I just noticed 2k & 5k MTT tickets ( brand new ), yet no sattalites to win them just like the 50k tickets. Is there an upcomming promotion these are being used for ? Currently there are 2k, 5k, 15k, and 50k tourn. tickets… yet only the 15k variety are winable. I didn’t see any posts in “News & Announcements” nor could I post this there…
OK, so I guess these are for the new Jewel Leagues, but will there be sattalites to win tickets?
These are new ticket types that can be won from Satellite tournaments beginning May 8th! We’ll have a bigger announcement on Monday with more details, as we’re upgrading a couple of our regular promotions. 
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ok, thanks… sry to jump the gun.
additional question: why are there lower satellites added instead of higher ones?
the whole idea of satellites is that you can play high stake tournaments you normally couldn’t afford. everyone that has at least a bit of patience can already play 2K,5K or 15K buy-ins. the 50K ones take slightly more, but it also isn’t really rocket science to achieve this without satellites.
real money satellites are also played because they can play tournaments which they can’t afford normally.
so the question is: why aren’t there satellites for the high stakes like 125K-1M (or maybe even the 2,5 or 5M ones)?
Fizzy,
I have looked at all MTTs for the next 24 hours, in specific the 2k buy-in Ruby League.
Promotion says 6 per day … yes I did find all 6 but to make it 100% fair, they should just be spaced out every 4 hours ( 4x6=24hrs) not loaded up heavier for “some country’s peak time”…
Monster Jam NL Hold’em Today 10:30 PM
Cat’s Eye NL Hold’em May 08 6:30 AM
In Seventh Heaven NL Hold’em May 08 9:30 AM
World of Antes NL Hold’em May 08 1:30 PM
Blistering Heat NL Hold’em May 08 4:30 PM
Hold’em Arena NL Hold’em May 08 7:30 PM
(-- Not exactly fair to everyone, are they ??? --)
Next Fizzy,
All of those are purple MTTs, yet the following are also purple MTTs
Super Blind Starter NL Hold’em May 08 3:30 AM
Omaha New World NL Omaha Hi/Lo May 08 1:45 AM
The Worm NL Hold’em May 08 2:00 AM
Catch Royal NL Royal May 08 12:45 AM
All of the four above listed MTTs are 2k/
… this makes looking for the Ruby League MTTs very , very , confusing to the average player. They cannot even just use the filter “tickets” to just give them the 4 Jewel League MTTs…
Lastly Fizzy,
tomorrow starts in about 1/2 hour, so if there are Sattalites ( to win tickets ) for the new Jewel Leagues, you would think we’d have already heard about it…
I will not get into 2 other things about the new leagues, yet … I would like to hear back from you on this 1st…
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Hey @sassy_sarah, @yiazmat,
I believe you have posted this last message while I was making the whole setup. 
. Without going into the boring details of how our systems work, we unfortunately had to make these changes in live and on the day before the league get started.
All League tournaments (both regional and gemstone) are now shown in gold. All satellites have seen their colour changed to Fushchia. Other colour codes remain the same (blue for freerolls, green for bankroll builder, pink for guaranteed tournaments that are not League ones). We voluntarily did not pick one different colour for each league as we did not want to make the whole schedule too confusing for new players, with too many colours. That said, of course please feel free to feedback on this.
When it comes to the time schedules, we went for a format that would limit 42 MTTs for each league per week (6 per day) and only the TOP 7 best results would qualify for the leaderboard. We slightly prioritized the peak periods on Replay (in term of player’s traffic) and we need to work around the existing tournament schedule and promotional tournaments (i.e. regional leagues). That being said, this is a Beta version of these leagues and we are looking at improving them taking into consideration all player’s feedback. Please comment/feedback on them as this will help us in coming up with the best format.
Some changes on the satellite schedule will show up from tomorrow, with some satellites to win 5K and 50K tournament tickets. For higher buy-in leagues and satellites (200K - 1M), this is most definitely in the pipeline for a near future too. We are going one step at a time as we want to make it right. 
I will also post a more official announcement about the Gemstone Leagues on the forum tomorrow. Everyone will be able to feedback on them, on the format and on how we could improve them in the future for all recreational players! 
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sounds good.
for now i don’t know additional feedback but if i think of something i let you know.
good to hear that . i get that it takes time, gl with the preparations of it.
Well done on adding the extra leagues but please sort the timing out. There is an 8 hour gap between consecutive games in all four leagues. This is how the times work out for players in New Zealand and others sharing our time zone… We get no league games at all from 4:30pm until 11:00pm ( a gap of 6.5 hours) Anyone with work commitments cannot compete while other time zones get 3 games starting in a six hour period in each of the leagues at suitable times to play. Please please please reschedule the games to 4 hour intervals so all players have a fair chance to compete. C’mon give us a fair shot please…
Monster Jam NL Hold’em Today, 4:30pm Finished 86 2K/ GTD 200K
8 hours until next game
Cat’s Eye NL Hold’em May 10, 12:30am Registering 0 2K/ GTD 200K
The Burnout NL Hold’em Today, 3:00pm Finished 95 5K/ 427.5K
8 hours until next game
Asian Showdown NL Hold’em Today, 11:00pm Registering 0 5K/ GTD 400K
Home of Hold’em NL Hold’em Today, 4:00pm Finished 59 15K/ 818.6K
8 hours to next game
Asian Prime NL Hold’em May 10, 12:00am Registering 0 15K/ GTD 1M
Expensive Fun NL Hold’em Today, 3:30pm Finished 49 50K/ 2.3M
8 hours to next game
Time to Repay NL Hold’em Today, 11:30pm Registering 0 50K/ GTD 1.5M
Whoeverit got there 1st… I have the same problem as a latenight player USA
Now lets take the raw data :
(4) Leagues, (6) MTTs … apply the KISS principle… so thats 24 MTTs …
You run (1) each hour and rotate the 4 types inside each 4 hour block…
You then run a sattalite on the 1/2 hour …
(KISS) Keep It Simple Stupid … While I understand so called “peak times”, with as many complaints about Replay being fix’d as there is, by continually making every promo, event, monthly, ect ect ect as fair as possible, it can only boost Replay’s integrity status… Because when you load up some times and not others, you feed into the “fix’d” conspiracies.
And yeah Whoeverit, for me it means last Gold MTT is 1030pm, and none again till like 530am… so much for playing latenight…yet some times a day, you almost have 3-4 tables going @ once cause there’s so many to play in… not fair
American & European 15k MTTs still show as “red” not “gold”
sattalite to 5k, will start with fewer than 30 players…
Okay, feedback heard and thank you for it. Please don’t forget it’s a beta and we are looking at improving it. There are quite a few moving parts and we always aim at offering the best format for all our players. I’ll add a 7th daily MTT for each league from today.
In regards to the wrong color codes happening in the lobby, this was fixed earlier and it should reflect all fine now.
In regards to the satellites, let see how they go and we will amend the format/schedule if necessary in a few days. If 30 x 5k tickets can be earned, only the top 20 positions actually get a prize.
The Gemstone Leagues are designed to give the recreational players a chance to play in a league format however we just cant compete. Recreational players play a few hours when we get the chance and we cannot compete with players who can play 12/14 hours a day. Using the top 7 best results to qualify for the leaderboard is not a scoring system that works for us. In fact this puts us at a disadvantage in the leagues that are supposedly designed for us as some players can play 3 to 4 times as many qualifying games. I propose the following tweaks to the tournament rules to improve the scoring system
(1) Players must play at least one game per day
(2) Average score over all qualifying games counts NOT just best 7 results
Simple… The end … Thanks for the great site
Thanks again for all the feedback @whoeverit. This is very helpful!
If we want a league that recreational players can compete in, we still want to encourage players to play more tournaments on the site. We indeed thought about the system you are highlighting although we unfortunately encountered a few cons.
(1) Some players can play more than 7 MTTs a week but can’t necessarily play every day. So the first rule is not ideal for all players. However this rule could be replaced by ‘Play a minimum of 7 MTTs in the week’, which leads to the second issue below.
(2) We’d like to avoid encouraging some ‘no play’ behaviours. If a player does well in his first 7 MTTs, then playing more MTTs can be risky as the tournament point average will be impacted negatively by a lower performance, so will the player’s position in the leaderboard. We don’t want players to stop playing after a few days to maintain their position in the leaderboard. This would be counter productive for both the players and Replay.
All that being said, we certainly do take into consideration all feedback and we will definitely be looking for ways to improve the system. As it stands, the current system still gives an edge to players who can play more tournaments, that is certainly correct. There is still a limited number of qualifying tournaments though and we would not expect a player to play more than 4 times a day (28 times a week). If this is clearly an advantage, we still like to value commitment and dedication to the competition, even for recreational leaderboards. A player who manage to play 10-15 MTTs in a week should still have decent chances to rank well in the league.
Last but not least, let’s give it 2-3 weeks, gather some more feedback from all players. We can come up with some good amends that will please everyone from there.
Agree with whoeverit.
I got excited for a recreational league for the casual player. Then I saw that best 7 results were going to be used and immediately knew these weren’t the leagues for me. Rewarding high volume play should not be part of a casual league.
I may play a tourney or two in these leagues but if I don’t place high in those I won’t play any more that week cause you will need 7 high finishes to have a chance and I can’t play 30 or 40.
The final result will probably be that I, a casual player, end up playing less than I would have if these leagues had not been created.
It continues to surprise me that Replay has so much difficulty designing a true casual league and a true ranking system.
How hard is it to calculate average position of finish relative to the field?
Shakeraise,
I know this is the 1st week, basically a Beta, think of our comments as Beta Testers…
I personally decided to “try” and test it out 1st before more comments, but some things like colors, ect ect ect should be fix’d sooner rather than later. We are trying to help this work…
That being said, whoeverit is right… and have you noticed staff seems to be stuck in a rut with all the “best of xxxx” situations.[quote=“Shakeraise, post:14, topic:6339”]
(1) Some players can play more than 7 MTTs a week but can’t necessarily play every day. So the first rule is not ideal for all players. However this rule could be replaced by ‘Play a minimum of 7 MTTs in the week’, which leads to the second issue below.
(2) We’d like to avoid encouraging some ‘no play’ behaviours. If a player does well in his first 7 MTTs, then playing more MTTs can be risky as the tournament point average will be impacted negatively by a lower performance, so will the player’s position in the leaderboard. We don’t want players to stop playing after a few days to maintain their position in the leaderboard. This would be counter productive for both the players and Replay.
[/quote] Lets think about this for a second, shall we… :
“play a min of”… altho thats a start to a different kinda of system, yes it leads to “no-plays”, any system will be scrutinized and exploted if possible… even the staff can’t and shouldn’t stop that from occuring… smart gameplay is 1 advantage that is player specific.
but “best of” also leads to the same kind of explotation. Exactly as Whoeverit said…once you fill those 1st seven, all ur doing is bumping worse entries, so sheer # of xtra MTTs exponentially increase your odds. This format “best of” will never, yes NEVER be a good fit for “casual” players.
Now, if as described in my above post things were 100% fair to everyone… then a possibility would be to give everyone tickets, then the entry fee might be as follows "(2k / ) + 2kEntry " … what this means is its just like it is now, for the payment portion… but you would also need a " 2k Entry Ticket " to register… I’m sure the casual player could find time to play in say 10 MTTs a week, in my fair format… then Rank ppl on ONLY those 10 MTTs.
Shakeraise,
Last month I had a few wins early on, I was playing casually… by mid month I was like, if I ever play enough I can punch my ticket… then with 2 days left, I was 150k-200k in TournPts behind being in the top 15 ( for a champ MTT ticket )… knowing filling those low spots would do it, I marathon’d it…and Yes, I punched my ticket with like 90 minutes to go… and those last 2 MTTs were just for cushion… There was nothing casual about my play, thats what the “best of” does best… play more = do better.
I want to play thru this 1st week Shakeraise as much as possible, and just see how it goes… but I do see some serious flaws to the “for casual players” and more flaws in general that are easily tweak’d into a great ongoing promotion… let us help you make it great.
Great feedback and all are very well noted. Thanks all! 
We could potentially have 2 type of leaderboards for each league in the future:
- Endurance (Hardcore): takes in account all tournament results
- Performance (Casual): takes in account a restricted X number of tournaments
The ticket system you highlighted @Sassy_Sarah does sound like a possible solution to implement the Performance version. An other solution would be to have an option on the tournament registration whereby the player can choose if the tournament should count towards the Performance leaderboard or not. This might be a more user-friendly approach as a new type of ‘tickets’ could be confusing for some players. These two above solutions should be possible to develop but it might require a bit of time. This is something we can look at and prioritize though. I will ask our tech teams how complex it might be and how much time it might take.
An other solution that might be quicker to implement in the short term is to release a new leaderboard type whereby only the ‘First X MTTs played’ would count towards the Performance leaderboard. The player would not have the same flexibility in term of choosing whether a tournament shall count or not, however the leaderboard would still be restricted to X number of tournaments played for all players. If we are looking at the Gemstone Leagues for instance, each league could feature the two following weekly leaderboards:
- Endurance: All results count
- Performance: First 10 results count
Could that be a short term solution for you @Sassy_Sarah, @whoeverit, @Whittaker ?
As mentioned by @whoeverit, average position can easily be abused by players unless there are specific conditions on the minimum of tournaments played. We can also explore this route though.
Shakeraise,
I think this discussion path lends itself to Leaderboards in general, as well as overall structure of what MTTs are offered and when.
As far as the new Jewel Leagues, you still have a severe problem of unfairness due to the times offered. Even if you load a couple up at peak times, you can’t just screw a specific part of the playerbase by having almost 7 hour dead zones… how would u like it if those 7 hrs are the only 7 hours u can play… wouldn’t even you think the whole thing was stupid???
(That simple fact is how I see all the MTTs… 50% low, 35% med, 15% high … so we work our ass off to get up in bankroll, only to have Replay say… sorry the times you play, there are very few or none of the MTTs you wanna play in, now that you have a bigger bankroll…)
Its the same thing with tickets, no wonder I never saw that there’s 1, just 1… MTT for 2k tickets, its on when I’m almost never on… go figure.
What you haven’t answered Shakeraise, is what exactly Replay considers a “casual” player… x num of days a week, x num hours a day… what exactly ?
While I think “first x count” is a really bad substitute, you should also consider things like “best x of, max 1st x num of entries”. I really think this discussion path deserves its on thread, its easier to keep seperate concepts organizable.
Back to the current Jewel Leagues,
I’m look’n @ the next set… 5a, 530a, 6, 630a … (peak time asia)
I have tried here, its a pain to play 3 @ once, let alone 4… right after a 7 hr dead zone.
A casual player to me, can play 4-5 hrs a day, 2-4 times a week. I think there’s 3 kinds… casual, consistant, and maniac… So, most MTTs with 80-110 players, will take you about 2 hrs. If you are doing good, and you want to play all 4… I hope you can play 4 @ once… Somewhere I suggested 1 per hour on the hour… in that senario, your casual player deff could log on… anytime of day… and play 1 of each that session… it might take 6 hrs tho… you could also offer the corresponding sattalite, and I use that term loosely, on the 1/2 hr … So, lets say the 5k started @ 1p, then the sattalite would be @ 1:30p… that way a person could play both, and hopefully win his next ticket for the next 5k if he so chooses…
Thats 24 MTTs, 1 per hour… and 24 sattalites on the 1/2 hr… I already have a premade schedule thats the fairest humanly possible, if you want it … it takes into account the 3 Leagues that were already @ certain times.
Also we have the structure of the leaderboard… Its awesome to allow say 10-20% to be thrown out, to allow for a little bit of looser play or bad beats… however the final format, a simple raw “Best of” is not good, but we shouldn’t just limit ourselves to a " x of x " mentality either. This is specifically built for “casual” players, so untill you define casual… you cannot finalize the format.
---- possibly 10 entries, best 7 of those ----
Right now, USA time MST, in the current format… from 10:45p thru 5a, you cannot be a casual player in the Jewel Leagues. IWhoeverit has the same prob, and its his peak times.[quote=“whoeverit, post:9, topic:6339”]
This is how the times work out for players in New Zealand and others sharing our time zone… We get no league games at all from 4:30pm until 11:00pm
[/quote]So I guess there, if you have a job daytime, and sleep @ night… like normal ppl do… you’re also screwed…if you are Whoeverit.
So Shakeraise, what we have here is a awesome promotion, that needs a couple serious tweaks, then just make it forever… like the 3 red Leagues ( that aren’t red anymore ) I see no reason why you can’t just put the red ones back to red, and make the gold ones same start time, but different name MTT. That also solves the issue of trying to fit in MTTs around the already current times, and remain 100% fair… just run it straight away… 2k, 5k, 15k, 50k, repeat, repeat.
Also for another thread, but why in the heck do so many MTTs, qualify for so many different things ? if you wanna keep the maniacs outta the way of your casual players, only have the jewel leagues qualify for themselves, not Monthly or Regional … just a thought.
The Recreational Player…
He enjoys Replay as a diversion from his daily life. It is his own little guilty pleasure, but he won’t let it interfere with job or family. He’s been known to leave in the middle of a tournament because his daughter came home from college for a visit or because his mom called for a chat.
He often doesn’t play for a few days because other things are going on.
If he was a bowler he would be in a Thursday Night League, rent his shoes and use a house ball.
And when someone tried to get him into the Saturday Morning Bowling League he would say “No thanks, one night a week is enough”.
He feels a little disconnected from Replay because he isn’t “in” a league and he never wins any bonuses from the leaderboards.
When he has some free time he flips open his laptop and joins any tourney or SnG that fits his chipstack.
Replay wants him to play more because, well let’s face it, Replay wants everyone to play more. There is nothing wrong with that.
But they aren’t going to get him to play more. Poker is a recreational diversion for him. The other things in his life come first. If and when his life circumstances change, he may become a higher volume poker player.
The most likely scenario is that he finds a more fulfilling diversion and quits playing Replay Poker at all. Maybe he takes up golf. Maybe he starts going ballroom dancing with his wife. Maybe the new neighbor starts a regular house poker game. Maybe he gets a mistress.
The challenge for Replay, in reality, isn’t to get him to play more but to make Replay Poker more desirable to him. In esence, to make it his mistress.
This is why I applaud Replay’s effort to design leagues for the casual player.
He may still only play 8-12 hours per week but it won’t be hit and miss in random games. He will play in league tourneys with the hope of making leaderboards. He will feel like he’s part of an ongoing competition. He will see alot of the same people at his tables an develop friendships.
From this perspective, personally, I like almost everything about the new Gem Leagues. But I agree with the previous posters that it needs a couple tweaks.
Here would be my guiding principles:
- There should be a minimum number of tourneys played to qualify for the leaderboards but that number should be fairly low…7-10.
- Because of #1, it is crucial that leaderboard criteria be Average Position of Finish relative to the field. The casual player has to know that NOBODY will have an advantage against him because they play more(or less) tourneys. If he feels that is the case, he won’t play.
- Convenient Times…Replay’s goal should be to accommodate as many players as possible. It is less important how full the tourney is because with average position of finish relative to the field, a 20 player tourney has no advantage over a 200 player tourney for leaderboard purposes. Chip payout for individual tourneys can be raised or lowered based on number of entries.
I wanna stress again the importance of leaderboard criteria. Every tourney is important to the casual player. They should all count toward the leaderboard standings. If people wanna play Bingo, that’s fine. But I want that last place finish to be reflected in the formula for the leaderboard.
No top 7.
No top 50%, which means a 51% finish is equal to a 99% finish.
Every League Tourney counts if you reach the minimum.
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