Originally Posted by jdpc27
edit: now 10 am on the west coast of the world and i just busted 215 tcoop. lets see...i can play a 100 rebuy with a 15k gtd which attracts only 62 players on a tcoop day. oh, theres also a big 109 with a 15-20k lower gtd than what i am used to seeing. oh joy...let me fire up a whole miserable friday where i risk 4k to try to win 4k in some of the better scenarios. instead, i'm going to go watch mindless tv and eventually go out for lunch and stumble into some activity to do because i'm bored.
once again..when you have a guy who loves poker setting his alarm for 645 am so he can play a 215 rebuy while knocking cobwebs out of his head...when you have that player unregging and logging off stars by 10am when he woke up at an ungodly hour specifically to be engaged on pokerstars. when you give that player no motivation or reason to stay online after only 3 hours when he went to sleep early last night specifically to wake up and play on stars, you have a huge problem. you can continue to look at data and intrepret it 40 different ways. Me, I will continue to look at players motivations, time engaged, comments and the "stickiness" of the stars app. And if you look at it from that point of view, the data supports my arguements.
the only thing we really disagree on is the reason. Luke and stars think that demand has left the building and players have left the planet. Me and many other players think that stars is running its high stakes tournament schedule into the ground and is personally responsible for a decent amount of the reductions the data is showing.
Almost every live EPT event just crushes. the 1ks and 2ks in barcelona and prague did record numbers. the high rollers are almost all up on numbers across the board. every time you have a special promotion or wccop/sccop etc, the gtds you guys set always get blown out of the water. I just can't buy the arguement that everyone has left and turned off the lights when its the same players live that also play online. all of these players have stars accounts. We haven't left, we have simply changed behaviors. Years ago, most of us would battle it out in midstakes and small highstakes tournaments to win 3-5k up top. These tournaments were soft and often if you made the final table, winning 1st or 2nd was almost a lock. you could justify playing these tournaments because you would win them a huge amount of the time that you final tabled. also the weekly schedule across sites was way more expensive. it used to cost me upwards of 40k-60k a month just to cover my online buyins. there were 3 1ks a week across sites and many high stakes offerings plus ftops and party series, etc. In today's environment the final tables are much tougher and variance higher. It seems way less worth it to battle it out for 3-5k top prize when i'm going to take 7th about as much as i take 2nd and my game is continuing to be exposed to other good players for not much upside. At least when my hands are seen or showndown during the super tuesday, i have a chance to be rewarded 100k for that exposure to my game.
look at all the data you want, but i've been around and totally immersed in this game for the last 12 years. Give us a reason to play and isn't it funny, we always show up. Yet because I'd rather go out to movies/lunch on a friday than play a 100 rebuy with a withered 15k against 62 other players where i personally know about 30 of them just seems exactly what it is, withered.
people haven't left in droves, we just go to where the excitement and big money is. and apart from a special series and sundays, you barely give us a reason to show up. Tuesdays and thursdays are just barely hanging on as it is and you can't keep overusing the ko/sko/pko format to keep them breathing. They are simply band aids for the real problem. the schedule and gtds were run very rigid in the past.
Gtds were set by the worst performing day of the week. This killed organic growth, not helped it. gtds were the same across all days of the week and to not have a huge overlay on mon and fri, you guys kinda killed off the entire week as a whole.
give us more high stakes tournaments on tue/thur/ and some minis on sundays and watch the excitement and engagement come back.
seems funny they say that demand isn't there but everytime a series throws a big gtd on it, it smashes. Even take live for example. right after pca, there was a poker series at hardrock in florida. i would never normally go as their main event was a 1k and i would have to change my flight to make it, so costs wouldn't normally justify it. however, they threw a 1 million dollar gtd on it. and you know what happened, people came out of the woodwork and south florida hosted the biggest 1k that they have EVER ran. What was so different than any other 1k's they have ran? simply the guarantee.
thats why i'm saying that you don't have to just have huge buyins on the schedule...buyins that target midstakes can also pull in both groups but the gtd and format of the tournament has to be good for both groups.
it seems counterintuitive that every ept is crushing and all big gtd live events blow past expectations but that online is some completely different beast suffering through huge withdrawals. It is my arguement that this pain is self inflicted and can be fixed.
i'm begging to be proven wrong. Just start with Tuesdays and actually make tuesday a super tuesday. build out the schedule and see the response. If i'm wrong, the response will be medium and will trail off after a few weeks. But what if i'm right? see when u give a guy just one tournament say the super tuesday he then weighs that against whatever else he could be doing that day. maybe he got invited to a dinner or to go out with mates. when you give that same person a schedule to play..then they have to weigh the entire schedule vs whatever opportunity cost they have. for many years, i never missed a sunday or tuesday unless i was playing live or had a near death in the family. I rescheduled key events around the stars schedule. nowadays, if i miss a tuesday who cares. Sundays still pull decent amount of weight and still play into consideration when scheduling flights, life, etc. but not nearly as much. Just a few years ago, you would have me delaying a flight for a day or two cuz no way i would miss.
the only part of stars that still has this amount of "stickiness" with players is the live events. Most of us plan our year around those events cuz each one can change your life. We still mark our calendars for wcoop/scoop and we only really care about the two sundays during tcoop.
in fact, while on teh subject, tcoop is a perfect example. The schedule was not that great overall which just led me to follow my normal routine. play tue/thur/sun take off mon, wed, fri and saturdays are optional. only thing tcoop got me to modify all week was to fire a 3 hour session this morning. now, lets be clear..after traveling and playing live a bunch, i flew home to mexico specifically to play online and play tcoop. yet even tho i'm at home with this goal, you still have me skipping several days of one of your "series". this would have never been the case in the past. i skipped aussie millions and a wpt and am now beginning to regret both.