WSOP ‘Town Hall’ on Twitch.tv

19:51
03 Feb

This week saw the WSOP head honchos hosting a ‘town hall’ meeting on the popular WSOP Twitch.tv channel, where they outlined their plans for changes at this year’s event – and also fielded a Q&A session with viewers.

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Jack Effel, the well-known WSOP Tournament Director, was joined by Executive Director Ty Stewart to host the interactive session, with an appearance off-screen by Seth Palansky, their VP of Corporate Communications.

The trio listed a host of minor changes during the hour-long broadcast on Thursday, many aimed at making the 2016 event easer-going on the entrants.

One of the main points of discussion centred around the playing schedules for events, with the WSOP planning to shorten the length of tournaments to avoid late finishes and undesirable extra days.

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Other plans include possibly increasing the % of those cashing, and also bringing cashes further up the playing schedule, for example not so deep into Day 2 – a point which they claimed was off-putting to the recreational players who hit Vegas at WSOP time.

The other big point of the town hall get-together was aimed at the ‘November Nine’ date, which this year would clash with the US Presidential Elections, with October 31 – November 2 being the final table dates mooted by Stewart.

In more detail, here are the big talking points:

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Shorter event structures

Although the shortening of events was generally welcomed by players and viewers, it won’t see massive changes to the structures: Day 2 in particular will see the hours played limited, with a view toward keeping the tournament length to a reasonable 30 hours, thus avoiding Day 4 spill-overs.

The list of changes wasn’t exactly huge, but the following will give an idea of the new approach from the organisers:

Tournament start times will be switched from midday to 11 a.m;

The early blind structures will be tweaked to eliminate any duplicate levels (as seen last year, there was a 100/200 level, followed by a very similar ’ante’ level of 100/200 level)

The breaks between levels on Day 2 and Day 3 will be decreased;

An extra half-level is planned for Day 2.

These changes would save the equivalent of 2 levels over a 3-day event according to Effel and Stewart.

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In the Money

Both the length of time to ‘reach the money’ and also the payout structure were discussed, with Effel and co. believing that not only recs, but also pros, should be pleased that the above-changes to the timing should lead to a quicker cashing for those doing well.

As for the payout structure, the viewers were asked directly what their views on this were, with the general consensus being that lowering the minimum cash of 125% of the buy-in was necessary (so, for example, $2500 profit on a $10K investment) and that would allow for 15%, rather than a standard 10% of the field, to cash in any event.

According to some reports, well-known players such as Dan O’Brienand Jonathan Little were among the viewers taking part in the Twitch session, and the idea that quicker cashes and more spread for those winners seemed quite popular.

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Colossus and Main Event

Last year’s Colossus was, well, colossal! And the 2016 version, as reported here a little while back, is expected to be even bigger.

With an expansion to three starting days with two flights per day, the WSOP-opener is highly unusual in that players can – if they wish – buy-in to every starting flight and cash numerous times because reaching Day 2 already guarantees you’re in the money.

The main point is that if you’re not doing so well on day 1/flight 1 for example, you can forfeit your stack and re-enter a following flight . It sounds like an amazing way to play, but you need to realise that if you bust out of your re-entry flight before the money, that’s it. You’re out of the event, as stacks don’t carry over.

One notable point made by Effel and Stewart was that the 2015 Colossus saw a phenomenal 5,500 first-time WSOP-ers take part among the 22,000+ entrants –obviously something which the organisers will be looking to focus on and take advantage of in the current poker climate.

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The November Nine in October?

The pesky Presidential Elections being deemed somewhat more important than the Main Event final table, Ty Stewart has said that the big finale to poker’s biggest title event will be moved back to October 31st until November 2nd.

As recalled this week by Steve Ruddock at USpoker.com, in 2012 it was named the ‘October Nine’, and his suggestion for this year is the simple ‘Autumn Nine’. My own preference is for the ‘October Octet’, getting rid of someone else before the final event and streaming Classical music during play!

More seriously, I’m sure they will find a suitable advertising/promotional title for the revised schedule which we’ll hear about soon enough.

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The final topic which was discussed was that of ‘shot clocks’, which would seem to be something for the future rather than anything we’re likely to see this year or even next. As Ruddock reports, “while they seemed open to it (on a limited basis) they’d yet to be presented with what they felt was a usable model.”

So, a fair few changes on the way forWSOP 2016, and for once in poker, there seems to be very few points of controversy! No doubt there will be more little tweaks to the summer’s big event to come, and here at PokerTube we’ll do our best to keep you up-to-date with what they are.