Luke do have my posts hidden for your view? Not only have I discussed in detail why the payouts are really bad for poker so have most other people. If you want to wash the poker economy more; well that’s your provocative since you are a business. But don’t do it in ways that will destroy your market! By removing the excitement and thrill from tournaments you nullify the desire to play them, Regs and Recs will stop playing them at all because they will find poker boring and stale. I have found a total loss of excitement going deep in any of your tournaments now, and I play as a Reg imagine what its like for a recreational players? And as I have said before don't think that just because your numbers have not plummeted that you don't have a problem; it could take months for all the Regs and most of the Recs to realize but when they do what do you think will happen? Do you really think their loyalty to your Amaya-rake-grabbing business will keep them playing on your site? If people were clever enough to download and install your software then they can do it again from some one else.

You have the massive market share in an industry which is huge and you want to rock the boat with these stupid strategies? It could be the case that online poker is on its last leg and you want to milk it dry before it goes under but more likely is that online poker it is a declining market, fine but one with LONG term ability to stay afloat; which means more money for you in the long term if you don’t **** things up. Why not do this thing that most businesses do, its called "investment". So instead of raping your customers through underhanded techniques why not invest in bringing new players to the game and/or making existing players play more

You previously said that you want to cater more for the smaller stakes players but your new schedule does not reflect this. I doubt players will simply move up in stakes (Regs or Recs) just because you have fewer smaller stakes games they will simply move to a site that does offer them. I feel you need WAY more $5-$20 non major games which are predominantly Turbos around 10pm onwards. You seemed to really get on with this idea in a previous post of mine but the new schedule is even worse in this respect.

Fine you want to have more "major" tournaments but a lot of players Regs and Recreational alike would often want "normal" tournaments that are not so small and insignificant in terms of how much they can win thus SNGS wont cater for them nor do they don't want to play something that will last 10 hours. I am not saying make all majors turbos! I am saying cater for the players that would want normal/medium/shorter games to fill in the gaps or end their sessions with. Adding more Turbos around this time will increase traffic overall. And for Recreational players they would often come home after being out with friends around this time so again would often like something "meaningful" so an SNG would not really cater for them but also not too long (not a Major tournament). When you add more games you would keep the players already logged in interested to "fire up another tournament"; when they bust a previous game they will want to "take another shot" at something else. A few people have already asked for the return of the $4+$1+40c Knockout game; this was a very popular game type so why not bring back a few of them and place them in the right times.

What about adding some Turbo Bounty Builders which would cater for those who want a medium sized game. Something that is more significant than a mere 180man for example, but also not a marathon like a Major. The bounty builders take like 10 hours which is very long for a lot of players. Again I am not saying then them all into Hypers with 500 starting chips! I am saying have tournaments to fit this need for medium sized games like 3-4 hours. If you don't want to add Turbos to the official series of Bounty Builders then just have some non-series knockout Turbos and/or Hypers especially in the $5-$20 range.

Didn't Scoop "Break all Records"

Yeah time to lower guarantees immediately after a record breaking series, good one!

I agree with you but its pretty clear that payouts aint on Lukes table. This is a decision taken much higher then Mr Luke. ITs a business Decision.

I've always said that I play mainly for fun, and any money I make is a bonus. I continued to play through the rake increases (ring games, SNGs, and MTTs) because it didn't change the games much. As the games continued to become tougher and tougher, I continued to play, because I was still enjoying it most of the time. I would play 4-8 micro MTTs almost every Friday/Saturday night, and any other night I didn't have to be up early the next day.

Yesterday I played 5 hyper STTs. That was the first time I have played a single hand of online poker in roughly 4 weeks. In 7 years, I don't think I've gone that long without playing. Even when I've gone a week without playing I would still always fire up some MTTs to end the week. With the payouts the way they are now I don't have any motivation to play. As Karedog said, the payouts have taken the fun away. It's not even the min-cashes that bother me. It's that it takes 3-4 hours to reach the money, then another 2 hours on top of that to hardly double your money. It's just not worth it, nor is it fun anymore.

The new schedule, as excited as I was for it, has also taken away my want to play. I hated the one hour late-registration that was on everything, and now it's gotten even longer even on a lot of the minor tournaments. Playing in the ET evening, now everything is a re-entry tournament, and I am not a fan of those either. Similar to the screenshot above, when I opened PS around 7:00 ET my filter showed just two tournaments starting in the next 6 hours (non-turbos, non-re-entry between 7:00 and 11:00 ET, $0 - $4). Everything in that time range is a re-entry tournament, so my evenings of enjoying MTTs have all but disappeared.

It's not even about moving to other sites to supplement any volume I may have played, or moving more of my time to SNGs or ring games. I've just simply started playing less and less.

luke sunday omania $16.5 plo8 at 11:05 WET had 138 runners 17 paid which is fine, but it had 57.27 as a mincash. I all for big mincashes but where is the consistency? some tourneys have barely 1.5x buyin and this one nearly 4x buyin.

The payout structure could work, but they have done it wrong in my opinion... tho not always. There is a definite lack of consistency among the pay tables, even at the same limits.

I think it's fine to pay slightly more of the field and only pay 1.5x for a min-cash, but the tables that work best IMO are the ones that don't give tiny increases to every person who survives another 10 minutes. The ones that really feel like reasonable structures are the ones where I min-cash I get 1.5x, I survive another 45-60 minutes and I get 3x, if I fall short of that, oh well. But then all that money being saved by not having those incremental increases should go back to the final table, especially 1st to 3rd. Then you'd have nice big paydays, reasonable pay jumps that actually reward real time survived in a tournament and yet still the 1.5x larger % of total field paid out to recycle the funds more. And as I said, Stars already has some of these.

I played an event yesterday where the first pay level was from like 108-144 players and paid $4.98 in a standard $3.30 FO (meh)... but then the next pay jump was right to $8.00 for 72-107... and then right up to $11.XX for 54-72 and then table by table with increasing pay gaps... but first place was still only like $4XX or something...

A combination of that pay jump concept, but with a slightly flatter bump each time and the money going to the top 3, so first place in a $3.30 that gets 3k is more like $600 would make everyone happy I think.

And that rambled a lot, hopefully it makes some sense... or someone can re-write it better for me

Would be cool too see the sunday grand start 1/2 Hours earlier, often end up one tabling this one for a long time since after the sunday grand/b215 there aren't lot of HS regspeed mtts to play.

Would like to see a timebomb major on sundays

holy **** b109 9k 1st

that's pathetic



b22 from earlier this year before adjusted payouts



compared to a recent one with basically same entrants.

Come on luke, this is just not enjoyable for anyone. Not to mention the super silly mincash after playing for hours. Could you please think about meeting us somewhere in the middle?

Been away for almost a month, you're telling me the weekly 4 cards haven't been revived? LOL stars wake up these games are a necessity on the weekend! All this talk of trying to grow Omaha games and you take away the flagships on the weekend?!

9.5k for first in the big 109 nowadays? zzzzz

9.5k? that is sad

Maybe wrong place to write this but anyway; What do you guys think about this suggestion:

In progressive knockouts, make them "normal knockouts" WHEN you reach the final table.
- That means you get players FULL bounty on you account when busting them on a final table.

1. Would enhance the feeling of being in the final table, more enjoyable since bounties are bigger.
2. Not so top-heavy since second and first place usually are the ones that busts people out.

What do you think?
Is there any downsides to this suggestion really???

nope, not a fan

Why? What is bad about it??

Haven't posted here for a while and I can see lots of ppl are complaining about the somewhat same subject, payouts, etc, and I agree with them.
But look for another thing, the Bigs on Sundays are paying like half what they used to pay. Big $55 paid about $20ishk last Sunday, normally used to pay about $35ishk, sometimes $40ishk.

I think Bigs on a Sunday deserve better attention, guarantees do matter!

Big $22 same thing, used to pay like $25k, paid $15k last Sunday...they both crushed their guarantee, Big $55 $100k gtd, finished in $153.2k, Big $22 $75k gtd, finished in $111.1k. I know they are getting a better guarantee than usual on Sundays, but you can make better than this, make them more attractive, like they used to be, make your moves, give them some sugar, paint them blue, Idc, just make it back for what they used to be.
Thanks!

Give the big tourneys slightly better structure on sundays ( this is what we all loved before to actually be able to play deepstack poker in them when it matters)

Really like this idea. Way too topheavy in the PKO's now, nobody except the guy who wins it enjoys it.

If you dont implement this idea then atleast make it possible to chop up the bounties aswell.

Excuse me, interpreted it false. Actually not that bad of an idea, but chance of it being implemented close to zero Id guess.

Do you like the possibility that the winner doesn't win any bounties and someone else can win more money than the winner?

Yeah. Chop up the bounties would be nice as well

Sometimes gotta hit that one-outer ; )

The winner will almost always win most anyway. The diference will be that the winner wont win 1.5 -2 x that of a second place win.

The 1st prizes at the FT is always 5-10x of the average bounty anyway. So for the winner to get less than 2nd he must have a low bounty from start, at the same time the second must have huge biunty AND take out most guys on FT. And still it might not even happen that 2nd receive more than 1st.

There's a reason for that. Amaya has done a wonderful job making MTTs unattractive (worse payouts, worse structures, less recreationals players on those - from less sats to giving recs other formats as spins, etc).

Because of that, less players join the MTT, and that means poor guarantees

structre of bigs is fine enought, pls do something with this payouts !
I sad it before there are good for PSKO and some of Hstakes stuff but suck at everything else.... non one enjoy it, non one like it . Please Luke listen to players and reverse it or meet in a middle at least !