@chinagambler: I doubt that even 18-man Spin & Goes (suggested by slayerv1fanfan) would take off at reasonable stakes. The reason is the liquidity - they just won't fill up as fast as expected from a lottery hyper. That's what has happened to Full Tilt's Flipout SnGs (36+ player), btw.

@GonZo72: as I mentioned above, there are positive precedents of capping the highest BI, e.g. iPoker hasn't deployed Twister of higher BIs than the initial $(€)10 during the 6 months of Twister's existence, and neither has Winamax for even longer (speaking of Expresso).

In iPoker's case, they apparently want to keep jackpot (Rio and Fort Knox) SnGs alive, though I wouldn't mind them being replaced by Twister of higher BIs, as JP SnGs barely run lately, especially now, when the Maui (€5 BI) JP has accidentally almost approached the Rio one (€20 BI) in size - of course people prefer lower BIs to get a better risk-reward ratio (that's why the progressive SnG JP concept fails).

****ty networks didnt add higher stakes because their combined all sng traffic is smaller than 7$ 6m hypers at stars, its not like they wouldnt want to

I was talking about the traffic of $200+ Stars hypers, which is not that stellar either. (Some don't even like the $60-100 traffic, though it's fine for me as I'm used to waiting for 2-4 minutes for an SnG to load like with iPoker €20 supers at peak ). So the Sp&G BI cap at Stars may be higher, but still should be in place.

more like the other way around

100$ fishies playing 15s because chance of a big prize yo

Plus even the least savvy players will understand that they're going broke too fast when they hit 'too many' 2x prizes, and drop down in stakes to fit into their monthly gambling budgets.

1. Rake needs to be beatable. Stars should tread carefully in higher spin and gos which seems to be the direction. If they are not beatable (FYI 7% rake is not beatable) there will be hell. Not from lol 2p2 bitching but because the game will actually just be dead.

2. Variance is a strong part of whether it is beatable Here, .1% of the results add up to almost 10% of the EV. I know there needs to be enough numbers that when the "spin" happens it looks varied, but there should be a real effort to maintain a high top prize but keep the "top x% of results" low in EV. We've seen before that regulars (except for the best that are winning a lot) are basically dumb when it comes to bankroll management and can get bounced of games very easily which has hurt traffic over the last while.

3. Sane transition to midstakes: The writing on the wall seems to be that spin and gos will be introduced to Stars and swallow up traffic. I would like to see a sane transition as it moves to middle+ stakes... the lack of caution in the past has led to the lobbies you see today (as opposed to back then when every lobby was off the hook)

a. Convert format to its "natural" super-hyper format A 3 player hyper seems awfully close to a 6 player hyper in half the time - it seems built for players that want to "GO" even faster than the current hyper offering. Here's what I would do: 3 hands per level (or 1 minute levels), 4 players, still 65/35 payout. Paying half the field instead of a third of the field will prove more appealing for all players. Multitabling consistency is important too: its harder for players to multitable across different payout structures, so keeping it consistent with established structures means more liquidity. [Yes HU players can MT it too, but 6m players MT way more, and are much more likely to play high volume]

b. Keep rake consistent with superhyper standards Even as it is now, 3 player games should have less rake than 6m games the way that HU games have less rake than 6m games. Lets keep rake consistent with super-hyper standards : this means AT MOST half of the rake of normal 6m hypers: because there are less hands per level, and less players.

One random promo if these games become popular could be like "second chance tokens" where if you get the worst prizepool 25 (?) times in a row (1.72% chance), you get a token that does something.

FTP ran a promo like this (7 times in a row). http://www.fulltilt.com/promotions/unlucky-number-7

These Spin and Gos are going to end up being the crack cocaine of SnG Poker. After playing maybe thirty of them on Fulltilt poker I have to say that I think they trump all other forms of SnG poker as far as an entertainment value.

Agreed that they may need to be altered to work at higher stakes. I think some have brought up collusion aspects of a three man winner take all SnG and I 100% agree that these would be easily targeted by cheaters if the player pool is small enough; aka higher stakes.

They are a lot of fun though and hopefully pokerstars can work out some sort of reasonable and fair rake/structure for them. I think they will definitely serve as a great entertaining platform to introduce a lot of new players to online poker.

Isnt WTA less 'colludeable' since there is no ICM to exploit?

Should be much less colludeable, like cash games.

Although I guess sharing whole cards would give a fairly nice edge in a 3h game.

who cares about colluding before the structure rgith now

look at that varaince simulator for 5% ev roi allready a casino game

0% ev how would that look (much more likely in such a simple game at any reasonable stake)

also lol to talk about innovation when supersimple changes like changing the way the blinds escalate in turbos to a normal structure and away from the awfull 2002 way of doing things.

2002 tho

Don't think it is so much an argument for innovation as much as making some changes to keep the games fun and entertaining.

The entry level into online poker, especially SnGs, isn't what it once was and the games are not only going to be mostly super unprofitable for a beginner but also downright boring at the same time.

These Jackpot SnGs could possibly serve as a great bottom feeder into online poker SnGs and online poker in general and bring a lot of new players into the game. As you mention yourself they are a rather simple format so once these players start to learn the game, they'll probably look to expand their horizons and start playing other games, higher stakes possibly, etc.

Hopefully PokerStars can fix some of the structural changes to Turbos and add some demanded Hypers in the meantime as well.

I don't think people should be fearing these Spin and Gos as much as they are and instead give them a chance and see what impact they have on the site and your games, then make your final verdict on them.

I've seen some crazy stuff in the ones I've played on FullTilt poker. On at least two occasions in my minimal play with them I've seen my two opponents go all in blind after drawing the 2x multiplier. I think some people are going to play these like a slot machine and when they draw a low multiplier play them with less focus

Anyway, I'm done contributing on this topic as you guys are the ones playing the majority of the games and deserve your voice to be heard more so than mine.

Go see what happen on winamax.fr who are the first to lunch the lottery sng (Expresso). For what i read in the french forums, one year after the traffic in ''normal'' sng is DEAD, even in micro limit the traffic is worst that small poker rooms like Turbopoker. Now most of the traffic is on the Expresso. The fish ****ing love them. Now maybe Pokerstars have some solutions to keep alive other ''normal'' sng and don't kill the traffic but i doubt. Even if Pokerstars keep capped at a low buy-in, why a fish would go play a ''normal'' sng in higher stake if he can play many lottery sng cheaper and use his ''one time'' to bink a big win ?

And to talk about innovation, what did Pokerstars do these last years ? Zoom Poker ? A copy of Rush Poker from Full Tilt. Hyper cash sng ? Again a copy from Full Tilt super turbo sng. And now Spin&Go who everybody know is a copy of the Expresso from Winamax. GG Pokerstars, worldwide leader in online poker. Ok i admit i forgot one Golden SNG, this one they didn't copy (for what we know ?) but for the others...

If really they would innovate, they would have add longtime ago 18m, 45m & 180m hypers because hypers are so popular and we can not play these 3 formats anywhere. And if the hypers are so popular why not try a new speed limit for sng more fast with an average of 5 minutes for ex, the fish would love them. But no everytime we are asking for it we have the same NIT answers ''liquidity...'', ''we understand that many players are asking for it but we do not plan to... maybe in the futur... lol who know ?''. Nobody asked them to mix poker and casino but they did it. And now it open a door for all this casino bull****. What will be the next step ? Next year add the roulette on Pokerstars ?

Winamax.fr really? How much traffic does that have, 5% of Pokerstars? Or even lower? And Pokerstars bought FTP you know...

I agree that if Spin & Gos would seriously harm other SNG traffic that we should try and not get them implemented, but we need poker rooms that have at least a real fraction of PS their traffic to be able to predict this.

Just want to post an updated Spin&Go variance simulation graph here as it turns out the software I used was not designed to handle payouts that have very small frequencies. This resulted in lower average winnings for the Spin&go graph.

The software is updated and here's the new graph (with the glorious variance intact).

Same simulation parameters as the original (quoted below).




Here's 500k of the Spin&Go.




50k of the FTP Jackpots (same finish distribution (well, 37.5/33/29.5 for tiers that pay 3 places), so higher winning due to lower effective rake.) These pay all 3 places (75/15/10) for the highest 3 prize tiers.




5k FTP Jackpots.

IPoker small stakes were grindable (to an extent similar to PS midstakes) and still are, so no, they haven't died out since the advent of Twister.

So 50% chance of being more than 2k buy ins away from EV after half a million SNGs with a 4.62% ROI? lol

Please do one with 0% pre-rakeback ROI just to see.

Yes approximately 5% of Pokerstars.

Everbody knows it. That change nothing, the original idea of Rush Poker or Super Turbo (short stack cash sng) was from the old Full Tilt not from Pokerstars

Is there a general 18m turbo thread? or skype group. i'd prefer 18m hypers, but I'll settle.

this looks horrible for 5%, id like to see 0-1% simulations

in this setting just a game totally based on luck over relatively big samples. Maybe a skillgame on paper but if it takes 10 years to get there who the **** cares.

I think that 4-5% will be a realistic post-RB ROI for SNE at the highest stakes. So Max Cut's sim is plausible. For those who break even pre-RB, the situation is somewhat grimmer.

But the latter will be a big fraction of regs too, so that's why I'm all for cutting the top prize probabilities a bit in favour of introducing the 50x prize to be contested once in 2K games.

It would be a compromise between recs who'll be still happy to get a 4-figure payday at the midstakes (more than a weekly salary in many countries) and regs who're used to waiting for a 4-figure payout for a month-two / 5K-10K games (e.g. many of them have a habit of saving FPPs up for $1600 cash rewards, though spending them on tourney tickets would facilitate playing higher / with fewer BIs in the account with only a slightly lower $/FPP rate - 0.0157 instead of 0.016).

50k WTA @ 1% (65/35 6max @ 1% looks very similar)


50k FTP Jackpot @ 1% (I chose FTP Jackpot because it sounds very likely the top tiers will payout 3 places).


50k WTA @ 0%


50k FTP Jackpot @0%