I’m very torn on this discussion. I should start by saying that there is no agenda to hurt high stakes games. It is fairly obvious, from my perspective, the only successful non-Sunday high stakes games (>$215 for the sake of this argument) are the Super Tuesday, Thursday Thrill, and Saturday Super-Knockout. I imagined the Weekender to fill the very niche you’re so passionate about, but so far it has not done so. If you are saying “build it and regs will come”, then the (not all that) early time slot should not affect tournament performance. The structure was designed with a guarantee of $200K in mind, but it has not come close to such performance on any non-WCOOP Saturdays. No change to the structure will double participation, nor should putting it at 14:00 if only regulars are needed to build the prize pool.

I do not think it is appropriate to point at promotional series to determine whether or not a new weekly high stakes tournament will be successful. I think looking at past prize pools of the Super Tuesday and Thursday Thrill is much more useful in terms of results. Like many other tournaments, their prize pools have declined year on year.

I’m not saying this to be a wet blanket—at this point I’m truly unconvinced whether or not there is some substantial contingency of players we’re not serving. Part of that is the fact that pre-Black Friday I played only high stakes; however, once I went to Canada and Mexico, my volume massively increased and I played all stakes. I do not know many players who do not log in because the Super Tuesday isn’t enough.

As far as comparing live HSMTTs to online, how do you feel the WCOOP $51K performed? Better than expected? Worse? It is hard for me to gauge as I am out of touch with the $25K+ live scene.

As Mike posted above, the rake was a mistake. It was a carryover from last year and was corrected immediately.

• PLO/NLO8 was not included this year as they both had substantial overlay last year. Apologies to those who are disappointed. It was given a fair chance and I assumed it would be a slam dunk. That being said, I've discussed it with the team and we'll do something a little special for the Sunday $82 PLO and NLO8 PSKOs. I'll get them in the lobby tomorrow.
• The VLT has changed to 6-minute levels to start and 75 minutes of late registration. I understand the point made that VLT is less suited for a PSKO. I did not consider that last year when this promotion was initially created; however, I am generally a proponent of variable speed tournaments.
• Lead time for player communications is decided by the promotions team. I will pass on the feedback that you would like it to be sooner.

These are currently being run as a test for Knockout Week. It was a spur of the moment decision. I landed on giving away tickets to the FT only because knockouts already reduced advertised payouts and as you increase the number of tickets awarded, the minimum number of players to start the tournament increases as well. Since this is not money added, I would never want to risk a tournament cancelling. At this time, all planned Knockout Week Special tournaments have been deployed. I’d very much like feedback on this type of satellite. Sadly, they must be scripted as satellites, but should still be visible in your favourites.

The guarantees for the Super Tuesday and Thursday Thrill have been increased back to $400K. Also, the latter is now a part of Knockout Week and has a $500K guarantee on 15 October.

Guarantees have also been increased for many of the new Sunday Million satellites (effective immediately) and for many micro tournaments (beginning next week). As always, you can search “Guarantee Boost!” in the lobby come Friday evening.

MicroMillions is taking a break. Common Cents is intended as a semi-replacement. I do not yet know what the future is for MicroMillions.

We apologize for the disruption during the $100K. It seems that it mostly affected tournaments beginning around the same time. If you were affected, please send as much information as possible to Support.