Thanks,

Has anybody made a rough estimate of how much rakeback this corresponds to for a limit like €25NL? Just a ballpark number, I'm trying to decide whether UniBet or Microgaming is the best site to play for the smallest stakes €10NL to €50 NL.

@shashoualex

It depends on how much you rake, which depends on how much you play, idk how much you in particular rake at nl25. Some people play 5k hands, some 100k.

Rakeback is between 10 and 60%, it's quarterly so 3 month periods. The 1k rake per quarter is the lowest point, 12.5k per quarter is the point where the rakeback spikes to the high numbers. I assume you can get around 20-35% at 3-4k rake per quarter which is probably very attainable at NL25-NL50

As I haven't shared my thoughts on ticket exchange yet, I will do it in this post. Be aware, it is long, really long.

First of all I want to start off with the fact that i am a pro-ticket exchange person at the moment, although I realise there might need to be done something in the long run, because this system (apparently) doesn't work. This is the first assumption I make, and I hope to do as little as possible assumptions, since I have the feeling a lot of people do assumptions ITT that are either not completely right or just wrong.

I have said it before, but my personal poker story up to this point (made a little bit of money, attended some live events last year with as headlight UO Bucharest) would probably not have existed without ticket exchange. Short story: it started with a free ticket that I turned into a bigger ticket and when I heard it was possible to break it down, I did it and went on from there. I was possibly really lucky at that point, because if I look back at that time I did know nothing about Poker. But if I went on to play the ticket, there was a big chance I would have lost it and at the same time lost my interest in Poker.

I read that someone said that a new 'recreational player' could not survive because the regs are also competing at some of the lower levels. While there is obviously a logic reasoning behind that, I think the opposite is true as well. If a recreational wins a ticket and can break it down, he/she is much more likely to play multiple games, stay alive longer and therefore get a better feeling for the game and gain more interest/become a better player. I also think ticket exchange is good for the players, because they can play many different satellite systems, without having to pay huge amounts of money for every sat tree. That means you don't have to have a big bankroll to start playing/ grinding for that amazing live experience and it is more accessible for everyone.

Of course there are also some disadvantages for the players in the current system of ticket exchanges. As mentioned before, the level of play might become a bit higher at lower levels, but having said that, I also think that ticket exchange possibilities make it so that 'recs' keep alive longer. Also the big workload for CS with the exchanges, but also the ticket management for players themselves, is quite a lot of work currently. Therefore I think it would be good if there was an in-client option to let players manage the tickets themselves.

I think the current system also benefits Unibet. As said, I think new players can be alive for a longer period. If they are not aloud to exchange them, they have to keep playing the next step, and probably go bust sooner. I actually think it is a great Unique Selling Point for Unibet and they could use it to attract more recreationals. Unfortunately I have to mention there that I don't have a lot of faith in the marketing of it, since even current promo's etc.. are not promoted in a effective way at the moment in my opinion. To give just one example: You broadcast the UO this weekend, and I think this is the ideal moment to recruit new players, the only thing Unibet uses are the good old freerolls and giveaways. Probably a bit effective, but I think you could do so much more during these streams to promote your weekly and monthly promo's. Other example: At some point UO Malta was in the client, I think this should go out like a big thing either on community, social media or other channels as soon as it is confirmed, and not week(s) later. I also saw the Bucharest dates are confirmed in a simple post in the community now, but you could also do a big reveal live on twitch during the weekend, about that UO and therefore create more buzz around it! This is probably annoying me way more than the normal customer, but that is because I am currently studying marketing, and my fingers get itchy when I see all the potential options that are currently not used by Unibet.

Let's go back to the ticket system. I read that there is at least one big disadvantage for Unibet, and that is that not enough players are actually playing the finals at the moment. I have to be honest I have no clue how to solve this in an easy and quick way.

I just want to mention as well that I saw an assumption that people who now buy in with tickets, will also buy in with cash if the current system gets limited. To give myself as an example: I am currently a student who can't afford a lot, and also my bankroll does not allow it to pump a lot of money into satellites. This system might be the only way I can play these satellites, and if the ticket exchange would be removed completely ( I know, complete removing is not the suggestion people are making), I would not be able to play for another live event I think.

I hope I stated my point of view on the ticket exchange, although I probably missed some points as well! Also I just want to make a few suggestions. First of all, as said earlier in this thread, I don't see how this rule from the Unibet UK Tour is benefitting either Unibet or a recreational player, and therefore I think it is better to remove it. ''one package per event can be exchanged for cash, providing the player has more than one package.'' If you win two packages for the same event, you have €500 for travel already, which should be more than enough. Besides that, it is also taking more money out of the UK tour system and buyins/prizepools for live events. As said, I would really like to know why this rule is in place and how it does benefit either Unibet or a recreational player.

Also, after this whole wall of text, I would like to mention the UK Tour once more. I don't see how a satellite tree with R/A is a good idea for a recreational player. In my opinion you should have a consistent satellite tree that is either completely freezeout (or with rebuy, that doesn't change much for me) or completely with Add-on (which I am of course not in favor of, since it might put off recs who need to invest potentially more money). The way it is right now, a new player that wins a ticket to a €4 UK Tour tournament, can play it, but has to use real money to add-on at that point, while all the regs have enough tickets. But I have said enough about that, so I will stop moaning about it now.

@unibetdavid if you feel the need of discussing the ideas of the Unibet Poker team on ticket exchange any further with some of the players, I am really interested in these and happy to discuss some more about it!

Feedback for the challenges system: The only thing I can come up with at this point is that I wouldn't use the current system for SNG's anymore. In a cash game every hand is the same if you look at Bbs etc, but I think when there is a lot of action in the first few levels of the SNG, it has completely different dynamics. If you want to take in account your minor and major challenge as well, it can be a lot of things you have to keep in mind while playing. I think it is too much sometimes, and would therefore go back to the old system for SNGs, just a few points per SNG as it is in MTT's right now.

As I mentioned on many different places I still think getting a roll for each satty tree is the best solution to the overload in ticket exchanges.
That way also boobie prizes can be paid out in the structure and result in a maintaining of liquidity in said tree. (For example when a UO final pays out 200 euro to the bubble boy, this 200 euro has left the tree)


- What's the point of a br next to your main br
vs
+ Some people just like the payout structures of the sattelites, also it's easier to control your BR for the tree you want to play. For example you have a budget of 100 euro to play normal MTT's and 100 for UO, you could possible waste more money than you want in normal MTT's

- A lot of overhead with all these different rolls
vs
+ Now there is overhead with mirriads and mirriads of tickets. Having 5 rolls at most seems fair (Main, MTT (which then should include sunday and saturday majors), UO, UK and UOS/DSO/other temporary sats) It should only show the roll where you have pending money, so you don't have 2 rolls with money and 3 with a 0.

- A lot of dev time
vs
+ Investment of dev time to get a lot of CS time back, after implementation no more CS time will be needed for exchange

- And how with Double trouble and so on? Yes indeed there will be a few tickets that need to be kept, but these are a small amount of freeroll tickets. No exchanging, extending or whatsoever is required.

Also the expiration policy of cash tickets can be implemented. For example, if you didn't use your UO br for a month, then it expires. (There should be an exception option for when you'd go on holiday or exclude yourself for a while... This isn't maybe on point yet)

My 2 cents on the ticket exchange. Something has to give... CS can't be doing this manually forever... either a built in exchange or change is needed.
If it's a built in system then CS is alleviated of the extra work but that solves only 1 problem and not the issue of the sat tree ecosystem issue (if it's an issue) I'm assuming it is.

What I propose is a built in system with a quarterly cap on monetary exchanges. Example (numbers derived from my ass) 1k euro's allowed to be exchanged per 3 month quarter. In this example if I broke a 50eu UO ticket into five 10 tickets then I've just used 50 of my available 1k in exchanges.


This system allows players whom don't feel comfortable taking under rolled shots to feel comfortable while having a cap in place prevent the uber paranoid guy from taking shots and toughening the lower buy in sats while essentially building a $T bank account.

Thoughts?

For me, someone who hasn't put a single € into any live event sattelite tree, the solution of Vikings looks very attracting.

Right now I just don't want to manage all those different tickets so I don't play them although I really like sattelite structures.

Quarterly is way too long. It also don't help the problem of people not playing the target.

Something as simple as limiting exchange requests to one a week would ease the pain for CS. If you look at the Exchange forum on the Community there are multiple players making multiple requests a week and that doesn't include attempts to LC.

I actually really like this solution. Just like you say Unibet should find a good balance in that quarterly cap and then the system would allow anyone to exchange tickets, just not the big grinder(probably better players) to keep exchanging forever. One note I would add to that is: I think it is better to then make it a certain amount you can exchange per satellite tree, so it doesn't mean people are not playing in some trees because they can't exchange enough. This might also solve the problem of people having too many final tickets in their account, since they (might) stop playing the satellite tree if they are on there max of conversions. This also means more final tickets go to different persons.

I would like to see two systems. Both should have a Unibet Open packacge as the top prize in the top tier. You only win tickets, and they can be used to buy in for different tournaments on the site or to the next tier.

One of the systems will be skill based. If you do win a package you can get half the value in cash instead if you want. More regs would be incentivised to grind the sattelites, but in exchange there would be better liquidity if a rec wants to play.

The other system is luck based. It is the same system as above, except each tier runs as a flip tournament. You can't exchange packages won in the flips for cash. This system would also be promoted by freerolls, rake back rewards and so on. The tickets you get from promotions can't be used in other tounaments straight away, you need to win at least one of those flip tournaments.

If you are plus EV then yes, you can grind up a small amount in the satellite system. You can also do that at the cash tables or SNGs and then enter whatever you want. The question is, should the satellite be a protected environment for people paying to take a shot at getting into the target tournament (and those who think they can get in cheaper firing bullets that way), or is it just another part of the site that's grindable.

If people think splitting tickets is ok, then why not just have the "satellites" pay out T$ or LiveT$ and let everyone grind up to whatever they want.

The difference is that I could never justify taking the tournament dollars from winning a seat to a major online tournament and blow them on one tournament. But if I only get tickets, for the same system, then I could. I am still against splitting tickets, but tickets are a better system than tournament dollars.

I won't reply to the individual ticket policy posts but thanks for engaging in debate over this, some good ideas thrown around and really useful to gather different viewpoints from players here. In an ideal world (i.e. long term when we can allocate the dev time) I like something like this solution:

The shorter term fix will be more of a manual one just because we don't have a quick dev fix and have a lot already taking priority in the roadmap for the next 6 months. We had a long discussion about this internally today and something is glaringly obvious to me. We aren't a site under pressure to sustain GTDs we set (speaking about non-regular schedule) and if we need to take 1 step back in order to take 2 forwards in a healthy way then we have that luxury. I think a short-term solution is likely to involve lowering GTDs in qualifiers (UO, UK tour and possibly others), restricting exchanges and letting the qualifier trees run at a more natural level. Lowering those GTDs would also mean more room to run more freezeout qualifiers.

We have a draft policy but before sealing that, I'd like to organise a group call with some of you to openly discuss and debate (Jonny, Pirahn, NMP, Remk95 and Sleazy). You guys have been highly active over the years and have some significant skin in ticket exchanges. We're travelling for a dev workshop next week but if you guys are happy to take part in something like that the week after then I'll email you each and we can organise a time. We'll compensate you for your time too, although I'm sure you'd all happily get involved anyway

This would be a nice hygiene feature but I suspect that if it is adding something 'new' rather than changing the existing timebank then the dev time need might be too prohibitive to prioritise it highly.

Glad to hear you like them. The concept isn't going anywhere for the time being, although we will likely strip down some of it to make it simpler. Nothing has been decided yet on that front though and is something we'll work out here over the next few weeks.

Next UO package is worth €2k (as are all 2018 UO packages, no non-European UO events this year I'm afraid)

Appreciate that can be annoying but forcing people to place an extra click could be even worse for the majority. Option to not see that confirmation box could be there but again it's probably a nice hygiene feature that will struggle to get priority in the next 6 months at least.

Gl

I really like some of the innovations GG have, our all-in equity feature will hopefully feature something similar regarding outs and I agree that the concept of preset chat emojis is worth us looking into.

Note-taking is more redundant because of the ability to change aliases.

Which device are you trying to log in from? If you PM me with your username I can have a look into it.

The game type won't be a new tournament format

What NMP says is accurate, I'm not at my work laptop right now so won't be able to get more detailed figures for now. I'd say play both and see which you prefer, our rewards are generous and I'd be confident in most players preferring our software.

On an unrelated note, do many people in this thread use Twitter? I'm thinking of starting to use my account (it is 2018 after all). We had a brand/social media workshop for ambassadors this week and I think it has given me the itch.

Shame we all not going Brighton, as a live chat would be better. I think we all got a seat but most have switched over to Glasgow.

Alternative You could get us all to Malta and instead of the esports sng we can play battle of the tickets

David, Face to face at London offices would have been awesome.

@david. One guy talked about confirmations before joining a tournament. But as you say, an extra click is annoying
BUT
Something that should be changed is that one minute before the tournament starts, you get seated and can't unreg. (<- this shouldn't change, but this should - >) Here we should also get a confirmation like you would get during a running MTT had it a few times that I miss clicked and joined a MTT which was one or two minutes from starting. So if it's possible to make the normal notification 2 minutes earlier than its usually (so from 2 minutes before the start until end of late reg) that would be awesome (don't need dev time for this I think)

To all the haters saying the frees pins are bad I got 1,5 euro from them (which isn't bad) and then decided to replay these at 0,25 stake until it was either 0 profit or something significant (in my eyes 5+ euro for 10 frees pins)
Can't post the screenshot, but got in a bonusround and had 17 euro profit that's not bad for a second step in the monthly challenge.

Happy to shoot the **** with the boys if required

Twitter > Facebook IMO

Sure, go ahead! Would love to see some BTS-stuff.

Just as an FYI for any current Stan James players reading the thread, migration will occur on Monday 26th Feb so any of you that wanted to withdraw funds beforehand would be advised to do that ASAP. If you don't already have a Unibet account then I'd encourage you to set one up this weekend, no probs if not though because we will then move your account over to Unibet anyway.

On a related note, we can also now take Irish players (woohoo). We'll publicise fully in poker press next week but if you're in Ireland and reading the thread then you can now play on the site

^ fantastique

I'd be totally fine with one exchange per week.
I really don't think 1 k per a quarter would be too great. That could be way too low if you play higher tickets.
As for cutting the GTD's, for me personally its a huge turnoff to see only 1 or 2 tickets in a sattie, unless it's a sattie like the UO 2 that most of the time passes the GTD.

Before you do too drastic changes please remember that 6 months ago there were only 7 players max in a UO 4 when reg closed and many times it didn't even start at all. Now it's a much healthier tournament. Around 14-24 people are playing it every time. In last month i only saw it once not start. No idea what happened that time.
So clearly the exchanges and bringing new people helped. Why ruin it ?

The mark of how healthy the tournament is not the raw number of players but
a) how many of them have brought new money to the satellite structure by buying in with cash or bonus points etc. rather than splitting tickets
and
b) the variety of players it sends to the higher levels of the tournament pyramid.

I am up for it too, going to be interesting for sure!

On another note, could you please look into this tournament? It said there were 10 players, but showed only 9 aliasses. Also when we were left with 3 players it said there were 4 left. In no means looking for a refund or something, but it is a bug that happened before. https://gyazo.com/8e3afc4ceda97ce0bd34c64add20bc2e

EDIT: I forgot to give a compliment for the coverage of UO London, was very nice to follow it again!

David, Is it possible to get the tournament tickets updated in real time.

Your ambassadors and social media team (e.g. Simon) already do a great job on Twitter, but you're possibly missing out by not being active on it yourself. That said, it can become a time-sucking distraction if you get addicted to checking it 15 times a day.