Pokerstars recently removed most of their tournaments with 20% award structures. (The capped $0.55 - $1.10, and $0.55 - $2.20 at 19:00, 2:00, 5:00) The decision to remove the tournaments may have been completely irrelevant to professionals and some recreational players, but it was an inconvenience for me and other poker players with a desire to do anything that they can to avoid and reduce the variance that is associated with the game. Perhaps it’s the greed, ignorance, and hubris of the human condition that makes most poker players believe they have what it takes to climb the mountain of variance and good players, and profit from tournaments with top-heavy payouts. I am not one of those people, nor do I have any desire to try to be one of those people. There was a short period of time when I was interested in the idea of being a professional online poker player, but that was before I learned that even the best poker players experience down swings of 100 buy-ins or more. That kind of variance is completely unacceptable to me, therefore the only option that I have is to avoid most tournaments and only play the ones with flatter payouts or extra incentives like tournament tickets or money added prize pools.

The general consensus amongst professionals and some recreational players is that top-heavy payouts (or 10% award structures) are better because it invariably increases their ROI because of the higher payouts to the top 3 players, and it allows good players to exploit weaker players that are just trying to finish ITM. That may be true for a small percentage of players, but I think the majority of recreational players would benefit from having the option of playing a higher volume of tournaments with flatter payouts. I like having the option of thinking about playing for 1st while I am also thinking about finishing ITM. And I like playing tournaments that usually require a relatively small amount of winning hands to finish ITM or make it to the final table. From my experience playing 100 tournaments with a 20% payout instead of 10% and an average buy-in of $1 can easily add an extra $10 - $15 to my bankroll. The easy min-cashes do have to be combined with some final tables to get a good ROI, but my final table% would have to be higher to compensate for the higher variance of a 10% award structure.

I recently sent an email to Pokerstars asking them to bring back the tournaments that they removed, or increase the amount tournaments that are currently available. ($0.11, $0.27, $0.55, $0.82) They happen to be the only turbo tournaments on the stars that I am willing to play, and I would like to have the option of getting to silver star by exclusively playing the 20% payout tournaments. That would ideally be accomplished by having the option of playing tournaments with buy-ins at $0.55, $1.00, $2.20, $3.30, $4.40. I also suggested the idea of having multiple tournaments with the same buy-in ($1.10+$1.10+$1.10+1.10) starting at the same time every hour. Please send an email to Pokerstars and let them know that you would like to see some changes to their tournament schedule if you happen to be a recreational player that wants to avoid the variance just as much as I do.

lol...perfect

There is 1$ 180men reg speed sngs and a couple of other mttsngs at similar buyin level/player field that are all regspeed and seem to be running on a regular basis. What prevents you from playing these instead?

I usually play the 180s during the golden sng promotion, but I don’t play them regularly because the award structure is 15% instead of 20%, and I don’t like the payouts at the final table. I would prefer if first place received 25% of the prize pool instead of 30%.

go play at party poker mate they payout everyone in the MTT exept the 1st 4 guys that bust

hahahahha

try time tournaments OP, great VPPs for your silverstar and low variance if you are semi decent at turbos