There's been a lot of discussion on Twitter recently directed at Jack Effel @wsoptd regarding the $10m first place main event guarantee.

His response was basically that $10m is the new $1m and that for years the wsop paid $1m to first despite the number of entries.

I haven't really seen any posts by players favoring the $10m for first.

Some alternate proposals have been...

Guarantee to pay out 1000 players and adjust prizepool from there.

Guarantee $1m for making the final table.

Guarantee at least double your buyin if you cash the main event.

What type of prizepool guarantee would you create to benefit players and actually increase interest in the main event?

The standard 10.5% of players cash with standard payout structure is fine. There is no need for special rules to take advantage of big round numbers like $10 million first, 1000 players paid, 2X for mincash. Nobody is going to play or not play for $10K because of a silly gimmick. The main event is the biggest tournament of the year by far so why does it need "tweaked"?

1st 10m
2nd-50th 1m
51st-151st 10k

Life changing money for more people.

Also the marketing of "50 people guaranteed to become millionaires" would probably work well.

Allan I think it's part of the marketing theme, something new, a way to drive a wider distribution of news of the event before, during and after.

Sometimes the high stakes players are themselves their own worst enemies when it comes to bringing in new players.

lol

A "Millionaire maker" like they run on Bovada. Flat 1m payouts like a satty. Top 80 get 1 million, 81st gets whatever is left, 82-8k get 0. Maybe half mil maker where ~160 pay based on 8k runners not including rake. Bubbles galore!

Pay 20% of field...still have to outlast thousands and thousands

that would be awesome if they did it like this i always thought they should just give more people a million no one could complain about winning a million

Assuming one wasn't involved, this would provide a pretty hilarious bubble spot. Any at all competent big stack would just be able to completely destroy their table around 60 left. Of course, it wouldn't even really be worth it much for them to even try since there is so little to be gained. With this structure, around 60ish players left, if one had a an average sized or greater stack, then for a lot of players, it might actually be +EV to leave and go find the most expensive lobster and steak dinner they can and eat it slowly before going back to the table. It may be slightly more +EV to actually stay at the table (just to provide the threat of possibly playing a hand), but fold every hand.

min cash doesn't get double. online-like flat structure, all gradual increases, including final table. event is great enough on it's own, don't need to dress it up with goofy prize structure tweaks.

quadruple shootout: prizes based on 6,561 runners (9x9x9x9) almost exact amount of runners this yr - 6,683

so $9,400 going to pool x 6,561 runners = $61,678,850 prize pool

729 tables, win your table you make the money. 729 cash and double their money - $20,000.

648 people will mincash but not win their second table, 81 will win both their first and second table.

648 x $20,000 = $ 12,960,000 paid out with $48,718,850 left to distribute to 1-81.

72 will win their 1st and 2nd tables but lose in the 3rd. For their efforts they will receive $150,000.


150k x 72 = $10,800,000 paid to spots 10-81. This leaves $37,918,850 to distribute to spots 1-9. Here's where you can have some fun creating whacky payouts.

$59,999,996.50 - PSU Mike so he can go on the ultimate Pai Gow heater
$3.50 - Doublejoker for penny slot heater

So you're arguing to only have the top 2% of the field (assuming 8,000 player field) to make the money? While only 50 people make a profit?

poker tournaments should strive for icm to matter as little as possible in order for the poker to become more important than the tournament aspect since the tournament aspect is more of a mystery to less smart people (recreational players) since they're just here to play a little texas holdem. best way to do that is as few cliffs as possible. ideally you'd have it so gradual that people didn't want to stall, didn't have to pass on plays that were +chipEV because of icm boneage.

i guess i'd probably make it ~5m to first, 1m to all final table ppl, and gradual at the FT

1. 5M
2. 3.5M
3. 2.5M
4. 2M
5. 1.7M
6. 1.4M
7. 1.25M
8. 1.2M
9. 1.15M
10-18. 900k
19-27. 750k
28-36. 100k
37-136. 20.9k

Flat payout for final table, but final table takes a large % of prize pool (45-55%).

Something like:

1st: 10,000,000
2nd: 7,000,000
3rd: 5,000,000
4th: 3,500,000
5th: 2,500,000
6th: 2,000,000
7th: 1,500,000
8th: 1,250,000
9th: 1,000,000

This totals 33,750,000 which last year would be 50.5% of the prize pool (not accounting for the rake). Edit, accounting for rake = 53.72% of prize pool $

Edit: This is for a first place guarantee of 10 million.

Edit 2: Just for comparison, 2014 final table payout was $28,485,673 = 45.34% of the prize pool.

Actually, if you really wanted to take ICM (and stalling) out of the picture, you would make it winner take all.

Given the expected number of entrants, I see nothing wrong with pre-choosing a nice round number for first place. Marketing is an important part of business.

If as an amateur I was only going to play one big tournament in the next few years, I'd rather have a greater chance to win a big amount rather than just double my money.

If I were a professional, I'd like $20,000 for the top 2,000 players and $20 million divided however by the final table.

Last year, the min-cash was $18,406. The next step above that was $20,228.

Would you rather have that be the min-cash for the first 72 players and the next 72 players or would you rather have a min-cash be $12,500 and then the next step for the next 72 players is $17,500 which would equal a "savings" of $621,648 for higher payouts?

wot

8m
5m
3m
2m
1.75m
1.5m
1.25m
1.1m
1m
= 23.6m

10-18th:600k avg = 5.4m

19-27th:400k avg = 3.6m

28-36th :300k avg = 2.7m

37-45th:150k avg = 1.30m

45 - 54th: 100k avg = 900k

55th-90th:60k avg = 2.1m

91st - 200th: 45k avg = 5m

200-400: 30k avg = 6m

401-550th: 25k avg = 3.75m

551 - 750: 20k avg = 4m

751-850: 15k avg = 1.5m

About 60m total prize pool, 13% of PP to first. 14% of players paid. This would be a much more reasonable prize pool, but is still fairly top heavy. Also it creates 9 millionaires!

I'd honestly prefer paying only 9% and using that 9mil to flatten out the payout structure more and make min cashing matter a lot. (like 25k to min cash, have it be fairly flat to 150 left, but have top 100 people all get 100k+).

Obviously this is a different tournament than the ME and completely irrelevant to this thread.

If payouts were a bit steeper and final table was guaranteed a million last year:


1st$10,000,000
2nd$5,147,911 -> $6M - 852089
3rd$3,807,753 -> $4M - 192247
4th$2,849,763 -> $3M -150237
5th$2,143,794 -> 2.25 -106206
6th$1,622,471 -> 1.75 -127529
7th$1,236,084 -> 1,5 -235584
8th$947,172 -> 1.25 -302828
9th$730,725 -> 1 -269275
10th-12th$565,193 - > 600,000 -104421
13th-15th$441,940 -> $450,000 -24180
16th-18th$347,521 -> $375,000 -82437
19th-27th$286,900 -> $300,000 -117900
28th-36th$230,487 - > $250,000 -175617
37th-45th$186,388 -> $200,000 -122508
46th-54th$152,025 -> $150,000 +18225
55th-63rd$124,447 -> 125,000 -4977
64th-72nd$103,025 -> 100,000 +27,225
73rd-81st$85,812 -> 85,000 +7308
82nd-90th$72,369 - >70,000 +21,321
91st-99th$61,313 - > 60,000 +11,817
100th-162nd$52,141 -> 50,000 +134,883
163rd-225th$44,728 - > 40,000 +$297,864
226th-288th$38,634 - > 35,000 + 228942
289th-351st $33,734 -> 30,000 +235242
352nd-414th $29,400 -> $25,000 +$277,200
415th-477th $25,756 - > $20000 +$362,628
478th-549th $22,678 -> $17,500, +$372,816
550th-621st $20,228 -> $15,000 +$376,416
622nd-693rd $18,406 - > $12,500 +$425232

Total difference = $70,916 (in the negative (i.e. rio's pocket)).

Edit: this final table payout is roughly 49% of the prize pool.

27th down to first should all be a pay step up. 18th paying the same as 10th is absurd. No financial accomplishment for someone who out played 7 others in the intense stages of the biggest event of the year.

Headline grabbing 15 million for first but fund it by making 2nd-9th pay the same. Advantages:
Proper poker played at final table to get chips rather than people open folding AQ because they want to ladder.
People who are 'pros' but unable to find people to swap pieces with won't be majorly affected in terms of increased variance.