Not that i am asking for $200 9mans, but is it not a fair assesment to think that the reasons for the success of the $100 6max is down to the fact that there is a perfect feeder system leading up to them. One that is not present in the 9man side of things.

Nobody can move up in them because we have 1.50/7/30/100 compared to 1.50/3.50/7/15/30/60/100 for 6max.
You have set up a system that doesn't allow players to move up at all and then you use the fact that there is little volume in these games to argue that their shouldn't be 15s. It is pretty stupid imo.

Surely it would at the very least be worth adding in 15s and then seeing how the games evolve over the course of the year rather than ignoring a possible problem?

Don't worry though....i'm sure you will gloss over this comment and continue to ignore it.

With regard to 6-max hypers, the 1.50/3.50/7/15/30/60/100 does exist now, but we only added the $60 about 3 weeks ago and we ran with 1.50/7/30 from May 2011 until January 2012. The $100 ran extremely well without the existence of the $60. In fact the success of the $100 was why we recently added the $60 and the $200.

Please be aware that I am not saying we definitely shouldn't have a $15 9-max. I am only saying we haven't made a decision about it yet. With the 6-max we started with the $1.50/$7/$30, then after several months we filled in the gaps with $3.50 and $15 and added a $100. After several more months we filled in the new gap and ended up with the complete progression three weeks ago.

The 9-max currently has the same progression as the 6-max had from May 2011 to January 2012 plus it also has a $100. The 6-max ran very well with that progression. Also bear in mind that the 6-max turbo and 9-max turbo have the same buy-in progression and the 6-max is still much more popular. The available evidence suggests that the greater number of games in the 6-max format is not due to the buy-in progression. It may be related to the fact that people who play hypers want fast action and 6-max offers faster action than 9-max.

Hypers have such a significant impact on the poker eco-system that we have introduced them gradually and only made additional changes once we are sure the impact of the previous change is completely understood. I will be looking at whether a $15 9-max hyper is possible, although it may be a few weeks before a decision is reached one way or the other.

is this an explanation? or a reinforcement that there is something wrong?

By the way Walmsey, you forget something very important.

9man is harder to fill without alot regs, so a feeder system for regs to move up in is more important to get big traffic then 6max.

Im sure if 18mans had a 7$ to 30$ gap, 30 18man would fill way less than it is now, this applies too for 9man. It just fills to slow without many regs, and currently there are not enough 9man hyper regs because of the gaps in buyins, so they will run not so often, this again reinforces no higherstakes turbo regs to try em, and so on.

definitely you cannot make conclusions for 9man hypers the same way as 6man hypers,

Changing the buy ins to linear amounts last year was one of the best things Stars has done for a while but it means little to nothing when the games are already weak and still getting worse. Too many games types can be overkill without high demand and Stars has a large selection of NL SNGs/mttsng which sounds good at face value but when the games liquidity is decreasing it starts to have the opposite effect and games end up drying out..

Stars need to make some decisions and put a lot more effort in to consolidating the games in general imo.

When you make any kind of change especially big changes there's always going to a number of people who dislike the change but if it is good for the liquidity of the game long term it makes sense regardless. Of course conditions may change again (like the 2K boom) and you can re assess but right now i don't see the room for so many different variants.

For example things like - scrapping slow/knockout games and put the 2 together so all slow games are now knockouts - all fifty50s turbo/slow - all hypers 6 max - scrap 27s and 18s and only run 45s/180s etcetc..........

I am not saying these changes in particular would make huge differences or not, but actually testing stuff like this for a couple of weeks/months would be a huge step towards making the games better for every body.

Obviously to piss minimum amount of players off and possibly lose players long term promote it hard and make it super duper clear to everybody that it is simply a test for right now in an attempt to increase the enjoyment/experience of playing at Pokerstars etc.

Rake stinks in nearly every game when compared to winrates but rake isn't the reason we're only dreaming of double digit ROIs in STTs as we all know too well it's the environment and the quality of the games.

What do you guys think about adding 18man knockouts? No? That's what I thought. Get rid of 9man knockouts. The only purpose they serve is further splitting up the 9man turbo player pool, something we obviously don't want.

This couldnt be more true.FInally someone mentioned this.Whats the purpose of 9 man kos?To reduce the volume of normal turbos

This is the point I was trying to make when i claimed that deductions were being made about the 9man ecosystem based on information that has a conflicted of interest. Meca said it in a much nicer way than me.

I'm sure 6max are more popular in general but that doesn't mean that 9mans wouldn't run enough if there was fluidity within the system. There is no money moving up the stakes, rather it is hitting the 7s and then leaving the format.

i thought the KO are more popular than the normal Turbos? i do not have a horse in this race but wouldnt the logical thing than be to get rid of the normal Turbos?

kos arent more popular than turbos.Always the turbos running are more than kos
The only thing they do is to suck volume from turbos

lol, if i had to choose make every stt a KO, there is obviously more skill and edge to be made i an tournament that has extra considerations. Pretty stupid to ask to remove them, its about the only $30+ STT i play and win on a lot. Rather ask to remove one of the other two imo turbo/normal noKO stts....

^no, KOs have less egde because donkey ****ty call becomes less ****ty and regs call shoves couple % wider, dont see any extra egde ;p
but i dont care, so whatever, for me all turbos/ko/reg speed should be removed as a relic of old sng era.

(and you win a lot because in general regs from niche sng types are bad cause they dont face top competition and stop evolving as players)

eh noo, everything that complicates a game format will gain additional edge for a good player, whether it is losing money in the KO part but gaining more itm% or seeing more spots for KO EV doesnt matter. It is more complicating game format thus higher edge attainable.

this is pretty derailing though. I think my comment about 9man hypers is pretty plausible though so I hope they take it into consideration when choosing for more 9man hyper levels.

Already posted on this in several threads but there is more money to be made currently in KOs than reg turbos.

That's fine. I would be curious to know if you'd like to replace "stt" with "sng". Anyways, the point I was trying to make is that the turbo 9man player pool shouldn't be further separated.

yes, thats more or less what i thought. Is there a plan to introduce a 300 or 500 6 max hyper anytime soon? Not saying it would be good/bad but interested to know what direction you are heading in.

What about allowing the $357 satellite hypers to run all week? Seems like that is long overdue.

Thing is, its only the very top regs that will be able to make even 1% ROI. Id say the average reg will make <0% ROI. And any game where that is the case is a pretty big joke imo.

The money comes from the lowered rake.

The argument you (an some others) keep making about lowering rake will not better the games because the problem is not rake but the reg/fish ratio is just stupid, and would only be the case if the reg/fish ratio could get any worse. The reg/fish ratio has gotten progressively worse over the years and no matter how much money PS throws at it this is not going to get better. IMO we are at a point now where its likely not going to get worse, so the only thing that is going to make the games better is to lower the rake.

You really think the reg/fish ratio will ever get significantly better from PS spending more money on promos and advertising? U think they dont spend a **** load already?

Like others have pointed out, the effects of lowered rake will create a situation for people to play more/move up faster etc. And why does there even need to be something in it for them? PS nets a ridiculous amount of profit every year from ripping us off.

This is prob the dumbest thing u have said itt.

Games run around regs, not fish. When the regs leave, so do the fish. Why u think the 9mans never go off anymore? Because regs arent open sitting. Its a know phenomenon that fish rarely open sit games.

+3.14159

thank you for providing the building blocks... whatever the other argument the eternal pokertruth is: no fish no game

Obv no fish = no games. That goes without saying

Just saying its the regs that drive what games run because fish rarely open sit.

Well,actually if stars wants to keep the same rake for the games he can increase the prize pool.How beneficial would it be if we had stts with 16+1.11 ?

What's taking so long regarding BOP?

+ 1 to change BOP and add new promotion(s) like happy hour, something like the Full Tilt Madness, ...

Actually not a bad idea. Maybe something like a 10% increase in the buyin amount across the board. But that would mess up the nice rounded amounts