I hate that the sites are so concerned about making everyone lose equally.
That they try to keep everyones hands a secret as much as possible.
On some sites you can't see any hand histories unless you were a part of them.
Even if your just sitting out for a round.

But what I find worse is people can't even show hands anymore. They try to show,
the hand flashes for like 2 milli seconds so you can't really see if most of the time.
And even if they show it still doesn't appear in the hand history.

People showing hands is at least a sign of real people imop.
Not like any of this will save bad players from losing.

If you aren't dealt in you shouldn't be able to see hand histories.

No idea why you want it to be easier to get hand histories. Online is a cesspool of collusion RTA and datamined hands these days as it is

most troubling thing in online MTT Poker is the faster and faster structures. Mind blowing to me that not more regs are concerned about this.

It seems like everyone bought the pseudo argument of "amateurs dont want to play for that long, faster play attracts more recreationals, hence better for everyone."

MTT variance is high as it is. You water it down to more and more of a gambling game, which means no one will dominate, which takes away the spectator effect. No one will care anymore. Who would watch Basketball if enough elements were introduced to take away the best players edges?

And as for the amateurs, I am sure often the complain will come games are too long whatever. But the goal of an amateur is having fun mostly. With a better structure, the amateur gets more for his money too, that is more time spent per amount of money he invests. Long run i am convinced even the amateurs wont care for games that no one cares about anymore, where winning means nothing. This whole thing has been super short sighted.

All tournaments should be zooms or like 50%+ IMO, you get to play 4x as many hands per hour and the tournaments finish in 1/3-1/2 the time

good point, zoom format is indeed good. Has both, fast speed still good structure

How would you run a Zoom tournament near the bubble?

near bubble you simply make it hand for hand like in other mtts too. That is how the tournaments now are handled already, works just fine. The tournaments are around already, just very few of them. I do agree there should be more if the sites do not want to reintroduce longer blind levels for the daily tournaments

What would make tournaments not take as long is getting rid of the ridiculously long late registration.

4 hour late registration is the problem with most online MTTS.

Yes. These two things are the major flaws in nowadays MTTs. Bad structures, long late reg.

If you get rid of both of those things, you increase the quality of the game by a lot. And you create an environment were online MTT regs have less variance, also the strongest will dominate much more which will add attraction if people realize it or not.
Making sure that the professionals can keep making a good living is important, even from a marketing point. There is no dream to sell with games becoming nothing more than lotteries.

I remember railing Lilholdem954 every day of the week in the 109r just wondering how that player is so good to make the final table seemingly every other day. That was just a normal daily game on pokerstars. Nobody would care to rail a daily stars game these days anymore. I strongly believe it is due to the dilution of the skill aspect. This might not have immediate effect on how well games run, but in the bigger picture this plays a major role.

Completely wrong. The lottery aspect is what draws recs to tournaments. Them actually having a chance to win draws them in. Some autistic gto bot 20 tabling isn't luring anyone in. The entire reason recs play tournaments is to chase a big top prize.

Making it so the well studied mass tabler has a higher win rate isn't increasing game quality at all.

If it wasn't for variance poker wouldn't even exist for any meaningful money.

yeah no.

No one says Poker should become chess. Obviously the luck element is an important factor. Does not change any of the points i made. Because so is the skill element.

Why do you think there are tournaments for Poker, but not for Roullette or gambling machines?

Yea yes.
Poker nerds like you need to understand why recs actually play especially play tournaments.

And it isn't to grind out a ****ing 18 percent ROI over a huge sample with tons of study.

Like seriously you think there are rec players out there who
1)aren't hoping to bink 100k for their small buy in
2) who wouldnt play poker tournaments but then found out about the hard working mass multitabling GTO pro and said "oh yea it's beatable"

GTFO with that ignorant at best nonsense.

It's a comical take.

Yea people might freak of being Ivey or Helmuth but they don't dream of being the typical grinder tournament player.

Recs play tournaments because they see what 1st place pays.

Not because they have 5 hours to register.

Getting rid of long late reg doesn't mean less recs are going to play tournaments.

agreed. what does that have to do with anything I said?

a fast structure with high variance is better for recs. they don't care that it makes it harder for some nerd pro to win.

A fast structure would indeed be better for recs. But except for high roller, recs don’t want a fast structure. That’s why extremely late registrants are almost all pros.

I agree with this statement. Poker is as big as it is because many players think they are smarter than the average
and can beat the game. Otherwise they would just play house table games.
Of course too there is just gamblers who just wanna gamble and don't try to apply skill to the game.

The sites are determined to cut any advantage good players have.

I had an idea about having a tip a fish option lol. I feel the sites should have some option for this, and
you can tip a fish some amount of money, and the money will go to say tournament tickets or cash game buy ins that
the fish can use. I thought something like this would help the overall poker community slightly. I really just
talking about the players who win some big tournaments say 10k+. Maybe if they just tipped 1-5$ which is nothing
of there big win. And the money goes to the biggest losers when they are broke. Not saying it would change the world,
but I think would help the poker community as a whole. Just my stupid idea.

I regged one 33 on 888 other night, an hour in I look at lobby and still 3 hours remaining of reg, I just wanted out then 😂

Without long late reg and option for unlimited reentries there would not be massive prize pools. As recs look what first is, that number would drop and less recs will play.

Nah brahs. Turbo and hyper-turbo MTTs will never die. In fact, fast MTTs will outlive all of you together.

This discussion is pointless. And btw, long late registrations are **** and recs don't care about it. Huge prizepools are not that attractive also, when was the last time that a rec won a WCOOP or a sunday million? No one remembers. Maybe on microstakes, but higher limits? I don't see that happening.

You guys are crying like there is no more fish on MTT hahaha, play some cash games.

exactly not the point. That is my main point that good structures are more important for sustainability of profession for MTT regs than having a couple more fish in the game. You just want some amount of players that are absolutely crushing. And you want all professionals to make a living without having to go to psychotherapy sessions every 6 months. The discussion is not about how tough or not tough the fields are MTT fields are always going to be soft.

What I do think is that in such an environment it is more likely that at some point the fields will get much bigger again, more likely there is another poker boom and so on.

MTT Poker variance is high enough as is. But with good structures you can actually afford to play few tables and focus on quality. If they make the structures worse and worse, playing poker for professionals will just be a monotone stressful thing to do. Being forced to put in long hours and many tables.

the "mass tabling theory players" are who would gain the least from better structures. It is just the top players who would gain the most. If you are mass tabling playing robotic poker, you will not gain from the ability to select your spots more carefully, be able to exploit more with deeper stacks etc. It is a good thing to have an environment where hard work, passion and dedication are rewarded, just like in any other sports or competitive game.

And I do think it is good for the image of the game to have a certain amount of players who are dominating. You do not want this to go away. It will though if this trend keeps going on.

I have not followed regular daily MTT online poker too closely the last couple of years, other than participating myself. But I would venture to say that while there are players like C. Darwin2 that are absolutely dominating, the domination comes mostly from big series games where the structures have mostly been very good (other than in this particular case wsop main event which, knowing gg, probably was a bad structure). And it seems like Pokerstars even started to make those WCOOP and SCOOP structures worse now slowly. What will happen if they keep this up is, they will become as irrelevant as the Super Tuesday eventually.

Make structures even worse, turn everything into mystery bounties and soon you will not be interested anymore.

A much bigger problem than fast structures is the ridiculous late reg. Its just stupid you have an evening tournament that starts at 8PM and then you can late reg until 11.30 with 10BB. Also unlimited rebuys or at least 3 rebuys is standard for these tournaments. The fact that theres very little mathematical reason to early reg means that a lot of tournaments feel like they start with 15-20bb (because of late reg). Or if you do early reg you sit there wasting your time for hours only for some guy to max late reg and triple up and have the same or bigger stack than you did after hours of play. Its just a shitty experience imo and one of the main reasons (except RTA cheating etc) that online sucks compared to live. It shouldnt be possible to late reg once start stack is below 25bb.

As a rec Im happy with fast structures, which lets me actually play a fairly large field tournament without setting aside either multiple days, or stay up until 4 AM. The mass reentries and late reg on the other hand forces every tournament into a shovefest where there is constantly 2+ people on your table with sub 15bb stacks.

Yes in terms of issues, 4-5 hours to late reg is a way bigger issue than faster structures.

Looks like it's finally becoming common knowledge that late regging freezeouts gets you a stack with a higher ICM value. I got abused for saying this 10 years ago, and their argument was that you'll start with a short stack and that's bad. My argument to that was that if you could start so late you're ITM, you'd cash 100% of tournaments and profit even if you are starting with a pathetic 0.5BB stack. Their argument to this was mute, ignore and block.

I'm not saying this is a good thing, I'm saying it's a true thing.

you're correct well at least for someone who knows what they're doing , although I wouldn't have thought so ten years ago.

Also personally the rare times I play tournaments I start on time. I'm used to cash so I'm way more used to playing deep stack. There are also more bad players early on.
When I have 10-20 big blinds left i feel like I basically have nothing and it's hard to break that mentality playing 1-3 tournaments a year. If I'm playing plo cash and double someone up leaving me with 10 big blinds i'm whipping those 10 blinds in with the next halfway decent hand I get, knowing i'll get 3-6 callers and I get to see the river. Terrible move in tournaments though.