On February 15th, Double or Nothing Sit and Gos will be history on PokerStars, the world’s largest online poker site. “PokerStars Steve” made the announcement on the TwoPlusTwo forum four days ago: “This is not a decision that was made easily, as these tournaments have proven to be quite popular with players. However, after thorough evaluation, PokerStars has decided that the format needed improvement.” Accordingly, Valentine’s Day marks the final day you can battle it out in Double or Nothing Sit and Gos, so ditch your honey and play while you can tomorrow.
PokerStars recently popularized Fifty50 Sit and Gos. In these tournaments, play rolls on until half of the field has been eliminated. Then, half of the tournament’s prize pool is distributed equally among the remaining players and the other half is awarded based on chip counts. “PokerStars Steve” touted that Fifty50 Sit and Gos lack shorthanded play, end quickly, and have lower rake.
The distribution of the prize pool in part based on chip counts means that players should continue to care about each tournament until half of the field has been eliminated. “PokerStars Steve” explained, “This difference means that players always have some incentive to care about the size of their chip stack, whereas in Double or Nothings, this was not always the case. This added element makes the Fifty50s a more skilful and, to many, more interesting format.” In essence, the amount of soft play can be lowered due to the different payout format.
The reaction to the announcement on the TwoPlusTwo forum was mixed. One poster lamented, “Sigh this is probably only going to make the Fifty50s reg-filled and near unbeatable.” Another community member pondered, “I wonder if Stars will eventually do something similar with all satellites – just add some (small) incentive for players to finish the satellite with bigger stacks.”
The Double or Nothing Sit and Gos were the target of a collusion ring emanating from China that resulted in PokerStars shelling out over $2 million in compensation to players. According to an e-mail sent from PokerStars to Poker News Daily last August, the colluders’ net profit was just shy of $500,000.
The same e-mail also stated, “PokerStars has recently introduced a new security function to prevent players from certain countries from playing in the same Double or Nothing events together. This restriction will ensure that only one player from each of several countries will be able to play in these events.” The gang typically targeted higher stakes Double or Nothing Sit and Gos with buy-ins greater than $50 and their actions were the subject of a BBC Radio segment last September.
As far as rake goes, “PokerStars Steve” explained, “The rake for normal speed Fifty50s is significantly lower than it was for normal speed DoNs. The Double or Nothings offered rake that was in most cases twice as much for normal speed tournaments than for Turbo tournaments. The Fifty50 rake is more in line with other PokerStars Sit and Go tournaments.”
Fifty50 Sit and Gos can be found by visiting “Sit and Go” and “1-Table” in the PokerStars lobby. Don’t forget that the site welcomes real money action from the United States and is the world’s busiest site in terms of cash game traffic according to PokerScout.com.
Visit PokerStars for more details on Fifty50 games.
This 50/50 format doesn’t make sense for players looking to make profit from their skill. They aren’t able to maximize their advantage in this format. I could tell that after thinking about this for two minutes.
A) Normal Sit and Go’s with a 9-player table will pay out the top 3 places.
B) 50/50’s have a “security blanket” function to where half the field will get half their money back minimum, so 5 out of a field of 10.
C) The problem with this is that in a 9-player Sit n’ Go if you are doing well you have more opportunity to leverage your skill advantage and/or large stack in short-handed play and where action is looser due to players needing to make the top-3 to cash, 33% of the field.
D) For 50/50’s even if you are doing well you are going to have the clock called on you before you can amass a really big stack in most games (unless you are making poor judgement calls and relying on luck to build a big stack and knock out players).
E) 50/50’s has conflicting strategy elements. The DoN’s on the other hand guaranteed a positive win/rate profit wise if you cashed based upon a certain avg. no matter your chip stack. This new style of table is geared more toward paying off the donkeys auto-calling short-stack all-ins than it is to reward intelligent calculation.
F) You have to end the match with 3,000 in chips or there abouts to attain the same pay out that you would in a DoN for cashing in the same sized field.
Summary, when you’re doing well early on in a 50/50 you’ll wish you were playing in a 9-play normal Sit and Go where you play it all the way out to maximize your profits. When you are just hanging on and carrying a low chip-count once it is 6-7 handed, you will wish you were playing in a Double or Nothing tourny instead.
I see this table format being more attractive to the average consumer and gambler and less attractive for the pro’s (not saying that I am one). On a side note during my DoN playing career the stats from Sharkscope.com showed:
-I had an overall ROI of 5% for Sit n Go’s (so I’m in the money more often than not, albeit a small margin in my favor)
– I played in 8,243 games
– $5,683 in profit
– Paid roughly $6700 in Rake Fee’s.
That’s right! Pokerstars made more in Rake fee’s than I did from my 5% ROI in over 8,000+ games. Goes to show you how difficult it was to make money playing DoN’s with the high Rake fees. I played a mix of Normal and Turbo’s. I love Pokerstars and realize I have come late to the party on this announcement, but bet this has shifted the grinders in all different directions and not to simply 50/50’s even though they appear very similar.