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You are not the first to suggest a Freeroll should be used to test the site capacity.
It does not work like that, & never did, here or elsewhere.
They have something called a "test environment" where they can & do test capacity on a regular basis. You can't see it, it is not visible, it's behind a "wall", but they do it regularly, (during scheduled outages) & they specifically did it to test up to breaking point pre UKOPS. The platform as a whole is very experienced as to high traffic loads - can you imagine the load Sky Bet has at 3pm & 4.45pm on a Saturday, for example?
You may well say that the first of the Super UKOPS suffered some issues - correct. The primary cause of that was NOT the volume of players on site, it was something completely separate, however, it occurred at the wrong time, coinciding with a peak period, & with the site being as busy as it was, some players, regrettably, suffered lag. It was very unfortunate & regrettable, but the root cause was not volume, it was exacerbated by volume. All problems begin with the root cause, obv. Lessons were learned.
Advertising? Well this Business has its own way of thinking. It used to advertise in the Poker Media, but it presumably found it was not cost-effective. It's very expensive (in relative terms), & clashes with everyone else's ads, so (maybe....) the main beneficiaries are the poker media, publishers, & Ad Agencies. That's the Businesses opinion, armed with the data, but of course you can think different if you wish.
Instead, they do their advertising & Promotions differently, & for this UKOPS, (& in fact last years UKPC) they used TV Advertising, utilising several thousand "spots". Not many Rooms do that, & they may be correct in doing so, but that's the line Sky Poker have chosen in those instances.
They also choose to devote a portion of their advertising/marketing budget on Sky Poker TV, which includes a weekly spot on Sky Sports, & which attracts very large audience, including - most critically - the poker curious - people who do not currently have poker accounts anywhere. That is a golden target.
Your way may be better, who knows?, (I certainly don't) but I'm backing the guys who are armed with the data.
Less mistakes? Well yes, can't argue with that. I have mentioned - several times - & Sam mentioned it HERE, too. I did not really want to spell this out, & I'll guess the Office won't be thanking me, but for context....
The MTT side of Sky Poker is generally around one sixth (16% approx.) of total Sky Poker traffic & revenue. (That changes during a UKOPS, of course, though UKOPS has the side effect of increased cash & SNG traffic as it happens). The MTT's atre looked after - as to daily scheduling, daily satellites, da de da, by 2 chaps in the office. Both of them are real good guys, though I would say that of course. Many of you have met both of them, both were at the last UKPC, & one was in Vegas this year.
Unfortunately, as Sam explained in that Link above, one of the dastardly duo became unexpectedly & unavoidably absent at a really bad time - some 4 weeks ago. Could not have been worse timing. Help was drafted in, but it's quite a complex role, & very laborious, & so one man - Sam - is carrying most of the load, temporarily.
That's not the player's problem, of course it's not. And no, it should not happen. But these comment in the last 24 hours effectively aimed towards one guy must be quite painful for him to read, (he reads it all but is a bit pushed for time right now.....) so I'd sincerely ask everyone to try & show a little tolerance please.
Thank you.
I see there is a 3k £22 bh at 7.30 tonight and that would solve the problem of Tuesdays if it were to become permanent. Wednesday can be solved with the simple addition of an auto-add on. I love £10 rebuys on other sites, and they all have this.
Just gna throw my 2 pence in.
I think UKOPS was definitely the best yet in my short experience, overall the variety and length of the whole thing was really good. Also the daily running of sats I think was a great success.
From a personal point of view I just felt there was a bit too many tournaments with the turbo mechanism. Obviously I understand the reason behind this, but I was a bit disappointed that the original 9pm £55BH had become a 10pm turbo most nights but that's just me. Also the 2nd week of UKOPS was a little underwhelming compared to the first but i guess that's to be expected.
In terms of going forward, the daily mtt schedule definitely needs a shake up. I think adding some turbos and double chance tourneys would be a good idea even some lower BI rebuys £5-10. Overall I reckon it’s worth adding some mid-stakes MTTS £15-20 BI’s.
I do agree that the tuesday main needs a revamp but also agree that we can/should keep the £10 turbo as a regular during the week with a lower guarantee like £2k.
Also Lambo mentioned having at least one bigger BH main on a fri/saturday which imo is a no-brainer, since we have 4 main BHs with more or less the same prizepool/structure.
Finally imo the £55bh 1500 turbo needs a revamp. I reckon even lowering the BI to £33 would be better and then having more sats for it would be a gd start, it surely can't remain as it is.
There's loads of other gd ideas posted so far here e.g. monthly higher stakes tourny with lots of qualifiers.
Just wanna give a shout-out to the guys at Sky who are always willing to experiment and listen to feedback. Great job guys.
Just before I reply to a few comments, please be assured they DO intend to shake the tree a bit & try to freshen up the MTT schedule, & do so without alienating too many. Not an easy task, but it's got to be done.
Neil Channing & I have also been asked to forward proposals & ideas to Head Office. If any of you want to PM Neil or myself with ideas, which you'd prefer not to put on thread, please do, they'll all get forwarded to Mr Upstairs Man.
Personally, I'll not be suggesting specific MTT's, & I doubt Neil will either - we both intend to look at it from a more strategic standpoint. For example, beef up the schedule on the traditional busy Online nights (Sunday & Tuesday), or go the contrarian route & beef it up on other nights. That sort of thing.
I agree 100% that the "other" thread they had there was hardly optimal. That's another story for another day, but imo you are correct.
Nice of you to offer to run the thread, too, but really, it's not practical or appropriate. For starters, it'll get removed unless we pay a whacking great quarterly charge. Would almost pay the fee myself to see how you deal with the trolls & haters, as it happens, think my money would be on you. We can but dream. If you wanted to throw in the occasional comment on 2+2 about Sky Poker of course, go ahead, a little covert spam rarely does much harm.
Fundamentally though, it comes down to what sort of players Sky Poker want to attract, & at what cost. Every single (UK-& ROI based) poster on 2+2 has already heard of Sky Poker. No exceptions. Maybe they only heard bad things, I don't know, & that needs addressing, but they do know of Sky Poker.
Now compare that target audience with the viewers who watch, for example, the Sky Sports Show. The majority of these are poker curious, & don't have an online poker account anywhere. This is a very important market. These potential sign-ups have far greater value to the business.
However, this thorny question of the Tuesday Night £11 main is the easiest of all to resolve, imo.
It's correct to say it does not appeal to many, who want something with a bit more bite.
It's also correct to say that it gets the biggest "Main Event" field of the entire week, simply because of its £11 entry fee, & fast structure, which enables those with lesser bankrolls, & who have to get up in the morning, to have "their own" Main.
My answer to this dilemma is easy. The existing £11 Tuesday Main must be retained, no question about it in my mind. However, alongside it - a "co-Main" if you like - something with more bite needs adding, something for Team Serious.
To my mind, they can both start at 8pm, or maybe 5 or 10 minutes either side of 8pm, perhaps even 7.45/8/8.15 for the existing Main & Mini, supplemented by something a bit more beefy.
That would be my suggestion. Both sides of this argument make valid points, & both can be addressed this way.
why not start up your own sky poker tv channel dedicated solely to poker where the poker curious see their hands on the screen. you might want to use 861....
The difference, of course, is one had a captive audience, preaching to the converted, & the other reaches out to a new market.
The key is to know what will interest a rec the most. These players won't have the cash for consistant direct entries into the main event and this is especially the story on sundays. The other thing most appealing to a rec is having a bounty hunter tournament which you don't have on sundays main.
How about creating a main PLO bounty hunter main event on the sunday for a price of £11 and advertise it aroud sky as a main omaha event. The bounty hunter part and the cheap sunday main event part should help catch the recs eyes and provide these MTTs with larger fields.
PL08 is the omaha event I can see struggling because split pots will put bounties in a dilemma and could mean a longer lasting MTT.
The key to it all is getting them to stand out in front of a recs eye, between 5pm-7;30pm 3 bounty hunters all cost the same price have got about between 100-150 entrants, you've then got this 4th bounty hunter with a guarentee twice the size of the others and this gets 300.
today's mini rebuy event has currently got 143 runners, monday's bounty hunter managed to receive 564.
A stand omaha event probably wouldn't do very good but this is where i'm suggesting it to be a bounty hunter because as was seen in UKOPS event itself the bounty hunter part made it a more interesting one and the point about it being a main event is like "UKOPS" 1K bounty hunter.
sunday's main event cost £110
sunday's mini event cost £11,
Sunday's main omaha could cost £11
Sunday's mini event is NOT a bounty hunter
Sunday's main omaha IS a bounty hunter
All in all we'll never ever know how interesting it is unless it's tried just as sky poker itself wouldn't have known it's interest until it was opened!