10 Player Top 5 ITM SNGs

[Amerzel]

On Bodog they have sngs where the top 5 get paid out of 10. They call them “beginner” sngs. They only offer 4 buy-in levels of these (the highest of which is $16+1.60) and I’ve been wondering why other sites don’t make them more mainstream. The 16’s are pretty popular on Bodog and filled with terrible players.

The Payouts are as follows:
1st – 30%
2nd – 25%
3rd – 20%
4th – 15%
5th – 10%

It’s a very flat payout, but rewards you for being able to make the money. Note 5th place just gets a buy-in back minus the rake, so they actually lose a little money.

I think putting this kind of tournaments in for higher buy-ins on the mainstream sites would really attract terrible players. People see that you only have to make the top 5 to get paid and think, “Hey top 5, I can do that.” And they can, terrible players make the money more often than they do in your typical sng structure, but for good players, these are easily beatable. They are also easily multi-tabled.

Unfortunately Bodog’s software pretty much sucks. You can only play 3 tables at once and their hand history system blows. There is some software you can use to record hand histories, DogWatch Handgrabber, but poker tracker doesn’t support Bodog tournament hand histories, so no PAHUD. These are also normal speed tournaments, so they typically last a little longer than an hour.

I think these tournaments have less variance, smaller bankroll requirements, and are very profitable. Even if they aren’t implemented on PokerStars or Full Tilt, they are an easy way to build a bankroll. What do other people think about these tournaments?