True poker - Time to get your act together (long)

[FatLoser]

I am a big fan of Truepoker and consider them, as they put it themselves, "the most enjoyable online poker experience available". However, I have hardly played anything there since june last year due to a lack of games at $10-20.

I started playing at Truepoker in june 2001 and played regularly for about 12 months before taking a vacation from poker for three months over the summer.

I'm not quite sure but I think Truepoker launched real money operations in may 2001. After a while I had worked my way up into $10-20 and games were running regularly, then Truepoker introduced a $10000 guaranteed prize pool tourney every sunday with a $100+9 buyin. These tourneys quickly became very popular and Truepoker also offered a couple of $15000 guaranteed tourneys and a few $25000 guarantees and topped it off with a $35000 guarantee tournament in late july 2002. Buyins for these tournaments varied a little depending on the guarantee but sometime along the way Truepoker lowered the buyin for the $10000 guarantee to $60+6 resulting in Truepoker having to pay a few thousand in overlay for almost every tourney. This lasted for a while and then the tournament was changed to a $1000 addon tourney instead with the same buyin, of course resulting in less entries. During the time these guaranteed prize pool tourneys were running every week the $10-20 games were great (not only sundays). At the peak hours there were usually at least two full ring games running with sometimes up to four games. During this time truepoker also offered a $1000 guarantee every saturday with a $5+1 buyin which were also extremely popular. When the guarantee tourneys were abandoned in favor of the $1000 addon tourney the $10-20 games started to die. (At the moment there are no $15-30 and no $10-20 games running, only one $5-10, one $3-6, two $2-4 and a few $1-2 running, this just isn't enough)

Seldom are there more than one $10-20 or $15-30 (introduced a while ago) game running and the site is abandoned by nearly all of us former regulars.

Sorry for rambling so much but wanted to give you people who aren't familiar with Truepoker some background.

What I wanted to say with this post is directed at Truepoker, please bring back the $10000 tourneys as they were a very big part of what made the site so great!

Put the buyin at 100+9 (this usually resulted in prize pools over $10000) and I would be surprised if you didn't get action back within a few months. But please set the payout structure to final table only, not last two tables since it isn't alot of fun playing for hours and only getting your buyin back when reaching the money. Put everything back to the way it used to be and hopefully things will go back to the way they were. Certainly you would see FatLoser back at the tables then.

FatLoser

[rusty JEDI]

A month or two ago i posted about my abandonment of truepoker aswell. The funny thing is that i was mad about true poker seeming to cut out the low limit players. They took away the $1 tournaments which were how i got started in the first place, now the sites that i have moved to can thank truepoker for getting me started. These $1 tournaments were every 2 hours, then moved to every 4 hours, then to twice a day, and now they are extinct. I think that these tournaments were great because it got play money players in cheap and then they eventually graduated to the low limit ring games, so they became quite juicy. I dont know how the low limit ring games have been going since because i have left the site. I check in on it sometimes to see if they are offering anything worth while, and my girlfriend uses my old account for play money (i think they have most play money traffic on the net).

But i do agree with what you are saying about the big money players as well. I used to sit and watch quite often and be able to pick from a few games. And i always checked in to see who was winning the big tournaments, when they had them.

So maybe David can tell us. Which way is truepoker going?

[Uglyowl]

I am in agreement that Truepoker's new structure is horrible! For about a six month period I considered Truepoker far and away the #1 site out there, as well as a lot of people I know. Now they are #5 in my opinion and I play there rarely.

In defense of truepoker I will say the $1000 add-on was actually more beneficial to the player even though it wasn't perceived that way. For example with the $10,000 guarentee the tourney eventually reached the point where it hit 167 players every week making it so there was no overlay, hence the change to $1000 add-on where it came basically a no fee tourney.

Maybe I am just the little small time poker player ($1-2 mostly and $10+1 and under tourney's) that got left behind in the quest to attract the bigger more profitable players. Yes I played alot, but I had to play 15 tourneys for them to generate the same revenue as one $200+ 15 tourney player. We will see what happens. I hope they go back to there old format, but for now I am playing at different venues (like the $5 + .50 tourneys a pokerstars). Bring back the $1000 guarentee and $300 add on omaha...loved that. Looked forward to those every week. ARG

[FatLoser]

Thanks for reminding me of the $1 tourneys, didn't remember those when I wrote my post. Maybe they didn't have any direct impact of the $10-20 games but in the long run they probably produce the occasional player into these games as well. I hope truepoker realises their mistakes and go back. Their new points program is a good thing but they need games for people to collect points in.

FatLoser

[SumDumFoo]

I agree about the crappy tourney sked. I also wanted to repost my only other complaint about TP in case it got buried before they read it last time.

From 1-6-03:
Would it be possible to get a rake break. All I am asking for is that you be competitive.
wsex and ultimatebet = .50 max
Paradise = .50 at $20 and 1.00 at $40.00

Now one hurdle you may encounter in the fact that your site has never dealt with .50 increments. I think a good solution would be to raise the raking point from $20 to 10x the small blind. $30 on 3/6, $50 on 5/10 etc.
If you think about you will actually be gaining $ because the rake factor hinders a 5/10 game from being spread. With a preflop raise every hand, you are raking the pot to the tune of a $100/hr or more. That’s very tough to beat, hence no one plays. Not to mention, I estimate, a full game at 5/10 brings in only slighty more than this and the price of playing is divided 10 ways. Maybe the math gurus can break it down better. Thanks.