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Micro Masters League - Getting around the volume advantage
NOSTRI
Member Posts: 1,459
in Poker Chat
Let's talk about the Micro Masters League. The advantage inferred to those who put in serious volume has come up in discussion again so we're going to try again to have a conversation about it.
Alternate title: How can we stop @lewjax79 winning every week?
We are sympathetic to this view and we want everyone in the league to have a chance to win it but I'm not sure if that's the reality right now. We are in week 8 now and it is a recurring theme that those who play the most games get the most points.
Personally, I am of the view that if you join a league you should be willing to play most or all of the events you can to have the best chance to win. But we accept that this is a casual league and not everyone wants to do that and it would also require serious feats of multi-tabling, which isn't to everyone's taste. All fair enough.
A few recurring ideas to get around this have come to the fore in our discussions, so let's start by listing them out and I'll describe the pros and cons as I see them.
- Only count x results per week, either the best results or the player's choice
- Shorten the schedule
- Disallow consecutive wins
- Weighted points
- Do nothing
X Results Per Week
There are two possible approaches to this. You can count your best, say, 20 results, or you can choose 20 tournaments you want to be counted. (20 is just a placeholder here.)
Using the best results seems pretty good but is still inferring an advantage to volume players, who have more chances to put up good results. But it does make it a little easier to win without putting in massive volume.
Selecting the tournaments you want to be counted gets around that but adds a number of extra layers of admin on our end on your end. Personally, I think this is a non-starter but it's included for the sake of having all ideas on the table.
Shorten the schedule
You can't get a volume advantage if there isn't a huge selection of games. If the schedule was shortened to something in the area of 5 games per night, spread out across the evening to reduce the necessity of multi-tabling, that's about as fair as it could get in terms of accomodating those who don't want to play 80 games a week.
It would get harder to keep the buy-in levels balanced with this option, and I'm sure we would end up culling someone's favourite game, but that's not an insurmountable challenge.
Disallow consecutive wins
Easy. Not very fair, but gets the job done.
Weighted points
Spoiler: this is almost certainly happening as soon as I get round to doing it. We'll have a trial week where we run weighted points alongside the current points system and see what everyone thinks.
This is a partial solution to the problem in question because it means the ROI of consistently running over small fields isn't worth as much in points and can still be overcome by getting a few good results in larger fields. For example if my Mini win this week was worth in the region of 400 points instead of 100, @lewjax79 ain't getting anywhere near me no matter how many games he plays.
But it hurts for primarily micro stakes players who have never seen a large field and may struggle to overcome those playing bigger fields regularly.
Do Nothing
Also an option. There are four winners, not one, and we've had a decent spread of different people winning prizes. So we could also just leave things as they are.
Discussion
That's the state of play as far as @waller02 and I see it. This post includes a poll where you can vote for your favourite option, and we would encourage you to give us your thoughts on each as well as any other ideas you may have.
Alternate title: How can we stop @lewjax79 winning every week?
We are sympathetic to this view and we want everyone in the league to have a chance to win it but I'm not sure if that's the reality right now. We are in week 8 now and it is a recurring theme that those who play the most games get the most points.
Personally, I am of the view that if you join a league you should be willing to play most or all of the events you can to have the best chance to win. But we accept that this is a casual league and not everyone wants to do that and it would also require serious feats of multi-tabling, which isn't to everyone's taste. All fair enough.
A few recurring ideas to get around this have come to the fore in our discussions, so let's start by listing them out and I'll describe the pros and cons as I see them.
- Only count x results per week, either the best results or the player's choice
- Shorten the schedule
- Disallow consecutive wins
- Weighted points
- Do nothing
X Results Per Week
There are two possible approaches to this. You can count your best, say, 20 results, or you can choose 20 tournaments you want to be counted. (20 is just a placeholder here.)
Using the best results seems pretty good but is still inferring an advantage to volume players, who have more chances to put up good results. But it does make it a little easier to win without putting in massive volume.
Selecting the tournaments you want to be counted gets around that but adds a number of extra layers of admin on our end on your end. Personally, I think this is a non-starter but it's included for the sake of having all ideas on the table.
Shorten the schedule
You can't get a volume advantage if there isn't a huge selection of games. If the schedule was shortened to something in the area of 5 games per night, spread out across the evening to reduce the necessity of multi-tabling, that's about as fair as it could get in terms of accomodating those who don't want to play 80 games a week.
It would get harder to keep the buy-in levels balanced with this option, and I'm sure we would end up culling someone's favourite game, but that's not an insurmountable challenge.
Disallow consecutive wins
Easy. Not very fair, but gets the job done.
Weighted points
Spoiler: this is almost certainly happening as soon as I get round to doing it. We'll have a trial week where we run weighted points alongside the current points system and see what everyone thinks.
This is a partial solution to the problem in question because it means the ROI of consistently running over small fields isn't worth as much in points and can still be overcome by getting a few good results in larger fields. For example if my Mini win this week was worth in the region of 400 points instead of 100, @lewjax79 ain't getting anywhere near me no matter how many games he plays.
But it hurts for primarily micro stakes players who have never seen a large field and may struggle to overcome those playing bigger fields regularly.
Do Nothing
Also an option. There are four winners, not one, and we've had a decent spread of different people winning prizes. So we could also just leave things as they are.
Discussion
That's the state of play as far as @waller02 and I see it. This post includes a poll where you can vote for your favourite option, and we would encourage you to give us your thoughts on each as well as any other ideas you may have.
Micro Masters League - Getting around the volume advantage 20 votes
Only count the best x results
15%
3 votes
Only count x results of players' choice
0%
Shorter schedule
10%
2 votes
Disallow consecutive wins
0%
Weighted points
55%
11 votes
Do nothing
20%
4 votes
Comments
e.g. full points for first 10 games of the week, half points for next 10, quarter points for next 10 then nothing after 30th game. Or whatever you feel the balance for such a system should be.
It's easy enough to apply something like "Double points for the mini" on top of that if you want some element of weighting for large fields, and it can't be 'abused' in the same way as a "Pick X of players choice" if you just award points for the first 30 games each week by start time.
--
I like a weighted system out of the options given. Even if people can't match the volume of certain players in the competition, it allows for someone to win if they run good in a bigger buy-in MTT (relatively) and a larger field (e.g. winning the mini).
"Only count best X" is ok, although all it'll do is remove a bunch of min cashes from the volume guys. I suspect "Only count best X" would end up with another thread like this in a couple of months' time.
Whatever you go with, I think it should reward volume but not to the extent where anyone who isn't playing every MTT is unable to do anything. IMO it should give people some chance if their volume is limited, although they'll have to go on a bigger heater than someone playing more games.
Personally I dislike "Only count X of player's choice" (Volume regs will just pick the smaller fields for the competition) and reducing the schedule (I don't think reducing the schedule actually helps the people who doesn't play every day)
X results per week is a good idea if you take your best results.
Shorten the schedule.
Again a good idea of making it 5 a night. There are a lot of £5.50 events (6) and playing 13 tourneys a night works out at £44.45 which given it's a micro tourny is a bit of an outlay.
Maybe an idea would be to keep the schedule as is but only count the best results from 2 of the 4 £2.20 events and 2 of the 6 from the £5.50 events. The £0.55 and both £1.10 events count automatically.
That still gives a good spread of events to play and keeps it in budget for recreational players.
Dissalowing consecutive wins seems harsh and if anything should have a bonus rather than a penalty given the difficulty of pulling it off. (I've assumed you meant consecutive1st places not points finishes).
Just a few thoughts. Oh and I like the weighted points idea.
In saying that, not sure whether its best to wait 2-3 weeks before making any changes. It certainly seems to be similar names at the top of the leaderboard for the last couple of weeks, but I think its still possible that the sample size is too small to say those names at the top aren't just on a decent heater and may not be seen again for a while. Giving it another couple of weeks would confirm whether that is the case or not
Part of the reason sky give prizes in these leagues is to encourage people to play a bit more, not less.
Weighted points is a fair idea, ofc the ‘trouble’ with that idea is - who decides which tourney should have more points? Sure the mini is a shoe in, but which other would be deemed ‘ tougher’ to win?
Some of the £2 ones are just as tough as the £5 ones ( again Imo )
Nostri is doing a fab job of spread sheetery, but to try to please the majority is a task even he will find quite tough., not to mention the ball ache of ‘tweaking’ the sheet.
TLDR - weighted points.
It's working as it is. The numbers are increasing each and every week. If you get to win one of the four prizes, it gives opportunity to those who don't normally play the larger field events from a league that was set up and named Micro Masters League. If you cash or even final table in the mini, you have done very well and will doubtless be financially rewarded quite well too.
Personally, I do play the mini a couple of times a week to gain further experience but if this became the only way to score decent points with the lower end tournaments almost discarded, then I am not sure I would see the point of being a part of the league and would just play the tournaments I wanted.
When I first registered for the league, I made the point that I didn't expect to be in the winners enclosure and that remains the case but it doesn't stop me enjoying a personal amibition of trying to do better each week and hopefully scoring a few more points each week.
I realise my voice is small in a sea of more experienced but as originally stated, this was set up as the Micro Masters League.
X Results Per Week
This was always my choice but was mainly due to the limited field sizes, I believe it’s gives players at least the impression they have a change of winning, players choosing their own games helps as certain players only play 1 or 2 games a night these actually have a lesser chance of winning.
Counting best x no of games again goes back a little towards volume
Shorten the schedule
Not sure this would work here. It worked for the plo8 but again mainly because i have more time midweek and believe it important to get the results out early. That said I would probably play more of these if playing a higher number of games was achievable. The volume players will probably play anyway
Disallow consecutive wins
why would you do that
Weighted points
Probably the best way forward for this. Finding something that works is something else
Do Nothing
It needs to change sorry.
They are loads of ways you could go.
Whatever you do you will not please everyone, go with whatever you choose for me it’s important that all players believe they can win. Even the bloke who only plays the 55p micro every night.Count 1st x games and charge 10 points if players want more games
Weighted games giving slight additional points for field size but this is difficult to get the scoring system right
I assumed that most players could comfortably put 20-30+ games in each week but its become apparent that it's not the case. I don't want it to get to the stage where most people just sack it off as they think there is no point bothering when they can't play that many games each week.
We want interest in MML to grow and get as many people involved as possible. Having the same handful of high volume players fighting it out for the top 4 each week isn't ideal and might put people off.
As far as weighted points is concerned, I think this would be a much fairer system. Winning a 100 runner (or however many entrants it gets) 55p Micro and scoring the same points as somebody who takes down the Mini, or even a 2.20 deepstack, just doesn't seem that fair. @NOSTRI has said it really isn't too difficult for him to implement a weighted points system into his spreadsheet so there is no concern there.
He has already hinted that it is going to be trialled. The current system will remain for now, it would just be so that we can all see how the finishing positions WOULD have looked with the weighted points so we can then make a decision about whether or not most of us would like to change.
As with everything, its always difficult to please everybody.
When this league was set up we all joined it knowing the qualifying events that were set out. We liked the idea and thats why we joined.
Looking through various chat this morning it has already been hinted at dropping a 2.20 level tourny(21.15 deepstack) in favour of another 5.50 level(21.00 freezeout), add to that the 55p micro been monitored for a potetial chop. Looks like were starting to price out the lower end entrants.
My league positions dont reflect the level of my play, i have to be playing every tournament possible just to put myself in some kind of contention for a prize, i push myself well outside my comfort zone most nights multi tasking just to have a chance(and i enjoy been outside my comfort zone). I have learned so much about my own ability and shaping a poker game im happy about, this has lead to me really enjoying my poker again.
As far as the league is concerned why dont we reduce the amount of tournaments so the high traffic players like myself dont have the unfair advantage thats been suggested.
I would suggest the 55p micro
1.10 deepstack
2.20 deepstack
2.20 bounty hunter
5.50 mini
5.50 bounty hunter.
Maximum layout of £17 per night
This may bring the low traffic players back into play whilst cancelling out the advantage the high traffic players have.
To be honest tho i dont know how sky can recover the cost of the free tournament entries if we are going to start encouraging less traffic.
Instead of some complicated points = sum of entrants/position x bin etc
How about (simplified to make it easy to follow where I'm going),
1st = 200 pts
2nd = 180pts
3rd = 160pts
Repeat that pattern down to 10th at 100pts
Then to allow for more casual players a chance of scoring have the next 10% players score 50pts
So a tourny of 350 players would see pts awarded down to 35th place and gives lower volume players a chance to earn some points even if they miss cashing.
Could it be an option to keep the points system as is but make it so you only score points from a maximum of five of the qualifying events per night and your points come from the tournaments you played with the most entrants first? That way you don't punish anyone who only plays the small field/small buy-in/small prize-pool tournaments, you don't punish anyone who only plays the larger field/larger buy-in/larger prize-pool tournaments and you don't excessively reward anyone who is willing and able to play all the tournaments.
we had 8 tournaments a day 7 day a week
i also did more points for bigger tournaments
You aren’t going to win with this. I will say however and maybe it’s just that plo8 players are different but there have been little complaints of the structure of the pick 3 game midweek league.
This is much more complicated due to the number of games and over 7 days. Limiting to a number of games per night affects players that don’t play everyday. If it was say first 10 games you played in a week I would make more of an effort but if I have to play 20 then it’s not happening. Maybe there are too many games for the random player.
You can’t And certainly won’t please everyone, all you can do is run it the fairest way you think possible.
I.e
15-20% finish = x points
10-15% = y points
5-10% = z points
Etc
Having said that, I’ve not got a strong view either way.
I would suspect prizes have been put up to encourage volume (by everyone not just one person/s), so whichever option achieves that will be most favourable.
And a thought I have just had while typing this is and I'll throw it out there in case it helps somewhat. PokerStars used to run a MTT leaderboard. Perhaps a scoring system similar to that may work quite well in this format.
I found an explanation of it and the formula used HERE. I'm sure it could be tweaked to suit the MML format better.
I'm looking forward to when I have my grinding head back on and I can join in more seriously.
Good luck finding the optimum format to please the most players.
Concept, Supreme, Administration, Outstanding.
For, clarification, there is, The BigBossMan, and the bossman, one, runs the forum, one runs Micromasters.
Miracles, ( do happen) eight weeks in, how many, yellow, or red cards? the boy pj been issued? Only one, ' naturally, in footie parlence, for, deemed..' abuse '.. appealed, deemed, edgy banter.
Now, if it takes, Skypokers extra special, marmite player, or, the Forums (real) Jason Bourne, to, step up, fix and sort, for the greater good, more than happy, to oblige.
In, a paragraph, Micromasters sorted, and fair to all.
Daily schedule, broadly totals a score (£20)..not the current, this, below, the new, and improved.
Buy in all, that's £140 a week, or £7780 per annum, that, is a reduced schedule, more than enough, for micro stakes. More even spread, of all mtts, more even spread, of start times, fair, across the board, points, scoring format, stays, exactly, as is, bar, 1 ( one) addendum.
In full,
19.15 £2.20 deepstack.
19.40 £1.10 deepstack.
18.05 £2.20 bounty hunter
20.00 £2.20 bounty hunter
20.30 £5.50 minimain * addendum*
17.15 £1.10 rebuy
22.15 £1.10 rebuy
Taking, the not unreasonable assumption, rebuy insta retrench, and add on, that rounds up, 7 mtts, and approximately £20 buyin, per evening, if playing all.
Minimain, has too carry, bonus points, surely, times 2 for any cash, times 3 final table, times 5 win it. Its, a Micromasters league, with the minimain, golden nugget.
Ryan, Pike, forget the author, if this was postured, by The Boss Man, you two, wouldn't, dismiss it, out of hand, 2 bounty hunters, 2 deep stacks, 2 rebuys, plus minimain, perfect mix, perfect start time spread, your very own, Jason Bourne, can offer no more lads.