Bryan could you share with us some of the reasons for offering no satellites to tourneys that aren't highlighted. I can foresee some potentially long term drawbacks for both Pokerstars and customers alike with this approach. Just wanted to hear some of the positives that Pokerstars foresees.

Certainly. The issue, essentially, is that we have an incredible number of tournaments in the client at any one time. As the branded tournaments grow, we want to be able to offer proper satellite systems to them, and between the branded tournaments, the live events, the promotions, the non-branded tournaments, etc... there is very little room in the client to put satellites without things becoming an unholy mess. There is also the issue of putting satellite attention on the tournaments upon which we are already directing our focus. Tournaments which are branded are already getting specific attention from the site; we're already directing players to them by branding them, by promoting them, by saying basically, 'Hey, go play this!' By that token, it just makes sense that if we are going to encourage players to go toward a specific tournament by offering a scheduled multi-table satellite, then the satellite should be one which points to a tournament upon which we are already spending promotional time and effort. This is not to say that the non-branded tournaments are not worth any effort... they certainly are, or they wouldn't be in the client at all. All of our tournaments are worth effort. It's simply a matter of choosing one tournament over the other, and we have so many branded tournaments at this time (go to Tourney/Special and sort by date/time), that even if we ever get to a point where we run satellites to those tournaments and only those tournaments, we'll still have time periods during the day when the client will look as though it has been painted Satellite Blue.

One thing to keep in mind is that the transition here is gradual. I've been removing satellites to non-branded tournaments for months, a few at a time, and so far I've been choosing target tournaments where the satellites in the client really haven't had much effect on total participation in the target. Also, as I have been removing MTT satellites to these tournaments, I've been adding S&G satellites to those same targets, so there is still an opportunity to get into them for less than the full buy-in. We have no desire to take away opportunities to get in for less, we just want to clean things up a bit.

I see you have separated the times for the sats of the Sundays $82 progressive PLO and NLO8.

Thanks for that

You should also look at the $530 PLO and PLO8, they can really use some change in their sats

Hi Bryan,

While you are being so active, could you make sure that the 6max hyper sat $181 sats to the Sunday500 are scheduled to be added back into the lobby within an hour of the target tournament starting please?

Thanks a lot for the explanation.

Are you at all concerned that by introducing so many "special tourneys" (Bigs, Hots) that these tourneys will slowly transition from being a special event into just another tourney like the current non labelled tourneys? By not offering decent satellite offerings to non labelled tourneys I expect that many will quickly die. And this is a snow ball effect. When a tourney that used to get 200 runners gets reduced to 150 people will perceive it as less value and in turn it gets reduced further. If this were to occur it's only a matter of time until the same thing starts to occur with the Bigs and Hots after the current non labelled tourneys seize to have any perceived value. Obviously I don't expect it to go that extreme but even if a bit of this occurs it could be a problem.

You very astutely point out a genuine concern, something that I mention when I'm asked why we don't have an umbrella brand (think "Big", "Hot", "Omania") for tournament types like 6-Max, Rebuy, Knockout, etc. We think long and hard before adding another umbrella. The most recent was Omania, and it's by far the widest spread within an individual umbrella brand. I believe that we're in a good place with the daily Bigs and Hot turbos, and that we may even have room for one more umbrella brand, but we do move very carefully along such lines.

As for the tournaments in the regular schedule which aren't branded but which are still strong, there are quite a few of them, actually. One of them, the $265 Knockout which runs at 10:15 ET, is currently being discussed elsewhere on 2p2 right now. This tournament runs daily with no satellites to it, and it is very, very strong. It's a good example of the fact that if a tournament has a strong following, even without branding or satellites, it can still do quite well. There are many such tournaments on the schedule. Sometimes, we take tournaments like that and bring them into the fold of an umbrella brand... we've done that, for example, with the $162 tournament which was eventually converted to the Big $162. (We did that with most of the tournaments which became daily Bigs and Hot turbos, in fact.) Identifying and nurturing those tournaments in the schedule which have dedicated followings where you might not normally expect to find them is a very interesting and often very rewarding part of managing our tournament schedule, and a part of my job which I really enjoy.

huh? there are deep satellites for most of your bigs during carnival.
and if there weren't, i can't see why you can't add them now.

again, concerning the biggest 162, no deep turbo satellite. please add one. before carnival, there were 4 relatively low sats for this one, one deep turbo 16.5, one turbo 16.5 and two 3.3+R 2xT. i can only see two of them now, the 16.5 turbo and one 2xT. i'd like a few more shots to qualify. thanx

BryanS-PS, I am very disappointed that there's no VIP Bash-satellite for 1B tournament and not VIP Bashes this month at all. As a MTT player, who has kept playing for SilverStar status almost solely because of those satellites (I can't get excited 100 FPP freerolls anymore) I have to ask, is this an isolated month or is there plan to bring down VIP Bash satellites completely (or just have them few around a year)?

Quick Yes, we'll be having VIP Bashes in future at least once every month-answer would be great, as I'm thinking if I should "grind" little over 200 VPP more this month. If not, I'll probably stop playing in Stars.eu regular tournaments completely and just play promotional ones.

To explain... there are files which drive the satellites. The files which drive the deep satellites were created after the files were copied over to a separate area for the creation of the Carnival satellites. So, some of them didn't exist initially for the Carnival.

In any case, I've just now gone ahead and added the Deep Turbo satellites for the Biggest tournaments tomorrow, each in their normal slot with the same guarantees as usual, at the same times they normally run. Thank you for bringing this to my attention.

Good news on the Wednesday 100k sats. See no reason why the same offerings can't be added for the Saturday SKO.

How about an $11 freezeout once a week with 1 PCA package guaranteed.
The only drawback I see for Stars is money leaves the ecosystem... but at the same time more entrants in the PCA is also a good thing.

1600 players should easily be hit with just banner advertising and sit and go sats.

is there any way to filter satellite by type? turbo deep, 2x, etc.?

only by typing in the filter box afaik

yeah with a combination of the regular filters and the search box you can narrow it down pretty accurately.

One thing I thought that would be great to be able to filter for specifically in the satellite tab is the value of target tournament. for example if I only wanted to grind sattys targeting tournaments $109-$320 then I could do this in a similar way you would normally filter for buy-in levels. Would of course be applied alongside all regular filters etc etc.

thanks guys, yep that works reasonably well for what i need

+1 this would be great

Can there be more RD satellites to the Mid and High stakes tournaments? With a $ buy in, like the FPP one they have to the WCOOP main and for the PCA packages etc. Where they are generally between a 1:3 to a 1:5 chance of making it to the next round.

Currently the one for the sunday million is a 1:22 for the first and second round or a straight 1:130 chance for a seat in the other sat.

I believe the Round satellites offer a more realistic shot at qualifying for the micro stakes players. If this has been asked before sorry ! thanks

dont think there is, but is there a way to remove all 1500 chip turbo FO satelites?

always feel bad beat when i misreg one

Bryan the regular speed freezeouts to the sunday majors are also really awkward and sluggish to play due to antes kicking in so late. If antes were to kick in at bb100 instead of bb250 they might become a more popular format.

please change the 22+ AUssie sat for the 700 6m into a fullring 22+ turbo sat, this should prob run more often then the 22+ 6m, most people dont like to focus on the 6m so they dont play them.

$1+R sats for S.Million with 0 seats gtd? i mean, really?!
anyways, at least fix their labeling so as not to see them in my lobby (they are hypers and it is not written nor does the filter hide them as it should w/ hyper-turbos unchecked). thanx

i might have gave them a look had i known they were hypers, never opened a lobby or regged one tho

I play these alot(both 6m and full ring) and the full ring ones are far superior imo. +1

Mega-Path to the $5M Sunday Million please!

200 FPP --> 500 FPP --> 1,500 FPP --> 4,500 FPP --> $5M Sunday Million

Is it deliberate that the 6m hyper-satellites to the Knockout Week MTTs have slightly different buyins to the normal sats?



$108.75s not $109s
$73s not $74s
$37.05s not $37.50s?