Xmas Stars $530 +100k added tourny

[M.B.E.]

I think this is kind of a weird decision on the part of PokerStars management. December 25 is the last Sunday of the month so ordinarily they would have their $500+30 tourney with a $700K guarantee. I imagine they figured they wouldn't get enough players to make the guarantee (because of the holiday), so they decided to turn that into a positive aspect that they could promote by calling it "$100K added". However, it might have been a better idea just to hold the $700K tourney on a different day (such as Saturday Dec. 31). I don't know that it's in PokerStars' best interest to create family strife by tempting their players to play in such a positive-EV tournament rather than spend time with their spouse, kids, or what-have-you on Christmas Day.

Anyone care to estimate how many runners this tourney will have? My guess is 1400-1500.

If they do get 1500 entrants, the prize pool would be $850,000 or $566.67 per person on average. How does that affect your EV? I suppose for a good player who typically has positive EV in a $530 tournament, this promotion would be worth about $100 additional EV. A typical bad player probably has EV around -$200, so even with the added money in the Dec. 25 tournament, most bad players will not have positive EV.