Change in format for slot scheduling

[alizarin]

In the last couple of days, there has been a change in the scheduling of the slot tournaments. There are no longer 3 hours tourneys during the day, only 1 hour ones with the 6 hour tourneys in the slower times being replaced with 3 hour ones. I was told it was to bring in more variety, there were more tourneys and more people could play. From what I see, there is still the same number of tourneys, there is no longer an overlap of some of the 6s and with the 3s and 1 hour ones. You have to be on Vegas within a 50 min. time period in order to play so how can it be said that more people can play. Also, its still the same slots over and over again that are being used. I cant remember when I saw a timed Checkout counter tourney. Im disappointed and saddened in what I see as the further downgrading of this game I still love to play.

[Linda]

We have changed the schedule so that we do not have overlapping hrly tournaments. We will be doing the same thing in LIVE at some point. In looking at the number of players who are playing the tournaments, we found no reason to continue to make so many extra tournaments.

Fewer tournaments means larger payouts in the tourneys we have set because more people will enter them.

Instead of having one 3 hr tourneys, we have three one hr tourneys. This gives you a chance to play three different tourneys rather than just one. As for the variety in them, we try to use all of our downloads, but sometimes a tourney will pop up on schedule where we already had the same tourney scheduled.

The largest non hrly tournament we had in the last 24 hrs had ten players in it, with the average amt in a non hrly being 3-6 players.

There is a new hrly tourney starting when one ends, so there is always one available to play.

[alizarin]

I appreciate your reply, Linda. There is something you're not seeing though. It's not so much the payout always. Sometimes, it's the slot so you will almost always get big numbers if it's Tarot or Zoolander or Spymaster, for example, regardless of the jackpot but very few, if it's a slot people don't like to play. With the 3 hour slots, you had 2 hours and 50 mins to enter and play...if it was a good slot, often several times. With the hourly slot, you only have 50 mins so out of every 3 hours, there's 30 min. when there isn't an eligible tourney to play unless you like to throw away your money. I do appreciate that you are still looking at ways to improve Vegas. Must mean you're not intending to pull it off the web just yet.

[Linda]

What we have compromised on is this. There will be a one hr, then a three hr, then a one hr. But they will not be overlapping like before. Overnight, we will add 3 or 6 hr tourneys. On week ends, we will add a 12 hr on Sat, and another 12 hr on Sunday.

When I look at the schedule, my concern is that the regular tourneys are not being played because there are too many hrly one's going on. The more tourneys on schedule, the less players in each one. So we want to see more players playing the regular tourneys also.

[adgreena]

Since Live is also being considered to be changed please consider this.

Maybe before playing with the hourly tournaments, you might want to look at how the regular tournaments are schedule. Currently in Live there is 10 mins between each slot tournament with a net 8 1/2 mins wait till next slot T. That does not give enough time to consider doing an hourly tournament unless you want to skip one of the regular tournaments. Also the 2nd tournament which starts at 25 after the hour runs while the poker T starts. The current schedule has 24 mins of dead/waiting time.

One thing that could be done is to run a Slot T at 12:00, next 12:15, then leave a break for a person to do the poker tournament at 12:30 or do an hourly slot tournament, and last 12:45 for the 4th possible tournament play in the hour for slots. This also allows a poker player to play a 2nd regular slot T and still have time to enter a poker tournament instead waiting 12 to 13 mins (hard to play an hourly in this time frame and still make it to the poker T) till the poker T start in the current schedule. This time line would then have 12 mins of dead/waiting time per hour.

[alizarin]

Thank you, Linda. I'm happy with the compromise...especially the 12 hour tourneys on the weekends. That's great!!

[VegasShowgirl]

I just want to say I really enjoy and appreciate the 3hr, 6hr, and longer tournaments. I play in the morning when I'm technically working, so at that time I can only do tournaments I can enter immediately so I am ready to get back to work when I need to within less than 10 mins. I also don't always get to the 1hr ones before they disappear because I am busy. I think mornings are difficult for a lot of people based on the number of entries I see for those. The longer ones give more people a chance to enter. But that's just my two cents.