Here is your request....


RedOak

I think the flatter payout schedules are so clearly superior, but people lose their minds if a massive chunk doesn't go to 1st place, which just exacerbates the variance.

Attendance is down b/c:

- Crappy payout structures
- Tournaments take too long for some fish, discouraging entrants
- While internet poker helps bring in tournament satellite winners (like the guy who shipped it), its not enough because there aren't enough people on those sites
- The tournament is in AC, where the economy sucks and everything is going bankrupt
- The overall economy in America still sucks

This... and the fact that there continues to be too many events around the globe, with nearly a constant supply of 'main events' every single week...sometimes 2-3 in the same week.

I concur.

Here is one showing paying 18.8% or 45 places. Two more tables than the 27 paid in the actual WPT event.

Often overlooked is the effect of taxes. Income over $413,200 in the USA is taxed at 39.6%. Below $9,225 is 10% and below $37,450 is 15%. By shifting top heavy payouts in the 39.6% rate to 10% and 15%, thousands of dollars will go back into the player's pockets instead of being sucked out of the tournament poker economy.

In a 6500 player main event at the WSOP, this tax savings would be close to $2 million or about $2,500 extra per cashing player by using just the first flatter payout formula.



RedOak

i prefer the payouts in the 10% bracket. I get what you are saying on the taxes, but assuming you have a baseline of income, that already takes you into the medium or high brackets anyway. I def think paying 19% AND having a mincash of 2x buyin is just too harmful to the toppish payouts. I don't mind the top 2 spots getting less than what WPT paid, but everyone at the FT getting less seems suboptimal to me.

Either way, it is great to examine all options and hopefully things trend the direction that is best for the players and poker economy.

EXCELLENT work RedOak ! Thanks for putting those together.

Flatter payouts, and more spots paid is so CLEARLY better for The Poker Economy.

Hopefully, TD's consider making some improvements in this area.

Flatter payouts are good for the casino because when someone min cashes they play the tourney the next day or donk it off in a cash game. It's not good for tourney grinders at all. I doubt the people who want 15 percent payouts even have ever played the wpt championship.with regard to taxes it actually does not effect it at all. It just effects whether or not you get a tax form. You owe taxes on profits either way.

You also lop 300k off first like it's no big deal that's where all your extra payouts come from. The whole point of tournies is to play for the win. You should not be incentivized to min cash or fold your way up the pay scale.

Keep in mind that the payout structure also affects the play of the tournament. When you make the gap between 1st and 2nd very small, correct play becomes more distorted due to ICM considerations, as it is now more profitable to play tightly and ladder up instead of accumulate chips. This also creates more incentive for implicit collusion. Overall, I think the WSOP structures are better than either the actual payout to this tournament or the flatter one some people have proposed ITT.

Payouts at this weeks playground wpt event are much smoother.

I honestly think his chart is horrible. The first place percent in super low and that's what funded most of the extra spots. Most casual players are not even happy with min cashes.

I think the major concern with very flat payouts is it turns into an icm fest where people into min cashes or don't play for the win.

If people who actually run tournaments should ask people who actually play these events what they think.

Turnout is low because the casual players these days will not fork over 15k for one tourney and the sattys are still expensive. Has nothing to do with payout stryctures.

If players wanted Winner Take All Tournaments, they would have them, but very few players would show up for such an event, so they do not run them.

The more Top Heavy a Payout Structure, the more we approach this paradigm.

Players, both recreational and serious, are interested in making a profit when the play tournaments.

The more people that feel they have a shot to make it ITM, the bigger the fields will be !

I am more interested in returning money to lots of Poker Players in a Tournament, than I am in returning lots of money to just ONE player in a tournament.

1st place would/should always make the Lions Share but c'mon.........10th place = $45k with 1st paying $973,000 is absurd

Shouldn't "icm fests" happen when payouts aren't flatter? When the jumps are massive and each move up the pay-scale is important even to higher stake players

No, ICM distorts the play most when the payouts are flat. For example, it is most distorting on the bubble of a satellite, when all the remaining prizes are the same. The only place that one can completely ignore ICM for is 1st. If a tournament is winner-take-all, then chip EV always equals tournament EV. The further you deviate away from this, the further these two quantities differ.

Thank you for "some" of these replies and I will pass it along to the WPT management besides myself. Trust me the WPT does listen to you as I have for years and feel that the 2 + 2 community has valuable input quite often.

As for payouts the WPT has standard payouts that we offer to all casino partners:

A- Is roughly a 10% payout and is more top heavy

B- Is roughly a 12% payout with 9th paying 10% of 1st and much flatter.

The Borgata has the option of using A or B but decided to use their own and we cannot mandate that they use the WPT standard payouts.

The payouts had ZERO to do with the decreased attendance I promise you.

Agreed, I've never heard of anyone not playing an MTT due to payout structures, except for a select few and we know who they are The WPT Championship has zero identity as an event. This is the biggest tournament of the year for them and fail to market it or make it their own in any way.

Timing is a huge issue as other events are occurring right now that steal the show. Everybody I know is grinding or saving their pennies to go out to Vegas for the summer. Why would you have this a month before the WSOP begins? In AC of all places.... They need a unique destination (think PCA) to add to the prestige of it being a Championship event or just have it in Vegas. It doesn't take top tier marketing firm to figure this stuff out so it's easy to see why they are going broke.

I actually think commerce would be the best location for it. Easier access for Vegas and la players. Correct payouts, and they could run step satellites for weeks prior.

There was only 1 sattelite for this online on new jersey sites.

15k should rotate between commerce, borgata, and hard rock

Plus state income tax in New Jersey and California and others, but not in Florida or Nevada.

No state income tax and a huge base of players in Texas too, if we can ever somehow defeat the undefeated undisputed tag team champions of Bible Thumpers and Out-of-state Casino Interests and get gambling here.

Here are the "Average Bubble Factors" for the actual payouts and some of the suggestions ITT. The concept is from Kill Everyone; it is a measure of how ICM heavy a particular point in a tournament is. For more info and comparison with some of the MTTSNGs running on stars see:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...ctors-1504943/

For comparison purposes here are the ABFs when X-handed in a classic Sit & Go with payouts 50-30-20
2 1.0000
3 1.3333
4 1.8750
5 1.5385
6 1.3889
7 1.3043
8 1.2500
9 1.2121

WPT Actual Payouts
Final Table
2 1.0000
3 1.3784
4 1.3652
5 1.4280
6 1.4396
7 1.4833
8 1.5429
9 1.6106
FT2 (10-18) 1.6304 1.5337 1.4628 1.4509 1.4023 1.3631 1.3560 1.3265 1.3015
FT3 (19-27) 1.3089 1.2880 1.2697 1.2536 1.2393 1.2266 1.2151 1.2047 1.1953
FT4 (28-36) 1.5459 1.5163 1.4898 1.4658 1.4441 1.4244 1.4063 1.3897 1.3744
FT5 (37-45) 1.3602 1.3471 1.3349 1.3236 1.3129 1.3030 1.2937 1.2849 1.2766

Post 49 Flatter (36 paid)
2 1.0000
3 1.3978
4 1.5709
5 1.6425
6 1.6639
7 1.6591
8 1.6408
9 1.6155
FT2 1.5871 1.4991 1.4340 1.4515 1.4028 1.3635 1.3897 1.3567 1.3288
FT3 1.3541 1.3293 1.3078 1.2889 1.2722 1.2573 1.2440 1.2320 1.2211
FT4 1.2605 1.2489 1.2382 1.2285 1.2195 1.2112 1.2035 1.1963 1.1897
FT5 1.6915 1.6604 1.6321 1.6060 1.5821 1.5599 1.5394 1.5203 1.5026

Post 49 Flatter2 (36 paid)
2 1.0000
3 1.4124
4 1.6013
5 1.6868
6 1.7191
7 1.7227
8 1.7103
9 1.6891
FT2 1.6634 1.5599 1.4844 1.5136 1.4561 1.4101 1.4499 1.4102 1.3770
FT3 1.4162 1.3859 1.3596 1.3367 1.3166 1.2987 1.2827 1.2684 1.2554
FT4 1.3146 1.3000 1.2867 1.2745 1.2633 1.2530 1.2435 1.2346 1.2264
FT5 1.7412 1.7070 1.6758 1.6473 1.6210 1.5969 1.5745 1.5537 1.5344

Post 51 Flatter2 27 Paid
2 1.0000
3 1.4420
4 1.6635
5 1.7771
6 1.8311
7 1.8498
8 1.8467
9 1.8299
FT2 1.8046 1.6702 1.5743 1.6202 1.5464 1.4883 1.5450 1.4941 1.4519
FT3 1.5051 1.4661 1.4327 1.4038 1.3785 1.3562 1.3364 1.3186 1.3027
FT4 1.6554 1.6175 1.5838 1.5536 1.5263 1.5016 1.4791 1.4586 1.4397
FT5 1.4224 1.4063 1.3914 1.3776 1.3647 1.3527 1.3414 1.3309 1.3209

You don't get the basic concept that finishing tenth in a 237 person field is way different than in a big field. It's like finishing fifth in your 100 dollar daily tournament.

The wpt should obviously listen to players but they should make sure the people with the ideas actually play the tournaments. Listening to some random people on the Internet who probably have never played the wpt championship is not necessarily the best thing.

People who actually played the event, myself included; And others like charder, tom marchese, David peters etc. all though the payouts were bad for such a prestigious event.

Finishing 10th of 240+ players and getting less than 3x buyin is outrageous and the jumps at the ft were way too big.