Michael Bohmerwald

Really interesting direction that the brand is going, a lot of big buy in, small high roller turbos. We’re going to see a big change in who has a lot of bracelets moving forward. 40 man PLO 25k turbo (with I assume reentry? so 20ish projected runners? 40 man 50k PLO, 40 man PLO/NLH mix 25ks. Negreanu is going to be all time bracelet leader very quickly which I assume the brand wants and then a lot of the wizards like Mararthur & Eelis will overtake the guys who have grinded during the summers over the last decade or so. The majority are priced out now, the buy ins are just so high that without backing or sponsorship you just can’t really play, the same 25 or so guys will play these events reentering and basically guaranteeing bracelets between eachother. I’m not sure how great that is for poker and for the brand though? But I’m sure they’ve considered all of the above. Really interesting.

As my amigo would say, I believe the below to be IMPORTANTE. Take a min to read please and then an extra minute to ask your favourite ambassadors to push the message internally. The main problem is there is multi parts of a tournament and with such long late reg you have to turbo the structure to get the other parts "over with". Two scenarios: 1) 5 hour late reg, you need to also get ITM, get to the FT and finish the FT. Tournaments cant last more than 10 hours really, so over half of the tournament is spent on the late reg meaning the structure is incredibly fast by design. 2) 2.5 hours late reg, you can now spend 2 hours getting itm, 2 hours getting to the ft and 2 hours on the ft. 8 hours total and crucially only 25% of the tournament in "reg phase" meaning the tournament is never rushed at any point and the average stack stays high throughout. Additionally & crucially, it makes the tournament into a shove/fold fest, where amateurs are unable to see flops with pretty hands, whenever they make wide limps/calls/raises they are immediately punished. It lowers the skill element of the game a lot and it makes potential winrates essentially non existent. Even worse, so much of the schedule is PKO, you basically shouldn't register a PKO after level 3 anyway, so there is really NO NEED. I hope the industry can correct itself.