The Dwindling Guarantee of the Sky Sports Bounty Hunter

memfno

A team mate pointed out to me that the Thursday Sky Sports Bounty Hunter (the flagship tournament of the site really - the only one shown live on Sky Sports afterall) started as a 15K guarantee in January, dropped to a 12K guarantee in February, and a fortnight ago dropped to 10K. I wondered how often this tournament failed to hit its guarantee, so using the results thread i checked it out and here it is,

Of the 7 15K events it failed to hit 3 times

24th Jan overlay £120

7th feb overlay £1050

14th feb overlay £2490

On the 21st of feb it dropped to 12K, perhaps understandable based on 14th Feb entry, but it was Valentines Night

Of the tournaments since then there has been overlay 10 times

14th March £180

12th april £210

2nd may £450

6th june £270

4th july £210

18th july £960

25th july £30

22nd august £90

29th august £660

5th Sept £720

on 12th sept it reduced to £10K and had a prze pool of £12360 !

19th sept had a prize pool of £11040

So those are the figures, what do people make of them for the future of the tournament?

FCHD

I think the coverage of this tournament is dwindling too - I'm sure we used to get two hours of  coverage, one early-mid event when there was still some play and then the last hour when it was mainly shove-fold poker. Now we only get the final hour. I can see Thursday becoming effectively cash night sooner rather than later

BorinLoner

Yeah, I think there has been dwindling bounty hunter coverage.

For a while, though, all three shows were overwhelmingly tournament coverage and there was only one hour a week dedicated to Master Cash. Of course, the Clinic, Ask the Experts and Analyse My Play all still existed, but AMP was always following tournament play too.

They changed things around again after about a month and I like the current balance. They removed the second hour of coverage of the Turbo Open, which meant not seeing so many standard pre-flop hands, and added a Master Cash hour. They also stuck another Master Cash hour into Thursday's schedule.

On the whole, there are usually nine hours of tournament coverage a week, four or five hours of cash and one or two hours of Poker Clinic/Ask the Experts/Analyse My Play per week. Obviously they have the occasional betting show, too. Some of those tournament hours have the odd cash hand thrown in.

That's basically how the schedule usually looks. I wouldn't want more coverage of tournament poker and I think it's fine as it is. If anything, I'd like to see an hour more of those Analyse My Play/Ask The Experts/Poker Clinic shows and maybe a tad less tournament coverage on a Sunday.

BorinLoner

Sorry, I know that wasn't the original thread topic.

I don't have much to add on the Bounty Hunter guarantee topic. I guess that if it starts beating the £12k mark regularly again, as the nights start closing in, the guarantee will be bumped back up.

Rich_Poor

I for one am happy the guarantee has been reduced.

Since January this tournament has been subsidized by over £7400, according to memfno's figures.

And who is paying the subsidy?

We are!! Everyone who plays on sky poker.

In my opinion tournaments should only pay out what is taken in entry fees.

Tikay10

Good morning.

If the Guarantee is £10,000, & it makes, say, £12,000, I don't quite see the problem?

 

GaryQQQ

The Primo has gone pretty much the same way; £15K gtd. down to £10K gtd. over the last 3 years, and the number of entrants in that time has more than halved. I thought the increased buy-in to be the cause there, though that can't apply to the Sky Sports Bounty Hunter for which the buy-in hasn't changed.

Apparently online poker is in a bit of a slump right now and total volume worldwide is the lowest it's been for 6 years, I expect that's a factor in reduced guarantees. Hopefully the long overdue introduction of legal regulated poker in the USA, which is currently available in Nevada only, and a return to health in the world economy will spark another boom at some time in the future.

DOHHHHHHH

Nobody has mentioned is the change in the structure of the Thurs BH.

It used to be effectively a turbo (although wasn't advertised as such) & over by midnight so that the FT could be shown live on the show.

People called for more chips/longer blinds etc as they always do, and therefore the structure was changed quite a lot, despite the old doublestack main being dropped due to it being the least popular.

Just have to look at the success of the turbo Tuesday main to see how popular these kind of structures are.

It's 1 of the very few recent innovations on here that has worked over a long period of time.

big_mick12

Recreational players dont want to be playing until 2am with work in the morning, a deeper strucutre may put them off, numbers decrease along with the guarantees.

belsibub

Main Event Guarantee Timetable

 

Day	Date	Main Event	Buy-in	Current Guarantee	Double Guarantee
Monday	07-Oct	Bounty Hunter	£33	£8,000	£16,000
Tuesday	08-Oct	Turbo Open	£11	£4,000	£8,000
Wednesday	09-Oct	Rebuy Open	£11	£4,000	£8,000
Thursday	10-Oct	Sky Sports Bounty Hunter	£33	£10,000	£20,000
Friday	11-Oct	Bounty Hunter	£33	£8,000	£16,000
Saturday	12-Oct	Bounty Hunter	£33	£8,000	£16,000
Sunday	13-Oct	Primo	£55	£10,000	£20,000

stuarty117

Will def be playing the turbo open again 8k gtd sounds good and maybe try and sat into a couple of others

unknown_username

Personally I think the answer lies in price/payout. Buy in's seem to have gone up and when compared with what you can play on other sites for the same money its small wonder player numbers on sky are dropping..
 
When I started playing on sky two or three years ago there were loads of £2.30 buy in games which were good value. You could play four of them for a tenner now it seems nearly every game is £5.75

While I'm typing this I'm looking at 888's lobby to make some sort of price comparison...

For $4 you can play a $1000gtd

For $3.50 you can play a $4000 r+a

I understand and accept the point that some people want to play a format that doesn't last 4/5 hours which the two above would, I know because I play them.

I'm sure there are those who would disagree but from an entirely personal point of view if I'm going to spend my money playing poker and I have a choice of playing for $4000 prize money or £400 for the same buy in price I know which one I'm choosing...

Lambert180

The whole argument about prizepool size is kinda up to whatever you prefer. Yes you can have a prizepool 10 times bigger, but that's because the field is 10 times bigger. A lot of people who play recreationally probably prefer smaller fields where maybe they can't get a 4 figure cash for £5 but with a field one tenth the size, it becomes 10 times easier to win or 10 times easier to cash and a lot of people would prefer small and regular cashes and just keep 'ticking over' playing the game for fun than having massive periods without a cash and a big one everyone now and then. This is true even more so when a big cash is hard to come by in these type of games.... I play my MTTs mostly on another site and I've had plenty of times where I've come like 20th out of 1500 people... sounds great when you say it but the PPs are so top heavy that it'll probably equate to turning £5 into £15-£20, hardly groudbreaking and as I say, winning or FT'ing tournies with 1000+ runners doesn't happen very often

Rant over.

Guarantees are largely irrelevant... if it breaks the guarantee it doesn't matter what the GTE was... if it doesn't then no site in the world is gonna continue to run it with that GTE so either way it makes no difference. We'd all love a load of overlay but it aint sustainable.

unknown_username

I think you've just made my point Lambert... i'm happy enough playing for 4/5 hours for the chance of a better payoff and cash often enough to make it worth my while, maybe you don't,  but I still play on sky because of the shorter format when i'm not in the mood for a session... my point simply was there are plenty of games available with higher payouts for the same buyin  if your prepared to look around.

memfno

The main event doubling promo posted above by belsibub could prove interesting. As most poker players attitudes to guarantees seem to be of a "build it, they will come" variety, i wonder how many will hit the new guarantees. Certainly Tuesdays £11 for £8000 in a non re buy, no re entry format, has to be great value across all websites. I hope the BHs get close to the 16K, and Thursdays £20K BH looks top notch value for a tournament that has only neen hitting the £12K mark. I really hope this, and the enhanced Primo get the numbers to warrant an improved guarantee going forward. Build It, They Will Come.