PartyPoker LIVE to Let Players Decide on New Structure

PartyPoker ambassador Patrick Leonard is asking for feedback on possible blind level structures for the upcoming PartyPoker LIVE main events -  he especially wants to hear from the amatuers who are considering buying in for the next big live party tournament.

PartyPoker’s live tournament series has been a great success this year. With the leadership of the new live tournament director John Duthie, they introduced the PartyPoker MILLIONS - a series of tournaments around the world with at least $1,000,000 GTD prize pools. Right off the bat, the first MILLIONS event’s prize pool surpassed the 7-figure guarantee in Sochi, Russia back in March, so the tournament returned to the coast of the Black Sea with an even more ambitious $5 million GTD up for grabs in the fall. In the 2018 live event line-up, the total some of the guaranteed prize money is over $100 million already.

Party’s doing great in the online department as well, their net gaming revenue has shown a 15% year-on-year increase. 

With all this success the poker room’s been having recently, it’s nice to see that they still welcome player feedback.

Last week PartyPoker ambassador Patrick Leonard tweeted out a chart with two potential blind level structures, soliciting opinions on which would be better for PartyPoker LIVE main events. He also added in a follow-up tweet that he is “especially looking to hear from amateurs”. 

Players would start with deeper stacks in the first format, 200 BBs; while the other one has 100 BB starting stacks. Both tournament structures have button antes - they are equal to the big blind, except for on the first level of the second structure, where the player on the dealer button has to post the small blind. Button antes tend to speed up the game, increasing the hands per hour by 3-5 hands on average. 

The first two chart Leonard shared said nothing about the durations of blind levels, but two days later he posted another one on his Twitter feed, now specifying that the levels are 60 minutes long, the event would have 5 playing days, and made some modifications. Level 1 starting stacks would be 167 BBs, the button ante would stay, being 1 BB throughout the tournament.. The big blind increases by 2000 chips after the end of each level.

The response Leonard got to his query was fairly positive, with most of the respondees favoring the deeper stack structure between the first two suggestions. The second image shared days later with the third, modified option got significantly fewer replies - there Spanish poker pro Sergio Aido chimed in, suggesting a guaranteed min BB average at the final table.

The next PartyPoker LIVE event is the Caribbean Poker Party, starting on November 19th in Punta Cana.