you have no intention to literally kill your players you might want to have someone to doublecheck your structures before you post them on client for A) that blind levels won't stop when there' still lots of chips at play + B) to make sure tournaments won't last 20+ hours. It really shouldn't be too much to ask, just calculate amount of chips at a tournament and make sure blind levels never stop over 20bb even if max player count is reached + B) calculate amount of expected players and count how many levels that would make if tournament ends like when there's about 50bb left in play + multiply that with level length.
I guess all promotions are out for upcoming serieses. 7k$ worth of freerolls for monster series and same promotions except the one that had some merit and interesting structure (Last Man Standing) from January for upcoming 40M$ Powerfest. Hopefully there will be bit more and better satellites than current offering coming up before powerfest though.
And I have to ask, because I just opened one random lobby from Powerfest tournaments.
Is this real and upcoming structure? 1-day tournament?
Last blind level would be lvl 81 with 725k/1,45M / 175k. 100M chips if it gets even 1000 runners and it would mean if heads-up ends like 35bb deep when that last level starts... after 18h 40 min of game time (calculate breaks and that's over 20 hours. And it could just go on and on.
If you have no intention to literally kill your players you might want to have someone to doublecheck your structures before you post them on client for A) that blind levels won't stop when there' still lots of chips at play + B) to make sure tournaments won't last 20+ hours. It really shouldn't be too much to ask, just calculate amount of chips at a tournament and make sure blind levels never stop over 20bb even if max player count is reached + B) calculate amount of expected players and count how many levels that would make if tournament ends like when there's about 50bb left in play + multiply that with level length.
04-22-2018
, 10:20 PM
04-22-2018
, 10:44 PM
Quote:
Don't worry, that is being changed later this week. Wrt starting stacks debate, I likely was the most opposed against the bigger starting stacks, and so were a few others but party has received a lot of feedback that rec players love the bigger starting stacks, so w/e guess they are here to stay and we should focus on more important things such as mement pointed out very well. As far as I'm aware, this deepstack was (ye another) experiment, and I think it is likely gonna be the only tournament that will have a 200k starting stack, and perhaps it will be converted to 100k as well with slightly different structure. Time and feedback will tell I guess.
As you said, starting stack is secondary vs structure....
Good to see buy in gaps reduced to 3x ish, that s crucial for your traffic
04-23-2018
, 12:06 AM
