PokerStars is pleased to announce comprehensive changes to Sit & Go Tournament offerings. The lobby display, blind structures, variety offered, and buy-in/rake have changed for many Sit & Go Tournaments. New Hyper-Turbo cash Sit & Go’s are also being tested at the $5 buy-in level.

Many of these changes are a direct result of player feedback over the past months. Thanks to all players who offered their thoughts and suggestions.


Lobby Display
There are two new columns in the Sit & Go lobby: “Speed” and “Type”.

The Speed column tells you if the tournament has a faster blind structure, either Turbo or Hyper-Turbo.

The Type column identifies Fifty50, Knockout, Heads-up, Satellite and other special tournament types. The Type column also includes icons identifying tournaments with fewer than 7 seats per table.

The changes to the Lobby Display will be available with the May update to the PokerStars client. Mac users will be able to download the updated client today. The Windows version will be available sometime next week.


Improved Variety
A wider variety of buy-ins is now available for many popular tournament types. A few new combinations of tournament type and game speed are also available. Tournaments that were rarely or never played in the past have been removed from the lobby to help players find opponents more easily.


Hyper-Turbos
In direct response to player requests, PokerStars is introducing $5 Hyper-Turbo Sit & Go Tournaments for a trial period. The new Hyper-Turbos feature 500 chip starting stacks and 2-minute levels. These extremely short tournaments are a good match for players who have limited time or like a lot of all-in action. For now, these tournaments are available in 6 -handed, 9-handed, and Heads-up formats for both No-Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha.


Buy-Ins
All non-satellite Sit & Go’s now have standardized buy-ins. Players can choose from $1, $3, $5, $10, $20, $30, $50, $100, $200, $300, $500, $1000, $2000, and $5000 buy-in tournaments. Not every Sit & Go type is available at every buy-in, but the buy-ins offered match player demand for each tournament type.


Rake Consistency
Rake for Sit & Go tournaments has been re-evaluated and set to be more consistent. Variations between the rake charged at various tournament/game types have been eliminated. types in different game types. Now, single table non-satellite Sit & Go’s reliably charge less rake for tournaments with fewer entrants and tournaments with faster blinds structures. Some rakes have increased and others decreased, but taken as a whole the rake for Sit & Go Tournaments is very slightly decreased.



The above graphs are specific to No-Limit Hold’em because the line representing ‘Old’ rake would be different for some game types. The ‘New’ line, however, is consistent across all games.


Improved and Standardized Blind Structures
Blind structures for No Limit Hold’em and Pot Limit Omaha have been improved and standardized. A few NLHE and PLO tournaments that were deployed with unique blind structures in the past have now been brought into line.

All NLHE and PLO S&G structures now have shorter blind levels and smaller blind increases per level. All Turbo speed single-table tournaments have 3-minute levels while all regular speed tournaments now have 6-minute levels. Despite the shorter levels, the tournaments will last a similar amount of time overall, as the blinds will increase by a smaller amount than previously (The new blind structure has no levels where the blinds double). The table below shows an example of the change, with the old and new levels side-by-side.



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Edit/MH: See http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1780

Cool

NOT COOL, higher rake for most grinders.

why u increase the rake??!?!?

"Grinders" as in $10 sngs? This seems like a benefit for 99% of Stars players

The $6.5 and $27s also have higher equivalent rake, the $100s rake is still much higher than the old $16s.

Absolute joke. Increasing rake for most grinders. GG STARS

Big increasing in rake -1

The 6.5s don't appear to be higher at all but it tough to know for sure based on looking at the graph. The 27s only appear to be higher for 6 max regular. For some reason the old 9 max turbo 16s had an incomparably low rake. Why should the 9max 16s have an unfair advantage over the 6max 16s? IMO they made things fair across the board and gave a slight break to the people who are actually generating significant rake (as they should if you ask me).

Judging by the responses I guess only 9max turbo $16 sng "grinders" from stars are the only ones to chime in thus far lol

you know, just c--p, c--p today tomorrow and ten years from now.
why doesn't somebody start a poker site, zero advertising, great
software, no frills or promotions, just sngs heads up to 180 man
rake 1/4 -- 1/5 of stars.

get used to it, the rake is never going down.

btw: remember the discussions 5 years ago on 2plus2,
about rake? how does it feel now? to the idiots
who laughed at people who couldn't beat the games
then?

from a winner.

have a nice over-raked day.

I play micro mtt sngs and on the 45s from what i seen is increased by 5% rake which is alot in the long run

Damn FU stars

FU stars rake for 18/45 mans has increased so much siiiiiiiiiiigh.

#14th

"Sit out and quit this table on next BB also coming with this update?

so 3r 180s are gone?

When a company makes X dollars per year, they generally don't like for that number to go down - only up. Now you guys are going to have to make up for the lost rake from US customers. Heh, at least they'll can a lot of US marketed pros so they can free up some money so they don't kill you guys too badly.

Lol gtfo.. 18 man sngs 15+1 to 10+1...

What a ****ing joke srsly

Ye thats excaktly what makes me suprised, there are no US anymore here, every other countyr got tooons of good sites to play on , entraction, ipoker, ongame etc etc etc.

I thought stars wanted to keep their playerbase?

STRIKE

This is amazing, thank you so much pokerstars

No $10 turbo's?

heh... Everyone was expecting an improvement. This is probably a worsening to most players.
Maybe it is fair but this is not what they made it sound like in the beginning when they announced the rake changes.
I thought they would reduce the rake like 50% across everything. Maybe only 20% for the 16$ which was cheap to begin with.
I thought that maybe I would be compelled to start playing at stars instead of tilt.
Seems that I either missinterpretated their earlier statements or they gave false hopes.

improved? so u admit full tilt had better structure?

You were the only one that thought that, I was just hoping for $16s' rake at the $20s.