Winamax is awesome, stars.fr is nowhere even close. I wish they went worldwide or had a .eu version at least.

Luke now that youre back from the holiday, can you stop ignoring the pay out concerns? Whats the point of this thread then? Its by far the biggest issue that recs and regs care about.. youre killing your site

phahahaha really but yeah, keep going at it luke, ur doing a great job ignoring the payout issue.

The thread that keeps on giving.

888 also arbitrarily reduced the gtds for the summer, however party didn't. Let's see who's wrong and who's not going to pay for overlays.

stars and 888 are quite friendly, imo

Hi Luke,

Thanks for your answers. But you completely forgot to comment on the new payout structure. Could you elaborate on that topic?

to be fair he did make two posts on the topic. Many on here (myself included) don't agree with it but he did state to the effect "that recreational players cashing more frequently causes them to play more. "

This may or may not be true but the one certainty is Pstars makes more profits due to recycled rake.

hi luke.
the new schedule at a first glance looks good but it's not.
I play every decent MTT between 11$ and 109$ + the Majors. it's sunday 11:00 ET and I have 2 tables. started regging/lateregging at 09:00 ET and for the next 3 hours didn't have more than 5 tables at the same time. something is not right, everything is a psko, turbo or semi turbo mtt.

we need big field flagship MTTs with decent structure around which people register other MTTs, something that a reg or rec knows he can't miss.

how did you get to destroy the biggers ? everyone played them because they knew they would get huge prizes. A good example is big 7.5$, now after one hour of late reg it has 3.5k$ for 1st on a sunday. every person who isn't 100% sure if to play it will not register.

the new payouts schedule is very unappealing.

i feel that there isn't anything on the schedule that would make people dream of hitting big with a smaller investment(with a few small exceptions).

you used to have big 8$,11$,22$,55$ with 1st prizes that would make everyone play it.

the former 3x sats for the SM/SWU are practically destroyed and I think the only reason is the rake change(even though the structure for the 3x's improved). everybody who had 5$ in his account tried to qualify for the SM in those 3x turbos.

They were destroyed because Stars figures those players that you speak of can use that money in Spin n Go's to the Sunday Million where Pokerstars enjoys higher margins due to recycled rake (Spin prize is $5 so players play again)

if stars is so right about everything why does it seem to me that traffic is consistently dwindling? why their stock price have fallen so high over past two years? why other sites managed to grow in a declining market? what am I missing?

They have it so backwards if they think recreational players care more about mincashing then what 1st pays. I am a recreational player on draftkings and I have played many tournaments that I know I am -ev in if I see a massive first place prize. For example the other day a $33 MLB tournament with 100k for first, i literally know nothing about baseball but spent $33 to play this to try and get lucky and bink. If it was 30k for 1st but the exact same prizepool I would not have played it.

If players try a bit harder to replace some of their games from stars with euro site games it will have an impact.

For example any player in europe should skip the mini mill.Your playing till around 8-9am and getting a pretty ****ty payout compared to what you would with the old payouts, specially when you consider how big the field is.
Playing reg speed mega fields use to be worth sacrificing your sleep schedule, adding variance to your game, but now its wiser to skip ones like the mini mill, big 11 etc.

Personally I like 3-Stack. Please don't make them another PKO. There are enough PKO in the schedule already.
But why do all tourneys have to be gimmicky anyways. What's wrong with vanilla?


When you are speaking of 'Omaha' tourneys would you please specify whether you mean PLO or O8 because those games are fundamentally different.

It's mostly O8 players who are complaining about the entire schedule being 6-max now. The reference that CG is played 6-max doesn't justify the switch. Holdem CG is also mostly played 6-max, but you wouldn't turn the entire HE schedule into 6-max overnight, would you? O8 was about 75% FR, turning it into 100% 6-max overnight is very unthoughtful.

Edit: I do like both 6-max and Full Ring for different reasons. I'm not a fan of 9-max though. I wish all Full Ring was made 8-max. But removing Full Ring entirely is very bad. It's always bad to remove an option, whether it's popular or not.

i dont think they think that. They only say they do. Its all about rake incr. Fish lasts longer this way. Ideally, for them, would be that every player wins his buyin minus rake and everybody keeps playing. But they are making a big mistake. Because not everybody will keep on playing. And advertising with somewhat ok first prizes (which get diminished as more people register) wont do the trick either. People will notice it. Recs too. Big mistake.

I wont play any mtt where first prize pays so less a %.

Luke, does the Super Sized get to the timebank faster than reg speed tournaments? everytime i have to think a bit there i feel i have to hurry

Sadly you have it backwards if you think they give a **** about what recs care about (wrt payout structure). It is simply to get them to recycle rake, whilst perpetuating the myth that they don't want recs going broke too fast (but here play these hypers and spins!!!)

well recs need to enjoy themselves to even start registering to start recycling rake, so, you have it backwards.

turn 320 6max red on sundays, call it Sunday 6max with 5k stack with 50k gtd for start push 1h and i think its gonna be a success

Now that's a start!

What really is frustrating is the lack of response. Since the start of the new schedule I have made at least 10 posts about mixed games but not a single one of them has been addressed. It's like tapping in the dark as to understand what made you do these changes and whether you are willing to listen to us.

I've been looking at the new mixed games schedules from different perspectives (Filtered, Tourney->Special, Events->'MTT schedule'->Majors|'Daily Specials'. It appears - and again we can only speculate - that you intended to unclutter the special tab and therefore have removed both 'Daily' and 'Weekly' tournaments. I see you mentioned the word 'special' in recent posts and it seems to you these tournaments were not very special. They certainly aren't in overall comparison, but for mixed games players those Weekly tournaments are special, something like their Sunday Millions.

Now I'm not sure if there is a chance to bring back the tourneys under their former label. But as you continue to run 'Omania', alternatively you could at least add the former O8 games to that umbrella. In particular:

Daily 15:30 (ET) $27 Omania FLO8, $1.5K Gtd

Sa 13:30 (ET) $215 Omania Weekly-H PLO8, $10K Gtd
Sa 13:30 (ET) $82 Omania Weekly-L PLO8, $8K Gtd

Su 13:00 (ET) $215 Omania Weekly-H NLO8, $12K Gtd
Su 13:00 (ET) $82 Omania Weekly-L NLO8, $10K Gtd

Su 14:30 (ET) $530 Omania Weekly-H FLO8, $15K Gtd
Su 14:30 (ET) $82 Omania Weekly-L FLO8, $4K Gtd

NEW: Su 16:30 (ET) $215 Sunday NLO8 Hyper [6-max], $30K Gtd

Except for the Hyper, I do suggest to make them 8-max (formerly 9-max). If you for some reason don't like the -H/-L approach please bring back at least the $215 versions. I opted for a higher buy-in for the FLO8 to target both high stakes MTT and CG players.

HORSE and 8-Game are still well represented (albeit maxed out at $82) but their individual games Stud(8), Razz, 2-7 need a comeback too. Also please revive the 'Astronomer Freerolls' to introduce new players to these games.

Can not believe there is no o8 highstakes toernement in weekend?? it second populars MTT format.

I mean it stupid in so many ways i do not play mtt in weekend anymore only for this reason.
It not that hard to add a 215 (8 max) on saterday and sunday and lot of people will be happy make it reentrie and stars is cashing in.

I dont care that pokerstars is only looking for there own interest. But is very frustrating to see that stars do this kind of things that even bad for them and for people who like to play these toernements......

Would really like to know how a rec feels after he won the 1$ prog KO with 4.6k entrants for about 300. Highest would be around 400 if he busts all and then he checks the big1 and sees he could have won over 500 there with only 4.1k entrants. Does he really think "At least the prog KO reduces my variance?". Well I know how I think: Never again. Unfortunatly there isn't much to play in the micros. And with these fields you need some kind of volume.

Exactly This. since you removed them ive only played one weekend. i don think i ever missed on in 18 months. There is literally nothing worth playing.

It's simpled and gtrx made some great points too.

$215 NLO8
$215 PLO8
$215 Hyper (maybe pko)
$530 FLO8 (more popular wiht hs/cash players does better as a bigger buyin.

even if theyre turbos as we have regular speed in the week at least it's something. HS holdem players used to play these but theyre not gona bother when the highest mtt we have is $82 it's a joke.

Is it just me or is the The Blue lower staked MTTs have a fairly bad structure still? Went reasonably deep in the mini super tuesday $33 a couple of weeks ago and once it got serious average stack seemed to be around 20-25BB. I think just as I was busting the average stack increased a bit but only cos the blinds seemed to have shot up fast forcing the action. Time to bring back the old BIGS structure. That was so perfect don't know why they changed everything.

This!!!
08 Variety MTT's are completely different to PLO cash games and I really wish we could get atleast half of them back to FR.

Horse and 8-Game are running every hour which is great except there is zero mtts for anyone to move up. "ALL" of these are $2 which i find kind of strange. Some $5, $11, $22 etc each day would awesome

This has probably been said before but...the min cash in 22$ Mini Million is $29.93. Took almost 4 hours to get ITM. Do you think any of the recs are happy with this crap??? Make 8$ in a 22$ tourney, a whopping 2$/h. Absolutely pathetic.
You can think about margins and about recs not losing as quickly all you want, but this is not FUN. Fun players play poker because its FUN. This is absolutely ridiculous. Recs will stop playing a lot quicker than you thought. I'll pray to baby Jesus party poker keeps doing what theyre doing and 888 grows too