NPL needs an overhaul

[rcon]

finally, what about some sort of "loyalty" tournament/bonus/prize/incentive?

i.e if someone plays all 10 games at a venue, then, as a reward for not dropping venues late in the season, they get entry so some sort of tournament?

I like this idea benny the cunt.
Maybe not for this season but give Matty and myself a little time and we'll see what we can come up with for our region.

Yep - that is a great idea. Regions could have loyalty tourneys - play 10 games at 1 venue in a region, and you get entry to that regions tourney?

[bennymacca]

is this starting to get too much though, another tourney? then we will have to find time for states, regionals, loyalty tournament, and promo tourneys each season.

maybe overloading a little?

what about each player that plays 10 games goes into the draw for a chipset or table or something? if you play 10 games at 5 venues, then u get 5 tickets?

[Dug]

des dont get so defensive.

I support my venue every week without fail. 2 cards everytime. Plus whatever i put on the dogs for the night too.
If i was a tight arse do you think i'd be playing NPL?

Out of the 25K prize pool, i dont know up to NPL, i wasnt wanting more prizes per se, i gave an example of how NPL can attract more people later in the season.
Perhaps with 500 more chips the people who play other leagues might give NPL a crack, seeing they are getting more chips. Plus if you have a regional final then this may entice them more.
Without naming names i believe this is how it works in another leagues.

Or perhaps if can make more money from the tight arses by pricing the cards differently, say 100 extra chips for 1 stamp, 300 for 2 and 1000 for the full card, where only the full card can be used for redraw.

This way you still get people stamping fulls cards but it entices the people that dont to do so too.

[David]

You know, the NPL actually does SO MUCH in relation to keeping people coming back to venues.

If it weren't for state finals, regional finals, and other special offers happening, people would treat the NPL tournaments as stand alone events, and go "whenever they could get there".

In my eyes, the state finals et al have made player retention through a season 10 fold. Any other offers created won't have anywhere near the same effect.

[Des]

getting defensive?

i was just asking a few questions mate, trying to understand your logic

500 chips is not going to make a difference.. you are trying to avoid bad beats / bad players if im correct

bad players will still make bad decisions regardless of whether you bet 500, or 1500, or 15000

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also think of this... the idea of the cards is so that the venue gets a return on their investment of holding a poker tournament

if you increase the starting stack... how many people will decide not to card up, and thus revenue for the venue decreases, thus the venue decides to not hold poker anymore.

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you think im attacking you, im just putting forward my point of view

[Dug]

i understand.

But dont give me the spill about venues keeping poker, obviously they want to make a return on their investment, but dont forget there are 2 other leagues around town and if NPL decide to leave or get kicked out, i'm sure the others are waiting on its heels, at a much cheaper cost.

Not avoiding bad beats, like rcon said just giving myself more options to play some good poker.
If you are so concerned about venues making money perhaps NPL could lower their fee, or perhaps start with 500 chips. That should do it.

[Garth Kay]

Ok Ladies and Gents,

Just finished our weekly phone ops conversation.
Something we have had on the simmer for quite awhile is developing three tournament structures based around the numbers of runners at these events.

We will trial these tournament structures sometime during next season at specific venues.

We do not want to damage the integrity of the tournament structure or the passport promotion by increasing the size of the stack or redemptions dramatically. Nor do we wish to see a final table loaded down with a million in chips in a regular tournament.

As many of you may have noticed the skill levels between a new player and an experienced player is dramatic. If we create a tournament structure leaning towards a deeper stack and relaxed blinds you will see this vast gap only widen.

A tournament structure that you propose Dug allows the more skilled players to definitely have an advantage and does remove a lot of luck from the equation. We do have promotions like bad beats and re draws so that beginning players do have an opportunity to advance deeper into a tournament.

As soon as we start hurting those novice players our tournaments will suffer, you always want new, young fish in the ocean. If we do implement a structure change of the type you have asked for, do you think we would see a lot more of the skilled players continually reaching points and final table and leaving novice players behind.

No one wants to continually turn up and finish last. Well some people do, but remember the first time you final tabled or made the points? Remember that feeling when you took down your first tournament win? How happy and validated you felt?

We want every member to have the opportunity to experience this and for some of them they will require a lot more luck than others.

In saying that I have taken everything that has been said in this forum on board. We will have a look at our tournament structures and see if we can reach a compromise of sorts.
We will also be introducing a bonus for venue leaders, I will not mention more on this until we have the details finalized.
We do offer more in the way of prizes and prize money than any other competitor, we listened to the players and having a state finals that is a Satellite into another larger tournament is ridiculous (especially if it is one run by that competitor and not a casino based deepstack event), hence why we offer cash prizes at State Finals now.

We are reintroducing Satellites into major Australasian events, we are doing a player of the week promotion which will see ten people per week win entry into SkyCity tournaments. As well as having their profile up on the website.

We offer nightly prizes, regional finals and venues are 100% behind us offering cash or vouchers and sometimes even bigger promotions.

And most of all, we listen to what you, the players, have to say and seriously consider all aspects of your input.

All in all, when you weigh up the pro's and con's, why play anywhere else?

[rcon]

You know, the NPL actually does SO MUCH in relation to keeping people coming back to venues.

If it weren't for state finals, regional finals, and other special offers happening, people would treat the NPL tournaments as stand alone events, and go "whenever they could get there".

In my eyes, the state finals et al have made player retention through a season 10 fold. Any other offers created won't have anywhere near the same effect.

That is an interesting point David - DOES state finals keep people coming back? would higher nightly prizes be more of an incentive?

I'm constantly surprised by the number of people who say they are at a venue for the $$ prize. It really doesn't cross my mind what the prize is when i'm choosing where to play (as i've said before, i'm out to relax and be entertained - prizes are nice, but not what gets me thru the door) but these people are saying that the prize is what they are there for. But those people often play rather aggressive, don't care if they get knocked out and then head to the next place.

I personally like the idea of the finals, but it does seem to make the 2nd half of the season a little lighter on number - but that is just a guess as I can't be bothered looking thru the stats.

Just some thoughts anyway.

[rcon]

As many of you may have noticed the skill levels between a new player and an experienced player is dramatic. If we create a tournament structure leaning towards a deeper stack and relaxed blinds you will see this vast gap only widen.

A tournament structure that you propose Dug allows the more skilled players to definitely have an advantage and does remove a lot of luck from the equation. We do have promotions like bad beats and re draws so that beginning players do have an opportunity to advance deeper into a tournament.

As soon as we start hurting those novice players our tournaments will suffer, you always want new, young fish in the ocean. If we do implement a structure change of the type you have asked for, do you think we would see a lot more of the skilled players continually reaching points and final table and leaving novice players behind.

No one wants to continually turn up and finish last. Well some people do, but remember the first time you final tabled or made the points? Remember that feeling when you took down your first tournament win? How happy and validated you felt?

That is a fantastic point I'm happy to admit I had not considered in any of my posts. Very worthwhile keeping that aspect.

[Garth Kay]

Dug,
It is true we have two other competitors and yes they do offer a substantial discount on what we charge.

If it was all about the cost to venues, why haven't they grabbed a larger chunk of the market? Because they do not look after the venues with their promotions.

If we decrease costs to venues then we decrease the prize pool and staffing budgets. We hurt staff and we hurt players then.

We have these promotions to drive venue spend, and at the moment we do believe we have created the fine balance we are after.

But that is not to say we cannot alter tournament structure in some way, but the last thing we want to do is hurt venue spend by players. Can you understand why that is and where this argument is coming from?

I have to re iterate that we will be looking at tournament structures and revising them, but there are many factors to weigh up.