Some comments about the WCOOP structures

[twonine29]

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What about starting these big events on saturday instead of sunday ? this way is not a real problem for people with a job to play a long MTT

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Although very simple, this may be a genuine solution. If Pokerstars could make an educated guess on which tournaments will last the longest(20+hrs), it would be wise of them to schedule those tournaments for a friday or saturday start time, thus eliminating the "work" problem for most.

Anything but change the structure. The structure makes it worth it to play, as these aren't just regular donkaments, the skill has time to rise.

[CalledDownLight]

Going to Saturday would be a very good solution imo. People will sell accounts and play for each other if they live together no matter whether you make it two days or one day. I do think there should be a 1 hour break 8 hours and 16 hours in though. People need time to eat, take a quick nap, get away from the computer screen for a reasonable amount of time.

I don't think the chop structure is a problem at all and honestly wouldn't be upset if they didn't allow you to chop at all.

[M.B.E.]

Yuv is exactly correct on this point. It’s unfair to expect your customers to play more than 15 straight hours of poker with only two breaks longer than five minutes, and no break longer than thirty minutes.

Among other things, it discriminates against the elderly and people with certain medical conditions. At the very least, you should give players a 90-minute break halfway through in order to have a meal and get some exercise or a short nap.

The irony is that you implement a slow structure in order that ‘good poker’ will win out, but the same structure forces players to make decisions under sleep deprivation.

I would assume that a significant number of those who made it deep in these events were tag-teaming to some extent.

Moreover, when you subject players to sleep deprivation for 18 hours and then ask them to make decisions worth up to a few hundred thousand dollars, you are giving them a strong incentive to use amphetamines or other potentially harmful drugs. Overall I find the tournament schedule ill-advised and unfair. I also believe that the majority of players who entered yesterday’s tournament would not have entered if they had turned their mind to the fact that it would be more than 20 hours from start to finish.

[earck]

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I also believe that the majority of players who entered yesterday’s tournament would not have entered if they had turned their mind to the fact that it would be more than 20 hours from start to finish.

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You believe wrong, over half the field? Maybe a couple hundred.

[ilushan]

I finished 10th in WCOOP #4. I played for almost 10 hours from 0:30 to 10:30 Moscow time. Being Russian (+8 hours) with work makes playing big PS events practically impossible anyway.

Thanks God, this event was scheduled to Saturday. But I was absolutely exhausted and my Sunday was futile.

The tournament & structure were awesome, but I'm definitely for 2 days tournaments. Well, if they had a break after 8 hours when I was a big CL, I believe I would have won the whole thing [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[TheGiorgio]

I'm not sure this kind of structure is good for better players, try to find on event #5 someone on FT with significant result .... none

[Yuv]

The blind structure is great. No one is really saying anything about that. Just the length of the tournament is the problem. Solved easily by making it two days.

[NHFunkii]

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I'm not sure this kind of structure is good for better players, try to find on event #5 someone on FT with significant result .... none

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QED

[Noir_Desir]

lol @ 3rd in an EPT event for 220k Euros and change not being a significant result.

[Yoshi63]

I read through this thread, and thought a lot of good ideas/points/opinions were expressed. I'm just going to re-iterate the parts I thought meaningful...

The structure (30 min levels) is obviously the best part of these tournaments, and regardless of the fact they are the culprit of making it last 20+ hours, shortening them I don't think is a good solution.

The idea of starting these massive tournaments on Saturday (and running thru Sunday) is an interesting idea, but I don't think it is addressing the problem at hand. We are still left w/ the decision to run the tourny for 20+ hours or break it into 2 days (and increase cheating risk). However, I don't particularly like the Sat/Sun idea because 99% of the players will only play on Saturday (which is clearly a less conveinient day than Sunday).

I agree with many of the posters here than the large tournaments should be broken into 2 days, pausing either after ~12 hours, or at a set field size (i.e. once combined to 10 tables). It should be made very clear to participants WHEN SIGNING UP that this is the case, and somehow explained that participants making it to Day 2 will have had to advance very far in the field (what I'm trying to say is let the players know they will be in a very good situation if they manage to make it to day 2 - already deep in the money with a good shot at FT'ing.) The purpose of this is to encourage players w/ Monday jobs to still participate, so long as taking a day off is a reasonable option. Players who simply cannot free their Monday schedule will find themselves in a very tight spot after 20+ hours anyways, so I don't think breaking into 2 days affects too many players.

Also, as others have pointed out, make the start time of Day 2 clear. Probably the same start time as Day 1.

The obvious remaining problem is with the integrity of a 2-day event. Since I don't know a lot about sharing accounts, I won't comment much here beyond saying that Stars ought to be able to take measures to eliminate, or at least reduce this from happening. One idea might be to inform players at the start that Day 2 must be played from the same location/IP as Day 1.