Been lightly following this years events and noticed it is nothing like last years. Last year all the top dogs were playing and the buy ins were larger. This year there is a significant portion of regular SHR players missing. I don't see Fedor, Goose, Amadi, Dan Smith, Tollerene, Fish2013, Christner, Schillhabel, Aido, act. Why is that? Is it because the buy in is smaller and WCOOP is better opportunity? Personally I liked it a lot better watching last years events with the wizards doing battle. No offense to the fields this year but a lot of them seem to be a bit more button clicky than solver nerds.

Stupid to have it the same time as WCOOP imo

I always find watching the solver nerds is like watching paint dry. They're certainly not going to attract anyone to the game.
Then again, that's not what PokerGo is for.

They heard Maurice Hawkins was coming so didnt bother showing up.

I mean from an entertainment aspect I totally agree. I just liked to see the game played at the highest level without missing a hand. I guess sort of like watching a pitchers duel in baseball. I understand I am in the minority here and see why they went the entertainment route this year but last years masters was so much better to me.

Now I don't want to throw anyone under the bus and mention names. I am sure they are also very good against playing vs weak opposition. But if I wanted to watch a button clicking leveling war fest where majority of the field has never opened a solver in their life, I could just watch any of the other events covered on PokerGo. The Masters was supposed to be a prestigious event like how it is in golf.

Lol this

This analogy is more flawed than most. In golf do players refuse to play unless there is a weaker golfer playing? Are golfers putting up the entirety of the prize pool? In the poker Masters are players only allowed to play if they qualify as one of the best players? Do golfers sell pieces of themselves to the point where they make a profit even if they do poorly?

Poker players go where the money is and the fields are softest.

-BD

Crypto crashed hard

https://www.moneyweb.co.za/news/mark...dotcom-levels/

Right but even if value were the case, would players like Goose, AmadI, Fedor, Tollerenne, ect. see more value in last years stacked field than this years with some "questionable" newcomers? Has it just come to the point 25ks just aren't worth traveling for?

Just checked pokernews and many of those people are in attendance. They will probably play the 100k which hasn't happened yet. I wouldn't blame Fedor for not showing up considering he just got top 3 in one drop.

sometimes in poker, they might not want to play the masters

Is there somewhere that notes these players are in Vegas for the Masters but just plan to play the bigger events? I know Petrangelo, Marchese, Dan Smith and a few others just showed up for the last 25k. May be they just skipped the first few events due to not planning on playing the PLO and short deck events? I really hope so

On DAT Poker Podcast, Negreanu et. al. speculated that a Las Vegas super high roller tournament is not appealing to Asian and Canadian players or something along those lines.

For the 50k Vogelsang, Davies, and a few others made their first appearances. Still lacking Stevie, most of the usual German contingent and also the Spanish players.

It is noted that a lot of the selfmakers in the "small" events were just there to try and parlay one of those into playing the rest of the series and have mostly flamed out. I guess that is good both for entertainment purposes since watching guys mash and play more human like instead of trying to emulate a computer is definitely more fun and it will also add more "fun players" to the bigger buy ins if they succeed, enticing more wizards to play the bigger events. So I guess I can get behind the lower buy in events. It really seems only the players most interested inthe prestige of winning the JACKET planned to play every event from the regular high roller community. I think next year there needs to be something done to add more prestige to the Jacket or else this series is just going to be like any other weekly series of 25k events these guys always play around the world

Sometimes you just get sick of having 5 per cent of yourself in a torny I guess

Aria did a pretty poor job of publicizing it. I was there last week and there was no advertising or signage anywhere that I noticed. I was there on Thursday and Friday (I think the first tourney started Friday) and I didn't see anything about satellites. They didn't seem to be running any in the main poker room. I believe these Masters tournaments are held in PokerGo Studios, which seem to be locked and off limits to the public.

All in all, if they're trying to entice casuals to drop $500 or $1k on a satellite then they need to try harder. Their turnout could be a lot better if they put any effort into it. That doesn't seem to be the purpose of this series though. It seems to be about small fields with a high concentration of big names. Good for viewers, but lower -EV for players than something like the WSOP which will attract a lot of shot takers to dilute the fields.

Haven't followed this years poker masters, but for high rollers in general don't you all feel that there are just too many operators offering events.

Demand for these is relativity fixed. There is only so much money to provide the staking.

As more options are put in market, and fixed demand, each event will have fewer entrants.

Events offered will eventually contract. Unless Fedor just wants to stake everyone.

WCCOP + POWERFEST = MoreEV online than live

I guess this is mainly what causes smaller fields @ pokermasters

Surely, Pokermaster's marketing and scheduling weren't gto this year.

I don't believe they ran satellites. I think Aria didn't feel the need to advertise since they really weren't looking for the dilution. It was kind of if you know, you know thing. This year a lot of the high roller community knew, but for some reason just didn't want to attend.

Overall the turnout has probably been better this year than last year but the quality of player took a step down. If they wanted to go pure mashers and just attract larger fields they could just embrace that route but I don't think that was the vision of whoever created the masters series.

I'm just trying to find out why the higher players never made it out this year. Guys were so excited last year. Fedor made that daily vlog which was very entertaining. Negreanu vlogged. Polk vlogged. They broadcasted more than just the final tables. It was just overall much better last year imo. Not to mention I learned a lot watching those guys.

This seems to be the reasoning why. If PokerGo/Aria want to make this a successful prestigious event I really think scheduling changes need to be made for sure. They may feel different and not really care about the quality of players and keep it like this year which will be unfortunate. It really feels like it is missing something when you replace Stevie, Fedor, Goose, and the others with 10k self makers trying to parlay.

It seem this ultra high roller events dry up , there are to many . 100k event at Master got only 15 entries.

I agree the staking or lack thereof is likely a factor, and with Justin Bonomo taking most of the big prize money recently (and Fedor Holz before him), plus less recs/whales playing these events, it all must have an impact.

A solution to get bigger fields might be to have some on line sats for these events with super sats starting as low as $200. Would probably work if they can get a major on line poker site to host the sats.

^^

good point. Online qualifiers in addition to just increasing the prize pool have the added benefit of softening the fields, which in turns attracts more regs.

The upcoming PokerStars PSPC at PCA 2019 is a great example.

http://www.pokerstarslive.com/pspc/

PSPC is going to create quite a bit of buzz and have one the largest prize pools to date for a Live MTT.

I think you guys are having a different view than me. I'm not really interested in increasing field size with just random mashers. I really don't think they even had that problem this year. The fields were bigger and filled with a lot more than GTO Wizards for sure. A lot of knighthood and mashers came for the 10ks and even some 25ks.

I just hoped the masters series would be like last year where the top dogs congregated and just competed with each other for one week straight. I guess it just isn't possible since it's true the players have to put up their own money and thus have to seek the best value and look out for themselves. It's just unfortunate because in most sports and games the best compete against each other and their skills are showcased on a stage. Poker is a little different I guess.

There's no worse prize than a purple jacket.