Let's get right back into it, then!
Quote:
Originally Posted by DanteA
Do you have anything to say regarding the minis, Luke?
They were clearly successful, but it is worth starting with the fact that
mini-majors had promotional support. It was part of the Christmas Calendar and had added prizes. A weekly mini-majors suite would not replicate the success of a marketed promotion.
Part of the main schedule reformat I mentioned above involves evaluating both our current majors and the average buy-in of tournaments on the schedule. The 14:00 slot will likely transform in some way to accommodate more players. Any fresh ideas out there?
Quote:
Originally Posted by DoGGz
Need more info!
We'll soon have the functionality to change the length of blind levels once criteria is met. While the logic being developed has many possible use cases, the use I see becoming nearly ubiquitous in tournaments is the idea of increasing or decreasing level length at certain elimination milestones. This functionality appeals to a professional-turned-recreational player like myself because of the authenticity of the experience coupled with its mostly controlled length. I do not want to change a Big that typically lasts eight hours to last four. This type of structure will allow the tournament to still last a significant amount of time, but for more players the experience will be shortened.
For those of us with 9-5s, this represents the opportunity to play more tournaments without losing a night of sleep unless it involves a deep run!
Quote:
Originally Posted by LostOstrich
No doubt there will be plenty of nonsensical aggro rants like this, but I'm sure Luke can handle it.
gl Luke! We don't agree on everything and I'm not stupid enough to expect you to give more than a passing consideration to anything I or anyone else on here suggests, but I look forward to following and contributing anyway.
The Mini versions of the majors were such a roaring success that you must surely be tempted to try them again, right? Running them every Sunday would dilute the appeal for sure, but why not once a month?
Awarding tickets in the Bounty Builders is a fun extra (though not really an extra at all, since they're taken out of the cash prizepool), but is it really worth doing when you consider the downside? Are the tickets awarded at the FT actually driving people to the games? If you believe they are, what do you base this on? And will you be rolling more of this out across other games? Personally I think the software issues are costing you rake as a decent number of people who might be attracted to the games either can't see the amount of money in the pool or have satelites filtered out and don't see the games at all, which is likely to outweigh any benefits, but I don't have access to your data.
Once again, all the best for the new year.
I replied about the mini-majors above, but I'll add that doing them once a month isn't entirely my decision. If I deployed them without any promotional support, they would not encourage players to log into the client. Those who would play are those who are already in the client. This does not result in incremental play, but instead spreads liquidity. All of our promotions are analyzed, so I'm sure the very capable people responsible for making such decisions will see how successful it was. Regardless, I love having input into promotions and will mention this one as a candidate for repeating or even transforming!
As far as Bounty Builders tickets go, the idea was to point traffic to Wednesday to build a new major. Until the first BATTLE ROYALE ran, I was quite worried that the guarantee was too ambitious. As it turns out, this tournament performs extremely well (a signal that the exclusivity of the buy-ins of other 14:00 tournaments may not be necessary) and the tickets do not make or break the guarantee.
I wasn't over the moon with the idea of hybridizing these tournaments due to the two obvious bugs, and it is possible it changes in the future. There is a development item with potential to be deployed "soon" in order to display the cash prize pool as opposed to packages. The satellite filtering issue is likely more complex. If those issues are solved, hybridization will likely spread with tournaments awarding Sunday Storm or Million tickets.
As a test, I've removed the hybridization from the Monday-Friday version of the 12:15 $1.10 and 15:15 $7.50 Bounty Builders beginning Monday, 11 January. It will be very obvious how removing the hybridization element affects the tournaments.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mashxx
subbed
can we have less question dodging this year? and could you improve your communication and visibility? take example from Keith or Matthew.
Well, this mostly depends on your expectations. If you expect me to respond to every single suggestion, you're likely going to be disappointed. As for question dodging, what are you referring to?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ac3play
Can you also consider what a lot of us said about the 3+r structure? 2+r also... Just make it the same as the 11+r one
How do people feel about the new rebuy structure? Does it need any adjustments before being rolled out across the schedule?
Quote:
Originally Posted by jdawg91
Yep ****ing awful lag, including lobby lag (as in taking 15+ seconds to reg) around timeslot for one of those stupid ass FRs; I'm missing first hand dealt some portion of the time in the cash hyper sats when these lags are happening so not just affecting MTTs
I'm hopeful that I'll have something to report in the very near future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neilcaterham
I think the best MTT for micro players recently was a sat to the PCA.
You could win a whole PCA package for just $2.20 playing 3 phases of a nlhe game WITHOUT A BLOODY REBUY PERIOD. These were being run everyday with the final on Sundays.
They were excellent value for money and attracted a lot of players.
I think Pokerstars should think of running these for all major live games that Pokerstars runs or sponsers. EPT, UKIPT, LAPT etc.
In regards to reducing the MTT schedule please leave the Omaha8 games alone as there is barely a days schedule as it is.
Thanks.
I love the idea of Phase satellites to live events. It essentially guarantees that a handful of recreational or micro-stakes players can win a trip to the Bahamas. Our live events satellite manager is keen on the idea as well. As far as I can tell, it is moderately difficult to run Phase satellites to smaller live events, but I'm sure tournaments like EPT Grand Final, Barcelona, and other popular stops will utilize the functionality.
Do you find it complicated? Did you know that you can change Phase 2s if there's more than one remaining before the final Phase? I hope you'll share your experience!
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Originally Posted by ORLY???
Luke, I'll ask again: would you please consider implementing the 320 6max on saturdays?
Also, any news on an upcoming WCOOP challenge or monthly high stakes tournament (2k 6/8 max would be nice)?
The 320 6-max is very unlikely to run on Saturdays. That tournament only performs well on Tuesdays and Thursdays for obvious reasons. I'm of the opinion that the ABI of the schedule will be reduced over the course of the year. I know you're implying that it would succeed because its starting time is near the Saturday Super-Knockout, but I don't see it adding any overall value to Saturday.
As far as high stakes tournaments, I haven't seen much of the promotional calendar past February. That said, I am often sharing my view that high stakes players do not come to the site unless there is a promotion. As a player, I loved WCOOP Challenge. Please remember, I do not make promotional decisions!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alexo
or any news on the ridiculous rake on saturday bounty builders?
Win rates in scheduled PKO tournaments are extremely high. The rake will not be changed in these games. We realize that this format has not fully matured, so we will keep a close eye on results as the year progresses.
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Originally Posted by Uhrenknecht
Micros?
Bring 0.50+0.01$ Hyper
Bring back 1$R Big Ante Turbo with a way better structure and GTD, old gtd was 750$ and 1k chips for starting stack and rebuy stack. I mean, c'mon.
People love the 3xr-Turbo and blow it up to 40k. They love the hypers with their big antes and get 1k entrants. give it a chance.
Requests noted, but I'd like to point out another goal for 2016 which is lower overlay. One of my responsibilities in this role is managing overlay, and I did not do a sufficient job in 2015. Guarantees are more likely to be preemptively lowered for large sporting events, holidays, and the summer. That said, I do foresee the average guarantee increasing before summer simply because of the changes I'll be making to the schedule.
Quote:
Originally Posted by davidv1213
- Edit pay tables so that an even number of tables -1 player is paid and hand for hand is played w the same number of players on each table. Makes quite a big difference in smaller fields (320 6max, 200r, etc). Change was already made to Stars live tournaments quite a long time ago.
- Run all satellites in the same currency as the target tournament (HKD, BRL, AUD, etc), auto converting at daily rate upon buying in instead of using a guess at an exchange rate months beforehand.
- Run EPT player's choice satellites during SCOOP.
- Make a majority of PLO tourneys 6max, especially Omania. Short handed PLO should be the standard given how poorly the game plays full ring.
- Use 4x turbo sats to all HS tourneys especially the weekly 1ks, they were excellent in WCOOP and haven't been seen since.
- Earlier antes in million and warmup.
- Semi sat to super tues on a monday.
- Improve structure on 1500 chip turbo sub sats, they are basically unplayable atm given rake level and field sizes.
- More emphasis on rebuy, turbo rebuy, 4x turbo and reg speed deep satellites. They are some of the best satellite formats and hardly any exist.
- Early antes in 55r turbo sats.
- We’ve already been discussing this, so it must be a good idea! We’ll give it more serious thought, but if we do implement such a change, it’s a massive amount of work and will take a significant amount of time to implement.
- All of your live events feedback is read and considered. My colleague reads this thread and I believe many changes have come about because of the suggestions in these threads.
- I plan to change Omania to 6-max n-stack sometime before the summer.
- 3x and 4x-turbo tournaments are unlikely to be expanded in the main schedule. I'm sure you'll see many of them in *COOP satellites, though.
- The structures for the Million/Warm-Up/other majors will be examined at some point during the year. I do not consider this an urgent change to make.
- Super Tuesday satellites do not draw a crowd like other smaller targets. While it is likely the Super Tuesday and Thursday Thrill have their satellite systems aligned, I do not foresee large satellites being added on Monday and Wednesday.
- The 1500 chip turbo satellites are likely to be removed in the future. For that reason, I'm not going to spend time adjusting them.
- Best in this case is absolutely subjective. The turbo rebuys seem to cancel almost as much as the 1-in-3 hyper-turbos on offer. Numerous positive changes were made to satellites in 2015. These changes will be spread out among the schedule in 2016.
- Quite likely this format just receives a new structure in general this year.
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Originally Posted by I AmLegend11
All reg speed rebuys should be changed to the new structure, from top to bottom of the schedule. I think it is safe to say this new structure creates the biggest prize pool, where we are forced to rebuy
More thoughts?
Quote:
Originally Posted by LOLCh1pPorn
I don't think it's happening but if you want to do more for micro players, you should probably just bring back micromillions
MicroMillions will likely return in the future. That said, I do not believe it will return in March.
Quote:
Originally Posted by skadooshh
Firstly, want to thank you for the changes you made in the last year. It really has improved things a lot. Selfishly I am especially grateful for the bounty builders, which have improved the off peak schedule huge amounts.
There are a few suggestions I have to really improve the tournament schedule further;
- Update all rebuy tournaments to include the new structure (which is awesome)
- Sunday Minis for the; Kickoff, warm up, sunday rebuy and million. I play mainly up to 33$ and many others play lower, although you have improved sundays slightly with the new sunday guarantees it is still the same tournaments we have day in day out. Give small/micro players tournaments on sundays to really get excited about. I also disagree with the suggestion that they should be ran monthly.
- introduce another 44 6 max PKO tournament; I understand why this tournament was removed but it was far healthier than the other midstake freezeout tournaments running around it. If you feel like peaktime is too congested there is no reg speed midstakes tournaments between the 55 bounty builder starting at 3am and the 55 3k starting at 13.30.
Appreciate the kind words! Over the course of the year, I imagine there will be fewer gaps like you’ve described above. We’ll make a lot of progress in 2016.
Thanks,
Luke