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I think UKOPS has probably had an influence. I will be playing a good chunk of these this week and will also try and get a 'Stay or Go' style hand breakdown thread from one of these going which can hopefully drum up a little bit more interest in the games.
Apart from that, I think for any real growth in the games the schedule needs to be tweaked. It just lacks diversity for the BH's. No buy ins offered apart from £5.50 but we have 2 of these and at the similar times. The PLO8 player pool is already a niche area of the player pool without further narrowing it to night time players who play £5.50 tourneys.
It is clear there is room (with a 4 hour+ gap in the plo8 MTT schedule) for some £1.10, £2.20, £3.30 and or £11 games to be trialed. This would help get more players interested in the games very quickly and undoubtedly cost Sky nothing. There isn't even a knock on effect on DYM's to worry about as they do not run much at that time.
I would also say UKOPS and any such poker series is a good platform to try 'new' tourneys out yet we had no PLO8 BH's at any buy ins, even though they have proven to some extent at least to be relatively popular (especially compared to the regular format). UKOPS mini would have been the perfect time to test run a £1.10, £2.20 or £3.30 PLO8 BH IMO.
Don't mean to moan but while Sky were excellent in trialing the games to start with, and supporting the league, I really do not understand the reluctance to diversify the current offerings. If UKOPS shown us anything it was the BH's are more popular here than the regular format, the same goes for the PLO8 games yet the PLO8 MTT schedule is heavily dominated by low buy in regular format games which struggle.
hi chris,
i've sent you an email.
hoping to help.
Do you have any updates for the last week handy? Many thanks if so
P.S. I have posted a new rule in the OP after a suggestion from Chris. Basically if you win a prize you have 2 weeks to indicate you are accepting it for the reasons outlined in the OP.
Hopefully someone from Sky can help out
Hey Chris,
No worries. I will see if I am able to keep track going forward, if it works it works, if not then so be it.
Could also consider a simplified structure, whether you would want to be involved with that or not Chris?
Either way we will suspend the current week, pause for reflection and see what can be done for the week commencing Monday 8th May and onwards.
Thanks for all your help with this Chris, very much appreciated and best wishes going forward!
At the moment there is a £33 weekly prize for most bounties in a single evening each week and a separate 'jackpot' prize to the first player winning both tourneys in 1 evening.
The jackpot prize can stay the same to encourage participation in both tournies. It is also pretty easy logistically to track this one.
The most 'bounties in an evening' prize would be harder for me to track myself as I don't have the speadsheet capabilities and knowhow that Chris does. I actually seen a bit of a problem in this anyway... Probably around half the prizes were unclaimed as they were won by non-reg players who have no idea about the league, or the forum, turning up and having a blisteringly good session.
What I would propose instead (as of Monday the 8th May and assuming nothing changes between now and then) is the following...
Very straight forward... We use the 7:15pm game as a weekly league. Play as many of the games as you like over the week and get points for final tabling. The player who has the most points each week wins the £33 prize.
Point structure would be...
1st = 10 points
I guess some will like the idea and some will not but pleasing everyone is a tall order.
Pros: Players who regularly play the games will win more often (not necessarilly 'the best' players but the players who turn up night after night and help support the games). I know some see this as a drawback but after trialing the bounty hunter set-up we had, well as mentioned, half the folk didn't know there was a prize to claim and do not post in the forum etc.
It is only 7 games over the week and would still be perfectly possible for someone to play 3 or 4 games and win the weekly prize.
It is possibly about as close as could be to a time that is suitable for everyone.
There would probably be some quite interesting battles developing each week.
It will be easier to keep track of.
Cons: It would have been nice to use both games but this starts to get harder to keep track of and would start to give the regs an almost insurmountable edge. Using the 7:15pm game probably strikes a better balance. Also the jackpot prize still encourages participation in both games.
If we cannot find a solution then fair enough but if people are happy enough with this or have similar proposals which everyone is in rough agreement about then I will commit to maintaining the new leaderboard and doing the updates myself.
Would appreciate some feedback from anyone willing to offer some.
As mentioned, we have had to change the format as sadly Chris will not be tracking the number bounties taken each night and this would be too time consuming for myself to do. Again many thanks to Chris for all the work he has put in!
In an effort to keep things going I mentioned a new format (posted above) which started from last night.
To promote both games, the FT jackpot prize will remain the same... Win both the 7:15pm & 9:15pm PLO8 Bounty Hunters in one night and you win a £33 MTT entry (only available to first person to do so each month).
As promised, I will track the results of the 7:15pm games each night and do a weekly league awarding a £33 tourney entry for winning the weekly league. This replaces the old 'Bounty Hunting' weekly prize.
The league will run from Monday-Sunday each week and you are awarded points for making the final table each night in the 7:15pm game. Points allocated as follows...
1st place = 10 points
Please note, this is all subject to change.
Our leaderboard after the first night of play has concluded is below...
Week 1 - Updated 09 May 12:41pm
Position
Player
Points
1
Catsnap
10
2
Finnyhad03
7
3
leapylee57
5
4
FREDTHETED
3
4
TOONGAZZA
3
4
hussar1519
3
7:15pm Game Weekly PLO8 BH League Standings – Week 1 (8th-14th May)
Position
Player
Points
1
TOONGAZZA
13
2
Catsnap
10
3
pomfrittes
7
3
Finnyhad03
7
5
bigbob57
5
5
leapylee57
5
7
FREDTHETED
3
7
coo1-um
3
7
lumkming09
3
7
harl07
3
7
hussar1519
3
Updated after game 2 from 9th May 2017
Some great points there Phantom!
To address them 1 at a time and give my personal take on it...
"Chris's issues and the loss of his services. Not good when a community stalwart feels taht way."
I agree fully. Chris put so much time and effort into the tables which was invaluable in helping the leagues to function effectively.
I thought someone in a position to do something may have puck the baton up and sorted this issue. Not leastly, to show Chris that his efforts were indeed appreciated.
"Also, the unclaimed prizes. Perhaps there could be more done here to promote the additional prizes?"
This is a good point. I feel when we asked for feedback about the set-up of weekly/monthly prizes a couple of things were perhaps overlooked. It is fine to tailor the prize set up to casual punters, rather than regs, if the games are going to be widely promoted. If the games are not widely promoted then the casual punter (whom the prize set up is tailored to) doesn't even know that said prizes exist.
If there is not going to be a significant drive to promote the games and let everyone know they are happening then it would be as well to tailor the prizes more towards the regs. At least then it will encourage the regs to play more, who may prove to be the backbone of the games and in large part determine their overall success/failure.
"1. By us, using the chatbox to openly talk about the league positions, the add-on prizes and the forum thread so that more people get to know. 2. By skypoker, maybe put something in the lobby blurb explaining the extra prizes? Put it on social media? Have Mr Ambo join in as part a challenge one time?"
I guess this is all down to priorities and what Sky's aims and objectives are.
If a better developed PLO8 BH MTT set-up (or even PLO8 BH SNG set-up) is not a priority to Sky then that is completely understandable. We all have our own take on things.
I was very surprised when the suggestion of implementing these games was acted upon so quickly by Sky! That really was top quality support and the kind of service you do not see enough of on most other sites. Then the offer to support the leagues, again, top notch!
Sky did not have to do that, so a big thanks for that!
What is a bit frustrating to me personally however is the following...
The games attracted more players than I think most people thought they would. There certainly seemed to be oodles of potential there, especially when we are talking about a non NLHE game variant. It was however obvious that a bit of tweaking may be needed to find out the optimal game set up.
The set-up of the games just now is clearly not where it could be in relation to the games realising their potential. There doesn't however seem to be an appetite to tweak the games and find that optimal set up.
When introduced the 9:15pm £11 game on many nights was comfortably making the guarantee, on some nights it struggled. The £5.50 7:15pm game, in contrast, has thrived since it was introduced and I would be surprised if the number of times this has missed the guarantee could not be counted on 1 hand.
The reason the 9:15pm game was not doing as well as the 7:15pm game was identified as being the buy in. It was then made a £5.50 buy in, in line with the other game. The same discrepancy between the games still exists though. The problem is very unlikely to have been the buy in (otherwise the change would have made both games similar in popularity). The problem was just that the game was a little bit late and the guarantee switch from £100 at introduction to £400 was slightly ambitious. If the guarantee had been upped from £100 to £200 then I doubt it would have had any issues.
The one thing that stood out with the £11 game was that some of the NLHE crew were showing an interest. This highlighted that (perhaps obviously), different buy ins would attract different aspects of the player pool. However we are in a situation were both BH games are identical buy ins.
There is clearly room for the games to grow and to be promoted. It depends whether this is one of Sky's priorities or not though. There is plenty of potential there to explore and realise. There would probably need to be some tweaks to the schedule though and some consideration to the points you raised. All depends on Sky I guess.
Great stuff eon
Hopefully have many interesting tussles with you on the felt!
Link to the thread here.
Have updated the opening post with the new set-up.
If I have the time in the coming weeks, and there is interest from the players, we could consider including both games in the new weekly league?
Would seem more fitting due to the time of the later game being changed to one which will probably suit more people.
The 9:15pm game has a new time slot of 8:30pm and starts in 15 minutes.