Firstly i am not entirely sure where to post this but i will drop it here.

With the recent release of Spin and goes by pokerstars (against many regulars wishes) there has been a rather big effect on the SnG community, as well as long running effects and some short term ones on cash and MTTs.

So what are the major effects that have occured so far?
-6 max hyper traffic plummeted for multiple stakes not just the 30s/60s
-Hu hyper traffic plummeted as well
-Cashgame traffic dropped 9% in the last week
-another top heavy distribution structure

Due to the release the traffic has all be re-routed to these games, leaving many SNE sng grinders stuck with out much choice but to either grind it out in negative edge games against each other and get SNE or give up after thousands of hours of hard sweat and tears.

Hu SnG regs have now suffered a huge drop in traffic which would mostly annoyingly effect those who are in orbits or cartels who had to battle for hours and hours to get into their respective levels.

Now if your sitting here smiling because your a cash or MTT reg this still effects you. Where do you think all the regs who can't cut it anymore in sngs due to the vastly higher reg count are heading? To your games. And lets face it if your a sng reg your skill set is almost always going to be higher then the standard MTT regs. As well as that you will find there likely is some level of traffic being diverted from MTTs towards spin and goes as well.

If your one of those glass half full types who haven't actually read into why spin and goes and terrible to grind and still think its a dandy idea then here is the reasoning as to why they suck.

1) little icm which means edges are smaller, fish lost a lot of equity in this department

2) the rake is higher 3handed in a hyper turbo spin and go, then it is with a 6max hyper

3) while the games are indeed soft the variance is so mindblowingly big its a massive issue, when somebody can grind 500k games and still run 1k bi's under ev its a problem for consistent incomes and for many people this just is not a problem, we require consistent incomes to survive and while variance in 6max hypers is high its definitely far more consistent then this.

4) For some reason stars has never released the great function that full tilt has had all along, a deal button that doesn't require stars input.
If you did hit a 1k multiplier and were now playing for the max prize pool on a $30 the payout distribution looks like this the payouts are...

$30k
$3k
$3k

you will notice there's still no icm at any point in these structures, and the fact that we are forced to play for 27k hu is ludicrous since it basically can make or break a very long period of our grinding.

This is what the distributions of jackpot tables look like

Spin & Go prize pool Probability
1000x - 5 of 100,000
200x - 10 of 100,000
100x - 15 of 100,000
25x - 80 of 100,000
10x - 1,000 of 100,000
6x - 8,000 of 100,000
4x - 18,010 of 100,000
2x - 72,880 of 100,000

73% of the time we are playing for only 66% of the prizepool we paid for!
This means graphs are expected to look like consistent downswings followed by large wins, similar to mtts.

So what are the Fixes?

Firstly if stars lowers rake these games will become more grind able and thus a reg pool will rebalanced within the SNG community meaning more fish for other games

Secondly if stars lowers the multiplier from 1k to something like 200x the variance would plummet and these games would become pretty appealing to a lot of grinders

Thirdly if stars were to release a system where players could control the deals the players could all do what they want to...chop. Then the variance would plummet and the games would also increase in appeal to grinders. For some reason FTP has this and stars never implemented this, whenever fish hit the jackpot all they are doing in chat is screaming CHOP followed by gentleman's agreement?

Fourth is introduce a different payout structure for the larger multipliers such as 25k/10k/7k, lowers variance and introduces icm to have an edge in

If we have to put up with these damn games then lets at least find a middle ground stars where we can all reach some level of happiness, instead of just raking in the money from casuals. There has been a lot of upset regs/anger towards your company recently and some are beginning to feel you don't care about player opinion anymore.

very nice read / thoughts man !

still those kind of sng's you cant grind like any other type of sng's so far , and that's another point, maybe you forget to write bout that, you should drop few words bout that as well.

If a few factors within the games are altered they could become grindable.

Amaya gaming has made many unfavorable decisions since they came into power (come back old stars <3 we love you).

If they were willing to adjust just the rake and any other variable these games could potentially balance the SNG Community out again.


If they changed the max multiplier, a deal option, or made a less top heavy payout on the actual jackpot sngs for the higher multipliers the games would improve.

ATM they're set up in the worst possible way

Maybe they will get alot of new customers. The game is very addictive, I know the variance is too high, so personally I don't play it. But the spin & go concept is pretty brilliant when I thought there was no other ideas for new types of poker. Also, I believe when you hit a jackpot a moderator will show up and ask you if you want to chop. I read that somewhere.

You cant chop anymore. This is the most reasonable response to spin &go's so far. I really don't like the catchphrase "We are poker, not gambling" used against this format. If poker wasn't gambling, how much money/fish do you think will be circulating around. I actually think its great that you can get a form of poker so apparently "gambly" and where you can also obtain an edge

I think its also important to note another method of fixing these potential games is also re-adjusting the odds

For example instead of

Spin & Go prize pool Probability
1000x - 5 of 100,000
200x - 10 of 100,000
100x - 15 of 100,000
25x - 80 of 100,000
10x - 1,000 of 100,000
6x - 8,000 of 100,000
4x - 18,010 of 100,000
2x - 72,880 of 100,000


We could make it a much more common probability to smaller jackpots like 6x 10x 25x and 100x and just make the major jackpot VERY unlikely, and decrease the amount of 2x prizepools

For example (hypothetical, i am sure these numbers won't add up)
1000x= 1 of 200,000
500x = 2 of 100,000
200x = 25 of 100,000
100x = 45 of 100,000
25x = 250 of 100,000
10x= 2420 of 100,000
6x= 10,000 of 100,000
4x= 20,000 of 100,000
2x=65k

but the idea being that the likelihood of the monster jackpots would be unlikely and the distribution of smaller ones would mean consistency would be vastly higher.

We could play around with a variance simulator till there's a structure thats agreed upon

if this greedy Amaya gaming company really wanted more money surely it would make sense to start by eating its own and introducing the chop software then hiring all these unneeded moderators to attend deals that take longer and often result in shifts of equity in between players waiting for the mods to arrive

With the recent release of Spin and goes by pokerstars (against many regulars wishes) there has been a rather big effect on the SnG community, as well as long running effects and some short term ones on cash and MTTs.

It's too early to tell what the long term effects are from these games. Sure, in the short term they are currently popular and drawing attention away from other games.

Due to the release the traffic has all be re-routed to these games, leaving many SNE sng grinders stuck with out much choice but to either grind it out in negative edge games against each other and get SNE or give up after thousands of hours of hard sweat and tears.

Ya. That sucks for those players.

. And lets face it if your a sng reg your skill set is almost always going to be higher then the standard MTT regs.

What? I've played both formats and I've had success in both and the skill set of your standard MTT reg is much higher than a standard SnG Reg. Especially in an MTT format, lol Are you serious with this comment?

the rake is higher 3handed in a hyper turbo spin and go, then it is with a 6max hyper

This could be an issue in the future. Currently the Spin and Go games are mega soft. I don't think it's much of an issue right now.

while the games are indeed soft the variance is so mindblowingly big its a massive issue, when somebody can grind 500k games and still run 1k bi's under ev its a problem for consistent incomes and for many people this just is not a problem, we require consistent incomes to survive and while variance in 6max hypers is high its definitely far more consistent then this.

ok. This could be an issue for guys trying to grind out consistent incomes. That's not Star's problem really. If these games don't satisfy that need for you move on to something else.

For some reason stars has never released the great function that full tilt has had all along, a deal button that doesn't require stars input.

Yep. This seems like an option that should be added into the software in the best interest of most players.


Firstly if stars lowers rake these games will become more grind able and thus a reg pool will rebalanced within the SNG community meaning more fish for other games

Pure speculation.

Secondly if stars lowers the multiplier from 1k to something like 200x the variance would plummet and these games would become pretty appealing to a lot of grinders

Maybe this isn't important to PokerStars. Lowering the top multipliers could possibly also make them less appealing to recreational players.

Thirdly if stars were to release a system where players could control the deals the players could all do what they want to...chop. Then the variance would plummet and the games would also increase in appeal to grinders. For some reason FTP has this and stars never implemented this, whenever fish hit the jackpot all they are doing in chat is screaming CHOP followed by gentleman's agreement?

Point taken. Add a deal button.

If we have to put up with these damn games then lets at least find a middle ground stars where we can all reach some level of happiness, instead of just raking in the money from casuals. There has been a lot of upset regs/anger towards your company recently and some are beginning to feel you don't care about player opinion anymore

Most of the Regs arguing for or against changes are arguing for their own best self interest.

If you truly believe SnGs were in a great state prior to the introduction of Spin and Gos with their vast number of SuperNova+ regs mass tabling and grinding out minimal or close to breakeven winrates, pushing out rewards, all while other casuals got eaten alive with their negative winrates and their limited rewards then I'm not sure it's worth it to try and argue points against you.

Something needed to be done to bring the "fun" back into poker and to give the casual players a more enjoyable and exciting experience. It's too early to tell if Spin and Gos are the long term answer or not but they certainly feel much more entertaining and appealing than your standard SnGs.

The lotto aspect also finally gives a lot of the casual players a chance to WIN. I cannot believe how much this gets overlooked by some people. If and when a casual player wins something reasonable for him/her in these Spin and Gos they will most likely comeback for more and advertise their WIN to other people around them. That's great for poker and the longevity of the game.

Exactly. One of the reasons for the poker boom was that everybody thought they could find an edge and be the next Moneymaker. As the games have become more and more solid over the years more and more people are learning that poker is a losing proposition for them.

Either that or they are in denial with their tin foil hats claiming that it's all rigged against them.

These Spin and Gos can create an artificial feeling of edge for a lot of these players and keep them coming back for more games. They're also a lot of fun.

cneuy please dont talk about stuff you have no clue off as far as i lnow you only playe dlow stakes, yes those sng players are horrible, thats why you could beat them.

What exactly is your point? That because the majority of my games have come at an ABI<$60 that I have no reason to comment on the newly introduced Spin and Gos which have buyins ranging from $1 to $30?

Maybe you are taking a shot at me in which case I really don't care. I've played against you along with many other guys with higher ABI's than me.

It's too early to tell what the long term effects are from these games. Sure, in the short term they are currently popular and drawing attention away from other games.
-it will take traffic reguardless, that is a given.

in relation to your response to players in the SNE grind spot
-this was thoughtless by stars so close to the end of the year to release this, they are ruining things massivley for their hardest working VIPs, this definitly could have waited till 2015

What? I've played both formats and I've had success in both and the skill set of your standard MTT reg is much higher than a standard SnG Reg. Especially in an MTT format, lol Are you serious with this comment?

-It means that your average $50 abi mtt grinder is worse then your $50 sng grinder, and its true purely based on reg to fish ratios, if a $50abi reg is looking @ a ratio of fish to regs of 75% to 25% then of course he is forced to improve. Thats not to say there are not great mtt regulars out there.
If your in an mtt of similar buy in the ratio is lower and the regs build less dynamic and are forced to study less, so yes i am serious but that isn't whats particularly important at the moment.

the rake is higher 3handed in a hyper turbo spin and go, then it is with a 6max hyper
This could be an issue in the future. Currently the Spin and Go games are mega soft. I don't think it's much of an issue right now.

-mix rake with variance and nobody likes it. If they doubled rake on MTTs (which are currently low rake and high variance but high ROI games) people would complain. This applies to sngs also.

while the games are indeed soft the variance is so mindblowingly big its a massive issue, when somebody can grind 500k games and still run 1k bi's under ev its a problem for consistent incomes and for many people this just is not a problem, we require consistent incomes to survive and while variance in 6max hypers is high its definitely far more consistent then this.

ok. This could be an issue for guys trying to grind out consistent incomes. That's not Star's problem really. If these games don't satisfy that need for you move on to something else.

-Sure, but its killing everything else's traffic atm. And definitely for the foreseeable future to an extent

Firstly if stars lowers rake these games will become more grind able and thus a reg pool will rebalanced within the SNG community meaning more fish for other games

Pure speculation.

-not sure how you claim there's pure speculation if there is a general relationship that occurs between the variables, its a standard reaction to the factors.

Secondly if stars lowers the multiplier from 1k to something like 200x the variance would plummet and these games would become pretty appealing to a lot of grinders

Maybe this isn't important to PokerStars. Lowering the top multipliers could possibly also make them less appealing to recreational players.

-this is a possibility, however if thats the case then please look at my post above yours that talks about a solution being readjusting the payouts for frequencies

If we have to put up with these damn games then lets at least find a middle ground stars where we can all reach some level of happiness, instead of just raking in the money from casuals. There has been a lot of upset regs/anger towards your company recently and some are beginning to feel you don't care about player opinion anymore

Most of the Regs arguing for or against changes are arguing for their own best self interest.

-Yes but out of self-interest we can also see that its not right stars charges higher rake. And we are offering a way regs can grind these games happily too, and its common sense mostly as to how the effects will flow on.

If you truly believe SnGs were in a great state prior to the introduction of Spin and Gos with their vast number of SuperNova+ regs mass tabling and grinding out minimal or close to breakeven winrates, pushing out rewards, all while other casuals got eaten alive with their negative winrates and their limited rewards then I'm not sure it's worth it to try and argue points against you.

-the skill won out in that which is what pokerstars has always strives to get across, poker is a game of skill. This introduced a huge gamble element into the game, the equivilent of this is trippling rake at cashgames, the introducing bonus pots into certain hands. They would immediately complain, however with sngs this is just ok?

And the edges in cashgame are way bigger. Casuals always get eaten alive, the only difference with this format is their winrate goes from negative gradually to negative with higher variance.

Something needed to be done to bring the "fun" back into poker and to give the casual players a more enjoyable and exciting experience. It's too early to tell if Spin and Gos are the long term answer or not but they certainly feel much more entertaining and appealing than your standard SnGs.

The lotto aspect also finally gives a lot of the casual players a chance to WIN. I cannot believe how much this gets overlooked by some people. If and when a casual player wins something reasonable for him/her in these Spin and Gos they will most likely comeback for more and advertise their WIN to other people around them. That's great for poker and the longevity of the game.

this completely goes against stars efforts to legalize poker in various places around the world. And this format was already available on fulltilt, the fact they brought it to stars as well is very annoying. The only difference is Fulltilts ones are actually run MUCH better

i need to learn how to quote properly

they may be negative edge but when moneymaker won the idea was any ametur could win on a given day, i think most fish going in knowing they will lose. This just increases the average speed at which they go broke.

Very good counterpoints MrBubbleBoy. I should definitely be a fair bit more sympathetic to current wrench that these Spin and Gos throw into a lot of people's livelihoods.

One thing about your last comment though. I feel these Spin and Gos do actually give an amateur the feeling that he can win on any given day.

Even if they do lose with more variance overall there will be a lot more success stories along the way, even if they're only in the short term. Through word of mouth and human psychology you'd think that these kind of success stories will lead to more returning customers for Stars.

Ex. I watched some multiplier, forget which stake, but there were two guys playing for $1500. Their play was absolutely atrocious. One of these players walked away from that Spin and Go with $1500. Now what he goes on to do with that money, only Star's will know and I'm sure they will continue to monitor that sort of stuff.

Ask yourself this though, Would that same player ever have been able to get that feeling of euphoria from normal SnGs?

That feeling of euphoria is what urges a lot of people to want to risk their money and something I feel is lacking in a lot of poker games today. That guy is probably on cloud 9 today and it's my bet he will be back for more games.

Anyway, hopefully as you said in your initial post that as time goes by things can be worked out to make these a more reliable option for grinders as well.

I really liked your ideas of lowering the multiples and increasing the frequencies that they happen to decrease variance. Just doubt Stars will do it. Seems most people mostly want to deal anyway when they pull the highest multiplier so why not give people lower top prizes but have them happen more often.

yeah and now they have a chance to win on a given day, unlike if they were to play a few 6 max hypers against 4-5 players who know wtf they're doing.

sounds like you're making an argument FOR spins.

Also, **** deals and all you little girls who play to spin for a 1000x and then want to chop. If you want to play these stupid games you don't deserve the right to chop. The whole point is to win 1000 bi's, not to hit the lottery and then not play poker. It blows my mind how many people are whining about how these are "pure gambling" and then beg for a deal button.

I understand the anger, but I'm not sympathetic. These things happen, and if you were grinding high stakes hypers expecting your insane hourly to continue forever then you obviously didn't learn your lesson from the other 10 sng formats that died over night throughout the years (partially because of the introduction of 6 max hypers). Yeah it would suck to be in that position, but you have to move on just like all the other players have done over the years when their main format either died or was eliminated. It's the nature of playing games for a living.

Without having read the thread: The problem is not that traffic is moving, it's that it's moving to a basically non-grindable format with is entirely different from changes that happened in the past.

There's no such thing as a non-grindable format if there is still an edge. You just need to change your BRM and work on your money management. Rough life...

Besides, calling spins non-grindable when people have been grinding live mtts for the last 40 years is kind of a ridiculous statement.

There is a limit of bearable variance, some ppl like to plan at least a little bit I guess.

I share this view!

i feel bad for the HU cartels....really

You obviously don't get it. If tomorrow, by natural events all the fish disappeared from 6 max hypers and went to MTTs or cash, fine whatever. I would be upset about it, but I would move, learn those formats and deal. That's not what's happening here. It's not just a matter of "learn the new format where the fish are" because that format is not grindable. There's nothing to adapt to, so your argument makes no sense, This is affecting all traffic, not just 6 max hypers. Anything that makes every other format except itself harder to grind, AND also isn't grindable long term is bad for the ecosystem and shouldn't happen. It's as simple as that.

Who said that Spin & Go's are bad for ecosystem?
They may appear bad to regs. Who are small part of ecosystem.

If we talk about poker ecosystem - these games do have potential to bring players in poker who otherwise would be playing black jack, roulette or slots.
This by very clear definition is very good for ecosystem.

I hope this is a level.

Any game that kills traffic at all other games is bad for the ecosystem. Any game where the fish go broke even faster than they normally would is bad for the ecosystem. Any game that turns the winning aspect of poker into basically gambling is bad for the ecosystem.