The double levels were better, they offered more deep play that is better for skilled players and a better value for the rest of the players.

You didn't like them because you aren't that skilled at most of the games and just want bigger blinds faster so you can gamble quicker and go off to buy-in to your next tourney sooner.

http://www.bluff.com/news/jack-effel...uctures-66730/

The complaints most pros had with the double levels I believe is partially influenced by their staking deals. When you sell off most of your action at a markup, your goal is to conduct your bracelet quest as time efficiently as possible. You don't want to spent too much of your limited time during the WSOP tediously battle over pots worth $100 in tournament EV and that you only have 30% or 50% of, when you could be playing juicy high stakes cash games with every pot worth thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars and where you probably have a much higher percentage of the win

So you want to accelerate to big blinds as fast as possible to build a big stack with substantial tournament EV, or GTFO to Bobby's or Ivey's room as soon as possible to play 400-800, or the upper deck in Bellagio to play 100-200 (probably not Allen's motivation cause he's too nitty to want to give away his money in high stakes cash games).

Faster early blinds doesn't make for better tournaments that better reward skill, and give all players more play. But for many of the tourney players in $1,500 is a lot of money, taking play away from them isn't beneficial to them, even if that greater play just means they have to run better to beat out skilled players to the final table. They drove or flew a long ways to play a WSOP tournament, why reduce their tournament time?

The shady part of it is if you sell 50% of yourself for 60% or 70% of your buyins, you can easily have different motivations than your backers. Sure you want to win, partially free-rolling your bracelet quest is great and winning bracelets means you get to do even more of it. But owning only a portion of yourself makes the events less worth your time than cash games, especially the smaller events.

So you would be happy giving up lower blind levels, the additional time for you to use skill doesn't add that much to your win expectation because of the low blinds, and you are willing to give up some of your backer's tEV in order to get more hours in cash games that are more profitable for you.

Great job, Allen

Right. Ok then in that case it is very witty.

And now that you mention it, I am familiar with that but just didn't get there when reading it for some reason even though I probably should have.

Yeah I liked it better before. Though they did add the 250/500 level. If they added two 200/500 levels I would be almost totally cool with the changes though. They are also doubling up on the 1200/2400 to start Day 2.

Kind of specifically disappointed in regards to the Dealer's Choice. Wanted some more time early to screw around with all of the games.

Last year we started with 4500 chips and the stakes for the fixed limit games were 50/100. This year it is now 7500 and 100/200.

Think changing it an hour before the ten game mix was very wrong.

I like the old ones better for recs.

I think you are incredibly incorrect. The old structure was literally worse for everyone except for the random amateur who's goal was to ensure that he got several hours of play before he busted. For anyone with monetary goals the old structure was a disaster, you would play 6 hours of nearly meaningless poker and eliminate a tiny % of the field, then the levels would increase much faster and you would quickly have an average stack size of < 10 BBs and it became a complete bingo game, and oh by the way you were still nowhere near the money.

You are saying the lazy pros don't want to play with a small edge early on but there is a tradeoff involved, to take that small edge early on they are giving up an edge on day two by having to play with significantly less average chips when the money is substantially more meaningful. Anyone that has played these things would certainly rather have more play on day 2, near the bubble, and once in the money.

The "skill" at the beginning of limit tournaments is winning some chips off some donk who does not know how to play. I'd argue there is a lot more skill near the bubble when you can steal antes, get people to actually fold a hand, etc.

You can run like god at the 75/150 and 100/200 levels and win 6000 chips at the money bubble this is like 2 blinds. So you are wasting time on some level. To add play to the back end of day 1 and beginning of day 2 is much better.

In general, I suppose it's the guys grinding 30 tournaments who had the most problem with the structure. But I'm sure if you asked expert players if a repeat level at 75/150 or a repeat level to start day 2 is better for the tourney they would overwhelmingly pick the day 2 option.

They actually did not change much they added a 250/500 level which is a good level where you can actually chip up and another level to start day 2 which will be near the money bubble. So in reality they took out one level.

It's always good to look at extreme examples.. How about starting with 20k chips and 50/100 blinds would that be more skillful??? Or would you just have to wait 6 hours for their be pots that effected people's chip stacks???

I don't understand what people were complaining about with respect to the limit events. They are saying the early levels are meaningless but there wasn't enough play on Day 2 and beyond? The is completely untrue. In fact, it was much more true under last year's structrues.

In 2014, in a $1500 Limit event, you started with 4500 chips.
The big bet in level 1 was 100 (so the starting stack was 45 big bets)
The big bet in level 11 (first level of Day 2) was 2000 (or the starting stack was just over 2 bets).

Compare to 2015 where you started with 7500 chips.
The big bet in level 1 was 200 (so the starting stack was 37.5 big bets)
The big bet in level 11 was 1600 (so the starting stack would be almost 5 big bets, more than twice as deep as the previous structure).

Play in the early levels is more meaningful in the 2015 limit events than it was in 2014, and play is also much deeper in Day 2. It was much easier to bust or build a stack in the first couple levels this year than 2014 or any earlier year. The changes that were made were good, and in the direction that people were asking.

I love the change myself for all the reasons you explained, but think it's bad for recreational players like Chainsaw.

But maybe I'm wrong, as maybe their expectations aren't that high and they are just happy to play with top pros for a few hours to tell their friends about.

If you grind slots to break-even on food and part of accomudation over your journeys to international livepoker events, I think you have passed the barrier from being recreational-player, to playing as a live-poker professional... Not to mention +40 WSOP cashes, with 5 final-tables.

Go Allen, ship that 50K championship, please



Important addition / @DesertCat:
Guess you were trolling, ha?
PLZ respond to my 2-7 question in draw poker...:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/21...s-btn-1529021/

The better argument is how does the early levels effect your chances of winning the tournament or cashing. If somehow the skilled players could pick up 1k on average over less skilled players I still think it would have little effect on them winning or cashing in the tournament considering average stack at cash is 75k with 7500 starting chips.

So I think the change is good.

You can't make everyone happy. As always IMO way to much hate on the saw in this forum.

yeah they can but in the fine print of all tourny rules are subject to change

I also was impressed that the WSOP was pro-active enough to take on board the comments, and also the realities they could see happening in earlier events.

I played one event before the change (3k HORSE) and one after (10 game) and I was much happier with the change - the double level structure was way too arduous for me as a rec player hoping to see the bubble in view at some point this year ...

In hindsight, I suppose more chips AND slower levels was a mistake ! For next year I imagine they will keep the extra chips, which makes plenty of people happy and is very visible, and fine tune the levels.

You obviously cannot please everyone, but the proof that the structure was "wrong" was in the time it took to get to various stages of field elimination which wasn't really consistent with a 3day WSOP event IMO.

I'm too busy adding triple range merging to the poker calculator and gently trolling my favorite tournament player, Chainsaw. But I'll try to get to your question soon.

FWIW, I think the most recent changes are fine. Both structures are better than what they used for $1500 limit events in previous years.

This makes absolutely no sense. Are u ******ed?

Raves over new structure. Only 25% advanced. Day two money before dinner and still played out over three full days.

Play shifted to after money until bracelet.

Not sure why you'd troll OP. He got the WSOP to make a good change for the players and he made it aware. When good things happen, we should encourage and give praise to those who do it.

thanks for the explanation