New MTT Schedule - Feedback and Discussion

[Le_Ena]

Waaa how many new tournaments, I love it

[Andy-Relax]

13 hours ago, Grefix said:

How about Minor tickets or something like that. I've been a nano stakes player, and I never really had interest in playing those 'Major' ones. Now I feel forced to do so and I'm pretty discouraged?

There are still 50c nano tournaments in the schedule so you're not forced to play qualifiers if you don't want to, unless you have some leftover tickets.

12 hours ago, GotKot99 said:

Could there be Major tournament(s) with no (or only like 3-4 levels of) late reg.? And maybe without rebuy possibility either…

Something like “straight-down-to-business” kinda poker playing. This would also shorten the tournament play time and/or shift the ending times earlier which - if I have understood correctly - was one of the ideas behind the new MTT schedule.

I have no clue if this is profitable or if I stand alone with this idea, but this is something I would like to see. Maybe @Rushbies post above had somewhat same tone(?). “A little less conversation, a little more action, please..”

Short answer is no.

It doesn't make sense for the business because we'd have to lower the GTD, which is the opposite of what we're trying to do with the new schedule.

It doesn't make sense for the players because the prizepool is smaller and also because re-entry tournaments are the norm now and population prefer them. We live in a world of 10 second videos and instant access so players want the flexibility to register late or play their favourite tournament more than once.

We're not trying to end tournaments earlier either. We wanted to make sure that the majors finished at a time that was good for casual players that had work in the morning but beyond that no tournament is in the schedule because we want it to finish in a specific time frame. There has been a general shift towards more turbo/hyper tournaments because population prefer them (for the reasons above).

There is a €10 freezeout major if you want to reminisce about online poker from 10 years ago  

8 hours ago, jerry said:

Generic MTT ticket dont work with tournaments, only flips and qualis.

Will sort that today, thanks for flagging.

[Andy-Relax]

14 hours ago, Rushbie said:

About the qualifiers, gotta say I really liked the duration and structure of the Title Fight Megaqualifier. With 5€, 1500 stack, 3min levels and 58 runners it took only 1h9min to finish, and played smoothly all the way. As a special note, ONLY 4 latereg levels! Which is something i'd really love to see more. A direction things should be heading into a lot more, imo.
For example, the 2€ sat to the Omaha Wrap with 1500stack, 6min levels and 32 runners took more than evenings movie, 1h47min, which is a bit too long and overlapping other games badly before finishing. Not great
ITM'd both, but doesn't affect the playing sensations gotten.
On a general feeling, really like the sight of the schedule with more PKOs, less annoying addon-games and the little hope of infernally long lateregs finally going down to hell, or atleast towards it
To be continued..

Sped up the slower qualifier by a minute to see if we can get it done by start time.

[GotKot99]

1 hour ago, Andy-Unibet said:

Short answer is no.

It doesn't make sense for the business because we'd have to lower the GTD, which is the opposite of what we're trying to do with the new schedule.

It doesn't make sense for the players because the prizepool is smaller and also because re-entry tournaments are the norm now and population prefer them. We live in a world of 10 second videos and instant access so players want the flexibility to register late or play their favourite tournament more than once.

We're not trying to end tournaments earlier either. We wanted to make sure that the majors finished at a time that was good for casual players that had work in the morning but beyond that no tournament is in the schedule because we want it to finish in a specific time frame. There has been a general shift towards more turbo/hyper tournaments because population prefer them (for the reasons above).

There is a €10 freezeout major if you want to reminisce about online poker from 10 years ago  

Okay. Andy, thanks for the reasoning ! I guess, I’ll just have to try to adapt to the “Zeitgeist” then (in terms of poker, not to the other stuff we see in the world). And I’m not saying that the trend in today’s poker is all bad. And the new MTT schedule feels good for the most part .

Maybe it’s just me and my preference against the “on-demand”, “I want it all and now” culture and mentality what you are describing above

Of course, I understand it from business perspective, that it is beneficial for the poker product as a whole to be tailored according to what sells the most or whatever. And to repeat myself, I’m not against all the current changes with regards to my own playing preferences either. Just would have been nice to see a tiny bit more of some old-fashioned straight action poker with no late regs. (or short late regs. giving some flexibility which is totally fine) and without rebuy or addon options: you start with what you have, and if you make stupid choices or are unlucky, that’s that - there is always a new tournament tomorrow or whenever.

But here we go. Thanks for the €10 freezeout major tip. Will have to check it out 

As @Rushbie would say: to be continued…

[Andy-Relax]

35 minutes ago, GotKot99 said:

Okay. Andy, thanks for the reasoning ! I guess, I’ll just have to try to adapt to the “Zeitgeist” then (in terms of poker, not to the other stuff we see in the world). And I’m not saying that the trend in today’s poker is all bad. And the new MTT schedule feels good for the most part .

Maybe it’s just me and my preference against the “on-demand”, “I want it all and now” culture and mentality what you are describing above

Of course, I understand it from business perspective, that it is beneficial for the poker product as a whole to be tailored according to what sells the most or whatever. And to repeat myself, I’m not against all the current changes with regards to my own playing preferences either. Just would have been nice to see a tiny bit more of some old-fashioned straight action poker with no late regs. (or short late regs. giving some flexibility which is totally fine) and without rebuy or addon options: you start with what you have, and if you make stupid choices or are unlucky, that’s that - there is always a new tournament tomorrow or whenever.

But here we go. Thanks for the €10 freezeout major tip. Will have to check it out 

As @Rushbie would say: to be continued…

As a real world example, the Title Fight (a PKO which players should be registering from the start to maximise their ability to win as much of the prizepool as possible) started with somewhere between 60-80 players. Had we not allowed late registration on that the tournament then it gets a 4k GTD instead of a 10k one. Had we not had re-entry, 2k of the eventual prizepool would have gone. 

I've tried to do as much as I can to reduce late reg and re-entry as much as possible. With very few exception you cannot register a normal tournament now with less than 20bb. This is much higher than some competitors, who allow registrations with <10bb, and reduces the late registration time. I also really wanted to limit all majors to a single re-entry but we had concerns about meeting the new GTDs and went for 2. I still think we'll be able to reduce it to 1 in the future and I'll be checking to see what kind of impact it would have on the tournaments once we get some more data.

We want to do right by the players whenever we can but we also have to try and be competitive against sites that offer unlimited re-entry and 5bb registrations to help them generate much bigger prizepools. 

[GotKot99]

4 minutes ago, Andy-Unibet said:

As a real world example, the Title Fight (a PKO which players should be registering from the start to maximise their ability to win as much of the prizepool as possible) started with somewhere between 60-80 players. Had we not allowed late registration on that the tournament then it gets a 4k GTD instead of a 10k one. Had we not had re-entry, 2k of the eventual prizepool would have gone. 

I've tried to do as much as I can to reduce late reg and re-entry as much as possible. With very few exception you cannot register a normal tournament now with less than 20bb. This is much higher than some competitors, who allow registrations with <10bb, and reduces the late registration time. I also really wanted to limit all majors to a single re-entry but we had concerns about meeting the new GTDs and went for 2. I still think we'll be able to reduce it to 1 in the future and I'll be checking to see what kind of impact it would have on the tournaments once we get some more data.

We want to do right by the players whenever we can but we also have to try and be competitive against sites that offer unlimited re-entry and 5bb registrations to help them generate much bigger prizepools. 

As @GR1ZZL3R said “feedback to the feedback is welcome”.

Much appreciated for taking the time to write Andy! Really! 

[Trophies]

I felt 8min levels were perfect, 9m/10m level tournaments were too slow, ten-spot 6 hours with 176 runners for example.

I played the full schedule last night and the feel i had was everything was packed in the peak hours window which probably lead me to play too many tables and then there was a big drop off once you get to 9pm uk time onwards. 

Something inbetween ironman and the stack would be good.

Will there be a mini supernova type tournament on sundays?

Sundays you could probably improve. Apart from the 2 big poker rooms all other sites seem to kick things off at around 2.30-3pm uk time with a decent sized gtd tournaments. Maybe you could have a couple extra earlier sunday special majors.

Will there be some rebuy sats at least for the supernova on sundays?

Some 3/4 euro rebuy bounty hunter mtts would be interesting.

[User_38938]

This new stuff is exciting and hopefully more people will come to play. Nice with lower buy ins and still good guarantees. However lets get to my critique. I notice that the major 6 handed tournaments are reduced in number. This I am very disappointed about! I have a hard time believing that we are so few who prefer 6 handed play? 9 is just so boring and tedious. You have to be so patient to succeed that watching fotboll or paint dry might be more fun. My suggestion is that you reduce maximum players from 9 to 8 all across the fullring tournaments. Isn't that more in line with the bigger poker sites? (Hate running in to aces and kings every 3 pot I play.) 

Another argument for fewer players/table (6) is that i find it more to the core of what the fun in poker is about. When you play against a specific opponent 20-30 times an hour instead of 5-10 or whatever it may be 9 handed the psychology of the game gets much more interesting. You can "get into the head" of you opponent much more and it becomes more personal and more of a rivalry. 

And also I agree that the daily Titan must be re-instated. Why remove you most popular and price-worthy tournament? Surely it runs quite late but if you are in it late its worth staying up! Maybe a compromise and have it start 30 or 60 minutes earlier? 

I feel similar to the other critique. Considering leaving after 3 successful years here. (have won it 4 or 5 times this year)  But I'll probably give the new schedule a chance before doing anything drastic. 

[FreedoM]

21 minutes ago, User_38938 said:

maximum players from 9 to 8 all across the fullring tournaments

[Andy-Relax]

15 minutes ago, User_38938 said:

This new stuff is exciting and hopefully more people will come to play. Nice with lower buy ins and still good guarantees. However lets get to my critique. I notice that the major 6 handed tournaments are reduced in number. This I am very disappointed about! I have a hard time believing that we are so few who prefer 6 handed play? 9 is just so boring and tedious. You have to be so patient to succeed that watching fotboll or paint dry might be more fun. My suggestion is that you reduce maximum players from 9 to 8 all across the fullring tournaments. Isn't that more in line with the bigger poker sites? (Hate running in to aces and kings every 3 pot I play.) 

Another argument for fewer players/table (6) is that i find it more to the core of what the fun in poker is about. When you play against a specific opponent 20-30 times an hour instead of 5-10 or whatever it may be 9 handed the psychology of the game gets much more interesting. You can "get into the head" of you opponent much more and it becomes more personal and more of a rivalry. 

And also I agree that the daily Titan must be re-instated. Why remove you most popular and price-worthy tournament? Surely it runs quite late but if you are in it late its worth staying up! Maybe a compromise and have it start 30 or 60 minutes earlier? 

I feel similar to the other critique. Considering leaving after 3 successful years here. (have won it 4 or 5 times this year)  But I'll probably give the new schedule a chance before doing anything drastic. 

I'll need to double check the old numbers but there was no intentional change between 6/9 max and it ended up being almost 50/50 for the peak schedule for balance.

I'd love to have 8 max but the client doesn't support it so it would require some product development.

The Titan was changed on purpose to see whether or not what your suggesting about it being the most popular tournament is true or not and it turns out it isn't. If it was indeed the most popular tournament, it would have hit 4k last night with everyone that played it last week coming back, but it didn't. The Titan did so well because it was highlighted and had a massive GTD compared to every tournament around it, not because it's a good format.

We've also made a conscientious decision to move away from R/A tournaments in general as they're not good for players, we got lots of complaints about them and they're exploitable for players who know how to abuse them. Barry Carter wrote a good article on R/A tournaments HERE that explains the issues.

 

[User_38938]

1 hour ago, Andy-Unibet said:

I'll need to double check the old numbers but there was no intentional change between 6/9 max and it ended up being almost 50/50 for the peak schedule for balance.

I'd love to have 8 max but the client doesn't support it so it would require some product development.

The Titan was changed on purpose to see whether or not what your suggesting about it being the most popular tournament is true or not and it turns out it isn't. If it was indeed the most popular tournament, it would have hit 4k last night with everyone that played it last week coming back, but it didn't. The Titan did so well because it was highlighted and had a massive GTD compared to every tournament around it, not because it's a good format.

We've also made a conscientious decision to move away from R/A tournaments in general as they're not good for players, we got lots of complaints about them and they're exploitable for players who know how to abuse them. Barry Carter wrote a good article on R/A tournaments HERE that explains the issues.

 

I can't even find that 2k turbo mega stack that you supposedly changed it to. When does it start? 

I think it is very early to conclude that it was not most popular considering that you only tried this out for one day. And I who is a regular did think that yesterday was som kinda special day. Don't usually play mondays. Very early to make any kind of conclusions about tendencies of the player pool so far. 

Thanks for your respons. I'll read that R/A article later(= 

[Andy-Relax]

5 minutes ago, User_38938 said:

I can't even find that 2k turbo mega stack that you supposedly changed it to. When does it start? 

I think it is very early to conclude that it was not most popular considering that you only tried this out for one day. And I who is a regular did think that yesterday was som kinda special day. Don't usually play mondays. Very early to make any kind of conclusions about tendencies of the player pool so far. 

Thanks for your respons. I'll read that R/A article later(= 

20:30 CEST, 30 mins before the old Titan.

[SickOldIMLOF]

My first impression after 2 days is positive and much better than what I expected. I will miss Galaxy and other rebuys, but balance between bounties and freezouts seems to be alright. Same with balance between 6/9 max, there is bunch of both.

Early plus also for blind structures.

 

 

[100HourChallenge]

Love the new tournaments so far. Except for all the bad beats  

[Andy-Relax]

20 hours ago, Trophies said:

I felt 8min levels were perfect, 9m/10m level tournaments were too slow, ten-spot 6 hours with 176 runners for example.

I played the full schedule last night and the feel i had was everything was packed in the peak hours window which probably lead me to play too many tables and then there was a big drop off once you get to 9pm uk time onwards. 

Something inbetween ironman and the stack would be good.

Will there be a mini supernova type tournament on sundays?

Sundays you could probably improve. Apart from the 2 big poker rooms all other sites seem to kick things off at around 2.30-3pm uk time with a decent sized gtd tournaments. Maybe you could have a couple extra earlier sunday special majors.

Will there be some rebuy sats at least for the supernova on sundays?

Some 3/4 euro rebuy bounty hunter mtts would be interesting.

Missed your feedback in the mix @Trophies, apologies.

For the Ten-Spot I think we just got lucky/unlucky depending on how you look at it on day 1, last night ran for 5 hours and was right around the GTD. 

What buy-in level do you think is missing between the IronMan and the Stack?

The Supernova Mini has been removed for just now until we see how things go. The Ten-Spot is quite close to the old €10 Supernova Lightning, just has a smaller starting stack and 9 min instead of 8 min levels.

Nothing planned just now for early on Sunday. BST/GMT countries don't make a huge part of our player base compared to later euro timezones. Can look into doing some boosted versions of existing afternoon tournaments on a Sunday though.

All the normal Supernova superqualifiers will still be there. 

We probably won't be adding another buy-in level at this time. The jump between €2 and €5 isn't that big IMO

[User_45203]

On 10/25/2022 at 11:01 AM, Stubbe-Unibet said:

@User_45203 might want to read this one  

 

well i have read it.

but still not impressed , because i see that 4000£ Titan is replaced by Turbo megastack 2000£ and same buyin, so prize money is half.

how can that be an upgrade ?

and i see alot of the other tournaments its the same.

so i dont see the plus side of this upgrade.

sad but thats how i see it

[Stubbe-Unibet]

16 minutes ago, User_45203 said:

well i have read it.

but still not impressed , because i see that 4000£ Titan is replaced by Turbo megastack 2000£ and same buyin, so prize money is half.

how can that be an upgrade ?

and i see alot of the other tournaments its the same.

so i dont see the plus side of this upgrade.

sad but thats how i see it

 

If we take yesterday as an example, we've gone from €55,000 in total guaranteed prizepool to more than €80,000! Not sure how to spin that in a way that it becomes a downgrade  

Because one tournament - which has a broken format - went from €4000 to €2000 in guarantee, you think the new schedule is a downgrade? It's quite simple: if players like the Titan/Megastack, they'll buy in and the guarantee will be back to €4000. However, this won't happen and it's more likely we'll see it decrease further - we had overlay yesterday.

I don't know what other tournaments you're looking at, as there're almost no other that have been copied over to the new schedule and as mentioned earlier, the total guarantee has increased significantly while we have slightly less tournaments.

It almost sounds like you haven't actually checked the tournament lobby  

[GotKot99]

Some feedback:

Yesterday tried playing Majors Battle Royale and Brawl. 

Battle Royale: Nothing wrong with the structure as such, but the playing was very tedious. Maybe it was only at my table where I played most of the time, but it was kinda one going pre-flop all-in and others folding all the time. Also my hands were so lousy, I couldn’t even consider playing. Somehow I still managed to get close to prized positions but at the end didn’t - losing with my best hand just before. No bounties won either. 

So the experience was quite monotonic and slow. But again, maybe it was just this one time. Otherwise, pretty decent structure for a regular paced PKO. Could try again sometime.

Brawl: Right from the start this felt more like a tournament for my taste. With 5m levels and 8 levels late reg. it was more packed. Maybe the players also made a difference. The playing was almost the opposite of what I experienced earlier in Battle Royale: more variation, all players active. Yes, there were pre-flop all-ins as expected, but also multiplayer flops, modest raises etc. that made the playing a lot more interesting. My own hands were also much better than in Battle Royale, so that did also help to make the experience more positive.

Won one bounty, and again got very close to prized positions. But the same story repeating itself: always losing with a very decent hand (this time JJ going pre-flop all-in and the guy next to me has - of course - QQ and wins) before getting into prizes. I guess, this has to be a bug . But definitely a tournament I will be playing again. Only negative aspect (besides not winning) is that it starts quite late, so one has to stay awake long into the night especially if getting to the final table. On a positive note, the tournament still finished under three hours; still could start like 1-2 hour earlier if only possible.
 

[Andy-Relax]

11 hours ago, GotKot99 said:

Some feedback:

Yesterday tried playing Majors Battle Royale and Brawl. 

Battle Royale: Nothing wrong with the structure as such, but the playing was very tedious. Maybe it was only at my table where I played most of the time, but it was kinda one going pre-flop all-in and others folding all the time. Also my hands were so lousy, I couldn’t even consider playing. Somehow I still managed to get close to prized positions but at the end didn’t - losing with my best hand just before. No bounties won either. 

So the experience was quite monotonic and slow. But again, maybe it was just this one time. Otherwise, pretty decent structure for a regular paced PKO. Could try again sometime.

Brawl: Right from the start this felt more like a tournament for my taste. With 5m levels and 8 levels late reg. it was more packed. Maybe the players also made a difference. The playing was almost the opposite of what I experienced earlier in Battle Royale: more variation, all players active. Yes, there were pre-flop all-ins as expected, but also multiplayer flops, modest raises etc. that made the playing a lot more interesting. My own hands were also much better than in Battle Royale, so that did also help to make the experience more positive.

Won one bounty, and again got very close to prized positions. But the same story repeating itself: always losing with a very decent hand (this time JJ going pre-flop all-in and the guy next to me has - of course - QQ and wins) before getting into prizes. I guess, this has to be a bug . But definitely a tournament I will be playing again. Only negative aspect (besides not winning) is that it starts quite late, so one has to stay awake long into the night especially if getting to the final table. On a positive note, the tournament still finished under three hours; still could start like 1-2 hour earlier if only possible.
 

Feels like you might be giving some results orientated feedback there

The majors are designed to speed up as the night goes on but if you look beyond them there are faster filler tournaments that start early and finish early. If you play any major you should expect them to finish around 01:00 CET or before, which should make the decision whether you play them nice and easy every night. If you want to commit to a full session, you can play as many of them as you want, if not, you can skip them and play the fillers. 

[GotKot99]

1 hour ago, Andy-Unibet said:

Feels like you might be giving some results orientated feedback there

Yup, maybe 

[GotKot99]

While skimming through the new schedule, I don’t seem to find any non-Major qualifiers. Is this intentional? Where are qualifiers for generic MTT tickets and HexaPro tickets etc.?

Furthermore, as a wild idea, could there be “qualifiers” for cash game tickets and/or playthrough bonuses? I’m not sure how much interest they would arouse. But there have been - and probably still are - some MTTs which feature cash game tickets as prizes…

Again, just thinking out loud here 

[Andy-Relax]

24 minutes ago, GotKot99 said:

While skimming through the new schedule, I don’t seem to find any non-Major qualifiers. Is this intentional? Where are qualifiers for generic MTT tickets and HexaPro tickets etc.?

Furthermore, as a wild idea, could there be “qualifiers” for cash game tickets and/or playthrough bonuses? I’m not sure how much interest they would arouse. But there have been - and probably still are - some MTTs which feature cash game tickets as prizes…

Again, just thinking out loud here 

Last paragraph of this post explains the generic tickets situation.

[Purps]

Is having 9-max PLO tournaments definately off the table at the time being?

I assume so since there aren't any, but still worth asking 

[Andy-Relax]

1 hour ago, Purps said:

Is having 9-max PLO tournaments definately off the table at the time being?

I assume so since there aren't any, but still worth asking 

Can you give me a good reason for having it? 36 of the 52 cards in the deck are dealt pre-flop, you'd be as well play face up IMO  

[Purps]

4 minutes ago, Andy-Unibet said:

Can you give me a good reason for having it? 36 of the 52 cards in the deck are dealt pre-flop, you'd be as well play face up IMO  

Well you only have 4 possible variations with game format and table size, which isn't much, so completely disregarding one of those doesn't seem that great imo. And yeah, most of the deck is dealt out, but that just requires a slightly different skill-set. You could even call it a bit more "rec-friendly". The game can still be fun. However obviously, the higher the buy-in, the less interest there would be for full ring PLO, but I can see it doing ok on the lower stakes.

I'm obv a little biased with this, as I would most prefer to play full ring plo8 which we don't have now and probably never will, so this would be closest to it and something I would always choose if I had to play one tournament a day. There used to be a full ring PLO PKO ( shooting/falling star ) still not that long ago and I don't recall it getting considerably less love than the 6-maxes did.

But that's just my 2 cents... If that's not a good format in yours and everyone elses mind, so be it.