We've had a couple of weeks to recuperate and regroup following the ecu Poker Tour (EPT) Barcelona. It was a hectic and record-breaking EPT Main Event with 1,785 players, which was won by 21 year old Sebastien Malec for €1,122,800 who qualified for just €27. That was a really perfect story and the overall hand will rightfully go down in poker history. It was an improbable festival with almost 6,000 players combining for over 22,000 entries and multiple records falling way to the incredible player support for Barcelona. But we also know that some people weren't proud of a number of the changes that we introduced, including the payouts.
Specific to the payouts, while we listened to feedback on the time and made changes to 2 of the events then and there, we've listened and skim much more since. As mentioned in discussions during Barcelona, we strongly believe (and feature crunched the numbers and the available data in addition) that paying out a rather higher percentage of players is healthier for the whole growth of the sport all of us like it. permits approximately 5% more players to head home feeling like they won something and/or have another shot at winning top prizes at final tables in a brand new event. We also spoke with the High Roller community as there are definite differences within the poker economy between players playing five and 6 figure buyin events and players playing three and 4 figure buyin events (point #1 below).
The two biggest discussion points were about 20% being the ground (lowest possible payout) or the ceiling (highest possible payout) and what exactly a min-cash must be. To the primary one we now have decided to flip from having 20% because the floor to it being the ceiling (point #2 below). To the second one one, that was an enchanting discussion as many players were comfortable with a 1.1x type cash but many felt like they only got their a reimbursement and didn't 'win' anything. Since one of the most key points in our change was to create more winners and more winning moments and the 1.1x cash doesn't necessarily qualify as a winning moment to a couple of our players an amendment was needed. Therefore we decided to return and lift the min-cash to something with more substance and it's now within the 1.5x range (point #3 below).
So, taking the entire above into account, the next payouts could be in place for EPT Malta and EPT Prague.
• All events of €10,000 or more will retain the former 12%-15% payout structure.
• All other events will payout an expanded 17%-20% of the field, but a 20% ceiling can be in place.
• For the expanded payouts, we've made adjustments to extend the minimum cash and provides all players a more meaningful return. We've got also flattened the incline to eliminate the double bubble effect that happened during EPT Barcelona. The brand new min-cash should fall around 1.5x the buyin of the event.
Another concern that came up in Barcelona was the early start times for the Estrellas (1B/1C) and EPT (1B) Main Events in addition to the Estrellas High Roller. While this was mentioned in some social media posts previous to the event, we wish to reiterate that this was a need in Barcelona as a result of large selection of players that enjoy that Festival and isn't a brand new standard at the EPT. Simply put, without that change, we couldn't have had two 3,000+ entry events running similtaneously. you will see within the Malta and Prague schedules, with the usual Satellite exceptions, all the events start from 12:00 onwards.
We're very hooked in to making a player experience that players look ahead to coming back to time and again and making our events the most productive that they are often. We've always been willing to check out new things and experiment with new formats and new activities (try the miniature golf at PokerStars Festival in New Jersey, it may be fantastic!) and we believe that may be something special about our live events. We've grown the EPT from stops with a handful of tournaments to actually world class experiences with 60, 80, even 100 tournaments of all kinds, including Hold'em, Stud, Draw, Omaha (even Chess!) and multiple variations of every - let alone the numerous expansion of High Rollers and Super High Rollers. And all with amazing coverage provided by EPT Live, PokerStars Blog and PokerStars social media channels if you are following along at home.
We'd love to think that we have much more things right than not, and we're proud to mention that we are going to keep trying new things and pushing boundaries. It isn't always a very simple balance to take care of when you are weighing up data, planning the following event, twiddling with new ideas and seeking to factor all that against how we expect you, the player, will like it.
We run frequent surveys, after every event in fact, so I'd really love to encourage anyone that involves an event to participate in that process. We're also investigating others how you can have meaningful conversations with players around the board. While we wish to hear what tour regulars think, we also wish to understand what motivates the player who's come for his or her first or second time - and even is yet to come back. We wish to create more winning moments for more players and continue to grow what we believe are the most productive poker events within the world.
As always, we welcome any feedback so please email us at live@pokerstarslive.com with any suggestions or thoughts about anything PokerStars Live related.
Read More... [Source: PokerStarsBlog.com :: European Poker Tour]
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