More satellites with 5/10/15 seats guaranteed for different events. Feels like they usually do well. Not sure if sky currently do 10 seats guaranteed to say £22/ £11 tournaments but suspect those could do well.
Allow satellites to run with 3 people. I believe sky scrapped these because of people 'flipping', but think if they brought it back and told people to be good then much more of them would run, giving people opportunity to late reg, etc. Last UKOPS felt like so many satellites didn't run because they needed 4, and people were put off by the 2 or 3 already in.
Probably room for a turbo or two at the end of the day. If I recall these generally did well for numbers. I don't see how something like a £11 1k/ £1.5k turbo (bh) at 9.15-30pm wouldn't do well, especially if rebuys were enabled.
Frenzy sats feel a little pointless when all in sats are a thing.
Stick a rebuy on more events. Just on your standard bounty hunter. Seems like this can only be a good thing for the prize pool.
Would love to see an obscene prize pool for a smaller buy in event. Like an £11 bounty hunter with a £12k prizepool, and put on unlimited rebuys an add on and loads of late reg. I won't get my hopes too high on this one.
I think 'dealer stealer' is a pretty good concept. A couple of events of that per UKOPS, particularly longer ones to keep the schedule a bit fresher.
I would personally like less bounty hunters, but if that's the format that gets the numbers then that can't change.
Thanks for starting this thread Tikay, I hope it is the first of many open debates that we can have.
The reasons behind me asking for Tikay to start this thread are to get closer to what our customers truly feel about what we are doing. It will also help us make better informed decisions about how Sky Poker progresses in the coming months and years. I appreciate that the Sky Poker forum will never be representative of the views of the entire Sky Poker base, but outside of our customer research streams it is as good platform as any.
Throughout the course of these different threads we will be very open and honest about why we do certain things and even give indications on the impact of the decisions we make. The only information that we will not divulge for obvious reasons are the numbers.
It is no secret across the industry that times are tough. Poker sites are not thriving as the focus for lots of companies is on sports betting and online casinos. This isn't to say that Sky Poker are not investing. We are. We have some very exciting things coming up in the next 12 months and I am very excited to be a part of it. The one thing that I have always liked about our site is how we can react to the needs of our customers. That is fundamental to what we are doing and these threads over the coming weeks are just a small part of that.
So I would encourage you to participate in these threads as much as you can. Please be honest, we certainly will be.
I think the Ukops are great, the only things I would like, is if they lasted longer maybe 2 weeks and had a few more deep stack Mtts, but in general think sky does a great job with ukops.
Leaderboards - good for sure, was the only reason why I played a few events last time
2 things to discuss here. I will come on to leaderboards separately but want to address the length of the festivals first.
We have always done 4 or 5 day festivals at Christmas and Easter and a slightly longer festival in October/ November. Lets address each time of year seperately.
Christmas - We try to capture that lull between xmas and new year. History has told us that boxing day is not a good day for online MTT's and NYE certainly isn't. For that reason we generally play it safe and the festival lasts 27 - 30 December. I used to play online poker as semi pro (I ended up having to get a job very quickly) and I never played between xmas and new year as I always had other things to do with friends and family. Is this a fair assessment of other peoples situations? This year in particular the Christmas ukops festival didn't perform as well as we would hope. Would people be more inclined to get involved in a slightly longer festival starting in the new year?
Easter - Obviously Easter comes at a different time each year which means there are no set dates for the Easter UKOPS festival. What is pretty much set in stone is that we again have a shorter festival. Usually 4 - 5 days. This year we will start the Thursday before Good Friday and run right up to the end of bank holiday Monday. As is traditional we will have our Main Event on Easter Sunday. James is currently planning the Easter schedule and we hope to have something to show you guys shortly. The seasonality of online poker tells us that as the days get longer, online poker gets less popular. The tide generally starts turning around Easter and for this reason we tend to have a shorter festival.
Oct/ Nov - This is generally our longest festival. Typically 10 days but in 2015 we had a 15 day festival. UKOPS generally starts with a bang. The interest is high on the first weekend and the tournaments prove popular. The weekdays are tougher than weekends and we of course need to be pragmatic about this. You won't see a £40,000 freezeout on a Monday night on Sky Poker anytime soon. UKOPS events are a separate discussion though. In a longer festival interest (or bankrolls) does tend to reduce slightly in the second half of the festival but generally peaks again in the final weekend. I am happy for us to go for 2 weeks but the longer the festival the more difficult it is to plan. We have to consider that a UKOPS festival can really challenge a players bankroll, just ask @FeelGroggy and @rspca12. A 2 week festival also means that a lot of the events become very repetitive, we do not at present have the functionality to offer many different formats so we have to be mindful of that.
Over to you guys. Do you enjoy a short action packed festival? Do you feel 10 days/ 2 weeks is too long for the average Sky Poker player. Do we need to go longer to give players a reason to come back to Sky Poker. Very keen to hear your thoughts. If you have any further questions about the lengths of festivals, I would be happy to answer them.
I think moving the Christmas UKOPS to a slightly longer/bigger version in early January could be a good move for two reasons. Firstly, people will likely have more free evenings with all the festive/new year socialising done and dusted. Secondly, the new year represents a clean slate for many with new goals, targets and enthusiasm attached to their poker exploits and a January UKOPS could be perfect to capitalise on this.
More satellites with 5/10/15 seats guaranteed for different events. Feels like they usually do well. Not sure if sky currently do 10 seats guaranteed to say £22/ £11 tournaments but suspect those could do well.
Allow satellites to run with 3 people. I believe sky scrapped these because of people 'flipping', but think if they brought it back and told people to be good then much more of them would run, giving people opportunity to late reg, etc. Last UKOPS felt like so many satellites didn't run because they needed 4, and people were put off by the 2 or 3 already in.
+1 to bigger sats.
Couple of suggestions to fix these issues that may also work if sticking with 1 seat gtd:
- Add an incentive for people to register satellites before the start, such as an early bird Poker Points boost. This will give more incentive for reg vs reg action in satellites, so that people don't just see lobby with Sicko1 and Sicko2 registered, then not bother joining. In turn, people not so interested in Poker Points will register because there's a satellite with a decent sized field and more than one seat prize.
Admittedly, this has the possibility of turning the satellite lobbies into 10 regs all grinding the satellite because extra Poker Points, and the rec player gets killed every time. Hard to know without trying it out though.
- You could seed the satellites with some kind of promotion, e.g. Every 30-60 minutes from whenever the traffic picks up in the late morning/early afternoon (Midday?) until 8-9pm, every player who has earned 1 Poker Point in the 30-60 minutes before start time can enter an all in satellite at xx:30/xx:00, and the prize is a seat into a £12/£24 satellite of Sky's choice starting soon. Should pay for itself just through getting a few people sitting/sticking around a bit longer/playing an extra SNG just because of the promo, and paying rake in the process, as well as ensuring that less satellites get cancelled and you get the rake from those too.
Also means that 28p DYM/4nl cash player gets a shot at playing an event that they can only dream of playing otherwise. The regulars will also see value in a lot of the prize pools now that there's an extra couple of players in there who are unlikely to be one of the top regs. Seems +EV for everybody.
I'm all for sat grinding but obv if people are just gonna reg the target tourney and take the £24 or whatever, then it's not so great in this case.
Over to you guys. Do you enjoy a short action packed festival? Do you feel 10 days/ 2 weeks is too long for the average Sky Poker player. Do we need to go longer to give players a reason to come back to Sky Poker. Very keen to hear your thoughts. If you have any further questions about the lengths of festivals, I would be happy to answer them.
Whenever Stars had a MicroMillions series on, I was usually losing interest by about Event #60-70, so like 9-10 days in.
I don't play the UKOPS much atm, but my gut feeling is that 8 days, Sunday --> Sunday is about right.
I think moving the Christmas UKOPS to a slightly longer/bigger version in early January could be a good move for two reasons. Firstly, people will likely have more free evenings with all the festive/new year socialising done and dusted. Secondly, the new year represents a clean slate for many with new goals, targets and enthusiasm attached to their poker exploits and a January UKOPS could be perfect to capitalise on this.
Clicked the "Agree" thing, then changed my mind. It's a tough one IMO. I definitely understand where you're coming from here.
My concern is that window between Xmas and New Year is probably best for people who have to go back to work after Xmas. It'll definitely be better for the regs, and some of the recs who take their poker more seriously, doing it the way you suggested. But I think regs play anyway, and loads of recs are hindered by being back at work, so I'm not sure if the extra rake taken from a handful of players being more motivated to play is enough to balance out losing some recs from the tournament.
If I was going to move any of the three UKOPS events, it would probably be the October one forward by 2-4 weeks. Might just be able to manipulate the beginning of that winter traffic slightly with a big series, and it spreads out the October and Xmas UKOPS series slightly more. Atm we have the Easter UKOPS, then like a 6-7 month break.
Sky poker tour,why are sky players not able to buy in direct online?,some are a long way to travel with the chance of not getting a seat or having to wait on an alternate list. Unless the SATs fill up the whole tournie to capacity,I can't think of any other reason.
I would like to see a Mini UKOP's run alongside the Main UKOP's with basically the same structures and same start time, but with a fraction of the guarantee and a fraction of the buy in. In terms of length I think Sunday to Sunday is ideal. Start with a bang on the first Sunday and end with a bang on the second Sunday. I would agree with those who suggest moving the October UKOP's to a bit earlier in the year. I get that traffic is less in the summer months but think that one just after August Bank Holiday would do well as most people tend to see this as the end of summer and I think spreading them a bit further across the year would help with the novelty value. Another issue I have encountered during qualifying for SPT Manchester (thinly veiled brag) is the amount of good, solid regs who are playing the sats to boost their bankrolls, having already qualified. Whilst I get this may sound a bit controversial and that no-one is doing anything wrong, plus Sky will benefit from the additional rake I do somehow feel this is a bit against the ethos of SkyPoker and it's recreational community. To help overcome this I do think that fewer Sats but with more guaranteed seats in each sat helps overcome this and gives the recs a greater chance of qualifying.
I haven't been on Sky long enough to know what works best but my suggestion would be two UKOPS a year, Easter and last week of September? Four Mini UKOPS (maybe rename it?) a year, seasonally. I think there is a real appetite for small buy ins, deep stacks, with big payouts.
As a side note, I think it's imperative to continue to bring in new young players to the game and probably the best avenue right now is Twitch. @adsthepro7 is doing a sterling job, when he can, to provide a stream purely focused on Sky Poker. Heck, he even brought me back here! I think there needs to be more streamers for Sky, or at least they need to be given some form of incentive to stream. I think it would provide great exposure and an excellent way to market UKOPS to regs and potential recs through Twitch. If anyone can persuade Neil Channing to turn on a webcam and showcase his skills on the network, I'm pretty sure it would pull in some new players.
I would like to see a Mini UKOP's run alongside the Main UKOP's with basically the same structures and same start time, but with a fraction of the guarantee and a fraction of the buy in. In terms of length I think Sunday to Sunday is ideal. Start with a bang on the first Sunday and end with a bang on the second Sunday. I would agree with those who suggest moving the October UKOP's to a bit earlier in the year. I get that traffic is less in the summer months but think that one just after August Bank Holiday would do well as most people tend to see this as the end of summer and I think spreading them a bit further across the year would help with the novelty value. Another issue I have encountered during qualifying for SPT Manchester (thinly veiled brag) is the amount of good, solid regs who are playing the sats to boost their bankrolls, having already qualified. Whilst I get this may sound a bit controversial and that no-one is doing anything wrong, plus Sky will benefit from the additional rake I do somehow feel this is a bit against the ethos of SkyPoker and it's recreational community. To help overcome this I do think that fewer Sats but with more guaranteed seats in each sat helps overcome this and gives the recs a greater chance of qualifying.
Its sats for expenses, completely different to playing sats for cash. Not even the slightest bit similar. Nope.
Regarding UKOPs, the Christmas one does have tough competition; family festivities, social nights out plus lots of sport on the box between Xmas and new year. Having said that, I can see why Sky plump for that slot as it is a bit of a calendar no mans land. Runners might increase if it started in early January but then would it lose its novelty value?
Thoughts on running the mini UKOPs series' before their main big brother? The order doesn't really matter for those that are rolled to play both, but if you're a smaller bankroll player who has a good mini series, then you might be inclined to play more of the main UKOPs events or at least some sats. It also gives a 'lead up' feeling to the main series.
Really love these event although I am more in the Mini camp than the biggie. One thing I would love to see is a HU MTT added to the line-up. I know the daily does get lots of runner but when paired with a leaderboard people tend to get in the mix a bit more with this type of thing. Also it would finally decide the Sky power rankings and would be a great comp to rail.
The quality of feedback on the thread so far has been excellent, keep it coming please. If this thread proves successful, there will be a lot more of them on all things Sky Poker, & that has to be good for all of us.
It's Sam's job to respond, not mine, and as a new Dad, I don't expect to see him on the thread over the weekend, but he'll certainly be looking at it & may respond further on Monday.
More satellites with 5/10/15 seats guaranteed for different events. Feels like they usually do well. Not sure if sky currently do 10 seats guaranteed to say £22/ £11 tournaments but suspect those could do well.
Allow satellites to run with 3 people. I believe sky scrapped these because of people 'flipping', but think if they brought it back and told people to be good then much more of them would run, giving people opportunity to late reg, etc. Last UKOPS felt like so many satellites didn't run because they needed 4, and people were put off by the 2 or 3 already in.
Probably room for a turbo or two at the end of the day. If I recall these generally did well for numbers. I don't see how something like a £11 1k/ £1.5k turbo (bh) at 9.15-30pm wouldn't do well, especially if rebuys were enabled.
Frenzy sats feel a little pointless when all in sats are a thing.
Stick a rebuy on more events. Just on your standard bounty hunter. Seems like this can only be a good thing for the prize pool.
Would love to see an obscene prize pool for a smaller buy in event. Like an £11 bounty hunter with a £12k prizepool, and put on unlimited rebuys an add on and loads of late reg. I won't get my hopes too high on this one.
I think 'dealer stealer' is a pretty good concept. A couple of events of that per UKOPS, particularly longer ones to keep the schedule a bit fresher.
I would personally like less bounty hunters, but if that's the format that gets the numbers then that can't change.
Great post Groggs.
It's very important that we don't stray off-topic, but you make a very good UKOPS-related point indeed about this "flipping", so I'll start a separate thread to discuss it later.
@Sky_SamT Said "Christmas - We try to capture that lull between xmas and new year. History has told us that boxing day is not a good day for online MTT's and NYE certainly isn't. For that reason we generally play it safe and the festival lasts 27 - 30 December. I used to play online poker as semi pro (I ended up having to get a job very quickly) and I never played between xmas and new year as I always had other things to do with friends and family. Is this a fair assessment of other peoples situations? This year in particular the Christmas ukops festival didn't perform as well as we would hope. Would people be more inclined to get involved in a slightly longer festival starting in the new year?"
One consideration with moving the Christmas UKOPS to Jan, is the financial impact on recreational players with smaller bankrolls. Regs will play anyway, as will pros who's effectively go back to work in Jan. A lot of recreational players get (traditionally) (and not everyone of course) paid their salaries very early in December and don't get paid again until the end of Jan. Jan is traditionally a very tough month for many, following the inevitable excesses of the Christmas period, so perhaps be conscious of a negative impact on field size when considering a move to Jan?
I am not sure if its suitable for ukops but a few more full ring tournaments like the oxfordable would be good it encourages more chat and helps with community spirit
I think Ukops is great for Sky Poker but unless I manage to qualify through a satellite I am not able to afford to play any of it, which is why I would be hoping a Ukops Mini version always ran afterwards so us smaller BR recreational players could enjoy a festival. I can't afford to play all of them by any stretch but I am able to play a few and perhaps 'treat' myself to more of the £10 events than normal, but I don't know if having a leader board has any merit as it is likely to be filled by the site's top players who can afford to play in the main Ukops anyway - I could be wrong, as I never check it, but would be surprised if I am.
As a side note, I think it's imperative to continue to bring in new young players to the game and probably the best avenue right now is Twitch. @adsthepro7 is doing a sterling job, when he can, to provide a stream purely focused on Sky Poker. Heck, he even brought me back here! I think there needs to be more streamers for Sky, or at least they need to be given some form of incentive to stream. I think it would provide great exposure and an excellent way to market UKOPS to regs and potential recs through Twitch. If anyone can persuade Neil Channing to turn on a webcam and showcase his skills on the network, I'm pretty sure it would pull in some new players.
I'm going to keep this short since it's not so much in the UKOPS Topic, but since it was brought up but @notbrook1 I will give my 2 cents on the matter.
Twitch Poker, and YouTube, is a growing market with a lot of viewers that play poker and watch streams (sometimes simultaneously), but aren't necessarily aware of Sky Poker and how it operates. If we could get some more eyes on the site from those domains, I believe we could really grow the brand and community here on Sky.The main selling point for me has always been the community, which for me sets Sky Poker apart from other brands. That's what I have been trying to focus on when streaming/writing up the blog, with the goal of bringing new faces on to the site.
Although I have been able to stream occasionally on Twitch, I am unable to produce regular content due to having a full time job and only getting on 1, sometimes 2 evenings a week. To be successful on the site I have found that you need to be going live much more consistently to build an audience and get more attention on the site.
If we could potentially find someone that can stream consistently, even if only for a trial for the forthcoming UKOPS events, that could be a big boost to the player pool and get some more eyes on the great events Sky provide over the series.
As I said I can go into much more detail on this but I don't want to go off topic in the thread, hope I've got my point across in a way you guys can understand, and I look forward to doing more for the brand in future.
Comments
Allow satellites to run with 3 people. I believe sky scrapped these because of people 'flipping', but think if they brought it back and told people to be good then much more of them would run, giving people opportunity to late reg, etc. Last UKOPS felt like so many satellites didn't run because they needed 4, and people were put off by the 2 or 3 already in.
Probably room for a turbo or two at the end of the day. If I recall these generally did well for numbers. I don't see how something like a £11 1k/ £1.5k turbo (bh) at 9.15-30pm wouldn't do well, especially if rebuys were enabled.
Frenzy sats feel a little pointless when all in sats are a thing.
Stick a rebuy on more events. Just on your standard bounty hunter. Seems like this can only be a good thing for the prize pool.
Would love to see an obscene prize pool for a smaller buy in event. Like an £11 bounty hunter with a £12k prizepool, and put on unlimited rebuys an add on and loads of late reg. I won't get my hopes too high on this one.
I think 'dealer stealer' is a pretty good concept. A couple of events of that per UKOPS, particularly longer ones to keep the schedule a bit fresher.
I would personally like less bounty hunters, but if that's the format that gets the numbers then that can't change.
The reasons behind me asking for Tikay to start this thread are to get closer to what our customers truly feel about what we are doing. It will also help us make better informed decisions about how Sky Poker progresses in the coming months and years. I appreciate that the Sky Poker forum will never be representative of the views of the entire Sky Poker base, but outside of our customer research streams it is as good platform as any.
Throughout the course of these different threads we will be very open and honest about why we do certain things and even give indications on the impact of the decisions we make. The only information that we will not divulge for obvious reasons are the numbers.
It is no secret across the industry that times are tough. Poker sites are not thriving as the focus for lots of companies is on sports betting and online casinos. This isn't to say that Sky Poker are not investing. We are. We have some very exciting things coming up in the next 12 months and I am very excited to be a part of it. The one thing that I have always liked about our site is how we can react to the needs of our customers. That is fundamental to what we are doing and these threads over the coming weeks are just a small part of that.
So I would encourage you to participate in these threads as much as you can. Please be honest, we certainly will be.
We have always done 4 or 5 day festivals at Christmas and Easter and a slightly longer festival in October/ November. Lets address each time of year seperately.
Christmas - We try to capture that lull between xmas and new year. History has told us that boxing day is not a good day for online MTT's and NYE certainly isn't. For that reason we generally play it safe and the festival lasts 27 - 30 December. I used to play online poker as semi pro (I ended up having to get a job very quickly) and I never played between xmas and new year as I always had other things to do with friends and family. Is this a fair assessment of other peoples situations? This year in particular the Christmas ukops festival didn't perform as well as we would hope. Would people be more inclined to get involved in a slightly longer festival starting in the new year?
Easter - Obviously Easter comes at a different time each year which means there are no set dates for the Easter UKOPS festival. What is pretty much set in stone is that we again have a shorter festival. Usually 4 - 5 days. This year we will start the Thursday before Good Friday and run right up to the end of bank holiday Monday. As is traditional we will have our Main Event on Easter Sunday. James is currently planning the Easter schedule and we hope to have something to show you guys shortly. The seasonality of online poker tells us that as the days get longer, online poker gets less popular. The tide generally starts turning around Easter and for this reason we tend to have a shorter festival.
Oct/ Nov - This is generally our longest festival. Typically 10 days but in 2015 we had a 15 day festival. UKOPS generally starts with a bang. The interest is high on the first weekend and the tournaments prove popular. The weekdays are tougher than weekends and we of course need to be pragmatic about this. You won't see a £40,000 freezeout on a Monday night on Sky Poker anytime soon. UKOPS events are a separate discussion though. In a longer festival interest (or bankrolls) does tend to reduce slightly in the second half of the festival but generally peaks again in the final weekend. I am happy for us to go for 2 weeks but the longer the festival the more difficult it is to plan. We have to consider that a UKOPS festival can really challenge a players bankroll, just ask @FeelGroggy and @rspca12. A 2 week festival also means that a lot of the events become very repetitive, we do not at present have the functionality to offer many different formats so we have to be mindful of that.
Over to you guys. Do you enjoy a short action packed festival? Do you feel 10 days/ 2 weeks is too long for the average Sky Poker player. Do we need to go longer to give players a reason to come back to Sky Poker. Very keen to hear your thoughts. If you have any further questions about the lengths of festivals, I would be happy to answer them.
Couple of suggestions to fix these issues that may also work if sticking with 1 seat gtd:
- Add an incentive for people to register satellites before the start, such as an early bird Poker Points boost. This will give more incentive for reg vs reg action in satellites, so that people don't just see lobby with Sicko1 and Sicko2 registered, then not bother joining. In turn, people not so interested in Poker Points will register because there's a satellite with a decent sized field and more than one seat prize.
Admittedly, this has the possibility of turning the satellite lobbies into 10 regs all grinding the satellite because extra Poker Points, and the rec player gets killed every time. Hard to know without trying it out though.
- You could seed the satellites with some kind of promotion, e.g. Every 30-60 minutes from whenever the traffic picks up in the late morning/early afternoon (Midday?) until 8-9pm, every player who has earned 1 Poker Point in the 30-60 minutes before start time can enter an all in satellite at xx:30/xx:00, and the prize is a seat into a £12/£24 satellite of Sky's choice starting soon. Should pay for itself just through getting a few people sitting/sticking around a bit longer/playing an extra SNG just because of the promo, and paying rake in the process, as well as ensuring that less satellites get cancelled and you get the rake from those too.
Also means that 28p DYM/4nl cash player gets a shot at playing an event that they can only dream of playing otherwise. The regulars will also see value in a lot of the prize pools now that there's an extra couple of players in there who are unlikely to be one of the top regs. Seems +EV for everybody.
I'm all for sat grinding but obv if people are just gonna reg the target tourney and take the £24 or whatever, then it's not so great in this case.
I don't play the UKOPS much atm, but my gut feeling is that 8 days, Sunday --> Sunday is about right. Clicked the "Agree" thing, then changed my mind. It's a tough one IMO. I definitely understand where you're coming from here.
My concern is that window between Xmas and New Year is probably best for people who have to go back to work after Xmas. It'll definitely be better for the regs, and some of the recs who take their poker more seriously, doing it the way you suggested. But I think regs play anyway, and loads of recs are hindered by being back at work, so I'm not sure if the extra rake taken from a handful of players being more motivated to play is enough to balance out losing some recs from the tournament.
If I was going to move any of the three UKOPS events, it would probably be the October one forward by 2-4 weeks. Might just be able to manipulate the beginning of that winter traffic slightly with a big series, and it spreads out the October and Xmas UKOPS series slightly more. Atm we have the Easter UKOPS, then like a 6-7 month break.
Unless the SATs fill up the whole tournie to capacity,I can't think of any other reason.
In terms of length I think Sunday to Sunday is ideal. Start with a bang on the first Sunday and end with a bang on the second Sunday.
I would agree with those who suggest moving the October UKOP's to a bit earlier in the year. I get that traffic is less in the summer months but think that one just after August Bank Holiday would do well as most people tend to see this as the end of summer and I think spreading them a bit further across the year would help with the novelty value.
Another issue I have encountered during qualifying for SPT Manchester (thinly veiled brag) is the amount of good, solid regs who are playing the sats to boost their bankrolls, having already qualified. Whilst I get this may sound a bit controversial and that no-one is doing anything wrong, plus Sky will benefit from the additional rake I do somehow feel this is a bit against the ethos of SkyPoker and it's recreational community. To help overcome this I do think that fewer Sats but with more guaranteed seats in each sat helps overcome this and gives the recs a greater chance of qualifying.
As a side note, I think it's imperative to continue to bring in new young players to the game and probably the best avenue right now is Twitch. @adsthepro7 is doing a sterling job, when he can, to provide a stream purely focused on Sky Poker. Heck, he even brought me back here! I think there needs to be more streamers for Sky, or at least they need to be given some form of incentive to stream. I think it would provide great exposure and an excellent way to market UKOPS to regs and potential recs through Twitch. If anyone can persuade Neil Channing to turn on a webcam and showcase his skills on the network, I'm pretty sure it would pull in some new players.
Regarding UKOPs, the Christmas one does have tough competition; family festivities, social nights out plus lots of sport on the box between Xmas and new year. Having said that, I can see why Sky plump for that slot as it is a bit of a calendar no mans land. Runners might increase if it started in early January but then would it lose its novelty value?
Thoughts on running the mini UKOPs series' before their main big brother? The order doesn't really matter for those that are rolled to play both, but if you're a smaller bankroll player who has a good mini series, then you might be inclined to play more of the main UKOPs events or at least some sats. It also gives a 'lead up' feeling to the main series.
The quality of feedback on the thread so far has been excellent, keep it coming please. If this thread proves successful, there will be a lot more of them on all things Sky Poker, & that has to be good for all of us.
It's Sam's job to respond, not mine, and as a new Dad, I don't expect to see him on the thread over the weekend, but he'll certainly be looking at it & may respond further on Monday.
Keep it coming please.
Great post Groggs.
It's very important that we don't stray off-topic, but you make a very good UKOPS-related point indeed about this "flipping", so I'll start a separate thread to discuss it later.
One consideration with moving the Christmas UKOPS to Jan, is the financial impact on recreational players with smaller bankrolls. Regs will play anyway, as will pros who's effectively go back to work in Jan. A lot of recreational players get (traditionally) (and not everyone of course) paid their salaries very early in December and don't get paid again until the end of Jan. Jan is traditionally a very tough month for many, following the inevitable excesses of the Christmas period, so perhaps be conscious of a negative impact on field size when considering a move to Jan?
1. Number of UKOPS.
Keep ones now, add a mixed UKOPS/Mini in the Summer
2. Length.
Keep "as is", with a Sun-Sun for the Summer
3. Leaderboards
Just Oct/Nov. Possibly a prize for the winner-only on others?
4. Big Sats
A must. Trial the 3pm ones during UKOPS on weekdays
5. Extra Turbo (5 min blinds) at end. Suggest smaller buy-in for that (5r/11r/11/22)
6. Trial restricting the 7:15 late reg qual to those who haven't already got a seat
I can't afford to play all of them by any stretch but I am able to play a few and perhaps 'treat' myself to more of the £10 events than normal, but I don't know if having a leader board has any merit as it is likely to be filled by the site's top players who can afford to play in the main Ukops anyway - I could be wrong, as I never check it, but would be surprised if I am.
Twitch Poker, and YouTube, is a growing market with a lot of viewers that play poker and watch streams (sometimes simultaneously), but aren't necessarily aware of Sky Poker and how it operates. If we could get some more eyes on the site from those domains, I believe we could really grow the brand and community here on Sky.The main selling point for me has always been the community, which for me sets Sky Poker apart from other brands. That's what I have been trying to focus on when streaming/writing up the blog, with the goal of bringing new faces on to the site.
Although I have been able to stream occasionally on Twitch, I am unable to produce regular content due to having a full time job and only getting on 1, sometimes 2 evenings a week.
To be successful on the site I have found that you need to be going live much more consistently to build an audience and get more attention on the site.
If we could potentially find someone that can stream consistently, even if only for a trial for the forthcoming UKOPS events, that could be a big boost to the player pool and get some more eyes on the great events Sky provide over the series.
As I said I can go into much more detail on this but I don't want to go off topic in the thread, hope I've got my point across in a way you guys can understand, and I look forward to doing more for the brand in future.
Ads.