I just wrote one article about Lottery Sit & Go’s, so might as well write another, while the subject is on my mind. Guess today is an all-Lottery day. The news on this page: 888poker has launched its own Lottery Sit & Go version this week, called BLAST Poker.
Like any Lottery Sit & Go, BLAST Poker is a short-handed, hyper-turbo (two minute blind levels) game with small starting stacks. One all players are seated, the prize pool is announced; it can be 2x, 5x, 10x, 100x, 1,000x, or 10,000x the game’s buy-in. Most sites make these games three-handed, but BLAST Poker goes its own way with four players per table. But that’s not at all interesting, so 888 came up with another change, one that will make these games even less skill-based than they already were.
After a certain number of levels, all players will be automatically forced all-in pre-flop until just one player remains. So a game that is almost an all-in or fold situation from the jump will now be like, “Welp, this thing has gone on too long. Time to just shut it down.”
If there is one advantage to this it is that players can enter a BLAST Poker game knowing the maximum amount of time it will take to complete, making the scheduling of their poker a bit easier.
The cut-off point for the BLAST games is dependent on the prize pool multiplier that is generated. The higher the multiplier, the longer the maximum duration of the contest. Let’s take a look at what we’ve got:
2x and 5x multipliers: three blind levels or six minutes max
10x multiplier: four blind levels or eight minutes max
100x multiplier: five blind levels or ten minutes max
1,000x and 10,000x multipliers: six blind levels or twelve minutes max
I suppose this might not be all that bad, as who really wants to fight over a 20 cent prize pool in a 10 cent BLAST Poker Sit & Go for more than six minutes? Speaking of which, the buy-in options for BLAST Poker are 10 cents, $1, $5, and $30, which are fewer than most sites offer. Normally, we would see at least one option between $5 and $30.
The prize pool multiplier will be either 2x or 5x about 97 percent of the time, with some variation based on the size of the buy-in itself. The 10x multiplier will come up three to four percent of the time.
Only BLAST Poker games of the lowest prize pool multiplier will be winner-take-all. After that, it is a 70/30 split for first and second place in the 5x multiplier games and 60/25/15 at the 10x and 100x levels. At the highest two prize pool multipliers – 1,000x and 10,000x – all four players will win money, with a 60/20/10/10 split.
