Figured we should have a centralized spot to post about all the other non-WSOP series happening in Vegas this summer.

Believe Golden Nugget is the first venue besides WSOP to announce their schedule.

Full schedule was just announced. It's buried in this news story:

https://www.pokernews.com/news/2023/...dule-43122.htm

Where is the xcel spreadsheet hosted this year?

Does this cover what you're after?

A trickle of Aria/MGM info.

"We are excited to announce our $2M Guarantee @BetMGMPoker Championship Event!

This event will highlight our 2nd Annual BetMGM Week including a Mystery Bounty event, satellites, and more!"



From what I gather, this event will actually be held at Aria.

No. This does:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=857315412

Kenny G = The Man!

That IS great! And it would be so awesome if we could get that combined with plog's S-point and fee analysis into one spreadsheet

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/6...lysis-1806909/

The best database is at https://public.tableau.com/app/profi...023SummerPoker.
You will be able to filter which of the over 800 tournaments you want to consider playing. You will be able to see the structures & print out your tournaments.

The events with higher than average rake are coloured red. You can click on "Show Rake" for all of your tournaments.

The lack of schedules released is annoying!!!!!!

Most don't come out until within 2 months of the start of the respective series. I expect Venetian will come out around the 3rd or 4th week of March since their series usually starts end of May. IF the Orleans is having a series this Summer, theirs will probably come out around the same time, or slightly later (early April maybe)

Venetian schedule is out! https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-tou...p-poker-series

It has a few Omaha events but otherwise all NLH.

Wynn partial:

https://twitter.com/WynnPoker/status...462098432?s=20

There another long-standing thread dedicated to this. Not sure if Mods want to get rid of one of them.

I think it makes sense to have a new thread for the new year instead of having 7+ pages of 2022 content.

There's a new thread for the WSOP, so not sure why people want to use last year's thread for the other stuff.

Either way is fine, but I do think there should be only one thread. Maybe they can be merged or just delete the other one.

Golden Nugget.

Not sure if it has been posted as yet.

https://www.goldennugget.com/content...3-schedule.pdf

Venetian Structures:

DeepStack Championship Poker Series
May 22 – July 31, 2023
https://www.venetianlasvegas.com/cas...scps-2023.html

Hopefully they release more levels......I have no idea what they plan to do on some of these 1 day events.

That link is broken. Think this is what you want:

https://www.venetianlasvegas.com/cas...scps-2023.html

The offerings at the Venetian and Wynn (based on the prelim schedule) don't look like they're going to line up very well with my travel plans, which is a little unfortunate since I enjoy both venues. I do think that generally the shift to more bounty events is a huge positive for the poker world, as it effectively flattens the payouts. There's really no reason for tournament payouts to be so top-heavy. The community has responded to the mystery bounty format in an extremely positive way, and Venetian are doing some cool stuff with other bounty formats.

Thanks for fixing that.

I played the Big-O at the Venetian last year and will likely play this year. I don't like that it's a one day event this year, but whatever.

I don’t mind bounties, but I hope mystery bounties remain a novelty and don’t become any sort of norm. How does taking 6 or even 7 figures sometimes out of a prizepool and giving it to one or two random people make a payout structure less top-heavy? All it does is make tournament results even more about luck.

The way the Venetian does their ultimate bounties makes sense to me. A big bounty, for sure, but the same for everyone who earns one. That does flatten payout structures and still depends on skill.

Distributing a chunk of the prize pool via bounties spreads the prize money among more people, and is still skill-based long-term because surviving longer and eliminating more players leads to more opportunities to pull the big bounties. That's without mentioning the possibility of these events pulling a softer player pool because the lottery aspect appeals to players who think they have no chance of winning a conventional MTT, where all the prize money is buried in the top slots when you are most likely to be against the toughest slice of the field.

Not all bounty tourneys are created equal. Again, mystery bounty events typically allocate a large percentage of the prizepool to one or two players. The lottery aspect exists, and it’s a true lottery. At least with top-heavy payout structures, the money goes to people who have performed best in the tournament instead of just the person who pulled the right envelope. These are supposed to be poker tournaments and not just lotto events, right?

Long-term, the people who play the best, consistently get the deepest, and eliminate the most players will collect the most envelopes and therefore the most big bounties. The payouts aren't going to be as flat though. Instead of being solely reliant on your final place as the determinant of your $$$ won, you have the "side quest" of knocking people out and collecting bounties to give you another cut of the prize pool. The big binks are going to be less impressive than a conventional MTT when you make the FT because so much of the prize pool will have been cannibalized by the bounties, but the medium binks can be a lot bigger.

I can see why it may not appeal to everyone, but I like the idea of flatter payouts in MTTs in general, and bounty events result in exactly that. Those runs where you go deep without touching the FT still have a chance to yield a nice payout vs. just winning a handful of buy-ins in a typical MTT setup.

Going deep in a tournament requires a lot more skill than knocking people out. That happens mostly through circumstance. The hands play themselves or your opponent makes a big mistake. You can go very deep in a tournament without knocking anybody out. There are certainly different strategies to employ when bounties are stake, but I don’t see this as somehow a fundamentally better form of poker. It’s just different.

Again, bounty tournaments are fine. So are mystery bounties. But if they, especially the latter, become the rule rather than the exception, it will be a sad day for poker. Anything which reduces the role of skill in the game diminishes it. There are always trade-offs, to be sure, but that doesn’t mean we have to go too far towards the game being little more than a lottery. If people want to pony up a bunch of money for a small chance to win a big prize, there are plenty of opportunities within the casino for them to do so. But those aren’t poker.

If the main goal is flatter payout structures, that can be achieved pretty simply without fundamentally changing the way the game is played… by having flatter payout structures. They are certainly flatter today than they were, say 15 years ago. Maybe they can be even flatter. I don’t hear a ton of clamoring for that, but if people want it, it will happen.

Adding more luck to poker does not diminish the skill component. Nor the opposite. Luck and skill are not on a single spectrum. You can change one without changing the other. Here's an article I wrote about that: https://www.cardplayer.com/cardplaye...e-in-your-game

I have yet to play a mystery bounty tournament, and am not a fan. I don't like the randomness of it. IMO, it does add a lot of variance to the game. And tournament poker already has a lot of variance. There is clearly a huge skill component to any bounty tournament, including mystery bounty. There are many adjustments you need to make to maximize your equity. Some of these adjustments are huge. I consider mystery bounties to add a huge amount of variance, although not diminishing the skill element at all. I just don't want more variance.

Cheers, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

I have a question about bounty tournaments in general. Would you guys say that it increases the likelihood of calls of your all-in (if V has you covered) because of the perceived extra equity?

If so, does that mean you should be more or less willing to go AI, knowing that you a) might be called more but 2) will be called wider? Or perhaps no impact, just play your game?