Open to the fact that I know very little about what goes into scheduling tournaments, and what the organizers are optimizing for and what other people's response functions look like, so just going to throw this out there from my perspective and see what people think.
I was a pro from 2010-2012 or so, then played a reasonable amount while in school and doing a startup from 2012-2105, and in 2015 took a full time job at a hedge fund which I enjoy. I miss poker and I'd like to play more, but the way these tournaments are scheduled makes it nearly impossible for me to play unless I am willing to take a huge amount of time off, which is usually worth substantially more than the tournament equity.
Mostly, my complaint is that tournaments often run 1-A on a Saturday, 1-B on a Sunday and then Day 2 from Monday onward. They also don't schedule other attractive tournaments (specifically high rollers) at convenient times.
For example, consider the upcoming
WPT in Montreal:
Days 1A-1C are Fri, Sat and Sun, and the 2-day 10k HR is Mon and the 1.5k is Tues.
Why would that HR be on Monday? Why not hold it Saturday instead? We could fire a bullet on Friday, play the HR on Saturday and fire a Main bullet Sunday whenever we bust. You lose Main bullets from people who would have fired 3 but now don't fire Saturday, but you also gain HR entrants that you would have lost due to them still being in the Main on Monday. (And you gain total entrants, from ppl like me who won't come under the current sched but would for this)
You could even mitigate this further by saying that people who play the HR are allowed to use two of their three bullets on 1 day rather than 1 bullet per day. The only reason I can see for this policy in the first place is that you want to make sure people stay all the days, but if they're playing the HR they are staying anyway.
If it were scheduled like this, I'd come play, but as is I am guaranteed to miss Monday and often going to miss Tuesday from work as well... and I might not even get to play the HR either.
Also, why aren't there ~1-2k one-day turbos on Sat and Sun from people who are there all weekend but make it through on Fri or Sat?? EPTs do this, and it's great. You get way more poker packed into the weekend.
If you're going to do it this way, then at least incentivize me to make a 9 day vacation out of it and take the week off (like PCA) with tons of events concurrent with the Main if you bust. But as is, there's just the HR and a 1.5k on Tuesday.
For an even worse example, consider the
Borgata Winter Open:
Day 1A is on a *Sunday* and Day 1B is on Monday. They also have no tournaments on Tuesday. Not to mention the damn thing goes until
Friday. That means you could make like 12th or something for not that much money, bust Thursday, and miss four days of work... or mincash and miss 3 days.. or not even cash and miss 2. For me, literally any outcome other than a final table would suck.
There's only one "second chance" tourney on the Tuesday. There's no way I can take all these days off to play the main, likely not even cash, and then not have other stuff to play. How do people with jobs play this??? Don't you want incentivize people with jobs to come play?
The
WPT in Maryland is less egregious, but a perfect example of a tournament I would've played had the schedule been moved up a day. Day 1-A on Saturday, 1-B on Sunday and the HR on Monday. Move all those up, and I'm there. Or, if it's as-is, at least give us something good to play on Sunday! I get that maybe this will stretch Saturday too thin and you don't have room, but there are other ways around that too.
I get that it probably works out OK for people who are local, and I'm new to the East Coast, but it seems like there are so many big cities around here that are close enough to play these if the schedule is accommodative, but too far if the schedule is not. (i.e. If I lived in DC I could play the HR after work, but from NY or CT that's not possible).
An example of tournaments that are easy for people with jobs to play are the ones at
Foxwoods:
Day 1A on Friday (would be even better if Friday started at 2 instead of noon), Day 1B on Saturday
Day 2 on Sunday
HR Sunday afternoon
Final Table on Monday (if Main is 3 day)
Friday is usually an easier day to take off than Monday and/or you can also take off work early and play Friday without taking a day off unlike Monday. If You started Friday Day 1 at 1 or 2pm instead of 11 or noon, that would be awesome... Only missing Monday if deep is a totally reasonable tradeoff.
Or, do it like
PCA, where people can take the whole week off, knowing ahead of time that even if they bust the main on Day 2 or 3, there is a ton of other stuff for them to play.
Again, there's a lot I don't know. How many people travel vs how much are you trying to cater to locals? How many people are there like me who will or won't travel based on days missed vs. people who happily miss days and you want to keep them around longer for hotel bills + gambling revenue? How much do logistics of having enough tables etc. drive these decisions?
But, just my $0.02 on how I'd do things a little differently if the goal was to make people like me with jobs who still want to play poker happy.