Unibet UK Tour schedule updated

[jonny2192]

@ArtyMcFly It mentioned within 24 hours, so presuming will be tomorrow

[NeriPoker]

The uk4 still remain seriously flawed imo. 

With the rebuy and add on, you still have turned a €4 game into a potential €12 game. Recreational players simply can't afford this. Unibet targets recreational players and so does the uk tour but this does seem to instead punish the recreational player. I can't play €12 games to win a €25 ticket. That small amount of money I like to call my bankroll will be decimated by these games. 

It seems strange that uk4 is the only one with an add on and if that's so I think that is wrong. 

[FeelsBadMan]

@jonny2192 @ArtyMcFly the changes to the 25's have been made already so get on playing :haha: the changes to the 4's have not yet

@Leo-Unibet thanks for listening to the feedback of the community, and for changing the tournaments in a reasonable way, as Arty said, the structure was kinda meh even before but nobody complained because overlays. Now they look much better.

IMO there's nothing wrong with offering re-entries even unlimited as it's only a top-up when you reach 0, like playing an extra tournament, doesn't affect the value of the chips / profitability, so if there are overlays it's a very good option to have. Rebuys and addons however add chips on top which create a delicate balance in a 4 to 1 sattie where single buy-in people having a massive disadvantage to someone that addons, but then if a few players addon they all lose money in the long run, and both situations aren't pleasant for anyone. Not to mention that in R/A's some people could literally just snipe situations where they can buy-in "for free" last minute pay ticket get same ticket back, have free chips, at the expense of the other players, or you could have situations with 50€ undistributed prizepool in a 275€ tournament which is a grossly losing tournament for everyone that plays it. 

[ArtyMcFly]

Indeed, it looks like the new UK25s are already set up for tonight. My participation in those has declined dramatically over the course of the year and I've hardly played any in the last 6 weeks (#UnbeatableGame), but with these changes I'll definitely begin playing again, probably starting with tonight's game.
I share Neri's concerns about the UK4s, although I haven't played those games for over a year, so I don't have a feel for how much liquidity/traffic they have. FWIW, I don't think add-ons make sense for any satellite system that has <100 entries per tourney, and I think the whole system should ideally have identical structures at all buy-in levels.
All that said, I want to thank Leo, first for listening to our (mostly constructive) criticism, and secondly for actually doing something to remedy the situation. Hopefully the UK25s in particular will start getting played more often, and the new system will be beneficial for both players and the site. Good luck to all!

[Leo-Unibet]

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@MoreTBC wrote:

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@nekoneko wrote:

@MoreTBC

So your solution in satties not running.. is to ...have even less tickets .. so even less satties not running ?

From what i understand now, many of them start only when most of the regs actualy play it, so if the regs will have less tickets too then wouldn't that make them to completely not start at all ?

 

 

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I'm suggesting that tickets should not stay in players accounts doing nothing for months because they're trying to follow strict BRM and not playing the targets, not creating less tickets. Just because a player has x amount of €25 tickets doesn't mean they're going to play the sats so all that happens is the €25 don't run because the winners are just collecting them until they have an amount they think is good for taking the next step. Forcing players to play more frequently means the sats will run, it means people may have to actually pay money to enter the sats if they run out of tickets and this means there is more money in the system to genereate more tickets.

Money has to come from somewhere to fund this system and regs just recycling tickets between them isn't going to do it.

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@MoreTBC You are right, with the relativly low nombers of players participating in the steps for UK packages we need those tickets won be used in the next step, that's crucial for the step ecology to actually move forward to what all this is about, the package win. If everyone that care for the UK Tour and to want to contribute by playing the daily steps from whatever buyin level suited there particular bank roll, it will all be fine.

[Leo-Unibet]

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@jonny2192 wrote:

At the end of the day making a sat system that works is only part of the problem.

The bigger promblem is we need more players.

 

@MoreTBC I think forcing players to use tickets goes against the rec friendly approach, I would never have kept playing if I had to keep buying in with cash. but I understand where your coming from.

Some suggestions on aquiring players, some points mentioned before:-

Targetted missions to players in the UK.

One extra normal mission for the next few months,thats hard to complete but awards a UK25.

Let me or another setup a UK tour promo on a mainly english facebook group.

Seeing as the SN has a lot of players and is high rake give a 1UK to everyone who regs it(special xmas gift)

Do a special offer where you will allow people to change a max of a 50UO to 2x25UK 1x4UK.

Twitch giveaways, so not to exclude people Ian could give 10e normal MTT or 3x4UK.

 

 

The UK tour player pool needs to be expanded for it to grow, trying to get more money from the existing UK tour pool of players is going to fail.

 

 

 

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@jonny2192 Thanks Jonny for the constructive suggestions, make sure you watching the ambassadors twitching next week, they might have surprises for you 🤫

[FeelsBadMan]

@Psycho79 

You've proposed many things, have many good ideas and are leading people into battle like a true leader. I'll give my opinion as well to some of your suggestions, as I'm pretty sure there are limitations as to what they can do.

Agree with many of the things you said and I think many of your ideas are quite good, but, there are some things that I don't think would work or I don't will happen even if they are good ideas. 

Tournaments having no guarantees, would result in nobody joining to play them, particularly the players that you would most want to join. 

Your funky ticket payout structure is really interesting + collecting money in a piggybank and maybe something that could be done in the future, but stuff like this requires development time from the software developers, and they have far more pressing issues. Something like this would just get postponed for many months. Also paying a much lower ticket would be a bad prize for some stakes, like lets say a recreational buys in for 25€ cash and wins a 1€ ticket, he won't play it and will most likely just get annoyed that he won a useless ticket for him (kinda the same principle for whoever suggested that people that play the supernova should get a 1€ ticket, they're not really the target audience that uses 1€ tickets). And money going out of the prizepool without being advertised as fee might also look bad to some recs as well as maybe not complying with some legislations. 

More chips, for game starters, I like it, but again might require development time. And people that do very late regging might not care for those 500 chips anyway. 

Play with the ambassadors ... well ... the thing is that most people play satties for an easy way to get to a live event, you're probably one of the few that wants to play super tough players in any game at any stake, but most people would probably be intimidated from playing a low stakes single table sattie for 1-2-3 tickets against a bunch of super pros that get paid to play them, that otherwise wouldn't have bothered with something so low for them. Hell, people get excited when you, me, mathrim, etc go to live events, cause the satties will be easier to qualify that week 😏 , but then they don't run cause not enough players start them :) ... However advertising various games on the twitch streams and telling people, hey there's this game starting soon, can help getting them started, it's what I was doing in the twitch chats and it kinda worked, it would be even more effective if the streamers did it. 

Focusing most of the rewards to the uk tour system, will be bad for most players that don't ever want to play a tournament in the uk, and David Pomroy mentioned on 2+2 that they want to focus much of this extra expenditure they had on the uk tour overlays on general mtt promos to boost them. Personally I still think the low traffic in uk tours is an advertising issue, combined with the fact that the satellites didn't look too attractive for people that didn't know about the overlays. Boosting mtt's in general should offer a boost to the uk tour as well tho.

Satties on demand would also be great but also requires development time.

I do agree with you that if the system is built and advertised properly the finals can reach big gtd's with no overlay. The finals for romanian tournaments on unibet have extremely ambitious gtd's with far less running time to qualify and get quite the number of players even while being geo-restricted. The UK should have so much bigger buying potential but the players just aren't making their way to these tournaments. 

[MathrimC]

I'm exited to try out the new €25 satellite structure tonight 😃

My thoughts on limiting ticket exchanges: not being able to keep a UK Tour bankroll will almost by definition lower the UK Tour qualifier traffic. With the ticketswaps regs can basically grind 4s and 25s, and use the profits to play finals. Without ticketswaps, that won't be possible anymore, and they would have to grind something else outside of the UK satellites to generate profits to buy into the €4 level. In other words: part of their UK Tour satellite grind will be replaced by something else to generate cash to fund the addinional €4 buy-ins. Therefore, I don't get how limiting the exchanges could increase traffic, except indirectly if you estimate that more non-regs would play them if they are less reg-heavy.

[Leo-Unibet]

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@ArtyMcFly wrote:

Indeed, it looks like the new UK25s are already set up for tonight. My participation in those has declined dramatically over the course of the year and I've hardly played any in the last 6 weeks (#UnbeatableGame), but with these changes I'll definitely begin playing again, probably starting with tonight's game.

I share Neri's concerns about the UK4s, although I haven't played those games for over a year, so I don't have a feel for how much liquidity/traffic they have. FWIW, I don't think add-ons make sense for any satellite system that has <100 entries per tourney, and I think the whole system should ideally have identical structures at all buy-in levels.

All that said, I want to thank Leo, first for listening to our (mostly constructive) criticism, and secondly for actually doing something to remedy the situation. Hopefully the UK25s in particular will start getting played more often, and the new system will be beneficial for both players and the site. Good luck to all!

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@ArtyMcFly Thanks man, I needed that 😃 Unibet poker has always had the intention to be there for the players, listen to the players and doing whatever we can to give players a good experience as possible, that's definitely ain't gonna change with me. For me to be able to join Unibet Poker and the philosophy they had the last couple of years about the players and players community around the company  was a privilege but aslo responsibilities  , when something isn't working, as the prevoius UK Tour setup with super many satellites not even starting , something has to change. I really belive in the "new" setup.

I was/are/wannabe a player myself, so I know the situations on both sides, I will always do whatever I belive is good for both Unibet and you, the players.

[MoreTBC]

Have to agree with @NeriPoker that I think the r/a should be removed from the UK 4 too. I've always seen the UK Tour as a grass roots tour and for someone with a big bankroll to be able to r/a over someone trying to live the dream moving up from a flip ticket win seems wrong. 

Based on the first €4 tonight it would have cleared the GTD and was a single player away from generating a a 3rd ticket before addons.

@Leo-Unibet, break in the first €4 ran for 10 minutes again. Starts at 18:55 GMT and ends at 19:05. Sees the addon and break being at teh same time is causing an issue.

[Leo-Unibet]

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@MoreTBC wrote:

Have to agree with @NeriPoker that I think the r/a should be removed from the UK 4 too. I've always seen the UK Tour as a grass roots tour and for someone with a big bankroll to be able to r/a over someone trying to live the dream moving up from a flip ticket win seems wrong. 

Based on the first €4 tonight it would have cleared the GTD and was a single player away from generating a a 3rd ticket before addons.

@Leo-Unibet, break in the first €4 ran for 10 minutes again. Starts at 18:55 GMT and ends at 19:05. Sees the addon and break being at teh same time is causing an issue.

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@MoreTBC  ok, I will look into that tomorrow, probably have to re-schedule so they start 5 minutes earlier

[pirahn]

Agree with @FeelsBadMan , lots of good intention with suggestions which will have little or negative impact.

Suggestions that ticket exchanges may be a cause are misplaced. The ability to exchange tickets has never really been advertised and would be a great selling point. 

Its not Leos fault why the UK tour has not taken off but by god its his fault for such a crass fix. Its not as though R/A has worked with milky way or Supernova. Maybe its worked for leo in a former life but its a huge negative at Unibet. 

The biggest disappointment is that the brand has been damaged. I dont play at Unibet for the tickets, i can get cash instead of tickets at another site doing exactly the same thing. I stay for the ethics, morals and values which have been significantly undermined.

The problem is not a singular issue but a multiple of issues of which some have been addressed by @FeelsBadMan

@Leo-Unibet some of the changes are welcome, not all are necessary but there is a huge error again. The €4 R/A is nonsensical. Why are the structures different at different levels. Thats just crazy. But thats not the biggest issue, €4 is an entry point for new customers who will come from the new promos you have planned and will not only leave quickly but will leave Unibet quickly. That gets us back to square 1. 

 

[NeriPoker]

Please don't stop the ticket exchange system. We are not all ticket hoarding regs who have no intention of playing the next step (not that I'm saying that is good or bad, I'm not sure). I'll play the UK4 game through the week and if I win a UK25 ticket I'll save that for the weekend as I'm usually unable to play it on that very night as I have to get to work. Sometime those weekends get busy with real life and having the ability to extend them is excellent for me. I have every intention of using the tickets as soon as I possibly can. I think the current ticket transfer exchange is what makes Unibet stand apart from the rest of the big poker sites and their own satellite set ups.

I also imagine that it is the regs that have alot of tickets are the ones who are making the games run anyway. You also have people like myself changing tickets earned via missions into UK tour tickets which gives an extra boost to the games liquidity.

With regards to the UK4 being rebuy AND add on the problem is obvious for a recreational player in that it can become a very expensive game to play for little reward. Paying 12 euros to win a 25 euro ticket is not very appealing to me.  Even a player who wins a ticket in UK1 heads into UK4 with one single entry. Yet they then find they need several bullets/tickets.

[NeriPoker]

Also forgot to add, please don't go down the route of forcing players to immediately play the next target game. Party Poker have been doing this this year with their "feeder" satellites and they have been very unpopular most of all with recreational players who simply haven't got the free time to sit and play poker all night.

[jonny2192]

@Leo-Unibet slight bug in setup.

3 minute break at 37 past the hour in UK25.

Other than that seems better.

[ArtyMcFly]

It's obviously too soon to draw firm conclusions, but tonight's UK25 (qualify for 100) at 20:45 UK time seemed to work very well (apart from the weird break time).
It got 13 entries, so more than met the guarantee, attracted a good mix of regs and recreationals, and almost half the field won *something* (even if it was just the consolation prize of a ticket that was essentially a refund). The speed/structure was much less stressful than the old hyper-style flippament, and had a duration that made me feel I was getting my money's worth, so I'll definitely be reinvesting my E25 ticket either tomorrow or the day after. Congrats to @jonny2192 on outlasting @MathrimC on the final bubble as he streamed it. Good luck in the final if you play it soon, Jonny!
If I notice any problems developing, I'll be sure to let you know, Leo, but thanks again for doing so much to change things up.

[jonny2192]

Seeing as we are fixing sats, heres a few issues that can be quite infuriating and put people off playing sats:-

Being made to play HU when you join as the 10th or 19th etc etc player, I tend not to reg if it will add me one these spots. Its not so bad now in the UK tour as you have a few more blinds but can be a nightmare in some games(mainly sats).

Moving table and being made to pay the BB twice, We all know how good it feels to get a walk in the BB when your around the 10BB stacksize, so you can understand how ❤️♥️❤️ty it feels when you have to pay the BB twice in a row and this happening can really have a big impact on your position especially when the blinds are big.

Late reg bug, not the worst of problems but will be losing Unibet a lot of rake. I like to late reg but when I wait for my time to reg and then cant a few games in a row, I just turn the client off and dont bother.(There is a bug report regarding this with screenshots on the community)

A lot of us live with these problems as we like Unibet and have a fair amount of tickets but I feel these kind of problems other players would just get fed up with and just stop playing rather than coming here and voicing there thoughts.

Thanks for listening and responding to peoples thoughts in this thread and taking action @Leo-Unibet its appreciated :)

[Psycho79]

Hey @FeelsBadMan!

TX for reading it anyway, you are probably one of the few who has done that. A bit salty about it, cause I spent all morning thinking of and writing the post, and the changes have been made today are nothing but sweeping the garbage under the carper in my opinion. There was 6 places paid today in the 25€ sat. Two Final bullets 100€ + 3  generic MTT Tickets + 24€ Cash. How does it suppose to be a healthy system when 99€, 1/3 of the prizepool, leaks out in an hour? Do you know that every five tournaments like this, we're sending one player less to UK? I know that what I suggested is not possible to apply overnight, but it's always a positive idea. At the end suggestions are only suggestions, no one has to like them. I agree with @jonny2192 saying that the structures are not the biggest issue, which is attracting players to these sats. From my perspective, playing/advertising these sats with/by ambassadors has nothing to do with intimidating players, rather hanging out and having fun time together. I remember when I first discovered streams on Twitch, it was a real pleasure to sit at one table with Dave shaking his head after hand against me or to see Charlotte's face when taking her bounty 😛 I think most players feel that way, and their attendance in the sats might be only better. Of course I didn't mean that Unibet should suddenly focus all the promotions on the UK Tour only, but arousing players' interest by doing "something ", not much, would turn out enough. I suggested no guaranties only at the beginning, to get rid of overlays, but multiple low BI sats throughout the day should produce many higher entries, providing at the same time game fluency and starting the higher BI sats, which is a lot now, regarding the amounts of them being cancelled so far. If you like to play the format that we played today I don't mind, I can handle these sats, but don't be surprised the boomerang will be here in a sec. This is not problem solving, but only pretending the problems are gone. Alright, no more to speak Your Honor. Have a good night you all, let's hope the UK Tour will be still here when we wake up. GL

[FeelsBadMan]

We've been though the streamers playing the satties part before, people either quit playing or were annoyed that unibet is paying them to stop them from qualifying to live tournaments even though they already have entries for them. A cash game is different, you can choose to sit down or leave, a big mtt has tons of tables, a few extra regs means nothing, a promotional MTT or sng again great cause that's its purpose. I enjoy playing with them as well in these tournaments. The UO has tons of tables and multiple ways to qualify. The UK tour right now is either 1 or 2 tables at most from the lower levels to the highest. You have no other choice than to play these tables if you want to qualify to the UK tour. So idk how many extra players you're bringing to the tables and how many you're alienating. Oh bring Hotted, Onscreen, or other gaming ambassadors to play them and that would have a net positive effect of course. Speaking of which, onscreen is british and I assume he has a decent uk audience, maybe could be an idea from time to time :haha:

A decent amount of your ideas were positive and good, but the fact thet it might take a year for them to end up being implemented doesn't really help right now, we need to find solutions with what we have now.

[Darkangel7]

Want to say Thank you to @Leo-Unibet for actually listening and putting things in place, still a bit to go but at least things are getting sorted. Looks like am gonna have to do a blog outside of Unibet about the U.K. Tours. The more exposure from all of us outside of the Unibet client regarding the U.K. Tour will help as well as the changes. We need to write about the fun and interaction of the tours. Lets see if we as players can help get players coming to Unibet to play. I know a lot have signed up to Unibet when we've had twitch streams. It's down to us as well. Come on if we want it to carry on lets spread the word.

#savetheuktour

[nekoneko]

So UK tour flip was said to be made a centroll :)  I thought it will be a centroll like that one from UO where you actualy play. But it's a centroll flip.. >.> And it gives the cents back too for many places :)

The UO one actualy makes some money at least for those tickets when 170 -230 people join every one of them. Wouldn't that be preferable for Unibet UK tour ?

[jonny2192]

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@nekoneko wrote:

So UK tour flip was said to be made a centroll :)  I thought it will be a centroll like that one from UO where you actualy play. But it's a centroll flip.. >.> And it gives the cents back too for many places :)

The UO one actualy makes some money at least for those tickets when 170 -230 people join every one of them. Wouldn't that be preferable for Unibet UK tour ?

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I think its because its been setup as tickets added rather than tickets guaranteed, so every entry creates a 1c prize(apart from the top places where a UK ticket is).

I agree that the same setup as the UO would be better, 1c with 10xmultibuy with same amount of tickets as now, maybe one slight difference make the top ticket a UK4 to add a bit more of a challenge.

[MoreTBC]

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@jonny2192 wrote:

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I think forcing players to use tickets goes against the rec friendly approach, I would never have kept playing if I had to keep buying in with cash. but I understand where your coming from.

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@NeriPoker wrote:

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Please don't stop the ticket exchange system.

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I was never suggesting that the exchanges should stop or that people should be 'forced' to play but I do think the tickets should be used in a timely manner and not collected. 

30 days is a long time to use a ticket, nobody should really need more than that. That's 4 UK finals, 64 €25 sats, 94 €4 sats and 94 €1 sats for people to be able to use their respective tickets. I was suggested that that should be it, no extension on that. That gives people time to go on holiday, move house, have not internet for a week etc and still be able to play. I think you could easily argue for letting the €100 tickets have 45 or 60 days as a default validity period and also for a single 7 day extension being allowed if something drastic happens to you a few days before your tickets run out.

With regards to exchanges I was only suggesting a cap on what you can do, not a hard cut. This was the kind of scenario I was thinking of regarding a cap on how many tickets you can have and how they can be exchanged:-

€100 tickets - 5 max in account (Edit: I actually think this is too high, you only need one ticket a week and you have 7 days to win another one. 3 tickets is more than enough) - It's a 1/5 sat so I don't see why you should need any more than that stored when you can only play one a week. 1 ticket can be converted into 4x €25 only.

€25 tickets - 6 max in account - This allows you to have 2 tickets to play on any single night and convert a single €100 ticket at any time. 1 ticket can be converted into 6 x €4 and 1x €1 only.

€4 tickets - 9 max in account - Same as above, 3 for any night plus a conversion of a €25. 2 tickets can be converted into 4x €1 each.

€1 tickets - 14 max in account - Same as above, 6 for any day/night plus conversion of 2x €4.

That still allows you to up to €700 worth of tickets in your account but would ensure that you have to use what you have a little more. Having to play through what you already have before converting other tickets will keep the money flowing and the sats running IMO. It'll affect everyone, including me as I just requested a ticket exchange that would not be allowed under rules like above, but ultimately it pushes everyone to play their tickets slightly quicker and gets the sats running.

It was mentioned that the ticket exchanges are generating more tickets, they're not. If you convert a €25 ticket to €4s all you're doing is taking the 6x €4 that 6 players used to enter the sat that you won and converting it back into 6x €4 that only you can use. It means one less entrant in a €25 and it now takes you 2 days minimum to put that 6x €4 back into the pool. It slows the whole process down and creates a bottleneck at the €25 sats.

All of the above maybe become redundant when the Irish market goes live and it might look like the problem is solved when GTDs are met every week but the Tour won't be growing. Even if every sat grows by one ticket a week that means we're sending one extra person a week to a UK tour stop, maybe two. Even then we might just be giving a second bullets to people already going. 

As horrible as it sounds some of the regs (and this includes me) need to lose some or all of their ticket balance in order to get the Tour growing. There has to be at least four packages worth of tickets sitting on players accounts in 1-4-25 tickets that need to get pushed through the system a little quicker. It's great as an individual to have €xxx in tickets in your account but it's not helping the UK tour at all. 

If a solution is going to hurt everyone a little to help the tour a lot then I think it needs to be done, whether it's something like I've put above or another option but when you're saying exchanges and extensions shouldn't be stopped really consider whether you're looking out for yourself or the good of the tour.

 

[FeelsBadMan]

@MoreTBC with those measures you're probably targeting a total of 2 players that maybe have a lot of tickets but play rarely, and if they play rarely maybe there are reasons for that and these changes won't actually make them play every day and will just end up completely removing them from the system :haha:

Your system will only make the exchange process more complicated for everyone, daily exchanges instead of weekly for example. As for the bottleneck, it kinda takes entrants from the present and adds them in the future,  people move up and then they play all the levels, so instead of having someone playing a 4 till whereever they bust once a week, they eventually end up plying all the levels multiple times a week. But it does take time to get there, for some a couple of weeks, for some months. The only way you get a true bottleneck is by having a level that can't be beat.

Also super short expiration dates are super annoying for most people, someone tries out the satties, then their ticket expires, then maybe has a bad experience with support getting it back, bye bye 1 player from the system ... hell that player might even close his account #neverforgetpirahn , but seriously, the average person that you want in the tournament is very sensitive to annoyance, making them have a bad experience just makes them not play. For us it's easy to say that these conditions would be fine for us cause we have nothing better to do and we're used to the process 😏

[MoreTBC]

I'm fine with removing those x players from system if it means them having to put the hundreds of euros their not using back into the system. Nobody is winning if this tickets sit in accounts not doing anything. They also don't need to use all their tickets, just some. Nobody needs to have 20 UK4 tickets saved up.

The ticket exchange scheme would mean you have to do one every 2 days, not every day and that's based on a player playing ever sat every day. For the 'rec' that plays 1 a day it's still weekly. The scheme only affects players that break down tickets regularly and they're usually the ones with the most tickets anyway. The 'grind' is still perfectly achievable with a ticket cap, it just requires a little more work from the people that want to do it. You can grind just the 4's for as long as you like until the point you have more than enough 25 tickets (6) to get a ticket to the next level. You can play 1 €25 sat and lose and then have the option to play either 4's or 25's again.

For the player that just wants to qualify for the Tour by winning up to 4 sats in a row, like you would normally play sats, it changes nothing.

Am I just not seeing the same words as everyone else on screen? Again, I'm not saying shorten the validity, I'm just saying don't extend it past the initial 30 days. If you can't play the target in 30 days why are you trying to qualify?

The question i'd ask anyone that thinks a change similar to above is bad is "Do you think it'll lower the number of people that win packages to go to a UK tour stop or or does it just make it harder for you personally?"