mini promotion of a few turbos as "tcoop special" (black label) seems like a nobrainer
mini main also kinda nobrainer tbh
works on all sites there is obv a lot to play but 109 with huge guarantee will always work and ppl can afford the buyin

27$ tickets from the store don't work with ME phase 1 satties

The Main Event Phase 1 Deadline sats are set to take the following tickets: "$27 Deadline Turbo Entry", "$27 or Step 2 Ticket VIP Store", "Step 2".

Which ticket are you referring to, please?

the one which is 2700 coins in the vip store

Oh right, of course... my mistake. That ticket is relatively new. I'll get it added to the remaining $27 Phase 1s as soon as possible. Thank you!

would have liked to reg phase 2 of the $27 tcoop satty to main even with a phase 1 start stack

It would be nice to have a fixed blind structure based on how many people are left in the tournament, only for ITM tho. Say you just reach ITM, have the blinds increase every time the average stack rises above 20bb or whatever is a good number we can agree upon. So much tanking in these big buyin turbos and it turns the game into a massive crapshoot.

I know its probably not technically possible right now, but make it happen!

wut ?

lmao ya it sounds kinda dumb, especially for TCOOP because they are, by design, crapshoots but think of it like the hand rule for 6max hyper satties. Blinds used to increase every 3 minutes but now they increase every 10 hands, or whatever it is. I think it would be kinda cool if when a TCOOP gets down to 45 player, the blinds increase based on average stack size, not every 5 minutes.

But that is not how tournament poker works.

Really disliked the long timebanks in the TCOOP main. So dumb how the average stack was like 9bb after the bubble had bursted, because everyone just started timebanking for 90 seconds with 600 players left.

I understand that, but you can still have the tourney progress at a reasonable pace if you set the blinds to increase everytime the average stack rises about 12-15bb or whatever people think is good for the game.

The goal here is to prevent nits that tank for ladders completely ruining what little playability is left when you're super deep in turbos. They can still tank for ladders, but at least they won't completely destroy action

I'm not sure how feasible this it, though. I'm curious what you guys think.

Or make it 7 min instead of 5, the ME was too short

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61...-spot-1587170/

I've got the data now, and I'm happy to share it. Some players did indeed try quite a lot of times. However, the overall average number of attempts at Event 01, Phase 1 per player came out to 1.850.

Overall data below for those who may find it interesting...

• Most Attempts by a Single Player: 30
• 20-29 Attempts: about a dozen players
• 10-19 Attempts: about 350 players

Those with 20+ have heart

Thanks for sharing the above data, Bryan.

A couple of questions for ya:
What are your overall thoughts on this year's TCOOP?

Despite a few overlays, would you consider it a success?

Did any games/formats fall below expections and any surprise you guys by exceeding expectations?

Lastly will there be a TCOOP in 2017?

Edit: don't take the last question the wrong way. I asked it because i personally feel there wasn't as much hype this year and hope Pokerstars doesn't make an impulse decision.

My pleasure.

It's too early to say. I'm still analyzing data from the series and will be doing so for a while. I'm glad that players enjoyed the series. I'm glad that the satellites worked very well, particularly the Mega-Path and the Round 1s to the satellites at $7.50 and above.

Success for a series such as TCOOP is defined in so many different ways that it's difficult for me to answer the above question overall. Personally, I consider Event 01 to have been a major personal failing in planning and execution, and look forward to putting the lessons learned in said failure into practice in future series. There were many successes throughout the series as well, though, and it would be foolish to ignore those while also recognizing that things didn't go as well as they should have in all areas.

The $7.50 Phase satellite to the Main Event exceeded my expectations quite dramatically. Obviously, Event 01 failed to meet my expectations, again quite dramatically. I was somewhat surprised by the 10-Stack Hyper-Turbo doubling its guarantee, as we were concerned about the 10-Stack trials that we'd run last summer. The High-Roller did quite a bit better than I expected, as well, including much higher satellite participation than I'd anticipated... nearly a quarter of the field in that tournament was in via satellite. The Main Event satellites did very well, also... more than a third of the Main Event's field was in via satellite.

I'd be completely stunned if there isn't. I find it difficult to imagine a scenario in which we'd stop TCOOP.

don't hold yur breath folks.....
that's what you said about micro millions last year.....
still waiting for micro low coop

ad mini st/tt/wu/milly/rebuy after the lag issue is fixed please.

I'm reasonably certain that I never wrote such a thing about MicroMillions. I could be wrong, but I don't think so in this case.

Good questions Jia and thank you for the candid responses Bryan.

One more... about the phase mtt that didn't live up to expectations. Do you think this was a result of:

Players not yet understanding how phases work?
Not enough genuine enthusiasm for phases?
Not enough phase 1s?
Guarantee just too high?
Other reasons?
Will phases be apart of COOP's in the future?

How much effort on your part is spent on planning phases compared to "regular" COOP events?

Regarding Event 01, I'm still doing quite a bit of analysis on it, but I'll answer the above as much as I can at the moment.

I think that a large part of the overall problem with Event 01 had to do with the fact that a large percentage of our recreational player population didn't/doesn't have an understanding of the fact that Event 01 was in progress once Phase 1s started running. I think that many players thought that Phase 1s were satellites, and that we could have (should have) done more to educate recreational players about how Phase tournaments work. Interestingly, I think that we could have taken one simple step in this regard by changing how they were labeled. For instance, on January 7th, we started with these five tournaments in the early morning, leading to the first Phase 2:

02:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Phase 1 of 3]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd
04:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Phase 1 of 3]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd
05:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Phase 1 of 3]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd
06:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Phase 1 of 3]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd
07:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Phase 1 of 3]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd

After speaking to many players, reading many emails and forum posts since then, I think that participation in them would have been higher in each one with one simple change:

02:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Day 1A]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd
04:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Day 1B]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd
05:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Day 1C]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd
06:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Day 1D]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd
07:30 ET: TCOOP-01 [Day 1E]: $27 NL Hold'em [6-Max, Turbo], $1.5M Gtd

There's no way to know for certain, of course... but given players' familiarity with Day 1s (largely due to watching the WSOP on ESPN), something tells me that labeling the Phase 1s as Day 1s would have resulted in much higher participation. I don't know if this means that we will label Phase 1s as Day 1s in the future, but it's something that I'm considering.

I believe that the overall lack of understanding of how the Phase system works (again, mostly among recreational players) was likely the biggest factor in Event 01's failure, leading to many of the other issues, but I don't believe that it was the only issue. Other issues include:

For a turbo Event, a 3-Phase event was probably too much of a complication. I set the Event up this way with the intention of giving players the opportunity to get through the first hour of play at any time they wished, and then giving them the further flexibility to play the 2nd hour of the Event at a time of their choosing. However, in the aftermath of the Event, I've changed my thinking somewhat to the idea that a 2-Phase Event would likely have been better for the size of the prize pool, if for no other reason than that it would have been simpler and players would have known after the first 2 hours of play if they were through to the money round. Also, with Phase 1 being longer, late registration in each Phase 1 could have been longer, thereby enabling larger field sizes, as quite a lot of our players - even Turbo players - prefer to register late.

As for whether or not Phase tournaments will be part of future Championship series, yes they absolutely will be part of them. The Phase tournament that we ran in WCOOP 2015 was a dramatic success and went over very, very well. Though Event 01 in TCOOP 2016 failed in many respects, we learned valuable (if painful) lessons along the way which we can certainly put into practice in the future. In the first version of the SCOOP 2016 schedule, there are two Phase Events, one of them a straight 2-Phase Event in the same sort of way that the Weekly Phase tournament runs, for the purposes of having many Phase/Day 1s. The other one on the drawing board is set up to enable a Mix-Max format, with Phase 1 being 9-Max and Phase 2 being 6-Max, the idea being that there may in fact be only one Phase 1 and the Phase technology being put in place solely to enable Mix-Max. Please note that these plans are strictly tentative at the moment, and there's no guarantee that either tournament will see the light of day once the SCOOP 2016 schedule is finalized.

Thank you for the questions and the opportunity to answer them. I love this kind of discussion, and I'm happy to answer questions like the above whenever I'm able to do so. Obviously, I can't disclose everything that we're planning, but to whatever extent I'm able to do so, I'm happy to share and to have the posters here help me to build a fantastic schedule.

Sorry, I just realized that I didn't answer this one.

Of the 50 Events, without question Event 01 took up more of my time than any other. Overall, I'd put it like this at a rough estimation in terms of time spent dealing with a particular Event and satellites to same:

Event 01: 20%

Reasons:

• Extensive Phase 1 & 2 list, targeting, etc.
• Sheer number of Phase 1s (283 when all was said and done)
• Extensive satellite offering to each Phase 1, specifically targeted to each
• Adjustments made mid-series to increase satellite offering & Phase 1 offering

Main Event: 15%

Reasons:

• Extensive satellite offering from start to finish
• Main Event Mega-Path, set up as one of the largest networked satellite offerings ever in TCOOP
• Extremely wide variety of Round 1 offerings to various direct satellites
• Extensive offering of S&G satellites to the Mega-Path
• Set-up of four different Deadline Satellites, including two Phase satellites, and wide variety of satellites to each, in some cases from the start of the series.

Rebuy Events: 10%

Reasons:

• Testing done on structures
• Satellite format changes resulting in fewer players qualifying but players who did qualify being put in a better position than in years past. (entire new suite of satellite files needed to be written for each Rebuy target)

Hyper-Turbo Events: 10%

Reason: Deadline Satellites were exclusively Hyper-Turbo this year, requiring a significant change to the way they were set up, their timing, etc.

Shootout/Heads-Up Events: 5%

Reason: Timing of satellites is different from satellites to other types of Events, requiring special attention (which was missed, in one case... ugh).

Event 10: 2%

Reason: 4x-Turbo was a new format, which involved some of the reasons already mentioned above, as well as uncertainty with just how many players we needed in the target to actually reach the guarantee. Pace tracking was a big part of keeping an eye on Event 10, though this was made more difficult by the fact that we didn't have a previous 4x-Turbo cash Event to which to compare Event 10's pace.

Event 47: 2%

Reason: the High-Roller always gets a bit more attention than other tournaments around it, and this year was no exception to that general rule.

Event 48: 2%

Reason: 8-Game satellites have a structure unlike any other in the series, and the $530 buy-in for Event 48 was unique in the series, requiring special attention to be paid to this event for multiple reasons.

Other Events: remaining percentage, roughly spread evenly

I could be way, way off... but I think that sounds about right.

Overall, the satellites to TCOOP 2016 got more direct and deliberate attention than any TCOOP in the history of the site. The satellites were more precisely targeted, the suite of satellites to each Event was more diverse, and the system of Round 1s to each satellite at/above $7.50 was more extensive than we'd ever run before in TCOOP (and in some cases, in any *COOP). I'm particularly pleased with how the system of Round 1s continues to work well for those who'd like to play in satellites, and I'm certain that this kind of satellite system will continue - and expand - as we head into SCOOP 2016. My goal with satellites is always to give as many players as possible an opportunity to participate in an Event or tournament which they might have thought previously unreachable to them. The idea of even playing in the target (let alone cashing) as an aspiration is a driving force behind creating a fantastic suite of satellites. Different players have different dreams, and I love hearing from players who got into, for example, the Main Event of one of our series who are just so excited to be playing at all, who didn't think they'd ever have the chance to do so, but got in via the Mega-Path (for example)... that sort of thing drives me and makes my job exciting.

Thanks for the answers... and take a holiday for a week, you've earned it.

Yeah great job Bryan. Thoroughly enjoyed playing this years TCOOP and looking forward to SCOOP!