Poker Stars has recently implemented some very welcome changes to the structure of some of their most popular tournaments, including the weekly Million Dollar Guarantee and many of their daily guaranteed prize pool tournaments.
For those who don’t know, the ‘structure’ of a poker tournament refers to the number of chips that players get to start and the pace at which the size of the blinds and antes increase as the tournament progresses. Together, these two factors determine how much pressure will be on players to make moves, play marginal hands, and otherwise accumulate chips aggressively. It’s generally the case that more starting chips and slower moving blinds and antes make for more skillful play, as there is more room to maneuver and thus more opportunities to make or induce mistakes.
Poker Stars has long been considered the best online site for poker tournaments because of the number of players they attract, the variety of games and game sizes offered, and the frequency with which their tournaments run. However, some of the other largest sites, such as Full Tilt Poker and Ultimate Bet, have generally been offering better structures. In particular, the Full Tilt Double Stack tournaments, where players start with 150 BB’s, and the $100+ tournaments on UB, where players start with 250 BB’s, offered much more playing time to losing players and more skillful play to winning players.
The recent changes to some of Poker Stars’ most popular tournaments will hopefully help them to maintain their dominance of the online poker market. Frankly, they deserve it. Their customer service and game selection are unparalleled, as their response to player complaints about tournament structure illustrates.
Props also go to Nath Pizzolatto, who devised and proposed a new structure for the Sunday Million on which Poker Stars ultimately based their revised structure.