I honestly don’t think this tournament structure is good or even feels like a real competitive event. The first 15 minutes are basically nothing but all-in flip fiestas and multi-way gambles. After that, the players who survive are sitting on absurd stack sizes — x5, x6, x10, even x20 starting stacks — because the blind increases are far too soft at levels like 70/140 → 175/350 → 450/900. It feels unnecessarily inflated and fails to create meaningful pots during key situations.
Right now the fields are massive, with 3k, 4k, 5k, even 6k entries, and 90% of the gameplay during the first 30 minutes is just push/fold chaos. The first four low-blind levels are basically meaningless and might as well be removed entirely. The tournament should just start at 50/100 from Level 1.
The first hour wastes far too much time on tiny insignificant pots, endless waiting, players stalling, slow decisions, and poor calculations.
Meanwhile, once the tournament reaches 25k/50k blinds and above, the structure suddenly becomes way too fast and shallow. From that point onward, everything feels under 10BB and turns into pure luck and setup situations. Blind levels there should last at least 10 minutes instead of only 5 minutes like the early stages. Because realistically, only when players still have more than 20BB around the 50k/100k stage does it truly feel like an actual poker tournament.
On top of that, with tournaments having 3k–4k entries while only giving out around 24–40 ITM tickets each time, it honestly feels like you have to exhaust all your strength and burn through an entire year’s worth of luck just to win once.
At the very least, the ITM percentage should be around 5% to properly compensate the amount of effort, time, mental energy, and emotional pressure players invest into these tournaments.
So Funny!
