i have a great idea for this.

2 day ultra deep 50k starting stack 10min day 1/ 15 min day 2. 4 hours late reg.

big between big 75 and big 22.

would absolutely blow.

i say 7.5$ and a 82$ for steps accesibilty but an 11/109 or 33/215 would also be the nuts.

this has been repeated many times bryan and saturday is the ideal spot for this. get on it. i absolutely guarantee this will make tonnes more in rake than the bowl comp clutter that i can easily find for u to remove/replace.

please dont change 55c to turbo.. maybe move it to 7:15CET, cos theres dead hour between 6-7 and lot of regs ( like i do) starts session around 7:00CET with latereging 55c and after that there is lot of good trnys..

sure there are lot of players who register it at the end of nightly session, but tbh its better to start session with this trny, then reg it at the end :P

Thanks for your recent responses Bryan. Perhaps we all act a bit entitled ITT as has been mentioned, but I really appreciate it when you are pro-active as I think this thread is important.

I took a look through all the "Cap" tournaments (ones that aren't blue) and I think there is a really strong argument for getting rid of all of them (except perhaps HU tournaments where they serve a purpose).

I would guess only these reach the cap:
9:15 ET $33 500 Cap
14:00 ET $27.50 360 Cap
17:15 ET $16.50 360 Cap

Even in these 3 tournaments I don't really see the cap serving a huge purpose here of decreasing variance or whatever, as the field sizes are unlikely to be much bigger (except perhaps in the case of the $16.50? And then I would argue there are $11 reg speed PKO 180s and $15 turbo 180s that sort of serve this purpose)


This tournament has become particularly bowl as of late, it used to get ~60 runners when it ran. However in theory it's not that unpopular compared to other tournaments around it, the $33 an hour later only gets 60 runners on average currently.

Are variable speed tournaments still in testing? I think this would be a decent contender for changing to that format although I'm not overly sure it would encourage more runners.

Re: turning it into a turbo, there are already a lot of $50+ turbos in this zone, and not much (or anything really) in the way of $55+ reg speeds). If you do decided to change it to a turbo, you would need to change the structure as I recall the add-on being only 3k at 400/800(a) when I've played it on turbo nights.

Speaking of turbo nights, I imagine this is pretty low on your priority list as they only run once a month or so, but Turbo nights could be much better.

You add a tonne of hyper-turbos with 500 chips that have the same rake as those with 3000 chips. A lot of them start many hours before the server reset; there isn't a huge rush to finish them. Even the ones that start at ~4.30:ET would be complete in plenty of time with 3000 chips. (Also could you change the $55 cubed structure on turbo nights as mentioned above).

You're welcome. Some more contenders for elimination:

00:15 ET $5.50 360 Cap - This only got 29 runners today.

Possible replacement: There are no-reg speed rebuys between 22:01 ET and 05:29 ET. Perhaps a $3.30+R or $5.50+R with a small guarantee would suit this spot?

02:00 ET $2.20 - Only 72 runners today

Not sure about this one but 72 seems tiny for a $2. I think you could either put a GTE on this or just get rid, there's plenty of other bowlaments at this time. The $4.40 half an hour later is much more popular and I didn't realise how many bowl Time tournaments there are as well!

19.30 ET $5.50+R $25 add-on
20:05 ET $5.50+R $25 add-on Omaha

These got mentioned recently, I'm sure they'd run much better as straight up $5+Rs with a GTE.

Other tournaments you could change to $27:
03:45 ET $27.50 [500 Cap]
03:50 ET $25.40 Stud
05:30 ET $25 Hyper
10.30 ET $25 6-Max Hyper
10.45 ET $27.50 4-Max
13:15 ET $25 6-Max Hyper
14:00 ET $27.50 [360 Cap]
15:35 ET $25 NLO8 6-Max Hyper
16:15 ET $25 Hyper
17:45 ET $25 6-Max Hyper
18.45 ET $27.50 Big Antes
20:00 ET Big $27.50???
23:45 ET $27.50 Turbo

Full Tilt have really cleaned up their lobby recently by offering fewer levels of buy-in. I wasn't sure about putting the Big 27.50 in there but I think it makes sense for $27 to be the buy-in level at this stake.

On the same note, there are only 6 tournaments in the buy-in bracket $56-100. They are:

00:00 ET $77 6-Max Turbo
02:00 ET $77 6-Max Turbo
06:30 ET $75 Turbo
10:00 ET Big $75
14:30 ET Hot $75
19:45 ET $88 4-max Turbo

Again a Big and Hot in there to make it more complicated, but I think changing all these to $82 makes sense.

Seeing as I've ventured into cleaning up the lobby, I wonder has the MTT team has ever discussed changing buy-ins to round numbers? SNGs were changed a couple of years ago and Full Tilt has just changed to this system.

Nice move on the 44 6m, maybe do the same with 44 4m? Also need higher buyins on phase tourneys, possibly a rebuy-phase?

Make pko's ft paid only or at least pay less of the field as mincashes and payjumps are pretty sad until you reach ft anyway

Please no rebuy phase. We still want recs to play these things

This tournament (10:30 ET $55 NLHE) is a good example of the difference between the expectations of some and the reality of the situation. I would love it if the tournament would sustain a guarantee of $15,000... but it simply won't; the data on the participation in said tournament throughout the last few months shows that very clearly. On Sundays, sure, the prize pool flies through the roof and often surpasses $25,000... but during the week, it's not unusual for it to dip well below $10,000... that's not because of the guarantee. Guarantees are important, but they're not the main drivers of participation, particularly for non-branded tournaments. Raising the guarantee of the $55 NLHE tourney at 10:30 ET to $15,000 would do little other than to ensure overlay, and a lot of it.

jesus christ Bryan, enough

So do I. There's a balance to be struck, to be sure, but I've always found this thread (and this forum overall) to be important. I wouldn't be here, otherwise.

We've discussed it many times over the years, but as yet it's not something that we've done. If we were to implement such a change, one big question that comes up is what we'd do about $215s. Going up to $250 would be a significant change... going down to $200 would be a significant change... and our $215s have been running for a long, long time... they're staples in our little corner of the poker world. We are gradually reining things in a lot more than we've done in the past, and for example the $27.50 buy-in level is very likely going away (including changing the Big $27.50 to the Big $27 at some point), along with other changes.

In any case, there are quite a lot of changes going in today/tomorrow/Sunday which will go into effect for next week. I hope that they're enjoyed, and I thank those in this thread who've helped with the decisions as well as identifying needed points of emphasis... it's much appreciated, as always...

Nice Bryan, looking forward to see the changes!

Any reason why there are no regspeed time tournaments higher than $5.50, since there are $11 turbo times?

And, since i'm trying to get some more regspeed micros to play during the day, and i realize i need a good reason for you to add some, i noticed the $5.50 short stack regspeed tournament only appears twice, 20:15 and 02:00, maybe you can add one or two earlier? one in the morning and one in the afternoon or something?

could you give us a list of some of the changes bryan?

Some nice changes deinitely been happening lately.

RE: the tournament buy in ranges and cleaning it up.

I wouldn't say you needed to go as far as Full Tilt have necessarily.

But to me it definitely makes sense to just group some of the buy ins that are very similar but not quite like has been mentioned. I.e. 25, 27.50, 27 all as one level. And 77, 75, 82 as one level etc.

Saying this with as much respect as i can possibly have.

You have the number one site on the planet, other sites 50 freezeouts reach 7.5 guarntee.

Show us the data for 3 months prior to world cup what the guarntees of this touranment was..

You killed the tournament because you lowered the GTD, I saw it with my own eyes, I grind every single day.

Did all the vamosssssss kill themselves after world cup because their team lost?

Hi Bryan,
Is there any reason why Stars don't have a monthly mtt, in the mould of the Whale?

So u think all of these fish saw lowered gtd and quit poker or did they jsut reg the 8r or 54ko instead?

No clue man... I just know before world cup there was no overlays and GTDS much bigger and they made adjustments and nothing went back.

We have listed all the other ones simliar things happen.

Rounder,

If you want bigger tournaments what we should be pushing for is more exciting tournaments. As Bryan said and we all know, that little $55 bowl becomes over twice as big on Sunday.

In other words, there are certainly players to make that tournament bigger, but they just don't play most days of the week.

What we need to do is to make a random Monday in March exciting enough to get players online and playing. The tide raises all boats.

This so much. Tell everyone first place is gonna be 6k on a monday and you gonna have a 200 people tournament.

Put it with a 10k gtd and it's not gonna be over 100 half the week

Bryan,

How can you be so sure of the above statements? i mean the data over past 3 months shows weak participation but with a low gtd on the tournament. not sure you can even guesstimate affect of raising the gtd without looking at data of tournaments where you have done so. i mean we can definitely look at the last year and compare this tournament pre world cup and after and show the decline due to the lowering of the gtd...how can you be so sure that there would be overlay and lots of it and for a sustainable amount of time? Me and many others believe you have given the perfect example for our arguement. That was a tournament that many believe was killed by lowering the guarantee and that if you put a nice gtd on it and took a hit for a lil bit on it, it would organically grow to be a tournament that could sustain 10-15k plus.

I still believe that there is a huge need for you guys to hire someone that actually has been in the pitts playing online poker for the last several years, someone that really has a pulse on how players think and what they want, because there are many ways to interpret data and many opportunities being missed as a result.

in the above example, you argue that the data shows the 55 just wont sustain at the 10-15k level and many of us would argue that the tournament would be doing just fine if the gtd was never lowered and that even without a red label, that it could succeed with a good gtd. essentially we are arguing that gtds matter way more than you are giving it credit and in my mind it is one of the biggest driving forces of participation.

Look...I have no other job than to play poker. I live in mexico where i can play online every day of the week. I have the ability to put in 6 day work weeks if I wanted, but I'm telling you that the schedule doesn't motivate me to play anything other than tuesdays thursdays, sundays with the occasional bored saturday thrown in, and thursday i only play for a few hours.

There is a huge opportunity to get players like me back on stars way more often and trust me that among the high stakes players, a majority of them play way less than they would prefer too. Stars is really missing the boat here.

If we cannot just start adding a bunch of tournaments to the daily schedule, can we at least acknowledge that tues thur and sat are bigger days of the week then the rest and start at least adding to those schedules? Is there a huge need to keep everyday pretty much the same?

I repeat my requests to implement the following asap:

Add high stakes tournaments to the schedule after the big 75 and before the big 109. huge gap here and could easily put 3 or more tournies on the schedule here. as it stands now a lot of people skip big 75 and 265ko because of these gaps and start with 100 rebuy late reg or big 109 late reg..

Tuesday/thursday: add second chances to super tue and thur thrill. add other mid/high stakes tournaments within 3 hours before/after these tournaments to build out schedule.

Saturday: please just put a low medium high 2 day event here. i love the idea of 11 dollar 50k, 109 200k, and 700-1k 400k as starters. This seems like a snap implement imo, everyone would love this. no gimmicks here please..just old fashioned 2 day event with different buy in levels...would just smash so hard imo. Add more to saturday schedule to build it out as a bigger day.

this is how it used to be back in the days..certain days where more meh and certain days were blockbusters. currently we have everyday is pretty much meh except for sunday and a few hours on tue and thur. i'd argue that a gtd in and of itself isn't the sole driver of participation but its part of building excitement and getting excited about firing an 8 hour online schedule is what drives people to want to play.

daily tournaments with a problem...320 6max is dying because of its gtd..i would put a 40k gtd on it and make it 8 max..i mean really i'd make it a big as there is somethign about a big320 that has a ring to it, and then obv you could add a hot 320...omg...now we are talking, but you guys seem real hesitant to do that for some reason.

Bryan, you can look at what 888 has done over the past two months which is basically implement some of the ideas posted here. we keep saying there is a huge gap after big 75 in the schedule so 888 puts a daily 162 high stakes in that slot which has a 15k on it most days, has had its tuesday gtd raised from 15 to 20 to 30k in 3 weeks time where it hit 42k on that day, and on sunday its listed as a 50k now on the schedule. They are demonstrating how different days are better than others and that those days historically will meet the guarantee across time. they are showing that different daily guarantees can work to organically grow the tournament bigger on the days that it is better in the week anyways..anotherwords, just by announcing that the croc is bigger on tuesdays, they are growing it another 15-20% on top of that by posting a dynamic gtd on it. also they put the tournament in the slot we are screaming for tournaments and look how successful it is. then they added a 600 starting at same time as the super tuesday and its crushing in only a month on the schedule. combined with the monthly whale and they are starting to get my attention. while i don't agree with your reasoning for staying with the lowest gtd obtained during the week and think its a very bad marketing strategy i do think that 888 is demonstrating how effective it can be. i'd really like you to revisit this decision if at all possible and try to see our perspective. i'm pretty sure data historically matches up by day where you could have dynamic daily gtds with not much more risk for overlay than you have now. at least 888 thinks so.

this is the gist of it. players now take those days off or go play live cash or live tournaments or travel or whatever it may be. if today was a decent day to play online, i'd definitely fire today as i don't really have any plans, but instead i'm gonna go see a movie..when i play poker for a living, don't have any plans and i'd rather just go to the mall walk around and see a movie i'm not even that excite about, houston we have a problem...

players have more choices than ever before with live circuits using multiple days and reentrys to build prizepools. players simply don't want to play for chump change anymore. if i'm going to bang heads against the same guys that i play in live 5k's and 10k's with 500k to a million up top, i don't want them getting more insights into my game and how i play for 10k prizepool with 3k up top.

its no wonder why sundays are so huge on stars. none of the rest of the week excites anyone anymore, so everyone just goes all in on sunday..can't really blame em either....

So, since we are in the market for new ideas, here is my shot.

We've been talking about the morning bowls. Here is an idea to spruce them up, add interest, and give people something that stands out and might get their interest.

Moving Up! These aren't red. These aren't branded or promoted. They are just a different style of tournament to entice interest in something different. The difference is in the payouts and an offering to take some shots.

11:00 ET $1.10 Moving Up
- The final 18 players receive a $11 tournament ticket. The tournament payouts are adjusted and otherwise plays like a normal freezeout.
11:00 ET $11 Moving Up
- The final 18 player receive a $55 tournament ticket. etc.
11:00 ET $55 Moving up
- The final 9 players receive a Sunday Warmup ticket.

The whole point here would be to introduce something interesting, but different. Something that stands out and makes player say 'hmmmm I really like that, I want to play that'. Most $1 players would enjoy a $11 shot. Most $11 players would enjoy a $55 shot. Most everyone playing $55fos would play the Warmup anyway. In the end they all help promote each other and in the end one of Stars marque Sunday events.

Replace/Cull the following:

10:30 ET 55fo
10:45 ET 11fo
11:00 ET 54ko
11:00 ET 1.1fo

Every single tournament player will tell you that you are wrong here. Every - single - one. I would even bet you there would not be overlay.

wasnt it a 55 16k at some point? maybe even 18k pretty recently, what changed to make it a 10k?

guarantees make or break tournaments for the most part. kill the guarantee kill the tournament. it's what lures all types of players