Replay should have at least....

I have mentioned more than once having tournaments, like Bust the Staff, on a rotating schedule.
It’s really the only fair way to let everyone have a chance to play. Never got a response, so I guess
it will never happen. I am glad to see at least one other person think’s tourneys should be rotated though.

We can experiment with a long game, perhaps at the 250k or 500k level. Our Poker Ops team will look and see if we can get a sustainable game. The difficulty has been with the higher stakes tournaments – Granddaddy of Them All, for instance, is 5 million with 10 minute blind levels and there were only 8 players last time, and Saturday Fever is 2.5 million, also with 10 minute blind levels, and had 12.

As for Bust the Staff, 4pm ET is the happy medium where staff can actually be present to play. With many of us in the US and Europe, along with the more “peak” hours on our site, this is what we’ve currently landed on (I believe we did experiment with a different time a while back that was less successful).

It seems to Have an Experimental Game at Half a Million chips will draw few Participants that’s a Given. I do like the idea of a two tier Tourny format. High and Low. To Kick it off try a 50 or 100K entry to make it more appealing to more Players.

ya good idea but in two tier i think a 100k and 250k might work, or 50k and 250k,… those would draw in all stake players to have interest.

@fizzymint - what about trying to replicate the scenario I referenced from my WPT days? Have satellites for these specific games running all week. The satellites are for a specific tournament, not for entry into any tourney with the same buy-in. They are only good for the game being held that week so you can’t try to win a bunch of them and stock up.

The games were high buy-in if you wanted to just pay full freight for them but the satellites were super competitive because of that. It allowed for higher skilled players without sufficient bankrolls to earn their way in to a 1M buy-in event by taking a shot in a 50K entry satellite. It allowed for the vast majority of players to earn their way in and created large fields. The large fields resulted in great games with payouts that actually mattered to most players. A 100+ runner field in a 1M game creates some hefty payouts. The satellites also helped create a buzz all week long because we could see who qualified and who hadn’t yet. Good for the competitive ego.

The biggest issue I see for doing this at the moment is the inability to scale satellites. On one side, you wouldn’t want to devalue the tournament by handing out too many tickets. On the other side, you would want to draw as large fields as possible to the satellites so you can’t offer too few tickets. Once you have the ability to scale satellites, these could become some of the most competitive tournaments on the site, say with 1:20 earning their way through. Something to think about I guess.

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Some deeper games would be great, at any/all buyins. Why restrict it to 500K+? Let people play some poker, regardless of their bankroll. What harm could it possibly do to have games that have more of a focus on skill? As @county29 said, its not like you have to pay the dealers or are limited on the number of tables you can fit in the virtual card-room. This is one of the best ideas I’ve seen here.

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Tournament format rules are meta-rules to the core game of poker, and they do shape how the game is played. I mostly like the current tournament format, but once the blinds hit 300/600, it does get ridiculous and more about lucking into a good hand, and by the time they hit 1000/2000 it’s all but critical.

The mid-stakes 2-hand SNG format starts you out with 5,000 chips and 15/30 blinds. They do go up at the same speed (ie, fast) but when you’re heads-up from the beginning, hands are quick and 2-minute blind levels feels more right. You stay at super-cheap blinds long enough. I’ve only tried played this format a couple times, and didn’t really care for it. Early stages dragged on and I tended to ignore blinds and bet based on % of stack instead. But if you would like a 9-seat/MTT tournament with long blind periods, this might work for you, too.

Yes, I like that idea…

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“Game On”, the highest buyin MTT on weekdays is running right now. There were only 34 entries to start with. At the 1st break, 9 players are left with an average stack of 14BB. The chip leader has about 21BB. Since antes are in play, these stacks are actually shorter than this. So, in 1 hour of play, you’ve lost nearly 3/4 of the players. The remaining players are left with stacks so short there is no real poker left to be played. In fact, if these games played like “normal” games for cash, everyone would have been in push/fold mode already and the game might not have even lasted the full hour.

Any game this short is going to be more about catching cards than about outplaying anyone. I didn’t say that skill doesn’t matter at all but I am saying that luck plays the dominant role. It would be nice to have deeper ones available so that players can get their poker on. Maybe you wouldn’t need a lot of the deeper games but why not have some available at different buyins and times throughout the day? Right now there are maybe half a dozen games per week that aren’t basically turbos. Leave those alone and let people enjoy them so no one complains. Just add some for people who want there to be more strategy and skill involved. Worst thing that happens is that they don’t attract enough players and you cancel them after a while. Seeing as many games don’t get even 50 players now, I can’t see how these would be less popular.

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Same game as last night, “Game On”: 36 entries. 7 left at the break with an average stack of 19BB and the big stack with 29BB. 2 players are under 10BB. Biggest game of the day in terms of buyin and its basically a turbo. Maybe there would be more preflop activity if players had more room to play poker rather than just sit around hoping to connect with flops?

Starting a new movement, #getyourpokeron

To paraphrase Moses, “Let my people play!”

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