Standard SnG Comp - FAO Sky Staff

Lambert180

when i first joined sky this was the type of tournament i wanted to play but there was none. I assume your talking about a 10 seat sng with top 3 paying by the way. I ended up playing bounty hunters and turbos which i really didnt enjoy. I Nearly left the site at this point but ended up becoming a dym junkie.

Defnitely i think normal sng's would attract new players. I'm sure i would give them a go but hard to see me moving off the dym's permanently.

Lambert180

**Sky - Can we please have the standard SnG Structure amended as per BorinLoner's post below**

Hi All,

There was something mentioned here a while ago about trying to get more action going on the regular SnGs because they never seem to run but ntohing more seems to have been done about it.

I've been doing the DYM laddering thing on here and there are 200+ people registered on the thread to take part which is probably already 10 times the player base who ever even consider regging for a standard SnG

So I'm thinking abuot putting together some kinda competition for standard SnGs to get people playing them. IMO they're a lot more fun than DYMs and teach some skills which are missing from DYMs like going for the win.

I'll need to speak to Sky to see if we can get some prizes but I'm sure they'd be happy if it can get some games going for a format that practically never runs, so first I'm just trying to see if there is interest in this and whether people would start giving them a go if

1) There was a comp

2) The games actually filled up when you regged.

Post up if you have any ideas or what kinda BI range you'd play if they did run.

Lambert180

Yeah either 10 seaters paying top 3 or 6 seaters paying top 2.

And yeah I've heard that story before lol, so many people become DYM junkies on here cos no other SnGs run.

So much more fun imo and much better money up top.

VespaPX

I'm in :-)

liamboi11

I used to love playin 10 seater sng`s on other site and every friday night me and a bunch of poker mates have our weekly home game.

we play 10 seater deepstack and we have a points and league system over 10 weeks/4 leagues over the year every week we pay £6 every week for the league prizes and we normally play £10 stake for the game that night and also we do a main event for £50 buyin and we also leave £150 for player with the most league points over the year(basically player of year) I won it last year brag lol.

but its all good fun so maybe a league system be good idea if we get the right amount of players interested and commited to it.

BorinLoner

The blind structure still needs addressing before I'd consider playing any decent volume of SNG's on Sky. I'd prefer they increased the clock to ten minute levels but they absolutely must add in a few levels beyond the 50/100 level. The early level jumps are a bit too small too, in my opinion.

1: 10/20
2: 25/50
3: 40/80
4: 50/100
    75/150
5: 100/200
    150/300
6: 200/400
    250/500
7: 300/600
8: 400/800
9: 500/1000

10 Minute Clock

As it is, they turn into a crapshoot far too early. If Sky wants decent numbers playing in these, they have to compete with the structures available on the other sites.

Lambert180

Very good idea Liam, only issue with that and the nature of a SnG is that Sky would need to create some password protected tables to avoid randoms joining. That's enough of a pain when I run the HU games, but playing a full 10 seater cos 1 oppo snook in would be urgh.

Also,  reckon the more the games fill up, the more random passersby will just see them and reg, then see they filled up quick and come back etc to get numbers up, so not sure if we should limit it to only forumites

Lambert180

In Response to Re: Standard SnG Comp:

The blind structure still needs addressing before I'd consider playing any decent volume of SNG's on Sky. I'd prefer they increased the clock to ten minute levels but they absolutely must add in a few levels beyond the 50/100 level. The early level jumps are a bit too small too, in my opinion. 1: 10/20 2: 25/50 3: 40/80 4: 50/100     75/150 5: 100/200     150/300 6: 200/400     250/500 7: 300/600 8: 400/800 9: 500/1000 10 Minute Clock As it is, they turn into a crapshoot far too early. If Sky wants decent numbers playing in these, they have to compete with the structures available on the other sites.
Posted by BorinLoner

Yeah I thought this might come up and I completely agree.

I'm hoping that if we bring in this new 'thing' then Sky will be persuaded to fix the structures if only as a tester to see how it goes. If there are X number of players that say I will play them IF you fix the structure, I can't see why they wouldn't, it's not like the games are running well atm.

rancid

I am sure like a lot of others I loved standard SNG's , it's where I started.

If they improved the structures to what has been said above by BL then I would play em -

Lambert180

Yeah it's where I started out properly too.

TINTIN

i would play sng more often but as been said before they need to resort to a playable structure.

5 year ago it was simple. 1 structure (10/20 15/30 25/50 75/150 100/200 150/300 200/400 300/600 400/800) and a choice of 2 lengths of blinds standard=10 mins speed=5mins. starting stack was 1500

i was happy to play them like that then and i would be more than happy to play them with this structure again. the only thing that put me off a little back then was the top heavy payout but thats been changed to imo a better 65/35.

i would love to know if anything came out of Scotty77 thread on the state of sng.

yeah i would be interested in a comp, anything that could boost numbers.

ACEGOONER

In Response to Re: Standard SnG Comp:

The blind structure still needs addressing before I'd consider playing any decent volume of SNG's on Sky. I'd prefer they increased the clock to ten minute levels but they absolutely must add in a few levels beyond the 50/100 level. The early level jumps are a bit too small too, in my opinion. 1: 10/20 2: 25/50 3: 40/80 4: 50/100     75/150 5: 100/200     150/300 6: 200/400     250/500 7: 300/600 8: 400/800 9: 500/1000 10 Minute Clock As it is, they turn into a crapshoot far too early. If Sky wants decent numbers playing in these, they have to compete with the structures available on the other sites.
Posted by BorinLoner

10 minute clock are you for real! The most popular sngs be it 6 max 9 max or 10max on larger sites are those with 5 min blinds. Sky is soo far off the mark on sngs and mtt's that its past its peak numbers acheived last year. That combined with cash promo's played by nitty regs is flushing this site of fish.

I dont want to wait half an hour for a sky sng table to fill then play for an hour ! Thats what it will be like at £11 upwards. Hardly a recipe for success. I can sit on a $3 rebuy 180 man sng on stars and it fills up within 5 mins. That tells me that the larger poker community likes rebuys. On sky between 5 and 10pm you have 3 rebuy mtts. The £11 rebuys are a start, but there needs to be more between £2.20 and £5.50, trust me they will catch on if sky are prepared to take a risk. IMO bounty hunters popularity is starting to wane. n

BorinLoner

The thread is about standard sit and go's, not rebuys or turbos. If you want to play turbos and rebuys, that's fine. Here we're talking about how to improve numbers in standard SNG's, not how to turn them into turbos.

I would definitely approve of introducing or re-introducing turbo SNG's, though. Same blind levels with a faster clock.

shakinaces

Would definitely consider heading back to the world of SNGs if something came up to tickle my fancy...

Would prefer 10-max to 6-max personally, not sure why Sky don't offer this (or indeed cash 10-max, but that's another thread)

Would probably enter 'steps' SNGs, the ones where (assuming 10-max) top 2 get a free entry to next BI level, 3rd & 4th get a free retry at the current level, at some of the higher levels 5th/6th get a free entry to the next level down, other players lose their fee... I guess this is similar in some ways to the DYM challenge (which I'm sure I ought to try one day!) but gives a more structured approach will all Sky players can be involved in, not just forum users.  It's always nice as a small stake player to think there is a shot at turning a small fee into, say, £1k if I can luckbox my way up all levels and cash in the highest level SNG - and for the more skilled players, they can buy in direct to the top level and know they have a massive edge against players who have fluked their way to that level.

Agree with Borin re: the levels involved, would be nice to have the choice of normal/speed/turbo clocks within that, but appreciate too much choice may be a bad thing while building liquidity and it probably makes sense to just have speed clock to start (not too slow for the action junkies, not too fast to make it a crapshoot for those of us that like a bit of play).

Games gotta fill up quickly, that's what put me off the Omaha DYM challenge... I get bored waiting 15+ mins to get a game started, start other games then don't want to leave the other games, so have too many tables open (= lag and, = progressively poor play!)

Would also like to see the shootout format come into the game, although appreciate even on a site with larger player pool this isn't the fastest filling type of tournament. Used to love playing them myself though, knowing that if you cash round 1 you are freerolling the next 3 rounds (if you keep progressing). Not far removed from bounty hunters I guess, so maybe they will be a popular addition here? May be a template to get people into playing SNGs?

Not sure how a cash champ type comp would work if Sky went down that route, but am sure I'd play a low-level band non-stop for a few weeks if there was a chance of winning a few extra quid.

Sorry for the ramble... in short... bring in 10-max... run £1 to £1000 (or equivalent) steps... bring in SNG shootouts... I'll play lots of SNGs and hopefully others will too

beaneh

In Response to Re: Standard SnG Comp - FAO Sky Staff:

The thread is about standard sit and go's, not rebuys or turbos. If you want to play turbos and rebuys, that's fine. Here we're talking about how to improve numbers in standard SNG's, not how to turn them into turbos. I would definitely approve of introducing or re-introducing turbo SNG's, though. Same blind levels with a faster clock.
Posted by BorinLoner

different formats and their relative levels of love from the community is important, no use fixing the super slow never blind increase tournies, if no one wants them or they all want super hyper allin first hands etc

no point discussing how best to improve slow sngs if sky needs to focus on what sngs it offers, and to tweak ALL of the schedules and format settings.

in general given the no antes, the blinds are always too long on sky.

as can be seen in the roller, blinds are too long, with no jumps in the blinds early and lots of jumps later, by keeping adding more early levels and removing some of the more massaging levels later on. which is completely the wrong way to go.

need to consider who is actually doing the setting up, ie random employees new to poker or people who play poker regularly....

BorinLoner

I completely agree with you beaneh. As it is there are too many small blind levels and too few larger ones. Sticking to the SNG's for the moment; in the later stages you go from having the average stack at, say, 15BB to an average of 7BB from one hand to the next. That's stupid in my opinion. Having tiny blind jumps in the early stages only exaggerates the problem.

As for giving the people the type of tournaments they want, again I agree. However if we're talking about the standard SNG's, they need changing. Whether there's a forum competition, promotion or nothing at all, if people are ever to play these in significant numbers the structures need to be improved because at the moment they play so much worse than the same games on Stars. That's true of both 6-max and 9/10 handed tables.

I agree also with shakinaces that there's no reason to play SNG's if they're going to take an eternity to fill. It's a big problem Sky has that you can load up Stars and be playing inside two minutes, though. It's always going to be tricky for Sky to draw players away from Stars to play these. Maybe that's why Sky don't put any effort into this at all - They've given up the ghost.

beaneh

In Response to Re: Standard SnG Comp - FAO Sky Staff:

I completely agree with you beaneh. As it is there are too many small blind levels and too few larger ones. Sticking to the SNG's for the moment; in the later stages you go from having the average stack at, say, 15BB to an average of 7BB from one hand to the next. That's stupid in my opinion. Having tiny blind jumps in the early stages only exaggerates the problem. As for giving the people the type of tournaments they want, again I agree. However if we're talking about the standard SNG's, they need changing. Whether there's a forum competition, promotion or nothing at all, if people are ever to play these in significant numbers the structures need to be improved because at the moment they play so much worse than the same games on Stars. That's true of both 6-max and 9/10 handed tables. I agree also with shakinaces that there's no reason to play SNG's if they're going to take an eternity to fill. It's a big problem Sky has that you can load up Stars and be playing inside two minutes, though. It's always going to be tricky for Sky to draw players away from Stars to play these. Maybe that's why Sky don't put any effort into this at all - They've given up the ghost.
Posted by BorinLoner

There was also the problem of the many types of similar but slightly different sng formats, with 2/3/4/5/7/10 minute blinds etc all with different silly names and quirks. 

full scale changes need to be made. but i've mentioned this many times over the years, doesn't seem like change will ever likely be forthcoming, and especially not by interacting with the player pool for input.

wynne1938

In Response to Re: Standard SnG Comp - FAO Sky Staff:

Would definitely consider heading back to the world of SNGs if something came up to tickle my fancy... Would prefer 10-max to 6-max personally, not sure why Sky don't offer this (or indeed cash 10-max, but that's another thread) Would probably enter 'steps' SNGs, the ones where (assuming 10-max) top 2 get a free entry to next BI level, 3rd & 4th get a free retry at the current level, at some of the higher levels 5th/6th get a free entry to the next level down, other players lose their fee... I guess this is similar in some ways to the DYM challenge (which I'm sure I ought to try one day!) but gives a more structured approach will all Sky players can be involved in, not just forum users.  It's always nice as a small stake player to think there is a shot at turning a small fee into, say, £1k if I can luckbox my way up all levels and cash in the highest level SNG - and for the more skilled players, they can buy in direct to the top level and know they have a massive edge against players who have fluked their way to that level. Agree with Borin re: the levels involved, would be nice to have the choice of normal/speed/turbo clocks within that, but appreciate too much choice may be a bad thing while building liquidity and it probably makes sense to just have speed clock to start (not too slow for the action junkies, not too fast to make it a crapshoot for those of us that like a bit of play). Games gotta fill up quickly, that's what put me off the Omaha DYM challenge... I get bored waiting 15+ mins to get a game started, start other games then don't want to leave the other games, so have too many tables open (= lag and, = progressively poor play!) Would also like to see the shootout format come into the game, although appreciate even on a site with larger player pool this isn't the fastest filling type of tournament. Used to love playing them myself though, knowing that if you cash round 1 you are freerolling the next 3 rounds (if you keep progressing). Not far removed from bounty hunters I guess, so maybe they will be a popular addition here? May be a template to get people into playing SNGs? Not sure how a cash champ type comp would work if Sky went down that route, but am sure I'd play a low-level band non-stop for a few weeks if there was a chance of winning a few extra quid. Sorry for the ramble... in short... bring in 10-max... run £1 to £1000 (or equivalent) steps... bring in SNG shootouts... I'll play lots of SNGs and hopefully others will too
Posted by shakinaces

+1

goldnballz

Agree with BorinLoner. Played a 10 seater SnG yesterday & the blinds go up ridiculously quickly after 3 or 4 levels. It just becomes a shove-fest.

I won't be playing anymore of these until things are changed.

Lambert180

Thanks everyone for the feedback, some great input so far.

I do have a few ideas in my head of potential things to encourage action in these games but it's clear people aren't going to play them without a more reasonable structure. Most of us play purely for fun and not for money but most of us don't find it much fun when the rake/poor structure leave a game having no edge.

So my first step is to try to get the structures amended (wish me luck!) even if it's only on a trial basis at first. I'm thinking basically BL's blind structure with a 5 min blind (turbo) and a 10 min blind (regular) but for the time being and to try to maximise liquidity in the games probably best to just start with 1 type.

I'll keep you posted.

DOHHHHHHH

Just. Copy. *****'s!

I'm sure they don't hold any sort of rights to the blind structure they use. 

Reg speed.

Turbo.

Hyper Turbo. 

No need for velocities, scarys, lightenings, blizzards, Hurricanes, Superchargeds, Blitzs, express', fearless' or tornados! 

Lambert180

Can we keep Frenzy though

rancid

How hard can it be to duplicate !

O looks that works they have 50 million players online - lets copy that !


It's broke, fix it !

shakinaces

In Response to Re: Standard SnG Comp - FAO Sky Staff:

Just. Copy. *****'s! I'm sure they don't hold any sort of rights to the blind structure they use.  Reg speed. Turbo. Hyper Turbo.  No need for velocities, scarys, lightenings, blizzards, Hurricanes, Superchargeds, Blitzs, express', fearless' or tornados! 
Posted by DOHHHHHHH

Too true... too much choice isn't as great as some people may think!

Good luck with talking them into changes Lambert. Can't imagine SNGs are a (very) profitable part of Sky's poker world given the lack of tables running, so they don't really have much to lose by going for change...

Sky_Dave

In Response to Re: Standard SnG Comp:

The blind structure still needs addressing before I'd consider playing any decent volume of SNG's on Sky. I'd prefer they increased the clock to ten minute levels but they absolutely must add in a few levels beyond the 50/100 level. The early level jumps are a bit too small too, in my opinion. 1: 10/20 2: 25/50 3: 40/80 4: 50/100     75/150 5: 100/200     150/300 6: 200/400     250/500 7: 300/600 8: 400/800 9: 500/1000 10 Minute Clock As it is, they turn into a crapshoot far too early. If Sky wants decent numbers playing in these, they have to compete with the structures available on the other sites.
Posted by BorinLoner

Folks

Firstly, I hope Lambert doesn't mind this sidetrack slightly, I for one would love to support a SnG Community Comp, but it does seem there's some discussion around blind structures and SnG types on offer.

In terms of the varierty, we have been trialling quite a lot of new variations lately for a couple of reasons. Some have worked, others have not. I take the point raised about too many types but I think we'd always try to be innovative and get that wrong than be accused of being stagnant. 

On to the discussion about blinds...

How would this blind structure work for you? 10 minute blind levels are unlikely to be honest given that most of our players seem to prefer something around the 5 minute mark. 

15/30

25/50

40/80

50/100

75/150

100/200

150/300

200/400

300/600

400/800

500/1000

600/1200

800/1600

1000/2000

1500/3000

In terms of the blind level timings offered, I'd also like your opinions on if we were to offer the following:

Regular - 7 min blinds

Fast - 5 min blinds

Turbo - 3 min blinds

Hypers - 1 min blinds

Keep it polite otherwise the YTS kids Beaneh obviously thinks we employ for this sort of thing will get upset and cry.

Thanks,

Dave

Lambert180

Boom!

Cheers for getting back to us/me so quick Dave.

I think the new levels look good. I agree that 10 mins is probably longer than the majority of people want (me included), I think the 4 levels of speed sound good. My only concern is that I'm not sure we need all 4 different levels, 3 min blinds is pretty Hyper (and is the blind speed of a HU Hyper), but if you put in place the above it's MILES better than what we have now.

If we could get these SnGs in place Dave, I'm happy to take the lead with some community SnG comp unless you already have an idea in mind?

Paul

shaun09

Dave= Legend

BorinLoner

The blind clock is the least important element of the changes I'd like to see. If the clock remains at seven minutes instead of ten for the regular speed SNG's, it's not a disaster since the majority are likely to be 6-max anyway. I would think that it would be pointless having four speed options, though. I'd say if you have those with a seven minute clock and a three minute clock, that would provide sufficient variety.

Anyone wanting to play a one minute clock would probably just prefer to play roulette on Sky Vegas.

As I say, I'd prefer ten minutes as the regular speed and five minutes as the turbo. It works for the site with enormous SNG traffic so, as others have said, why not just copy them?

Either way, I certainly think having four different levels would be excessive. The traffic isn't there to support that, in my opinion.

Sky_Dave

Just to clarify, I am merely pitching these figures at the moment - I can't guarantee I'll make them happen!

As for the 1 min vs 3 min options, you'd be amazed at how many people are playing those 1 minute variations - that's why I want to gun for 4 time gradients (7/5/3/1) rather than 3 (which would most likely end up 7/5/2 to cater for the 1 minute folks, etc).

Sky_Dave

In Response to Re: Standard SnG Comp - FAO Sky Staff:

The blind clock is the least important element of the changes I'd like to see. If the clock remains at seven minutes instead of ten for the regular speed SNG's, it's not a disaster since the majority are likely to be 6-max anyway. I would think that it would be pointless having four speed options, though. I'd say if you have those with a seven minute clock and a three minute clock, that would provide sufficient variety. Anyone wanting to play a one minute clock would probably just prefer to play roulette on Sky Vegas. As I say, I'd prefer ten minutes as the regular speed and five minutes as the turbo. It works for the site with enormous SNG traffic so, as others have said, why not just copy them? Either way, I certainly think having four different levels would be excessive. The traffic isn't there to support that, in my opinion.
Posted by BorinLoner

Respectfully have to disagree with you on this one Borin. The large site you refer to is a very different proposition and has a different customer profile to us. We have done some research with our customers on this and the 1 minute options are incredibly popular. 

I think 10 minute blinds would be too slow for the bulk of our customers (I know you are not alone on disagreeing here, but I am trying to take as wide a view as possible), so I think 7 mins is the timing we'd offer at that end.

The trick in my personal opinion is not too have too many options within each of the gradients: so 1 type of 7 min SnG, a couple of variations on 5 and 3 mins and 1 type of 1 min. That means there's around 6 types of regular SnG on offer. We are excluding DYMs and All-Ins from this as both of them do very well on their own - this view is just on 'traditional' sit and gos.

More than happy to discuss this further, so long as it remains constructive

BorinLoner

I think there are some crossed wires here.

If I were to play a sit and go today, I would play on Stars. The reasons for that are i) the already mentioned blind structure issues and ii) the time it takes for a game to start on Sky. On Stars, you can be playing a SNG in two or three minutes while on Sky it can take twenty or thirty minutes, if one gets going at all.

Obviously Sky is not suddenly going to gain Stars' traffic. However the problem with having three or four different speeds is that the player pool is split. You end up with two people waiting for a 1 minute SNG, another guy waiting for a 3 minute, and three guys waiting for a seven minute. The guys waiting for the 7 minute game don't want to play the 1 minute variant, just because they can get it started and the 1-minute guys don't want to play the 7-minute game.

Eventually everyone gives up and they don't come back because they know that games don't start on Sky.

I've played thousands of SNG's on Stars but I would prefer to play here. I can't because the only options are variants that don't appeal to me and the variants that do appeall to me have seen their traffic split between so many blind speeds that they get started only every twenty minutes.

With two blind speeds, the guys that want to play really fast can play something that's quite fast. The guys that want to play something slow can play something that's quite slow. Traffic is bottlenecked into two options and SNG's start every ten minutes instead of every twenty.

The whole point of sit and go's is that they start quickly. That's what needs to improve and I don't think offering more options will achieve that.