WSOP blind structure is only marginally better.

[Phanekim]

They doubled chip stack but they also made blinds bigger and moved up faster. Based on the 1500 buyin NLH tournament, Using Synder's Patience Calculator...i got

14.06 for 2006.
14.93 for 2007. (blinded off in 3.86 hours)

They basically combined the 25-25 and 25-50 level in 2006 and combined them into one 25-50 level in 2007. They then shifted all the blind levels up.

[gobboboy]

This means antes come into play faster and stealing the blinds in the first level is less worth it. Seems fine to me. But people will be playing much looser since they will think they have bigger stacks. Sidebets on how everyone talks about how the stacks are 'twice as big' this year?

[Phanekim]

I was under assumption that They would keep same structures from last year with the doubled stack. If so....you would get...a patience factor of...

22.78. Which is approximately same as UPC, which i guess had a huge patience factor for a 600 dollar buyin.

[spyu]

How is the patience factor calculated? What is it exactly? Just how long it takes for you to be blinded off?

[BigAlK]

[ QUOTE ]
How is the patience factor calculated? What is it exactly? Just how long it takes for you to be blinded off?

[/ QUOTE ]

Patience factor is based on blind off time (it's actually blind off time squared). It's used to compare the speed of different structures. Snyder's book, "The Poker Tournament Formula," discusses it in detail. It also explains how to use it to determine other things such as the approximate playing time to reach the final table based on structure and field size. His web site has some explanation and lists patience factors for some tournaments for comparison. They also have a downloadable Excel spreadsheet for computing PF.

[ravenfan1733]

I would really like Alan Goehring's input here:

The WSOP main event structure will be different in 2007 - 20,000 in starting chips but as the OP says, blinds start at 50/100 instead of 25/50. Antes also start at a 50 ante instead of 25.

So what effect will these changes have on the event as compared to 2006? Is it worse, better, same, or just different?

thanks

[Alan Goehring]

[ QUOTE ]
I would really like Alan Goehring's input here:

The WSOP main event structure will be different in 2007 - 20,000 in starting chips but as the OP says, blinds start at 50/100 instead of 25/50. Antes also start at a 50 ante instead of 25.

So what effect will these changes have on the event as compared to 2006? Is it worse, better, same, or just different?

thanks

[/ QUOTE ]

The "quality" of the 2007 WSOP $10k NLH structure is almost identical to the 2006 version. I think the primary reason for going to $20k starting chips was to discourage "chip substitution" from prelim events, rather than seeking an improvement in the $10k event structure. (It would have been easy to improve the $10k event structure simply by keeping 150/300 and 250/500 levels).

Doubling starting chips in the prelim NLH events means the big blind repeats (i.e. 100/200 wo & w ante) at a greater chip depth, plus it will take approx. one extra level to eliminate 98% of the field, etc. It is now basically the Bellagio prelim event structure with an extra level (namely 150/300/25). The structure of the WSOP prelims have gone from being slighlty worse (2006) to marginally superior (2007)to the equiv. buy-in events at Bellagio.

The OP is right, the improvement is only marginal, but it is a step in the right direction.

[ravenfan1733]

Thank you Alan for the quick response. I may actually play a prelim event now.

[Jetto]

I just wanna see how it all plays out.

[nanoshark]

Do any of you see this as the first step in raising the $10k buyin to $20k?