I don't think it's happening but if you want to do more for micro players, you should probably just bring back micromillions

Firstly, want to thank you for the changes you made in the last year. It really has improved things a lot. Selfishly I am especially grateful for the bounty builders, which have improved the off peak schedule huge amounts.

There are a few suggestions I have to really improve the tournament schedule further;

- Update all rebuy tournaments to include the new structure (which is awesome)

- Sunday Minis for the; Kickoff, warm up, sunday rebuy and million. I play mainly up to 33$ and many others play lower, although you have improved sundays slightly with the new sunday guarantees it is still the same tournaments we have day in day out. Give small/micro players tournaments on sundays to really get excited about. I also disagree with the suggestion that they should be ran monthly.

- introduce another 44 6 max PKO tournament; I understand why this tournament was removed but it was far healthier than the other midstake freezeout tournaments running around it. If you feel like peaktime is too congested there is no reg speed midstakes tournaments between the 55 bounty builder starting at 3am and the 55 3k starting at 13.30.

Luke,


schedule for micro/low players is not that great, and we dont have enough mtts to fulfill a complete grind session, so plz, dont remove then.

and bring back micromillions, its like the wcoop for micro players.

such nobrainer decisions...

People play them so way would stars give a **** about the customers when they braindeadly keep regging anything red?

All three fo these have been asked for before and again seems like very smart changes/additions, why is this not happening?

EURO MORNING IMPROVEMENTS
-Turn one of EET early morning $33 FO into Pacific special or something like that and make it $55 with 3k (for start) gtd and then see how many people it gathers, I am pretty sure it will make at least 5k in prizepool, but likely more.

-Hotter109 on Sunday has the same gtd as on weekdays. Make it 20k on Sundays, it will reach it easily as it does on some working days.

GENERAL IMPROVEMENTS
-Lower rake on higher turbos, at least a bit. Make $109t a $100+$7 or $100+$8 instead. Fire a promotion and fields will increase. "Cheaper turbos for everyone" or something alon those lines would receive much !

-Minis - you once saw how Mini SM, Mini WU, Mini Kickoff crushed gtds and had gue success. "Introducing minis" here we go another great promo with Mini editions to all HS tournaments (Thrill,ST,SM,WU,Weekly SKO,...) .

Ridiculous to not keep minis as biweekly or once a month It's ridiculous you don't rake us where we accept the rake but instead of giving us stuff we like that can't hurt you, you do only things to hurt us.

Mini is win win situation for both of us Luke, you guys get absurd amount of rake $ and we get a good trny.


I think they should be ran every week as well as minis to Tuesday and Thursday.

mini 1ks!!!

bounty builders six max on the schedule!

So it's been over a week in the new year and we ve made millions of suggestions and none get addressed? Kewl

if stars dont wanna run it every sunday at least 1 sunday a month maybe end of month or something as worst case scenario then if it constantly crushes (which im sure it will no doubt) stars can think about adding it every sunday

GL Luke for 2016. I'm hoping to see:

• Bigs/Hots with 5k starting stack and dynamic structures but obviously don't want to see them turn into turbos/hyper turbos in first 2 hrs.
  
• More mtt promotions. Would like to see more giveaways in mtts. Minis with giveaways every last week of the month, or once in every 2 months please.
  
• Don't forget mixed game/draw schedule. I've posted many times in the past regarding badugi, 2-7 triple draw, 2-7 single draw schedule here HERE
  
• 1k or 5k Stars Coin Zoom tourney(make it run every last week of the month)

I don't remember when I last played a non-hot hs turbo on stars. Lowering the rake on those 109s+ would bring a lot of us back.

I'm also a fan of trimming the schedule, I think that will be a good change.

Let's get right back into it, then!

They were clearly successful, but it is worth starting with the fact that mini-majors had promotional support. It was part of the Christmas Calendar and had added prizes. A weekly mini-majors suite would not replicate the success of a marketed promotion.

Part of the main schedule reformat I mentioned above involves evaluating both our current majors and the average buy-in of tournaments on the schedule. The 14:00 slot will likely transform in some way to accommodate more players. Any fresh ideas out there?

We'll soon have the functionality to change the length of blind levels once criteria is met. While the logic being developed has many possible use cases, the use I see becoming nearly ubiquitous in tournaments is the idea of increasing or decreasing level length at certain elimination milestones. This functionality appeals to a professional-turned-recreational player like myself because of the authenticity of the experience coupled with its mostly controlled length. I do not want to change a Big that typically lasts eight hours to last four. This type of structure will allow the tournament to still last a significant amount of time, but for more players the experience will be shortened.

For those of us with 9-5s, this represents the opportunity to play more tournaments without losing a night of sleep unless it involves a deep run!

I replied about the mini-majors above, but I'll add that doing them once a month isn't entirely my decision. If I deployed them without any promotional support, they would not encourage players to log into the client. Those who would play are those who are already in the client. This does not result in incremental play, but instead spreads liquidity. All of our promotions are analyzed, so I'm sure the very capable people responsible for making such decisions will see how successful it was. Regardless, I love having input into promotions and will mention this one as a candidate for repeating or even transforming!

As far as Bounty Builders tickets go, the idea was to point traffic to Wednesday to build a new major. Until the first BATTLE ROYALE ran, I was quite worried that the guarantee was too ambitious. As it turns out, this tournament performs extremely well (a signal that the exclusivity of the buy-ins of other 14:00 tournaments may not be necessary) and the tickets do not make or break the guarantee.

I wasn't over the moon with the idea of hybridizing these tournaments due to the two obvious bugs, and it is possible it changes in the future. There is a development item with potential to be deployed "soon" in order to display the cash prize pool as opposed to packages. The satellite filtering issue is likely more complex. If those issues are solved, hybridization will likely spread with tournaments awarding Sunday Storm or Million tickets.

As a test, I've removed the hybridization from the Monday-Friday version of the 12:15 $1.10 and 15:15 $7.50 Bounty Builders beginning Monday, 11 January. It will be very obvious how removing the hybridization element affects the tournaments.

Well, this mostly depends on your expectations. If you expect me to respond to every single suggestion, you're likely going to be disappointed. As for question dodging, what are you referring to?

How do people feel about the new rebuy structure? Does it need any adjustments before being rolled out across the schedule?

I'm hopeful that I'll have something to report in the very near future.

I love the idea of Phase satellites to live events. It essentially guarantees that a handful of recreational or micro-stakes players can win a trip to the Bahamas. Our live events satellite manager is keen on the idea as well. As far as I can tell, it is moderately difficult to run Phase satellites to smaller live events, but I'm sure tournaments like EPT Grand Final, Barcelona, and other popular stops will utilize the functionality.

Do you find it complicated? Did you know that you can change Phase 2s if there's more than one remaining before the final Phase? I hope you'll share your experience!

The 320 6-max is very unlikely to run on Saturdays. That tournament only performs well on Tuesdays and Thursdays for obvious reasons. I'm of the opinion that the ABI of the schedule will be reduced over the course of the year. I know you're implying that it would succeed because its starting time is near the Saturday Super-Knockout, but I don't see it adding any overall value to Saturday.

As far as high stakes tournaments, I haven't seen much of the promotional calendar past February. That said, I am often sharing my view that high stakes players do not come to the site unless there is a promotion. As a player, I loved WCOOP Challenge. Please remember, I do not make promotional decisions!

Win rates in scheduled PKO tournaments are extremely high. The rake will not be changed in these games. We realize that this format has not fully matured, so we will keep a close eye on results as the year progresses.

Requests noted, but I'd like to point out another goal for 2016 which is lower overlay. One of my responsibilities in this role is managing overlay, and I did not do a sufficient job in 2015. Guarantees are more likely to be preemptively lowered for large sporting events, holidays, and the summer. That said, I do foresee the average guarantee increasing before summer simply because of the changes I'll be making to the schedule.

• We’ve already been discussing this, so it must be a good idea! We’ll give it more serious thought, but if we do implement such a change, it’s a massive amount of work and will take a significant amount of time to implement.
  
• All of your live events feedback is read and considered. My colleague reads this thread and I believe many changes have come about because of the suggestions in these threads.
  
• I plan to change Omania to 6-max n-stack sometime before the summer.
  
• 3x and 4x-turbo tournaments are unlikely to be expanded in the main schedule. I'm sure you'll see many of them in *COOP satellites, though.
  
• The structures for the Million/Warm-Up/other majors will be examined at some point during the year. I do not consider this an urgent change to make.
  
• Super Tuesday satellites do not draw a crowd like other smaller targets. While it is likely the Super Tuesday and Thursday Thrill have their satellite systems aligned, I do not foresee large satellites being added on Monday and Wednesday.
  
• The 1500 chip turbo satellites are likely to be removed in the future. For that reason, I'm not going to spend time adjusting them.
  
• Best in this case is absolutely subjective. The turbo rebuys seem to cancel almost as much as the 1-in-3 hyper-turbos on offer. Numerous positive changes were made to satellites in 2015. These changes will be spread out among the schedule in 2016.
  
• Quite likely this format just receives a new structure in general this year.

More thoughts?

MicroMillions will likely return in the future. That said, I do not believe it will return in March.

Appreciate the kind words! Over the course of the year, I imagine there will be fewer gaps like you’ve described above. We’ll make a lot of progress in 2016.

Thanks,

Luke

Thanks for answering, Luke

For the minis, can't you just implement them on a regular Sunday once, see how they do and re-evaluate? If they perform well (and tbf we all know they will), there would be little reason not to keep them right? Especially since you want to do more for micro players

With that said, even as a lowstakes player the thought of a lower abi tournament schedule kinda scares me

If I knew in advance that the mini-majors were running I would definitely make a effort to clear my diary on that day and play again. I think running them once a month would be a perfect compromise.

Unfortunately changes in my personal life mean that I don't have the free time to be able to play much at all any more. When I do get the time the fact that it's pretty much the same old tourneys mean I generally look for something else to do instead.

micromillions will likely return? come on! this is your biggest playerpool and nothing for them since months and still have to wait a lot more. unreal!
we are stuck at micro/low stakes without chances to play for nice scores expect sundays. we need excitement at least each querter this schedule is just boring.
at least keep the minis (with those nice blind structures) for low guys to bring some fun to us.

how did you rich this conclusion? any data to support this?

the argument for not reducing PKO rake sounds a lot like an argument for reducing mid-high stakes turbo rake!

oh snap

How about this one... I could really dig up more but honestly I don't feel like it. You conveniently avoided questions recently in the past that you don't want to answer if you don't have a solid response to a given matter. It's probably on issues where you feel you know better because data. And you're also incredibly stubborn when it comes to some things which is bloody frustrating for a person in your position.

I don't see you changing bounty builders to 6-max even though .fr has them all 6-max and even though pskos play much better 6-max. That $44 was by far my favourite tournament and many others agreed ITT already and it was taken away.

Matthew has been under heavy fire recently but he's been extremely responsive and visible, even though I didn't agree with many things that he said it was nice to see him coming in trying to defend his point. Keith has been going out of his way helping out with the lag which I'd think is outside his responsibilities (as I see software development completely as a separate thing). You usually just go quiet if there's heat and you feel attacked and try wait out when people stop mentioning an issue.

And you should really try step up your GTD setup game. It's nowhere as horrible as in the beginning but there's still so much room for improvement, but it usually takes ages of both persuading and both implementation. Just because you believe that GTDs don't matter and they don't increase traffic but it happens on its own.

Or you won't implement minis more regularly because reasons.

How would you explain that a site like 888 with horrible software has been able to outgrow many tournaments that have some sort of equivalents on stars despite having much smaller playerbase?

And you never ever take any risks to grow, even though probably pretty much every other site (and business) does that, including stars.fr, which is lol.

edit:

This is the impression of you that many of us have, and you don't seem to care about changing it and improving the situation. You treat negative feedback like haters - just continuing ignoring them.

Also you never ever addressed hs turbo rake, it's been like what, 5 years? I know why, because you have 0 arguments to back it up. You can defend PSKO rake because of winrates but you ignore hs turbo rake, just amazing. Games should be beatable, that's why we play poker and not casino games.

Gl to one single idea from this thread happening in 2016

Why are you looking to reduce the abi of the schedule?
It's a worrying idea and I don't understand the rationality for it.
Party and 888 have both increasing there bigger buy in offerings in the last 6 months.


With regards to psko having high winrate therefore rake is going to be high. This seems a rather absurd statement.

Do we expect to see mid to hs turbo rake coming down, hyper sng rake coming down, plo cash game rake coming down, nlhe cash games under 200nl coming down then as winrates there are very very low

High winrates or not, 75% PSKO can not be raked similarly to other(non psko/50% psko) tournaments.

Posted in the other, now closed thread and have seen it mentioned here and figured I get my support for this idea in (I'd like to see a uniform structure for the cubed/quads as well, but admittedly I'm anal and have OCD)...

Can you make the $3-R 8K a consistent structure? Why is it a half-turbo structure on Mon/Wed/Fri and regular on Tues/Thurs/Sat when you aren't changing the structures of anything else around it? Just use the regular structure and make it the same everyday and then use the special Sunday structure... or change it to the same as the $11-R, that would be good too.

Edit: Same for the $2-R as well. Like there are 4 of them with 4 different structures within 3.5 hours (one is an Action Hour). Everyone seems to love the $11-R structure, why hasn't it just been implemented as a blanket structure for regular speed rebuys?