Originally posted on 01/19/2015:

Quote Originally Posted by Russian Rocket View Post
the new format is horrible

you have twice as less tourneys per day, much longer tourneys, more than twice as less chances to cash

enough said

gl guys!
I think "часть" is the word you're looking for there rocker

Fewer tourneys with fewer places played is worse for most without a doubt (aside from reduced buy-in), but it's pretty close to what the rest of online poker does percentage-wise. SBR's extended payout format saw most of the overlay go to paying out a lot of extra places...maybe they did it to drive ring games, maybe they did it to entice new players, couldn't tell ya. Considering the payout structure is an integral part of the game and the challenge, you can't really blame em for going to the standard structure...we've seen what happens with the old one; players like bobbo think they're good poker players because they can nit it up to 10th place in a field of 20

The only horrible part of the format in my mind is the horrendous pace. Traditional turbos usually have 5-6 minute blind levels, but the levels are much more gradual than SBR's, and the result is a much faster increase in pace (the increase from 100/200 to 150/300 ante 25 at 48 minutes in is particularly brutal, and probably not a coincidence that this is where larger tournaments start to fall apart). With a smaller field in the mid-20s it isn't as big of a factor; when 50 people are crammed into the tournament, you see what we saw a couple weekends ago: people playing regular poker for 30-40 minutes, then having to shove everything and get lucky. Takes a lot of the element of skill out of it, which is kind of the opposite of what you want for a competition where you're looking to have someone rep your brand at WSOP

Despite that, the daily format might be less pleasant to play, but probably won't impact qualification too much; top 50 will probably be largely composed of the same names as always, with a little more variety due to the high-variance nature of it. But if the same turbo format is kept for the final tournament, the entire thing becomes a bit of a joke; even when it's free, it's highly unsatisfying to fight for a chance to win something like a WSOP seat and then have to rely on mostly blind luck to get it. The funny thing is that if the top 50 were entered in a drawing for the seat, it would be more satisfying than running a format which has the appearance of poker but is essentially some poker followed by a mostly random drawing.

I get what shari's saying (I got it long before she said it, as did others): free is free. Nobody's saying they'd rather have nothing than something. But if SBR is going to do it, it seems crazy to do not make small changes that are entirely within SBR's ability, with no impact on SBR, which would make the experience better. There's a fine line between bitching ("we want more!") and constructive feedback; SBR has a pretty bad track record of ignoring both, which leads to more of both. It seems like it might be getting better, but stuff like this doesn't help.

TL;DR summary: thanks again SBR, I'll play and take my chances, but wish you made some small, zero-impact-to-you changes to make it more fun.