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EDIT: I will be replying to very common responses at the bottom of the thread to keep things relevant (so people don't have to read the entire thread to view all of the arguments, and so we can keep the same arguments from being repeated and shot down). If you feel that you've made a legitimate argument that I haven't responded to within 24 hours of posting, shoot me a PM!
Imagine, for a moment, that you are a young, aspiring poker player. You've played several home games and find yourself consistently beating your friends. Feeling on top of the world, you decide to venture into the world of online poker. Not wanting to get in too deep, too fast, you start with small $5 sit-n-gos on Pokerstars or Fulltilt.
STOP!
In the world of poker, a good player here might begin to gradually earn money and build bankroll. They may never sit across Phil Ivey, or out-read Negreanu, or put a play on Dwan, but this person could legitimately earn a small amount of cash over time by playing poker, even if he is never good enough to move up to high stakes games.
However, if the world of poker were anything like the world of Starcraft 2, this good player would never win a single tournament in his entire life. Why? All of the $5 and $10 sit and go tournies would be won by the world's best poker players. The average (or even well-above-average) poker player would likely never cash in any tournament because all of the world champions of poker would be dominating the lower stakes.
This happens every single week with the Starcraft 2 tournaments. The amount of skill chasing such few dollars is absolutely ridiculous. I've taken a small sample from just 4 small-cash tournaments that happen on a regular basis around here:
Undeniable Tournament
+ Show Spoiler +1 - Murder - $50
2 - Murder - $75
3 - Fenix - $100
4 - Fenix - $75
5 - Select - $75
6 - dignitasSjow - $75
7 - Taurent - $100
8 - Fenix - $100
7 - dignitasSjow - $100
8 - ROOTDrewbie - $100
9 - dignitasSjow - $100
10 - ROOTDrewbie - $100
11 - kawaiirice - $100
12 - dignitasSjow - $100
Wolf Cup
+ Show Spoiler +2 - MorroW - $50
3 - KawaiiRice - $50
4 - HuK - $50
5 - KawaiiRice - $50
6 - MorroW - $50
7 - Fenix - $50
8 - MorroW - $50
9 - MorroW - $50
10 - Fenix - $100
11 - Zelniq - $200
12 - TTOne - $50
13 - Fenix - $50
14 - Levin - $50
Craft Cup
+ Show Spoiler +1 - mouzStrelok - $50
2 - mouzStrelok - $50
3 - aTnSocke - $50
4 - NightEnD - $50
5 - NightEnD - $50
6 - SjoW - $100
7 - merz - $50
8 - aTnSocke - $120
9 - SjoW - $150
10 - SjoW - $150
11 - SjoW - $100
12 - tarson - $100
13 - Naugrim - $100
14 - sLDeathAngel - $150
Go4Sc2
+ Show Spoiler +1- Cloud - 200 EUR
2- Tarson - 200 EUR
3 - SjoW - 200 EUR
4 - Naama - 200 EUR
5 - Brat_OK - 200 EUR
6 - GoOdy - 200 EUR
7 - SjoW - 200 EUR
9 - MaNa - 200 EUR
10 - MaNa - 200 EUR
11 - Tarson - 200 EUR
12 - Socke - 200 EUR
These tournaments are all being won by some of the best players in the world. When I talk about "the best", I'm not talking about top-tier people like Idra, Ret, or Jinro, I'm talking about anyone who would make the top 200 (or even 300 or 400) list of any region. Compared to the number of people who play Starcraft 2 (3 million copies sold in the first month), these people represent a very small percentage (<0.05%) of the overall Starcraft 2 community.
This brings me to the "meat" of my problem with the current Starcraft 2 tournament scene....there's too much talent chasing too few dollars. There's just no money in it.
Now, I understand that there are plenty of people out there who say that the game should be played simply for the love of the game and that there's no reason that money should be a part of it, but if it could be, why not? When so many people are clamoring for Starcraft 2 to be taken seriously as an "E-Sport", and with so many eyes on the game (between Teamliquid web hits, stream viewers, professional match series observers, etc...etc...), why couldn't there be more money involved?
I think the single most detrimental problem afflicting the Starcraft 2 tournament scene is that there's simply no money going into it. The best players in the world are winning $50 tournaments. Much the same as my earlier example, it would be like a decent poker player enrolling in small-stakes online tournaments, simply to discover that the best poker players in the world are constantly sweeping every single event.
I believe the solution to this problem would be weekly buy-in tournaments. The Starcraft 2 community needs to stop relying on companies like Razer or individuals to donate money to prize pools in order for there to be any decent money for a prize pool. There would be a tremendous infusion of excitement and possibility for all Diamond players if small buy-in tournaments were to be popularized.
Imagine a 64 player, $10 buy-in tournament. With only 64 players involved, you have over $600 in the prize pool. You could go 400/200 for 1st/2nd, or even pay out some decent sized prizes to the top 4. With just 64 players (at $10 a player) you have a tournament with a larger prize pool than 99% of the tournaments currently posted on TL.
EDIT: After considering this for a while, I returned to poker to view the buy-in and prize structure. Awarding $600 between two people from a 64 player tournament would be pretty silly. $600, however, could very comfortably be split between the top 8, or even the top 16, and people would still be making enough money for tournaments to have an EV+ (an estimated positive return of investment).
HYPOTHETICAL PRIZE DISTRIBUTION FOR A 64 OR 128 PLAYER, $10 BUY-IN TOURNAMENT
+ Show Spoiler +$10 buy-in
64 players
10% Rake
$64 Rake, $576 prize pool
Award Percentage of Prize Pool
1 - 34.0%
2 - 21%
3 - 12.5%
4 - 12.5%
5 - 5%
6 - 5%
7 - 5%
8 - 5%
Actual Cash Prize Value
1 - $195.84
2 - $120.96
3 - $72.00
4 - $72.00
5 - $28.80
6 - $28.80
7 - $28.80
8 - $28.80
$10 buy-in
128 players
10% Rake
$128 Rake, $1,152 prize pool
Award Percentage of Prize Pool
1 - 26%
2 - 17%
3 - 11%
4 - 11%
5 - 4.75%
6 - 4.75%
7 - 4.75%
8 - 4.75%
9 - 2%
10 - 2%
11 - 2%
12 - 2%
13 - 2%
14 - 2%
15 - 2%
16 - 2%
Actual Cash Prize Value
1 - $299.52
2 - $195.84
3 - $126.72
4 - $126.72
5 - $54.72
6 - $54.72
7 - $54.72
8 - $54.72
9 - $23.04
10 - $23.04
11 - $23.04
12 - $23.04
13 - $23.04
14 - $23.04
15 - $23.04
16 - $23.04
Poll: Would you pay $10 USD to play in a Starcraft 2 Tournament?Yes (819) 68% No (382) 32% 1201 total votes Your vote: Would you pay $10 USD to play in a Starcraft 2 Tournament? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
If you include a rake in the tournament, all of a sudden there are millions of possibilities. Imagine that it's set-up similarly to poker rake, where the tournament hosts would keep a small percentage of the buy-in. $10 tournaments would be $9 into the prize pool and $1 into the rake. There are an almost limitless amount of possibilities that could spawn from that rake, including, but not limited to:
- People paying casters to cast their tournaments
- Websites being supported by more than constantly plugging products or begging for donations
- Teamliquid taking a small percentage of tourney rakes that they advertise, giving them money to pay coders/webdesigners
- More incentives for sponsors or advertisers to get involved
- People being more interested in taking lessons from top-tier gamers
I understand there are some boundaries to initially setting this up. Paying $10 for tournies where you have almost no chance of winning is discouraging. But if these tournies continue for a while, ideally the best players would be playing in better tournaments. It's the same way with poker today. Negranu and Ivey and Hellmuth don't play in small stakes because it's a waste of time for them. They'd much rather play in the larger stake games. If there were a lot of money in Starcraft 2 games from people paying to enter tournaments, the $5 and $10 tournaments would receive no interest from top players. They would be playing in the $25, $50 and $75 tournaments.
I know there are a lot of potential hurdles to this (local gambling laws, Blizzard's tournament registration policies, how money would be transferred), but I would really like to see the communities response to this idea. I know, from personal experience, that there ARE people out there willing to put SOME money into this game. I've seen it in the form of donations and I've seen it in people paying for lessons. As always, keep trolling/flaming to a minimum, constructive thoughts only, blah blah blah, love you. 
~Destiny
EDIT: Popular responses...
The best players are playing in small prize tournaments all the time, as is the point of the whole thread. If a player is ranked 100 in the top 200 and there's a 32 man or 64 man tournament with a $25 or $50 buy in, do you think that player is going to play in a 5 or 10 dollar tourney with a higher chance of winning or pay a lot more with a lot worse odds? I know this is going to come up a lot, so let me explain how free market principles dictate who plays in which tournaments.
If there were three different tournies at the same time every Friday, one at $5, one at $25, and one at $100, you would only be able to play in each one. At first glance, you might think, "Wow, Idra or Huk are just going to register and roll one of the smaller tournies, this sucks!" But think about it from Idra or Huk's perspective. How would you feel if you were one of the top gamers in the world and you saw that you were taking $200 prizes easily in smaller tournaments only to find that 2000 rated Diamond players were winning $4000 for 1st place finishes in larger ones? I think this would only need to happen ONCE before pro gamers quickly moved to the higher buy-in tournaments.
It would be foolish for top tier players to waste their talents in lower buy-in tournaments if other players of much lesser skill began to win large sums of money in the higher tournaments.
Blizzard won't allow it legal gambling herpes blah blah blah I understand there may be legal boundaries to this, but I'm not interested in those right now. I'm just interested in gauging the community interest/response. If tens of thousands of people are in favor of an idea, they will find a way to make it happen. And if there's an opportunity for blizzard to generate more interested for a game, and some income from it, too, such as taking a small percentage of the rake of all the tournaments, I couldn't see them saying no. But that's an entirely different discussion altogether.
Everyone has a shot at winning poker, and half the people at the table think they're the best person at the table, it's just the way the game works and it keeps people wanting to spend money thinking they're the best and them thinking its only a matter of time before the luck evens out and they become winners. A lot of people have been shooting down the parallels I draw between Poker and Starcraft because Poker has an element of luck involved in it that's entirely absent from Starcraft. While this is true, I believe it to be irrelevant to my example. I only used poker as an example because it's a sport where a lot of people with a huge range of skill can compete, and, due to the way buy-in structures work, almost ANY person who knows how to play, and practices hard, can earn money at SOME level.
I believe with different buy-in levels for Starcraft 2 tournaments, this same result could be achieved. The better the player you are, the higher in buy-ins you will trend to. The noobier you feel, the lower the stakes you would be comfortable playing. A bronze player will not enter a $200 buy-in because he knows he's simply throwing away his money, but an S Class, 2-time GSL champion will not enter a $5 buy-in tournament because he doesn't want to see someone of a much lesser skill win more money in a higher buy-in.
Such as only allowing people to of a certain league to play in certain tournaments. You just setup tournaments with a threshold on ladder level and points cutoffs. It's not rocket surgery. I want to squash this idea now. Free market principles NEED to weed out higher level players from lower level tournaments, otherwise it would be impossible to figure out who's smurfing or who's borrowing a friends' account to easily win in a "plat only" tourney. Does anyone remember ICCup? The HARDEST tournies on ICCup were the D tournies, because all of the A+++ players would create new accounts to smurf them.
There isn't anything stopping players from entering all 3 tournaments at once. I think there are a lot of people concerned with pros simply playing multiple tournaments competitively. They would play for real in the $100 tournies and then sweep the smaller ones. I think that spreading out the prize pool between the top 25% or so of the finishing players would decrease the incentive for this kind of behavior. Another idea, perhaps, would be to have all of these tournaments on the same day, so people were forced to choose between buy-ins, instead of simply playing all of them.
tl;dr: Luck in poker, no luck in SC2 + Show Spoiler +I have seen that you already responded to the "element of luck" argument, but i think you didnt get the point:
If someone wants to earn money by playing a SC2/poker tournament, there HAS to be someone else in this tournament losing money.
So why would someone participate in a tournament to lose money?
A: The player is aware of it, but participates anyway because he wants to play.
B: The player does not realize he is losing money.
Why A is true for poker:
Some sort of currency is essential to play poker. While it is possible to play with playmoney, the game is way more exciting when played with real money and there are people, who are willing to lose some bucks in exchange for some entertainment.
Why A isnt true for starcraft:
As long as free sponsored tournaments exist there is no reason to participate in a buyin tournament with no/little chance to get in the money at all.
Why B is true for poker:
short: (huge) element of luck
long: A losing player (a player who has a negative expected value) will occasionally win money in a tournament. A winning player( a player who has a positive expected value) will regularly lose money in a tournament. This means you cannot determine if you are a winning or a losing player based on your results as long as you dont have a huge sample size of tournaments played(we are talking about thousands of tournaments)
Why B isnt true for starcraft:
short: no(/little) element of luck
long: If you lose to a player on balanced maps, no build order loses involved you can be pretty sure he is better than you. If theres a tournament full of people, who are probably better than you, you know you will lose money by participating.
So basically what will happen is, in week 1 the 64 best players will participate in the 64 man tournament(lets assume top8 get paid) with the highest buyin. after that, at least 32 players will realize they have almost no chance at getting top 8 in that field. In week 2 there will only be 32 players left ( + some idiots who won money in the second highest buyin tourney). So there are less than 64 players participating, generating a smaller prizepool and a tougher field, thus making it unprofitable for even more players.
The 32 players who dont participate anymore will move down to the second highest buyin tournament, making this tournament unprofitable for other players, which will then move down also.
So every week every tournament is getting tougher, until no one can play any tournament profitably.
I think this post best illustrates why people believe that luck is such a huge factor in this SC2 buy-in tournament idea, and how it makes comparing poker to SC2 a false dichotomy, of sorts.
Poker does indeed have a great deal of luck involved (or at least enough of the illusion of luck to keep bringing fish back into the game). The only way for a few to make money playing SC2 in these sorts of tournaments is for many people to lose money, again, this is true.
However, with the buy-in and payout structure mentioned earlier in my post, I believe it's possible that people from a wide variety of skill levels will be able to profit from these tournaments, or at least will believe they can.
Let's say they first tournament is launched. In this hypothetical tournament with my previous pay-out structure outlined (top 8 receive money), it's almost a guarantee that those top 8 will want to participate again, as their next tournament buy-in will essentially be "free". The next 8 will probably want to participate again as well, as they were only 1 place away. So 16 are probably going to re-register. The next 16, from the ro32, may feel like they could get "in the money" with a lucky bracket reshuffle. That leaves us with the final 32 that you mention.
In a perfect world, skill will be distributed appropriately through-out the buy-ins. People of greater skill will play in higher buy-in tournaments (as there is more money to be won) and people of lesser skill will play in smaller tournaments. If someone is playing in a $25 tourney and they keep struggling to get past the ro64, or can never get past the ro32, perhaps dropping down to the next tourney (where they see some players finishing in the ro16 or ro32 that they KNOW they can beat) would be appropriate for them.
The only people who would really feel like they could NEVER compete would be people playing in the absolute lowest buy-in tournament who are unable to get out of the ro64. The prize money near the top could serve as motivation to improve, but they could also just play in the tourney for the chance of getting a good bracket shuffle so they can make it to or near the money. These players would be playing for such low stakes ($5 or less) that they wouldn't feel like absolute shit for throwing away the money, especially when you take into account how much money we throw at entertainment in our daily lives.
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Canada1637 Posts
I'm not really convinced that top players would stick to $25+ tournies while lesser players would play in the $5-10, I think the better odds of winning against easier players would keep them playing lower stakes. The SNG format works great for poker because even fish will win on occasion, in SC2 its much harder, and while a fish might be able to beat a decent player in the odd BO3, winning a 64 man tournament is near impossible and after a few attempts there is no incentive to keep trying.
I do overall like the idea and thought process though, definitely agree the amount of skill chasing such a small amount of money is insane, especially because a tournament will take like all freakin' day (unlike getting donked out quickly in an SNG and being able to start another) and only 3 spots out of 64 get money? I'm in the top 200 and probably could compete and do well in these tournaments, but I never feel like dedicated my entire weekend to playing in 2 tournaments in which I have a 2% chance of winning 50 bucks.
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Cool idea man, not sure I would want to pay 10$ atm but that is relatent to my lack of practice and suckiness as of late;)
There is a HAMER TIME missing after the stop!
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Actually, I think this is a pretty good idea, but why hasn't Blizzard thought of this already? I mean like I'm pretty sure they would've thought it out or something, since they probably will make money off this.
Personally I wouldn't enter cause I suck at it but, I can imagine it happening.
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Fundamentally flawed. Poker has luck involved, Starcraft 2 has barely any.
If you had a million tournaments, the top 200 players will win a million of them.
The skill gap is MUCH bigger and VERY defined in Starcraft 2. Looking at a guy's ranking and seeing him 2600 Diamond while you're 1900 Diamond means your likelihood to lose is probably 90%. This doesn't inspire buy-ins.
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I voted yes because I've done it before at a local LAN tournament.
I stopped, though, because the same player (LzGaMeR) won every time and I decided to stop wasting my money.
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There's no money going into SC2? I think that there's a lot of money going into SC2 compared to BW... like A LOT more. Anyways, there's plenty of tournaments that people can join in and win.
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Fish don't play in $100 buy-in poker tournaments. I don't think Idra would be happy with himself if he registered to win a $10 buy-in tournament and then saw that 2200 Diamond players were winning many many times more money than him in higher buy-in tournies.
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Opportunity cost my friend. If you get enough tourneys out there, then theoretically it's flat out NOT WORTH THE TIME for the pros to play in small stakes tourneys.
By the way, there is a ton of money out there, but it's all going to the same group, and like 60k of it is going to the GSL rofl.
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On December 14 2010 14:22 a9arnn wrote:
There's no money going into SC2? I think that there's a lot of money going into SC2 compared to BW... like A LOT more. Anyways, there's plenty of tournaments that people can join in and win. I'm not trying to sound arrogant or rude, but you say this because you have no concept of what "A LOT" of money is. I'm reading over the four tournies worth of results I pulled and I see the best players in the world competing for $50 prizes. That's 1/20th of my mortgage payment, bro. I need to win 6 of those tournies in first place just to pay for 1 car payment. This is why people stop competing competitively in this game when they get past 25 years old in age, the money is just not there for it.
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I'd like to add that although in his example he used a 64 person tournament, it doesn't have to be that exactly. It could be an 8 man tourney with $10 buy in. It could be a 128 person tournament with $50 buy in, it's only limited to the imagination. Personally I'd probably only enter $1 tourneys till I got more skilled/made more money.
Edit: One more thought to all the people saying that newbs wont ever enter these tournaments because they know they have a zero chance of winning, that's flatly not true at all. A lot of what makes tournaments appealing is the fun of it! I'll use my own poker example for this one:
At the place I used to work at my manager decided to start having poker nights at his house with $20 buy in. There were usually 4-6 tables with 6 people each. Some of these people were avid poker players and I almost never played poker at all. In fact it was my first time learning Texas hold 'em to be honest. Even though I knew my chances of even getting to the last table were slim I still went several times because of the fun of it!
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good idea, but how exactly would one person set up a tournament? Would it be through custom games and stuff? Agreed with Adebisi. very great idea, but they should have tournaments with a max level entry, so it is fair. Again it could go into different directions but a very good idea
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I actually like this concept, tourneys have always had a buy in to have a shot at the prize, I don't really know why people are expecting money for nothing in the sc2 scene.
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I had a similar idea to this but disregarded this, but judging opll results it seems like paying to enter would actually be reasonable. I think this wouldn't violate gambling laws, just because it't like any entry fee to a tourney: there shouldn't be problems in that realm
I can't remember how many tl accounts there are, but I figured if everyone chipped in $5 we could beat the GSL Prizepool :D
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Canada1637 Posts
On December 14 2010 14:24 FroZen(-_-) wrote:
good idea, but how exactly would one person set up a tournament? Would it be through custom games and stuff? Agreed with Adebisi. very great idea, but they should have tournaments with a max level entry, so it is fair. Again it could go into different directions but a very good idea
Problem with a "max level entry" is it just gets abused. Gold only tournament for $1000? Lemme go get on my roommates account o.O!
edit: Also, could playing SC2 for money possibly be legally considered gambling?
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On December 14 2010 14:24 avidday04 wrote:
I'd like to add that although in his example he used a 64 person tournament, it doesn't have to be that exactly. It could be an 8 man tourney with $10 buy in. It could be a 128 person tournament with $50 buy in, it's only limited to the imagination. Personally I'd probably only enter $1 tourneys till I got more skilled/made more money.
Issue with $1 is that the paypal would actually cost whoever recieved teh money quite a bit. At least $5 entry, or you end up in a situation where they can pay out MAX 60% rofl, the rest goes to paypal.
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I love the idea. I think the main problem is that since there is such small prize pools, only first and second place get prizes. If prize pools got larger, I would like to see 3rd-8th (or whatever number) making money too. If more people have the opportunity to win money in a tournament, then I think people would be more willing to take the chance. It would get kind of tiring to pay $10 a tournament only to lose at the quarterfinal (or where ever) consistently. That money adds up.
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Even thought voting says otherwise, I think very soon people would stop paying an entry fee to play an sc2 tourney they had no realistic shot of winning. Why pay any money for a tournament where your pretty much guaranteed to lose money when you could play some other tournaments for free.
You can't run sc2 like you do a poker tournament because of the skill/luck ratio involved. A completely terrible poker player can (and has many times) won poker tournaments just because they were running incredibly hot that tournament and won all their flips. That's what brings so many people to play poker tournaments and pay money because literally anyone can win. Definitely not true for sc
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On December 14 2010 14:26 Adebisi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 14:24 FroZen(-_-) wrote:
good idea, but how exactly would one person set up a tournament? Would it be through custom games and stuff? Agreed with Adebisi. very great idea, but they should have tournaments with a max level entry, so it is fair. Again it could go into different directions but a very good idea Problem with a "max level entry" is it just gets abused. Gold only tournament for $1000? Lemme go get on my roommates account o.O!
yeah this is stupid. Obviously if you are buying in to a tournament you want to be competitive. Anything that money is getting put into by a player is a high level tournament with high level players. On top of that you would have way less of those fucking walkovers in the ro8 because the guy prioritized another tournament over this one.
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I don't get your last point. If players like MorroW are playing in $50 tournaments and you say these 10$ buy-in tournaments will raise 600$, then wouldn't the pros be playing that instead. I think part of the problem is that it is too easy to compete. A football player can't play a bunch of games a day, meanwhile idra can replace his mass ladder games with these tournies and make a fortune. I think a better answer would be to increase the number of these 50$ weekly tournaments because i heard from the top pros that say they are barely worth the time and increasing the number would guarantee wins from unknowns.
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Go read the Blizzard terms of use when you apply to run a tournament you cannot run a buyin tournament Blizzard will not allow it.
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I'm pretty sure that Blizzard doesn't allow tournaments to charge an entry fee.
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On December 14 2010 14:27 Froadac wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On December 14 2010 14:24 avidday04 wrote:
I'd like to add that although in his example he used a 64 person tournament, it doesn't have to be that exactly. It could be an 8 man tourney with $10 buy in. It could be a 128 person tournament with $50 buy in, it's only limited to the imagination. Personally I'd probably only enter $1 tourneys till I got more skilled/made more money. Issue with $1 is that the paypal would actually cost whoever recieved teh money quite a bit. At least $5 entry, or you end up in a situation where they can pay out MAX 60% rofl, the rest goes to paypal.
You are assuming paypal is the only option. On a larger scale project you can have an independent payment service that's unique to the starcraft tourneys. Plus I'm sure there are other payservices that are available besides scampa- errr paypal.
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On December 14 2010 14:23 Froadac wrote:
Opportunity cost my friend. If you get enough tourneys out there, then theoretically it's flat out NOT WORTH THE TIME for the pros to play in small stakes tourneys.
By the way, there is a ton of money out there, but it's all going to the same group, and like 60k of it is going to the GSL rofl.
The only problem I can see is that they are already doing that exact same thing now. The best players are playing in small prize tournaments all the time, as is the point of the whole thread. If a player is ranked 100 in the top 200 and there's a 32 man or 64 man tournament with a $25 or $50 buy in, do you think that player is going to play in a 5 or 10 dollar tourney with a higher chance of winning or pay a lot more with a lot worse odds?
Maybe this would work but I really think there needs to be a ladder point restriction of some sort. That way tournaments could be separated to have players of similar skill involved. You could even have 5, 10, 25 etc dollar buy ins for bronze, silver, gold, plat, and diamond. I think the OP's idea would work well then, that way I could enter into a 'Under 2500k Diamond $5 Dollar Buy In Tournament" without worrying that all the best Diamond players would also be playing.
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On December 14 2010 14:31 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
Go read the Blizzard terms of use when you apply to run a tournament you cannot run a buyin tournament Blizzard will not allow it.
I think he is implying that Blizzard run these tournaments which would change things.
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On December 14 2010 14:31 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
Go read the Blizzard terms of use when you apply to run a tournament you cannot run a buyin tournament Blizzard will not allow it. I understand there are possible hurdles to this, but I'm not interested in having a legal debate over an idea that the community might not care about anyway, please try to just stick to the idea.
If there are thousands/millions of people behind an idea, they will find a way to make it happen.
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I really like your thinking. And your poker analogy is one I'm personally familiar with. Although I was never what I would consider a very good poker player I could made some money on some tables with low blinds.
Some people are saying that the pros will continue to play in the small prize tournaments because it's so easy to play in many tournaments. Certainly I agree that's true currently. The question is whether there could ever be so many tournaments that they couldn't anymore. I suppose maybe. Personally I'd put some money up to play in tournaments where I would have a chance of winning, and I think so would a lot of other people. but it would be difficult to get the ball rolling because when these tournaments first sprung up, top players would still likely be playing in them.
I think another possible problem is that most people who play starcraft aren't as interested in the exchange of money as your average online poker player. Not nearly as interested. I like your idea a lot but I think there would be quite a difficult transition period where average players would put up money and would be destined to lose.
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if we had simultanous tournaments running, 'pro-players' would be distributed among the competitions increasing the chances of 'average-players' to win some money.
but then again. this is gambling and against blizzard tou.
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lol how many people in the US played baseball growing up?
and how many realised they werent going pro in it?
probably less than the 0.05% or w/e that make money from starcraft..
actually, if you put your mind to it, you have a MUCH better chance to make money at sc2 than most "real" sports.
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On December 14 2010 14:31 iCCup.Raelcun wrote:
Go read the Blizzard terms of use when you apply to run a tournament you cannot run a buyin tournament Blizzard will not allow it.
Couldn't you technically just not apply to Blizzard for the tournament, and have it "behind their backs"?
I can't see how it's possible for them to monitor every tournament ever.
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@ Steven.Bonnell.II
first half i was thinking dam hes right.
but than i think i miss the point.
why should a 500 points dia newb put money in when he knows he has 0 chance of winning?
why should i put 10$ in when i know i will die in round 4-5 against a pro like in all other tournements i play? perhaps when its new people will do it 1 time. when they see they have no chance they stop doing it. When you make tournements for each skill level you have the problem that people will hide there skill to play in lower tournements.
to the Blizzard will not allow it. i think thats right but not a good point. in most countrys on the world nobody cares if blizzard allows it or not. you dont have to run it in southkorea. you can run any tournement with sc2 without asking blizz on most countrys. they will not sue you because they know there is no way they win.
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it is a good concept, but not entirely feasible. Like you stated, the issue is money for people, and putting in 10$ every week or soe for a tourney is not worthwhile, even for a low level player. The reality is that many gamers are cheap, as a result of being a student and not having a job. Hell, so many people complain about the cost of Gomtv and pirate on a regular basis. Don't get me wrong, I love the idea, put the best way to get this rolling is to have sponsors offer the small tourneys in ADDITION to big tournies. That way, sponsors can run a tourney for the small names at the same time as with the big names, which solves several problems at once (big players playing in small pools)
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You can't really compare prizes in Starcraft with prizes in poker because the game of poker actually revolves around money while Starcraft does not.
Ultimately, I don't think prize money is the way to support gamers. Salaries are a far better option in my opinion because it is a more consistent and reliable way for a player's skill to translate into earnings. And in order for salaries to actually exist and be significant, money doesn't need to be infused into Starcraft, greater viewership does. If more people desire their services, more players will be paid, and players will be paid more. Having pro teams emerge and players actually being recruited and paid like in Korea and for other sports like football would be ideal, but it will only happen if there's a large enough audience.
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Enervate, I think Starcraft 2 players appear incredibly cheap, however. As a company, why on earth would I want to sponsor a game where the players whine and cry about having to pay a measly $30 for GOMTV subscription fees???
The whole point of sponsoring is that it's a point of advertising, and if the company thinks the people are too cheap to buy anything in the first place, why bother advertising (or at least spending that much on it) at all?
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OK talking hypothetically assuming Blizzard would allow this to happen ...
One thing you have to realise is that you're not "infusing cash into SC2", like anything with a rake, you're skimming cash off of SC2. Just like with poker a few people get very rich and most people get a little poorer. To make such a pyramid scheme work you need a community of people who will put money into the system.
I don't really feel the SC2 has that kind of demographic. I'm not sure it would ever have that kind of demographic. It's a lot harder to fool yourself into thinking you're winning in SC2 than poker. One of the things that makes the poker scene work is the variance, even bad players can win on a good day. I don't think SC2 has that "anyone can beat anyone" aspect that poker has.
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On December 14 2010 14:46 Shakes wrote:
OK talking hypothetically assuming Blizzard would allow this to happen ...
One thing you have to realise is that you're not "infusing cash into SC2", like anything with a rake, you're skimming cash off of SC2. Just like with poker a few people get very rich and most people get a little poorer. To make such a pyramid scheme work you need a community of people who will put money into the system.
I don't really feel the SC2 has that kind of demographic. I'm not sure it would ever have that kind of demographic. It's a lot harder to fool yourself into thinking you're winning in SC2 than poker. One of the things that makes the poker scene work is the variance, even bad players can win on a good day. I don't think SC2 has that "anyone can beat anyone" aspect that poker has. I agree 100%! But I think that would make investing money into SC2 an even MORE exciting prospect - if I train hard and bring my best game to the tournament, I can be rewarded with a cash prize.
I don't think buy-in tournaments would "skim" any cash off of Starcraft 2, because it's money that's not currently going into it anyway.
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While I fully support having entry fees for tournaments, I don't think it would actually solve any problems. Also, I've heard from a few different places that there are serious restrictions on charging entry fees for SC2 tournaments. At first I was under the impression they weren't allowed to do it at all but I think MLG charges so there must be some specific rules on it.
SC2 lends itself to a different kind of mindset than poker, MTG, or any other game where the occasional lucky break can hyper-inflate a player's self-sense of skill. Even though everyone that plays SC2 thinks that they're god's gift to theorycrafting, most are also painfully aware of how their game is deficient in other areas. Blowing $10 per tournament gets old when it becomes clear that I have a very long way to go before I can even hope to pu ll second place. The pro players aren't dumb either. Why would they pay $200 to enter into the super-ultra-pro-competitive tournament when they could just drop down a level and dominate the whole thing. And then other pros do that too, and eventually the $200 SUPC tourney is just a token showing that no one really cares about and all the pros are looking to make an income off of lower level games. Then the low level players realize that these low level games aren't really that low level and they stop trying.
In fact, if I were looking to "go pro", I'd love the fact that there are pros playing for these measly prize pools with no barrier to entry. It'd mean that with a bit of time and effort, if I was good enough, I'd be able to make a splash.
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How can you expect there to be "enough" money in it when the game is so young? You have to give it time bro, the scene is just developing.
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that would work for a few weeks at most. then people would start to realize that the same few guys who always win still always win this tournament and nobody is going to want to play it.
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On December 14 2010 14:50 R0YAL wrote:
How can you expect there to be "enough" money in it when the game is so young? You have to give it time bro, the scene is just developing. Developing like what, Brood war did??? There was never much money in that game for the average player, either. I doubt anyone below A+ ICCup ever made a dime off of SC:BW. :/
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On December 14 2010 14:50 heishe wrote:
that would work for a few weeks at most. then people would start to realize that the same few guys who always win still always win this tournament and nobody is going to want to play it.
But to replace the people that give up are the smaller amount of people that are willing to work even harder than the top players and will catch up and surpass their skill level.
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i think the principles behind this are sound and i can definitely see the interest behind it
i know i myself recently was doing fairly well in a low, low stakes tournament only to come up against effing inflowmini. im a 2100 point player playing a top 200(i think hes like 3100 or something ridculous). feels really pointless and unfair. lucky for me the tournament was canceled before i could embarrass myself, but still, i had no chance at all.
the problems i see are definitely legal. blizzard(blizzard-activision i mean...) is definitely not going to approve of anyone else making a profit off their game without them getting some kind of a cut. so you may want to contact them as well and see what their policy is for independent buy in tournaments
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Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but Blizzard does not allow entry fees to SC2 tournaments.
EDIT: Ok, it's been mentioned several times...derp
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Wow this is exactly what I was just going to ask. I'm in the process of trying to put together a LAN event in San Francisco sometime in either late March, April, or even May possibly. And yeah I was wondering if people would pay $25 to play with the potential for like a $1000 prize pool for a 64 man tournament. Now 25x64 doesnt equal out but this is an idea of the prize after the costs of advertising, renting the space, flying in a big name caster and what not. I'm going to create a post asking if people would come out to play at a LAN tourney for $25. I completely agree with you though there are far too sponsors and far to many of us trying to enjoy the game and make a few bucks off it. You are absolutely right!
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On December 14 2010 14:22 a9arnn wrote:
There's no money going into SC2? I think that there's a lot of money going into SC2 compared to BW... like A LOT more. Anyways, there's plenty of tournaments that people can join in and win.
On December 14 2010 14:50 R0YAL wrote:
How can you expect there to be "enough" money in it when the game is so young? You have to give it time bro, the scene is just developing.
I bet years from now people will be spouting the same thing you just spouted and it'll still be about 10 players total that make any money from tournament winnings, and the very few that do, it's less than even minimum wage.
It's incredibly (see: not possible) to make a lot of money living off of pure tournaments. The people that are making money from SC2 are the ones that are coaching, streaming, or already on a team.
It's very tricky, because you have to commit so much to this game with only the CHANCE to make money, so you need to be very good + even more lucky enough to find a team to sponsor you. etc. etc.
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nobody is going to run a tournament without putting 5% into the person whose running its pockets. Simply put too many of these guys are going to file chargebacks once they lose.
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I would love to see <5$ buy ins actually, as a way to really make it not worth it for pros. I'm sure any amauters here would be estatic if they won 50$ from a 1$ per person tourny.
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I don't see how this is different than regular sports. Would a high school benchwarmer earn anything at all? No. He would have to be top of his high school to even be considered for going pro.
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On December 14 2010 14:49 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 14:46 Shakes wrote:
OK talking hypothetically assuming Blizzard would allow this to happen ...
One thing you have to realise is that you're not "infusing cash into SC2", like anything with a rake, you're skimming cash off of SC2. Just like with poker a few people get very rich and most people get a little poorer. To make such a pyramid scheme work you need a community of people who will put money into the system.
I don't really feel the SC2 has that kind of demographic. I'm not sure it would ever have that kind of demographic. It's a lot harder to fool yourself into thinking you're winning in SC2 than poker. One of the things that makes the poker scene work is the variance, even bad players can win on a good day. I don't think SC2 has that "anyone can beat anyone" aspect that poker has. I agree 100%! But I think that would make investing money into SC2 an even MORE exciting prospect - if I train hard and bring my best game to the tournament, I can be rewarded with a cash prize. I don't think buy-in tournaments would "skim" any cash off of Starcraft 2, because it's money that's not currently going into it anyway.
I know where you're coming from, I've heard you whinge on your stream about tournaments not being worthwhile, but you're a guy who hovers around the top 200 somewhere. While that may not make you the Phil Ivey of the SC2 world, it does put you on equivalent the sort of level where if you had that skill in poker you could be a full time pro. I can certainly see why you might enter the tournaments you're proposing.
The problem I see isn't from the good players, it's from the bad players who have to put the money in to pay off the good players. In poker they're plentiful. In SC2, like I said, they're not going to be deluding themselves that they're any good. You can easily play ten thousand hands of poker, come up a decent sized winner but still, in the long run, turn out to be a losing player. Nobody plays even a hundred games of starcraft without having a pretty decent idea of how good they are. So while fish in poker might chip in their money because they don't know they're bad, what mechanism is there in SC2 to put your money in?
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A good idea yes;however there is luck involved in poker which leads to miracle stories such as Chris Moneymaker and a ton of other unknowns who sweeps the field to take down a WPT/WSOP bracelet . This simply will not happen in Sc2. This is why it just simply won't work.
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I wouldn't put $10 to play in a 64 man tourney if oen of these pros who wins every tourney is in them , what would be the point? Might as well chuck the money away.
If you're playing starcraft2 to get rich you're in it for the wrong reasons.
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On December 14 2010 14:24 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 14:22 a9arnn wrote:
There's no money going into SC2? I think that there's a lot of money going into SC2 compared to BW... like A LOT more. Anyways, there's plenty of tournaments that people can join in and win. I'm not trying to sound arrogant or rude, but you say this because you have no concept of what "A LOT" of money is. I'm reading over the four tournies worth of results I pulled and I see the best players in the world competing for $50 prizes. That's 1/20th of my mortgage payment, bro. I need to win 6 of those tournies in first place just to pay for 1 car payment. This is why people stop competing competitively in this game when they get past 25 years old in age, the money is just not there for it.
"a lot of money going into SC2 compared to BW" I know that they still can't make a living off of gaming, that's the problem with all competitive video games, there's not enough of a consistent flow of money like for the "physical" sports. I was just comparing to BW.
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On December 14 2010 14:57 Whiladan wrote:
Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but Blizzard does not allow entry fees to SC2 tournaments.
i'm a little puzzled by this. from their tournament license FAQ:
Q: Are there any fees associated with acquiring a StarCraft II tournament license?
A: Tournament licenses are generally free. To protect our players, we may require that organizers adhere to additional rules and regulations if the organizer charges entry fees and/or intends to pay out large cash prizes.
doesn't this imply that entry fees are acceptable? or does this only apply to LAN entry?
in any case, i like the idea of buy-in tournaments.
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Good find with the tourney rules Likado!
There is one thing though that I've not seen anyone mention yet. Nerves. This can level the playing field a lot. When there is money on the line, especially when you are getting close to winning 1st, a good player can crack under the pressure and play like garbage whereas a lesser player may have nerves of steel. That can give a 'fish' the edge he needs to place high, or even win, a tourney. This isn't a major point but I thought it was worth mentioning.
In addition to that, just like in poker, you aren't just playing the game, you are playing the person. You can use deception, faking, and unique plays to advance. Even top players like IdrA is susceptible to things like this. Remember when he found the build order that toss was planning in gsl 1 on lost temple, the colossus rush? What did he do? The toss faked the colossus rush but rushed voidrays instead, so IdrAs army of roaches was useless. People shouldn't say lesser players have no chance, that's simply not true.
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I fail to see what the problem is with only the top <0.05% of the Starcraft II community making money from tournaments. Look at any other sport. Only the top .05% of people who play football, tennis, baseball, soccer, basketball or hockey make money doing so.
Why is it a problem that Joe Everybody doesn't make money for doing something he's not very good at (compared to the professionals) for fun?
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The opening post puts a strong case for why i'm-going-pro bloggers should keep SC2 as a fun, if serious, hobby and not expect fortune or efame in the near future.
If someone made a chart of SC2 players, their tournament wins, and then the time they spent as a serious amateur or professional in previous games the results would be quite sobering. The vast majority of top players, especially from BW, have been playing competitive RTS for years either as skilled amateurs (Jinro) or professionals (Iron). Any aspiring player should similarly expect to put in several years developing the mindset of how to improve before becoming a consistently good player, and without b-team practice houses, it's very difficult to sustain oneself while pursuing that goal.
Currently the game being somewhat unmapped (or has room for improvement, depending on your view) allows for more upstarts to win or place high in the odd tournament, and coupled with the hype and news coverage of SC2 gives them delusions about 'going pro'.
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On December 14 2010 15:05 Likado wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 14:57 Whiladan wrote:
Not sure if it has been mentioned yet, but Blizzard does not allow entry fees to SC2 tournaments.
i'm a little puzzled by this. from their tournament license FAQ: Show nested quote +Q: Are there any fees associated with acquiring a StarCraft II tournament license?
A: Tournament licenses are generally free. To protect our players, we may require that organizers adhere to additional rules and regulations if the organizer charges entry fees and/or intends to pay out large cash prizes.
doesn't this imply that entry fees are acceptable? or does this only apply to LAN entry? in any case, i like the idea of buy-in tournaments.
IIRC, a tournament license is only free in the case of low cash prizes+no entry fee.
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great idea, I would also add that you could make it "private sign-ups", so that in 5$ tourneys people will not be afraid of signin up because "this player" or "this one" has decided to enter. Players would be revealed like 1-2 days before closing signups etc.
imo we just need more tournaments, and those who sign up is because they think they have a legit shot at doing it, which wouldnt mind them to pay 5-10$ to play a tourney. This can also ensure commentators/hosts to have some money too.
+1 on this idea
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In poker everyone feels like they have a shot because poker is mostly luck. The law of large numbers allows poker pros to be successful. SC2 is more like basketball where someone with more skill will win almost every single time. People might be willing to pay $10 to go to a tournament for a little while, but eventually after the same couple of players win every time they'll stop going.
This happened where I live with free super smash brothers tournaments at the local library. There were a few players who were the SSBM equivalent of 2500 diamond who came to the tournament and everyone else was gold or silver. They trounced every one of us. As the tournaments continued, less and less people came to the SSBM event.
I can understand that everyone wants to make a living playing video games. People just need to be a little more reasonable with their dreams.
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i love this idea and i can't believe theirs 3 page of mostly possitive comments on this already
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
I like the idea of buy-in tournaments, and I do like your train of thought that it can (not will, but CAN) lead to more money going into Starcraft through sponsors and advertisers, once more events start popping up.
The one concern is, of course, if the general SC2 population is interested in buy-in tournaments, which depends on their belief that they can make back that money they invest. Even if you play the game "because you love it", spending money on a tournament is not easy, and earning money (or in fact, any sort of positive reinforcement) feels good. Most will think "why should I spend if I have no chance of winning??"
I think the solution to that is to expand the spots that get prizes. For example, in a $10, 64 man tournament, I don't think the split should be $300/200/100. Instead, it should probably be more like $220 for first, $120 for second, $50 for 3rd and 4th, $20 for 5th-8th, and $10 for 8th-16th. This will encourage more people to join, because you don't need to finish near the top to break even. You only need to advance a few rounds, and you can make a nice 100% profit. This kind of prize split makes the top prizes smaller, which will help to make it less enticing for top players, but more interesting for casual players. The manageable break-even point will also make tournaments like these more agreeable, financially, for normal players.
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$10 to play in a tournament? it would have to no more than 64 ppl and bo3 and double elim or else no its not worth it.
buy ins to tourneys arent the answer here. as to what exactly is i wont go into because its too broad and unexplored!
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As much as I would like to see this happen, Blizzard is a United States video game company, not an online gambling company.
It is completely illegal for Blizzard to do this under Federal Law, and something tells me Blizz isn't gonna be moving their operations to Costa Rica and run under the table transactions through WU...
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I've posted it in a different thread, but my website http://ehcg.djgamblore.com/ contains reasonably up to date standings for money earned by SC2 players including a lot of beta events.
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Personally I think blizzard should let people deposit money and then have their own buy-in tournaments... even ones like $0.25 to enter like there is in poker. I enjoy playing with not a lot of money.. winning even a little is fun with not much risk lol.. I even took a screenshot of my win of $11.70 in one of the small tourneys I entered on poker lol.. I also agree with splitting the money up more for people so there is less risk allowing some to earn enough to enter another tournament..
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I think that the main problem is that poker is still at its core gambling. There is a large element of luck involved in the game. A person can have a legitimate shot at beating a pro depending on how the cards turn out. In Starcraft it is arguable there is some luck but there is alot of skill.
Let's say I'm a prospective player, I play at 2k diamond and I see a 10 dollar buy in 64 man tournament. Prizes are split between top3. Then I look at the list of entrants. IdrA, Jinro and Huk have all entered. My odds of walking away with any money dropped down to close to zero. It suddenly becomes alot less attractive for me enter.
Also poker has the advantage in that there has always been money associated with it. Starcraft it is still pretty unusual for players to have a buyin for a tournament.
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I believe the problem is that pro players aren't properly supported, so they have to constantly compete in these small touneys to make ends meet. If Blizzard wants to have a stranglehold on the tournament scene, they need to establish some kind of official pro league that guarantees compensation.
Right now, there are only a handful of players capable of actually winning tournaments, and even if they put in money, it's only going to be a few hundred bucks for prizes. Blizzard needs to monetize the game better by working with other companies to sponsor the game, and create more of a spectator sport environment. Once the pros are supported, they'll have no need to compete in these weekly tourneys, opening up the chance for the average diamond player to make some money.
Basically Blizzard needs to create an NBA-type of thing for the pros with official teams, and then independent organizations can register with Blizzard to hold amateur tournaments, where pros would not be allowed to play. So it's all in Blizzard hands, and they aren't handling it so well.
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I didnt vote because of the "US" in the question. i don't have an NA account so it would be NO anyways 
Problem is, with an entry fee you scare away a loooot of players and thats not what you want. rather have some more sponsors and make it 200€ like go4sc2 (and thats only the cups on saturday, there's even more at the monthly final).
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It's a cool idea but I can't see it happening legally. Sure you could probably get away with a couple small scale tournaments running this way (running as a not for profit organisation with "donations" and "gifts"). But if it becomes large scale and gains any amount of decent publicity it will be definitely shut down unless theres appropriate capital to pay licensing fees etc... Let alone running it online across multiple countries, the investment required would be astronomical.
That's not even thinking about player interest, there's absolutely nothing to say a semi-pro player wont buy in anyway and that you will be just as interested in entering as much as you do the current tournaments.
There are lots of other issues, I wont really go in to it because it would take quite a while to write up properly, and I don't really have the time, but hey, if you really like the idea, go for it! Tonnes of entrepreneurs have just started with a cool idea.
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On December 14 2010 15:26 byFar wrote:
i love this idea and i can't believe theirs 3 page of mostly possitive comments on this already
IF by positive you mean naive and uninformed, sure.
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Only way it would work was if there were tens of thousands of players interested in tournament play for cash.
You need a huge number of tournaments to guarantee the top players would be playing the better ones. The large number would diffuse the population a lot more through the different tournaments.
BUT
I think a better idea is a free tournament format. (at least at the start) The tournament brackets and matching would be taken care of by battle-net directly, you just sign up and compete in single elimination Bo3 style. Winning could get trophies, or new avatars, or other crap.
It allows for tournament "experience" without having to pay anything, but still having something to fight for.
None of this will likely ever happen. The closest will be fan-run tournaments where you pay your "buy-in" through paypal, and kinda do it yourself. But I'm not even sure that's allowed, or if it would actually happen.
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I agree with you 100%
E-Sports is hindered by the lack of incoming money. It simply cannot follow the format of professional sports of making money from concessions, merchandising, and advertising. Without a realistically sustainable income for most top players in the world, it will not grow. Taking a page from poker would put much more needed money into the game, and thus the better players will be able to make more money.
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I like this, I would easily do it. No questions asked, if I can be on for the tourney, sure, I'd be more than happy to play, and even lose in the first round even.
I am sure the community rage would increase, but rules to frown on that would be put in place I would assume. But realistically, I feel it could generate some serious excitement towards the game for many who just look at it as a plain old RTS game that is just popular. I honestly would love to do this, because I used to do this in FPS games.
One thing I think that should be done is people stay within their league, for example, bronze players would only play bronze, silver would only do silver, gold would only do gold, but there would be buffer room on the extremes such as top 20 Bronze can do Silver if they wish, but the risk is greater to them (in some instances). Instead of going "10 dollars, and you face a random dude" who ends up being a diamond who has 5+ years of Starcraft experience. It'd be unfair to pit a 7 year old Softball player against a 25 year old Professional Athlete in a home run derby...but put do an age grouping for the tournament and you've got some balance, that whole "oh god I'll be facing Diamond's or semi-pro's" goes down to "Okay, I could be facing better or equal players"
With some of these things ironed out, you could really make a successful thing here, and I for one would gladly partake or offer assistance necessary to get some things done for it.
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It seems that this I hear about this recently...guess what who wrote it :3
Well, i think there is no big money in ANY sport until there are huge sponsorship or really many players play it with money so there can be establish a top tier players like in football.
Everybody dreams of big money, but there are only few who can achieve it. Look at any sport.
You believe in American dream? Your decision.
Also i wish there are not that many small tournaments because many pro players attend many of them at the same time and its unfair when a pro beats someone and get disqualified because he plays at another tournament like drewbie vs Destiny recently what was really stupid imo.
Also there should be kinda organization between these tournaments so the fixtures are more flexible and viewer friendly. I know that sc2 and its tournaments are still growing, but i see a lot of potential, I just wish that not everybody begins to cheese and try to win at all cost because of money like GSL S3 which was really horrible to watch except maybe handful of games.
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i think a huge barrier to this is also the fact that, unlike poker, people are not predisposed to spending a little bit of money to make a lot of money. their mindset is, i will either play the game to have fun, or go all the way trying to be pro. there are not many people who think, i want to compete, but not with the best, though enough to pay to play.
the problem this makes is that if you try to put up a scenario where people can win X or Y or Z amount of money in 3 different tournaments, where X<Y<Z, the situation will take many tournaments to flesh out, and i don't think there is enough confidence in the general community to put up money for the X and Y tournaments long enough, while naturally the best will go to however many Z tournaments they can afford to apply to.
i certainly wish it wasn't illegal to at least try, i'd love to be proven wrong and i think amongst the poker/SC players you could definitely have a community large enough to support consistent X money games where it could eventually grow to become an accepted way of running tournaments, but it's hard to see the 'mid level' actually bridging the gap with the Y tournaments. for a very long time i think the players who should be playing in Z will apply for Y too and just shove the mid-levels out since Y will still make them a lot more money than you can normally make in SC2.
i voted i would pay, but i wouldn't pay $10 continuously. i'd surely pay something smaller though. i'd want to play in a lot of tournaments to make a small amount of money and just have fun competing, $10 all the time adds up when, like many people suggest, 'you probably won't ever win.'
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Braavos36374 Posts
You're missing the point of why people play SC2. Sure, a small minority play with money as a motivator, but the vast majority (99%) play for fun. Most of the big names play these buy in tournaments that probably net them $10/hr (and that's if they win) because they'd be playing anyway, not because they feel it's +EV or something.
Thus, a buy-in scene is just not sustainable when the bulk of the people buying in can just play the dozens of other tournaments without buyins. The difference in experience of playing in a $10 buy in tourney vs a free-to-enter tournament is nothing to the average player. What does a buy in get you? In poker the experience of playing in a big tournament with high stakes is pretty fun. You even have a small chance to go really far if you're lucky. In SC2 for an average player paying $10 to play maybe 1, 2 Bo3s with 0% chance to cash? That just won't be worth it. Entry fees are fine when you're actually paying for an experience that nobody else can provide (MLG, etc) but for a regular online tournament, it's just not worth it.
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You can get lucky in Poker.
In SC it's mostly skill and the skill gaps between players can be HUGE.
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I have to say I only clicked this topic because the TC was STEVE
But it sounds like a really cool concept. I hope something can come of it; at the moment it's difficult for someone ~2000 diamond to even get into a decent paying tournament due to the number of higher ranked players who would inevitably be entering as well.
Though, I do find it kind of unlikely that playing in buy-ins will ever be profitable for even say, top 50-100 US ladder players, just because there would likely not be so much money as to deter bigger names from playing in smaller, 10 dollar buy-in tournaments. Off the top of my head, I can probably name 50 players in NA that I'd be super intimidated to play. Whereas poker is a lot more luck based, so winning a 64 man tournament at least seems feasible, winning a 64 man tournament in SC2 with just one somewhat well-known player like Hashe or Spades feels incredibly difficult.
However, it does feel a lot less intimidating to be participating in say, a 10 dollar buy-in, 8 man tournament. That feels doable, just because there's a slight chance I could win from really good luck.
Anyway, hope your idea comes to some sort of realization, sounds fun. Someone has to buy nice stuff for Rachel, after all!
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Buy in tournaments would be pretty awesome if the top 50% or top 25% got money, imo.
Let's say you have a 10$ payin with 64 people. That gives 640 dollars. You could easily pay the top 50% (the higher you placed, the more you would get, naturally)
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probably been posted but
poker isn't really the best example, anyone can win in poker with luck
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The fish know who they are it wont work. I can tell myself i' ll never win a tourny in SC2 because less variance for me to get lucky and the skill level is more defined.
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I think Hot_Bid explained why buy-in tournaments wouldn't work.
What incentive do players with a low chance of winning have to play in a buy-in tournament over a free to play tournament? Not a whole lot I would say. Money would be better spent on offline events such as MLG etc.
I've paid for myself to go to a tournament with some of the best names in Europe, but I went because it was an offline event and I had the chance to meet with the best players and play against them live, not over the internet, this was the incentive to me. This tournament offered something which an online tournament never can, the chance to meet with some of the best players around.
Sure I met MorroW in first round and lost 2-0 in a Bo3, but it was worth it to me because I had the chance to sit behind Madfrog or Socke to watch them play, which was such a nice experience.
If it had been a buy-in tournament I would probably get crushed by MorroW in 2nd or 3rd round and it wouldn't have been any different than joining a CraftCup where it's easy to get to like round 3-4 and meet some of the best players like Dimaga, just to get crushed.
I would never join a buy-in online tournament, but I would join any buy-in offline event I could attend, because they're so different than online tournaments. I've been to three offline tournaments, all of them made me a much better player, but I have yet to win anything, but I don't mind, as long as it's fun and a learning experience. Buy-in online tournaments wouldn't be anything different than a regular free-to-join CraftCup. So why bother paying?
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Poker has almost no skill requirements though, people are even allowed to wear masks so it's a glorified guessing game.
Now as for the actual topic, making 50-200$ a day just smashing lesser skilled players in smaller tourneys is surprisingly good money when you add in sponsorship and major tournaments.
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I have to say, rather than having it as:
"Pay me $10 and I'll put some of that toward the tournament"
I think it should be:
"Pay me $1 and we'll work hard with sponsors to get the rest, even if I have to start skipping lunch, because I love sc2 and I'm devoted to my community"
I have a feeling that if you go with #1, sc2 tournies would become a 'bubble'.
Everyone would be trying to host tournies, to earn themselves a quick buck from the rake in.
The quality of tournaments would degrade as more and more people host tournaments with small buy-ins, until eventually you start to find scammers, taking money then not making the payouts.
You wouldn't google poker and then go the page 10536 and pick one of those sites to play on...you would probably play on one of the bigger sites like pokerstars.com or fulltilt.com, like you mentioned.
[meat of story]
Which brings me to my breath taking conclusion...
Pokerstars.com doesn't make money from the people who play .10 cent tables
(i know, cus I'm the king of $0.10 cent buy-in 360 player hold 'em )
They make money from people who think they're big shots and play in the large tournaments.
So, in my opinion, charging buy-ins like $10, $20, etc is how you want to do it, because you want to make money from your hard work with amateur tournaments. But I guess what I'm trying to say, is you shouldn't be trying to make money off of the 'every day' starcraft player by trying to convince them they have a chance because its a small time tournament.
I don't mean to shamelessly plug this in, but as a reference, at njfail.com, we're working on ways to reward the crappy players that have no chance to win in our tournaments, because there HAS to be people who lose in round 1, or else it wouldn't be a tournament!
So we developed a system where players get "+10 points" for each round of a tournament they play in, +3ish points for posting on the forums, and +10ish points for casting replays for us. There are also 'achievements', where if you do -such and such a thing- in a game, or do -such an such a build- you get +xx points. The largest point holders are rewarded directly, and we hold 'giveaways', where you get 1 ticket for every 10 points you have.
So even if you don't have a chance to win the entire tournament, you still have a reason to play in them.
And the tournaments are free to play in :\
Basically... I think we should keep the money out of it...
Although it boosts competition, it also prevents the average player from getting involved.
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Give it a year and we'll have more little tournaments each weak than visable stars in the sky.
Let it grow, and the cash will follow
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Chess is a game that is closer to starcraft than poker, in that luck is less of a factor and the grandmaster will always beat the noob (whereas in poker, the noob can be encouraged because what he lacks in skill he can sometimes make up for in luck)
Chess is also a game where there are a ton of buy in tournaments!! The way they motivate less skilled players to play in tournaments is by having different sections. This is the way a chess touranment is usually organized
: 10 buy in for all players
OPEN SECTION (any one can enter this section)
Prize pay outs to 1st, 2nd, 3rd
2000 SECTION (players with ratings up to, but not surpassing, 2000 rating can play here)
Seprate prize pay outs for this section, slightly less than the OPEN division
1800 SECTION (players with ratings up to, but not surpassing 1800 can play here)
Separate prize payouts
1600 SECTION (players with ratings up to, but not surpassing 1600 can play here)
Separate prize payouts
UNRATED SECTION (for players with little to no tournament experience)
Smallest cut of prize payout
The thing that makes this work is that chess has an accurate and universal rating system that is effected by every tournament a player enters. Sandbagging does not happen often because (a) prize payouts are smaller for the weaker sections (b) Even if someone sandbags when they win a tournament in the lower section it will push their rating back up forcing them to play higher next time (c) most players are in it mostly for the love of the game, though a little prize money makes for excitement and incentive
In this format weaker players play against competition suited to them, but if they wish they can go up against the stronger players And masters/grandmasters play in a section exclusive to them.
the only thing stopping this from happening for starcraft is the lack of an accurate ELO rating system.
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On December 14 2010 17:10 arterian wrote:
probably been posted but
poker isn't really the best example, anyone can win in poker with luck
In poker you can always go blind all in and hope for the best.
Kind of like in SC2.
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I think the idea is fundamentally sound, but there is a huge catch 22 here.
If there are not enough tournaments going on then the chance for fish to ever win anything will be too low, so they wont play because they don't want to just be eaten by top tier players.
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On December 14 2010 17:42 vOdToasT wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 17:10 arterian wrote:
probably been posted but
poker isn't really the best example, anyone can win in poker with luck In poker you can always go blind all in and hope for the best. Kind of like in SC2.
Poker doesn't have micro though, just RNG.
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Starcraft
- headsup and
- 6man SNG
gogogo!!
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I have been playing both Starcraft and Poker for quite some time and I can tell you that this concept will not work out like it does in poker. The reason the poker economy can stay healthy year after year is the luck factor. When "fish" lose in poker they will automatically blame their bad luck, in fact we are as humans programmed to do this in order to deal with our problems - we find an external thing we can blame. On the contrary when a "fish" wins a big pot he automatically believes it was due to his superior skill and thinking. What this ends up meaning is that the "fish" will keep putting in money into the poker economy without ever realizing that he/she is not good enough to play poker.
This does not work in SC2 because it's more or less completely a skill game (don't get me wrong, poker is as well but not to the same extent). There will be no "fish" in this tournament system because bad people realize that they are bad and therefore they will not put in any money.
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I think there are a few things a lot of people seem to be missing when comparing online poker and sc2 cash tourneys. First online poker is technically illegal across most of the US and these companies get away with it by registering their domains outside the boundaries of nations where its an issue. SC2 would be harder to run like this but very easy to just have online site registered on some island nation which is loose about their IP rights to handle the money distribution for said tourneys and blizzard couldn't touch it. I also think it would be interesting to split tourneys by point/skill levels rather then level of buy in but there would be no way to limit smurf accounts or people who intentionally make their account appear worse than they are. I would definitely be into the idea of money buy in tourneys if I knew I would be playing against similarly skilled players.
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On December 14 2010 17:31 klauz619 wrote:
Poker has almost no skill requirements though, people are even allowed to wear masks so it's a glorified guessing game.
Now as for the actual topic, making 50-200$ a day just smashing lesser skilled players in smaller tourneys is surprisingly good money when you add in sponsorship and major tournaments.
Well sorry to derail slightly but i think your comments about poker being a "glorified guessing game" is STUPID why do you practically always see the same faces at the final table if its such a guessing game?? Well following your logic damn they just must be lucky everytime!!! yeah .. now how stupid does that sound.. Sorry but i find it absurd when people can't see skill in other things they are not involved in... im not a poker player but im certainly not deluded enough to say a comment like yours.
On topic:
Well i don't know if i would call it a silly idea but me personally i wouldn't pay im all for people trying out in tournaments but i would have a sore pocket.
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I don't know if anyone's commented on this but your poll has statistical flaws. One, it shows the current result of the poll before one takes part in the poll, which could influence the opinion of the person taking the poll. And two, you make an opinionated argument for $10 smaller tournaments which influence one's own opinion before taking the poll. And third, the poll is not a representative random sample of SC2 players. Randomness is not accounted for, which could skew the results in some unknown way.
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This post earns my reward for changing my mind today. I never thought about it like that before.
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I do think the same ideas that poker employs could be what takes sc2 to the next level of esports. However i believe the major set backs are 1) blizz tourny policies, 2) amount of players. I know there are a ton of sc2 players but the simple reality is the majority of them are in the lower leagues and i don't see those players entering tournaments (however this may be solved by your tiered tournament idea).
I have a friend who is a professional poker player who has earned over 3 million in earnings. Several of the guys he lives with in vegas used to play starcraft professionally. They switched to poker for the same reasons you talk about. He has earned over 3 million dollars and less than 2 million of that is from live tournaments. And he would never consider playing a tournament with a prize pool of less than 10,000 so the natural effect you talk about is exactly what happened to him.
I think you aren't considering the idea that starcraft2 skill is much harder to gauge than poker. Like you said beating up on your friends is probably enough to make some poker players think, "I can do this and make some cash." However how many of your gold ranked buddies truly believe they can compete in a tournament and earn cash. Its a perception that could be changed but will take a lot of effort from players and tournament organizers.
Just to add my two cents on what can be done i think a gamebattles type site that allows players to sign up and register for small tournaments on demand would really help. I know for me specifically i don't sign up for tournaments knowing they are days in advance and i just don't want to commit to something that like you said, i have a tiny chance of winning $50. If i could log in and pay $5 to instantly enter a 16 person tournament with a payout of $75 i'd do it constantly. And also just one more point but if IdrA, Huk, ret, inc, etc, etc could log on and enter a 16 person tournament with $100 buyin and $1000 dollar buyout maybe they'd do it?
I don't know if this type of business/website would be possible but i'd love to be a part of it. I definitely have friends that could be a major help if its something thats doable.
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On December 14 2010 17:00 vOdToasT wrote:
Buy in tournaments would be pretty awesome if the top 50% or top 25% got money, imo.
Let's say you have a 10$ payin with 64 people. That gives 640 dollars. You could easily pay the top 50% (the higher you placed, the more you would get, naturally)
That is a very good idea, it would definately motivate people to play again if they won a small sum every now and then
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Buy-In Tournaments just don't work in eSports. They have been tried often, and in most cases they failed miserably.
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Human psychology is the reason why there is so much money involved in poker. It's just a giant pyramid game living of the money of people who are tricked by advertising, deception and variance. I don't see how we could achieve a similar situation in sc2. Then there are also problems with hacking, while poker software is by design already maphack-proof.
There is also much more money involved in poker than in chess. That's the reason why many chess players switched.
edit: Human beings are weird.
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So i've read most of the posts since I posted earlier and I understand where everyone's coming from. Now I know someone who tried to run a $10 buy in tournament that failed miserably. The basic point of this thread makes sense. However at its current state it won't work.
What needs to happen is that people need to host more of these smaller tournaments. Whoever made this thread, if you want more cash flowing into SC2, PLEASE start a tournament! I've hosted one myself, and am currently working on setting up a LAN event in San Francisco. The more small tournaments that we have, the more sponsors will recognize this community and join in.
However the problem that we have right now, compared to S. Korea which has a flourishing Starcraft scene and a real Esports where thousands of people watch them play, is that our community in NA is not big enough! If we have more online tournaments, and most importantly MORE LAN EVENTS, people will hear about Starcraft and check out a LAN event or watch a tournament online. They'll see the game and they some will think its dumb, and some will love it and start playing. Not everyone will think that they can go pro, or even want to try. But 1% of the population will want to at least try, and if our population or community of SC players continues to grow it will get more attention and attract more sponsors and eventually a evolve into something like Korea's SC scene.
But this will never happen until people like us host more tournaments, and more LAN events! I can't stress that enough. Expose people to the game and it will catch on. Convince your friends who've never played or heard of it to play it at your house, or find a local LAN event and convince them to come with you. They'll sit over the shoulder of one of the players and be impressed by the amount of skill involved, or if you're lucky there will be a caster and a projector for people who don't know the game to watch and get an understanding for it. That's just my opinion but let me know if you guys agree that SC2 needs too follow this path before it can get the cash inflow that you're talking about.
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no money in starcraft, everyone is solid.
unfortunately most people can play starcraft for free unlike poker. why would they risk $ to satisfy their competitive ego when they can do it gaining points on the ladder? anyone looking for $ in starcraft will either devote all their time into it to become a top player or realize they don't have what it takes and pursue more profitable ventures. honestly, i love esports but i wouldnt buy in a starcraft tournament with >20 stranger players, and even then there would be issues with cheating, etc. starcraft will remain a very fun and free game 
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why we can organized starcraft 2 like the poker, so you have level of buy-in
bronze level 2cent(you put 2cent to play in the league, same for the other)
silver level 5cent
gold level 10cent
platinum 20cent
diamond 50cent
Master 1$
Grand Master 10$
and therefore you need a bankroll just like poker...would be really cool
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i believe the only players interested in making money off starcraft are people that give it lots of time and effort and there are very few of them. i am a 2700 terran who plays sparingly and wouldn't pay to play in an online tournament especially with any top NA players in it because i would have no chance. Even if I was playing 2000 level players who i feel i would beat in a series 95 percent of the time why would they keep playing in a buy in tournament when they barely play to begin with and will get smashed everytime by any half decent player.
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interesting post. maybe someday we will see more $$ pouring into a variety of tournaments (maybe i won't have to sponsor my top 200 koth out of pocket!).
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Lol.
It's like people pointed out. The difference between SC2 and Poker.. is that in Poker, some noob can win because of luck.
Less likely to happen in SC2. It's what makes Poker so popular.. because once in a while, the noob beats the pro.
Luck gives noobs the chance, the opportunity... and a dream.
Noobs in SC2 from bronze league know there is -1000% chance of winning against HuK or Idra.
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How about this approach, charge a small fee for people to view the tournaments. For these small tournaments I'd pay $0.25 - 2.00 to watch the matches with someone casting and maybe the ability to download a replay pack. Its the spectators that generate the revenue for most sports after all.
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I'm totally with the idea of buy-in tournaments.
People here are forgetting that poker was just a example. Chess (like JeanLuc said) could be a good example too.
For those thinking about the "noobs that won't participate because of the winning chances"
First of all, free of charge will still be out there.
And we can do a system similar to Code S from GSL. Top players will only participate on $25~50 tournaments, noobs $5~10, average $10~25 and so on. If they don't want to pay these higher fees...again, there are the free of charge tounaments.
The point is, top players will compete only against top players, but the prize will be much higher. Noobs will compete against noobs, but the prize will be lower.
Just an idea.
Edit:
Or we can just separate by Battle.net ranking.
Like, "Diamond-only $10 tournament" or "The $50 Bronze tournament" . . .
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Actually I would.pay...if someone set up a site that managed the money and set up the tournaments.I feel as though SC wuld get a huge popularity boost and take another step towards becoming a legitimate sport is the world.
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For sure I would do it. However we do not know if the player base is big enough to actually make as many as 5 dollar, 10 dollar, 50 dollar and 100 dolar tourneys. You might just end up with everyone playing the 10 dollar tourney.
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for people saying that no one would enter a tournament (payed) knowing they have to play players 1000 times better than them: That is the problem the OP is trying to solve... just saying.
Of course a bronze player wouldn't pay $10 to play in a top 200 tournament. but would a bronze player pay $10 to play 31 other bronze players and potentially win $250? This is essentially what poker does. If your a noob you enter a tournament with a $1 buy in and a $25 pay out, you probably are pretty similarly experienced as your competition in that said tournament. I doubt there are too many pro's surfing $1 buy in tournaments.
The problem (clearly stated by op) is that in sc2 you have a 32 person tournament with a pay out of $50 and some of the top players in the world are entering it. How to solve this is the difficult part.
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Imo the main problem is the difference between poker and starcraft.
Everyone has a shot at winning poker, and half the people at the table think they're the best person at the table, it's just the way the game works and it keeps people wanting to spend money thinking they're the best and them thinking its only a matter of time before the luck evens out and they become winners.
With starcraft, it's obvious to 99% of people straight away if they are the best or not the best in a tournament level after playing a few. With no incentive for those that are obviously not the best (they have no real chance to 'luck through', and unlike poker its obvious that they are not just getting 'unlucky'), they will simply stop playing since there's a free ladder for them to play anytime and its not going to cost them there money to lose there instead, this will go all the through until you're stuck with exactly what you are now, the top of the top players battling it out for little money.
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I like this idea, but I think it would be hard for the players to gauge whether it is worth the financial input, sure if you have a 128 player tournament with $5 buy in ($640 prize pool), it is not much to spend in order to participate in what should be a good challenging tournament with possible decent reward ($200 ftw let's say) while not much of a financial loss to the participants if they don't win anything (perhaps first round losers should go into another pool with a winner's prize so they don't just have one game and that's it), but when you scale this up to $25 buy in, the reward is much greater but the buy in is no longer a trivial amount to most people and you would probably just be left with the same few players who know they can win or do well in the tournament and many other players deterred from entering at the price. Also, would there be limitations put on who can join what tournament? Let's say one of these great players decides "I have nothing to do today, let's stomp all of the $5 tournament scrubs, it should be an easy $200", this kind of situation could straight up kill that $5 tournament and deter many people from playing in it in the future.
What I would suggest for these buy in tournaments is perhaps preliminary rounds or brackets that are free of charge to determine to the players whether it is worth it for them to spend their money to begin with. So you would already play with a small amount of the players that are applying for the tournament, giving you an idea of the skill level involved and whether the buy in is worth it. Or perhaps pay a small fraction of the buy in money (like a blind) in order to play in these brackets and then pay the full amount if you intend to continue with the tournament after the preliminaries. For example, let's say the buy in is $5 but to play in the preliminary round it is only $1.50 and let's also say that each prelim bracket has 8 players in it vying for 4 spots (8x$1.50=$12, over 2 players worth of buy in already, generating money for the pool to begin with), each player would play 7 games, which would be well worth it for the price and would also generate revenue for the tournament at little cost to each of the players, as well as giving each player an idea of the standard of play to expect from the tournament. The top two finishers from each of the brackets would be matched up with the 3rd and 4th from other brackets (meaning that it is still important to win in these prelim rounds) and the 5th-8th would miss out UNLESS any of the top 4 in their bracket decided they did not want to participate, in which case it would give the 5th-8th person a chance to buy in. This would of course mean that everyone gets bumped up (for example, the player who qualified first in his bracket decides not to play because HE IS INSANE, I MEAN WTF MAN, 2nd would become first and 3rd would become second meaning they could be matched against possibly easier opponents than if the 1st qualifier was still in the tourny giving them more reason to buy in).
So we would have 4 people from each bracket in the tournament, but the money pool would be slightly increased with little cost to the players not in the tournament, allowing for greater than 100% buyin per player ($12 for prelims + 4x3.50=$14)=$26 which divided by 4 is greater than the $5 buyin, giving everyone still in the tournament the feel that they are getting more back for what they have spent from the start and also allowing the players to have some idea of how they may perform in the tournament. In the event that so many players opt out from the full buy in that there are only 3 people from each bracket of 8 wishing to participate in the tournament, the highest qualifier of each group will obtain a bye for the first round. In regards to the issue of there being less players in the tournament and therefore less money in the tournament, this is not the case as insurance has already been provided for the missing players funds with the small blind buy ins of the players eliminated in the 8 player brackets (only 3x3.50=10.50 but with 8x1.50=12, it is still over the $5 each from 4 players required in order to reach the announced prizepool), so it provides small financial risk to the organiser (no need to top up the prize amounts yourself) as the prizepool should still be sufficient or even greater than the announced prizepool based on 64x$5 initial amounts.
Whoa I wrote an essay, sorry about that, but I think a system like this would certainly be viable for the lower end buy-in tournaments, whether it would scale up to the larger buy-in tournaments is another question (you could possibly bump up the bracket blind to increase the prize money in those cases instead of charging everyone who wants to participate a massive amount)
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The idea is great.
Is it possible? well, if somebody ask you 10 years ago that "can we organize a sc tournament and broadcast the on TV??" , we would laugh at him.
So I think yes, it is possible.
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The success lies moreso in local tourneys. LAN centers should be holding local SC2 tourneys that people play in.
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On December 14 2010 18:59 Magulina wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 17:00 vOdToasT wrote:
Buy in tournaments would be pretty awesome if the top 50% or top 25% got money, imo.
Let's say you have a 10$ payin with 64 people. That gives 640 dollars. You could easily pay the top 50% (the higher you placed, the more you would get, naturally) That is a very good idea, it would definately motivate people to play again if they won a small sum every now and then
this is actually probably the most insightful post i've read so far, thanks for quoting it. i think this idea could go a LONG way to overcoming the 'oh i'll never beat a good player, what's the point?' mindset if you don't actually have to beat most of the people in the tournament to win money. when you think about it, tournaments have a massively disproportionate payout. i think it would be an awesome format for a 30+ man tournament to have a buyin of $10 with the guarantee that if you got half way through it, you get your money back with some tournament experience, and every game after you make more money. that's actually how GSL is run too, minus the need for buy-in. people basically make money every time they win, and the more wins, the more money.
over time people would come to accept the idea of buy-ins as a stable way to run tournaments since half the people who enter are still 'winners', if only blizzard would allow it.
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Despite comparing Poker to Starcraft is pretty idiotic, your idea has a flaw.
Pro's won't have to decide between the small 10$ and big 75$ torunament, they will play both at once, like they are already doing.
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OP.
you are intelligent and i like your stream.
that is all.
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The thing with poker is you don't have to win to make money back. You can make money at poker playing a few games now and then, Then ofc there's the luck involved, people say it's a game of skill but anyone has the chance to get 4 aces on the flop and that could be the difference between going home poor or leaving with a fat stack of cash. Starcraft 2 doesn't offer this same... "small chance" issue.
The community isn't big enough and varied enough to run this many tournaments without them being scoured by stronger players for easy money. Poker is easy to understand, simple to follow, and the odd's are cheap.
An alternative idea could be.... like poker you pay the blinds.. how about in a 64 man tournament, every round you pay your blind to play your tournament game. If you win you get the previous rounds blind back and the pot is built up from the losing players blinds.
round 1.. 64 players $64
round 2 32 players $32
round 3 16 players $16
round 4 8 players $8
round 5 4 players $4
round 6 2 players $2
$126
top 16 make payments back so $2x8 16
top 8 make double there payments so $6x4 32
top 4 make triple $12x 2 24
runner up $20
winner $32
quick example.. prob a better system just thought of it off the top of my head. losing round of 64 and 32 returns nothing, round of 16 returns money at a small loss, round of 8 and up you make increasing profit.
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This is as untapped of a resource as there is in all of gaming. The first company that creates these buy-in tournaments the way poker is done will make millions down the road.
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sorry but the reason you give doesnt make any sense...
you say the best players are entering the lower price tournaments.. so you want to give other guys more oppurtunities i dont see why a bid-in tournament woul be best idea... the pros would come play them anyway and i dont think any of the lower tier players would pay to get in cause the best would also be in.. so i dont see the point of it..
the pay to get in tournaments are usually just for the best to get in
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I would be very interested in something like this. You could also limit it in other ways as well. Such as only allowing people to of a certain league to play in certain tournaments.
ie: This is a $5 buy-in bronze tournament or this is a $100 buy-in Diamond tournament.
Edit: Just thought I should throw out I'm a mid level silver player, and despite not having a chance to win I would probably still compete as it would give me a tangible goal to strive for. "Maybe I can make it to the quarter finals next week." It would also be a nice change of pace from the ladder.
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There isn't anything stopping players from entering all 3 tournaments at once. Many people play many poker games at once. If a player wanted to a very good one they would delay games to attempt to make it far in both tournaments. If one was really good at controlling the timings of the games they could do a very good cheese in one then start the next and drag it on to keep themselves in both tournaments and avoid causing having the games clash.
Now that, that is out of the way this wouldn't be a terrible idea, but there are PLENTY of pros and there is bound to be 2 in every tournament online regardless of the prize pool. Sure an average Joe will win one every once in a while, but most likely it will wind up like poker if you hit up the high stakes cash tables online you will get mopped up.
I do hope that there are more tournaments played and streamed than there currently are because it will help the development of the game since strategies will be seen more often and watched much more closely.
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What people seem to fail to understand is that with a poker like system would not fix the "problem" of lower skill level players not winning. Having poker like buyin tournaments would only widen the gap. Instead of NOT losing or winning, 80%+ would be losing money. This cant be avoided with any payout structure (that makes any sense) or buyin amount. Pros arent going to play against each other. They are going to spread as evenly as possible and meanwhile ensuring that noobs dont win anything. At least now Sc2 doesnt cost you money.
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The best players won't be able to qualify for a gold level tournament seeing the position they hold on the ladder is high diamond. You just setup tournaments with a threshold on ladder level and points cutoffs. It's not rocket surgery.
You'll still need sponsors to help cover license fees from Blizzard and they will want a cut of moneys earned from the company to allow you to use their IP even if not for a profit. Just take a look at the problems KESPA, OGN and MBC Game are facing having to shell out 85k for each tournament running as a not for profit. Maybe the person in charge is a mutli billionaire and loves gaming. You'll still need sponsors to help with other costs for this model to work.
There are people in this thread with dollar signs in their eyes that I don't think understand how risky this could be even with a solid model of getting something like this up and running without major backing.
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I'm sure this has already been stated, haven't read whole thread... LAN tournaments fix this problem and we need more of them.
We've got a pretty good SC2 LAN scene so far in New England and we've already had several tournaments with $300+ prize pools, with more to come.
In a LAN setting, the best players in the world can't participate (unless they happen to live nearby), so you get some more local talent sharing the limelight.
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Or you just make a lot of tournaments 
If instead of making a 128 player tournament, you make 16 8 player tournaments, you increase everyone's chance of winning. And it would be really unlikely for 16 different pros to join, and for all 16 to end up in a different tournament.
And then, instead of having 128 players take part in a 10$ buy-in tournament where the winner gets 1000$ and the second place gets 300$, you now have 16 tournaments where the winner gets 50$ and second place 30$, with a much higher chance of winning.
Or you can also widen out the prize pool a lot.
If in a 128 player tournament, winner gets 1k, and runner up gets 280$, then there is almost 0 chance for the average player to get any money out of it, and its likely everyone who enters is just paying a pro.
But if its a 128 player tourney where the winner gets 200$, second place 125$, 3rd and 4th get 75$, 5-8 get 35$, 9-16 get 25$, 17-32 get 15$, and then 33-64 get 5$, for example, that kind of tournament is a lot more interesting for the average guy, because you dont need to be better than everyone else to make some money back, you just need to be better than a lot of the players.
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Thats an awesome idea ,that will sadly never be realized , cuz of gambling laws and the game would have to change into a 18 (21) rating
But u should lower your examples , "full" dollars or euros are way to much for some avrg dude sometimes cents sound better make tournaments bigger and there u have nice tournament where pros dont get in cuz it maybe gonna take to long for a small amount of money , and there should be restrictions for tournaments
Post it in Blizz forums maybe they will say somethin , still its an awesome idea
PS: love your stream xD
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If a professional player had the option of playing a $100 buy in tournament or a $10 buy in tournament he would naturally choose the $100 one. This alone is not enough because many are saying "they would just play both." That certainly is the case now, however; its the case now because progamers are desperate to make cash whenever they can because of the low income from professional gaming. For anyone who has knowledge of poker history; this is how it used to be. WSOP winners were playing every tournament they could. Why isn't it happening today? I believe its a natural transition (Please read i don't know if this is possible in SC/esports, but its definitely the case in poker) because of the constant availability of higher payout tournaments. Poker's savior was mainstream media, i actually don't believe sc2 has the player base to achieve anywhere near the success of poker in terms of amount of players entering buy in tournaments.
It would also force tournaments to increase prize pools in order to draw big name players. Its only a thought but i can say if it was possible it definitely would be good for the scene i think.
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I wouldn't, but only because I'm bronze.
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Online tournaments risk abuse by cheaters. I would only play in LAN tournies. Cheating happens even when there is no money involved. Imagine if there were tons of tournies with money. You'd never be able to police it all.
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On December 14 2010 14:12 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:Imagine, for a moment, that you are a young, aspiring poker player. You've played several home games and find yourself consistently beating your friends. Feeling on top of the world, you decide to venture into the world of online poker. Not wanting to get in too deep, too fast, you start with small $5 sit-n-gos on Pokerstars or Fulltilt. STOP! In the world of poker, a good player here might begin to gradually earn money and build bankroll. They may never sit across Phil Ivey, or out-read Negreanu, or put a play on Dwan, but this person could legitimately earn a small amount of cash over time by playing poker, even if he is never good enough to move up to high stakes games. However, if the world of poker were anything like the world of Starcraft 2, this good player would never win a single tournament in his entire life. Why? All of the $5 and $10 sit and go tournies would be won by the world's best poker players. The average (or even well-above-average) poker player would likely never cash in any tournament because all of the world champions of poker would be dominating the lower stakes. This happens every single week with the Starcraft 2 tournaments. The amount of skill chasing such few dollars is absolutely ridiculous. I've taken a small sample from just 4 small-cash tournaments that happen on a regular basis around here: Undeniable Tournament + Show Spoiler +1 - Murder - $50
2 - Murder - $75
3 - Fenix - $100
4 - Fenix - $75
5 - Select - $75
6 - dignitasSjow - $75
7 - Taurent - $100
8 - Fenix - $100
7 - dignitasSjow - $100
8 - ROOTDrewbie - $100
9 - dignitasSjow - $100
10 - ROOTDrewbie - $100
11 - kawaiirice - $100
12 - dignitasSjow - $100 Wolf Cup + Show Spoiler +2 - MorroW - $50
3 - KawaiiRice - $50
4 - HuK - $50
5 - KawaiiRice - $50
6 - MorroW - $50
7 - Fenix - $50
8 - MorroW - $50
9 - MorroW - $50
10 - Fenix - $100
11 - Zelniq - $200
12 - TTOne - $50
13 - Fenix - $50
14 - Levin - $50 Craft Cup + Show Spoiler +1 - mouzStrelok - $50
2 - mouzStrelok - $50
3 - aTnSocke - $50
4 - NightEnD - $50
5 - NightEnD - $50
6 - SjoW - $100
7 - merz - $50
8 - aTnSocke - $120
9 - SjoW - $150
10 - SjoW - $150
11 - SjoW - $100
12 - tarson - $100
13 - Naugrim - $100
14 - sLDeathAngel - $150 Go4Sc2 + Show Spoiler +1- Cloud - 200 EUR
2- Tarson - 200 EUR
3 - SjoW - 200 EUR
4 - Naama - 200 EUR
5 - Brat_OK - 200 EUR
6 - GoOdy - 200 EUR
7 - SjoW - 200 EUR
9 - MaNa - 200 EUR
10 - MaNa - 200 EUR
11 - Tarson - 200 EUR
12 - Socke - 200 EUR These tournaments are all being won by some of the best players in the world. When I talk about "the best", I'm not talking about top-tier people like Idra, Ret, or Jinro, I'm talking about anyone who would make the top 200 (or even 300 or 400) list of any region. Compared to the number of people who play Starcraft 2 (3 million copies sold in the first month), these people represent a very small percentage (<0.05%) of the overall Starcraft 2 community. This brings me to the "meat" of my problem with the current Starcraft 2 tournament scene....there's too much talent chasing too few dollars. There's just no money in it. Now, I understand that there are plenty of people out there who say that the game should be played simply for the love of the game and that there's no reason that money should be a part of it, but if it could be, why not? When so many people are clamoring for Starcraft 2 to be taken seriously as an "E-Sport", and with so many eyes on the game (between Teamliquid web hits, stream viewers, professional match series observers, etc...etc...), why couldn't there be more money involved? I think the single most detrimental problem afflicting the Starcraft 2 tournament scene is that there's simply no money going into it. The best players in the world are winning $50 tournaments. Much the same as my earlier example, it would be like a decent poker player enrolling in small-stakes online tournaments, simply to discover that the best poker players in the world are constantly sweeping every single event. I believe the solution to this problem would be weekly buy-in tournaments. The Starcraft 2 community needs to stop relying on companies like Razer or individuals to donate money to prize pools in order for there to be any decent money for a prize pool. There would be a tremendous infusion of excitement and possibility for all Diamond players if small buy-in tournaments were to be popularized. Imagine a 64 player, $10 buy-in tournament. With only 64 players involved, you have over $600 in the prize pool. You could go 400/200 for 1st/2nd, or even pay out some decent sized prizes to the top 4. With just 64 players (at $10 a player) you have a tournament with a larger prize pool than 99% of the tournaments currently posted on TL. Poll: Would you pay $10 USD to play in a Starcraft 2 Tournament?Yes (819) 68% No (382) 32% 1201 total votes Your vote: Would you pay $10 USD to play in a Starcraft 2 Tournament? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
If you include a rake in the tournament, all of a sudden there are millions of possibilities. Imagine that it's set-up similarly to poker rake, where the tournament hosts would keep a small percentage of the buy-in. $10 tournaments would be $9 into the prize pool and $1 into the rake. There are an almost limitless amount of possibilities that could spawn from that rake, including, but not limited to: - People paying casters to cast their tournaments - Websites being supported by more than constantly plugging products or begging for donations - Teamliquid taking a small percentage of tourney rakes that they advertise, giving them money to pay coders/webdesigners - More incentives for sponsors or advertisers to get involved - People being more interested in taking lessons from top-tier gamers I understand there are some boundaries to initially setting this up. Paying $10 for tournies where you have almost no chance of winning is discouraging. But if these tournies continue for a while, ideally the best players would be playing in better tournaments. It's the same way with poker today. Negranu and Ivey and Hellmuth don't play in small stakes because it's a waste of time for them. They'd much rather play in the larger stake games. If there were a lot of money in Starcraft 2 games from people paying to enter tournaments, the $5 and $10 tournaments would receive no interest from top players. They would be playing in the $25, $50 and $75 tournaments. I know there are a lot of potential hurdles to this (local gambling laws, Blizzard's tournament registration policies, how money would be transferred), but I would really like to see the communities response to this idea. I know, from personal experience, that there ARE people out there willing to put SOME money into this game. I've seen it in the form of donations and I've seen it in people paying for lessons. As always, keep trolling/flaming to a minimum, constructive thoughts only, blah blah blah, love you. ~Destiny EDIT: Popular responses... Show nested quote +The best players are playing in small prize tournaments all the time, as is the point of the whole thread. If a player is ranked 100 in the top 200 and there's a 32 man or 64 man tournament with a $25 or $50 buy in, do you think that player is going to play in a 5 or 10 dollar tourney with a higher chance of winning or pay a lot more with a lot worse odds? I know this is going to come up a lot, so let me explain how free market principles dictate who plays in which tournaments. If there were three different tournies at the same time every Friday, one at $5, one at $25, and one at $100, you would only be able to play in each one. At first glance, you might think, "Wow, Idra or Huk are just going to register and roll one of the smaller tournies, this sucks!" But think about it from Idra or Huk's perspective. How would you feel if you were one of the top gamers in the world and you saw that you were taking $200 prizes easily in smaller tournaments only to find that 2000 rated Diamond players were winning $4000 for 1st place finishes in larger ones? I think this would only need to happen ONCE before pro gamers quickly moved to the higher buy-in tournaments. It would be foolish for top tier players to waste their talents in lower buy-in tournaments if other players of much lesser skill began to win large sums of money in the higher tournaments. I understand there may be legal boundaries to this, but I'm not interested in those right now. I'm just interested in gauging the community interest/response. If tens of thousands of people are in favor of an idea, they will find a way to make it happen. And if there's an opportunity for blizzard to generate more interested for a game, and some income from it, too, such as taking a small percentage of the rake of all the tournaments, I couldn't see them saying no. But that's an entirely different discussion altogether.
You know you aren't the first person to bring up this topic in fact there have been several topics with regard to this. I can only find one at the moment. :/
EDIT: Found it, at least I remember FA started it.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=131558
Either way, like other people said its against the EULA Blizzard set forth anyway no matter how good you think the idea is.
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I thought of the same situation in Quake and Unreal Tournament years ago when playing on clanbase ladders and such. That's exactly why if I ever make an independent competitive game like SC or such, I'll add an API or some sort of plug-in service for 3rd party matchmaking opportunities. That way people can set up buy-in tournaments like this and plug the game directly into their website or software, because I think the idea has a lot of potential.
Even like smaller, more frequent tournaments where for example you just join a room with 8 guys of similar ELO and $5 in credits is removed from your account. The software matches you all up into a bracket and launches the game into lobbies, etc. The game reports the winners back to the software and the bracket winner takes the pot with a $5 cut for the site. Why couldn't that sort of thing work?
Also Steven Bonnell's stream needs featuring already
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I like the idea of a buy-in tournament. Could do a simple structure like...
10% goes to TL (<3 TL)
10% goes to Child's Play
80% is winnings for 1st - 3rd or some such
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Just finished reading through the thread. A few thoughts:
TLDR Version:
- buy in tournaments for SC don't violate general gambling laws - in USA at least.
- exclude pros on teams from most smaller buy-in tournaments so different ppl win.
- use APM comparison to old ladder games or tournament-specific placement games as easy smurf detection.
------------
Full version:
1. At least in America, I think the "it's gambling that's illegal" argument is wrong. The law distinguishes between "games of chance" and "games of skill," and paying an entry fee (or equivalently, betting on yourself) is legal for "games of skill." There was a famous court case about whether betting in poker is legal or not; the pro-poker side presented a bunch of statistical evidence that the more experienced or "better" player (evaluated in some objective way) would beat the "worse" player consistently over the long term, and the court found that poker is a game of skill, so betting on it doesn't violate general gambling laws. Starcraft is a game of skill much more clearly than poker. (Some states have specific laws against betting on poker or against online poker, but AFAIK none do against starcraft.)
2. One way to make tournaments more viable for mid to high diamond players is to exclude salaried pros on teams from most of the lower-money buy-in tournaments. These guys have reputations and jobs on the line, so they have an incentive not to smurf. As for lower tiers, you could have tournament "placement matches" instead of just using BNet tiers to determine what section of the tournament someone gets placed into. (Higher tiers could get a higher percentage of the prize pool so ppl won't throw placement matches.). Then you can compare someone's APM in their placement and tournament games with SC2Gears as a simple form of smurf detection. Or you could ask them to submit a replay of an old ladder game in their BNet league and compare APM to that.
3. From actually reading the whole thread, it's painful how many times the same things get repeated. If anyone else says "oh no blizz TOS" or "oh no but top players will win everything" without adding anything new I will sigh and cast longing glances over to the mods.
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buy in tourneys are technically not allowed by blizzard, but MLG has a buy in for SC2 so there must be some room for movement. You would just have to negoiate with blizzard.
As for buy-ins being gambling, maybe in your country but not everywhere. I have been to plenty of sporting events where I had to pay to play, most notably the UK Snowboarding scene usually have some small enrance fee, and I was competing in them at 13.
As i understand it, buying into a poker tourney is gambling because thats what poker is. You risk your money against someone else's money. But thats not what SC2 is, they have a buy in for the WoW Arena tourney every year and only certain countries have an issue with that.
In SC2 the entrance fee isn't gambling because you aren't putting the money up to bet with (i know in poker you put in $100 and get $100,000 or whatever in chips but its different). You are putting up the money as an investment in the tourney itself.
I doubt we will ever see large scale buy in tourneys online, as they tend to only work at LANS but it might be a good step
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Making online tournaments like this magnifies every aspect of cheating. Unlike online poker where the game is played out server side, on a client side system you are creating a heavy incentive to develop advanced cheating software. And you are also motivating people to use it. This is also a problem with current online prize tournaments, but it still does not become a community wide issue to the same degree.
Also, the OP suggests that this would actually increase sponsor interest, but would it really? At lower levels sponsors won't have any interest regardless. The sponsors will end up having their brand linked not only to the winners but also the losers of the tournament. Some will surely end up gambling more than they can afford. And sponsors may be asked why they would support this.
The OP also claims it to be detrimental to the tournament scene, the most detrimental problem, that that no money is going into it. Is taking money from the players themselves the way to go? I think it would actually discourage a lot of players from entering tournaments.
And also, if you have more money going through the tournament system, it naturally follows that casters and admins will want more money and are less likely to do work for free. So in the end it's the players themselves who would end up suffering for tournaments to switch over to this format.
There have also been tournament organizers in the past who have not paid the winners of tournaments. This is bad enough without having to risk them running away with the buy-in money as well.
I will admit that I am biased against money flowing through the gaming circuit in the first place and I don't think professional gamers are necessarily a good thing for a gaming community. If you really want to play for money, play bet games with friends. Or is it only right to take money from strangers?
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I think its a good idea, cause it sucks when you play in a random, 25$ Z33k tournament and you face a 3200 ROOT guy...
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It's a product of how small SC is in the west. There's no way in hell a professional and top player in any sport or other significant competitive activity would compete in a large tournament for a potential $50. That's chump change and working minimum wage would earn more than all the practice that goes in.
But a buy-in tournament is a terrible idea because it discourages newer faces from playing. It would have the same effect as a tournament where non-establish top tier players have to travel distances to go so they just don't attend.
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On December 14 2010 14:24 avidday04 wrote:
I'd like to add that although in his example he used a 64 person tournament, it doesn't have to be that exactly. It could be an 8 man tourney with $10 buy in. It could be a 128 person tournament with $50 buy in, it's only limited to the imagination. Personally I'd probably only enter $1 tourneys till I got more skilled/made more money.
Edit: One more thought to all the people saying that newbs wont ever enter these tournaments because they know they have a zero chance of winning, that's flatly not true at all. A lot of what makes tournaments appealing is the fun of it! I'll use my own poker example for this one:
At the place I used to work at my manager decided to start having poker nights at his house with $20 buy in. There were usually 4-6 tables with 6 people each. Some of these people were avid poker players and I almost never played poker at all. In fact it was my first time learning Texas hold 'em to be honest. Even though I knew my chances of even getting to the last table were slim I still went several times because of the fun of it!
But in poker you allways have the chance of going all in and pulling a good card on the river. In sc you cant attack with your army and hope that last second in the battle a nuke drops on his guys from nowhere and you win as a result.
I would never enter those tournies as I would just lose. Why waste 10 bucks on a loss. The envoriment and the experiance is great... but i dont like justifying throwing cash away.
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I like the thought put into the thread and the idea, but I don't think too little money for too many pros is the most important issue.
I see the main difficulty in the game itself. It doesn't promote esports, it doesn't promote tournament play. A recurring tournament doesn't only need a motivated manager, but also people interested in playing tournaments in the first place, which then can be easily organized in-game. The chat (which has come too late) would have been an essential part of that, had it been there from the start.
Also, B.Net could have provided the infrastructure for tournaments. WC3 had automated tournaments, why didn't SC2 expand that concept? Instead, it was dropped completely AND tournaments now have to be manually approved by Blizzard, further making things complex for those wishing to organise something.
Had there been a solid support and the infrastructure for tournaments at the launch, SC2 could easily have made tournaments accessible and manageable for everyone, even random average players. We'd have much more tournaments, and much more people participating.
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On December 14 2010 14:24 avidday04 wrote:
One more thought to all the people saying that newbs wont ever enter these tournaments because they know they have a zero chance of winning, that's flatly not true at all. A lot of what makes tournaments appealing is the fun of it! I'll use my own poker example for this one:
At the place I used to work at my manager decided to start having poker nights at his house with $20 buy in. There were usually 4-6 tables with 6 people each. Some of these people were avid poker players and I almost never played poker at all. In fact it was my first time learning Texas hold 'em to be honest. Even though I knew my chances of even getting to the last table were slim I still went several times because of the fun of it!
That is completely untrue. In Poker, luck plays a massive role -- sometimes entire games can be decided on a few lucky hands and completely bypass skill. That's why it's considered gambling -- anyone can potentially win on 2-3 huge hands and be insignificant all game beyond that.
In SC, you have match after match where luck players a much more trivial role. Sure, you can get a lucky flank or cheese and keep in unscouted, but good luck doing that against 4-5 separate players in BO3s to get to the top, especially considering some of those players will always be pros.
Basically, your logic is completely flawed.
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On December 14 2010 14:12 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:Imagine, for a moment, that you are a young, aspiring poker player. You've played several home games and find yourself consistently beating your friends. Feeling on top of the world, you decide to venture into the world of online poker. Not wanting to get in too deep, too fast, you start with small $5 sit-n-gos on Pokerstars or Fulltilt. STOP! In the world of poker, a good player here might begin to gradually earn money and build bankroll. They may never sit across Phil Ivey, or out-read Negreanu, or put a play on Dwan, but this person could legitimately earn a small amount of cash over time by playing poker, even if he is never good enough to move up to high stakes games. However, if the world of poker were anything like the world of Starcraft 2, this good player would never win a single tournament in his entire life. Why? All of the $5 and $10 sit and go tournies would be won by the world's best poker players. The average (or even well-above-average) poker player would likely never cash in any tournament because all of the world champions of poker would be dominating the lower stakes. This happens every single week with the Starcraft 2 tournaments. The amount of skill chasing such few dollars is absolutely ridiculous. I've taken a small sample from just 4 small-cash tournaments that happen on a regular basis around here: Undeniable Tournament + Show Spoiler +1 - Murder - $50
2 - Murder - $75
3 - Fenix - $100
4 - Fenix - $75
5 - Select - $75
6 - dignitasSjow - $75
7 - Taurent - $100
8 - Fenix - $100
7 - dignitasSjow - $100
8 - ROOTDrewbie - $100
9 - dignitasSjow - $100
10 - ROOTDrewbie - $100
11 - kawaiirice - $100
12 - dignitasSjow - $100 Wolf Cup + Show Spoiler +2 - MorroW - $50
3 - KawaiiRice - $50
4 - HuK - $50
5 - KawaiiRice - $50
6 - MorroW - $50
7 - Fenix - $50
8 - MorroW - $50
9 - MorroW - $50
10 - Fenix - $100
11 - Zelniq - $200
12 - TTOne - $50
13 - Fenix - $50
14 - Levin - $50 Craft Cup + Show Spoiler +1 - mouzStrelok - $50
2 - mouzStrelok - $50
3 - aTnSocke - $50
4 - NightEnD - $50
5 - NightEnD - $50
6 - SjoW - $100
7 - merz - $50
8 - aTnSocke - $120
9 - SjoW - $150
10 - SjoW - $150
11 - SjoW - $100
12 - tarson - $100
13 - Naugrim - $100
14 - sLDeathAngel - $150 Go4Sc2 + Show Spoiler +1- Cloud - 200 EUR
2- Tarson - 200 EUR
3 - SjoW - 200 EUR
4 - Naama - 200 EUR
5 - Brat_OK - 200 EUR
6 - GoOdy - 200 EUR
7 - SjoW - 200 EUR
9 - MaNa - 200 EUR
10 - MaNa - 200 EUR
11 - Tarson - 200 EUR
12 - Socke - 200 EUR These tournaments are all being won by some of the best players in the world. When I talk about "the best", I'm not talking about top-tier people like Idra, Ret, or Jinro, I'm talking about anyone who would make the top 200 (or even 300 or 400) list of any region. Compared to the number of people who play Starcraft 2 (3 million copies sold in the first month), these people represent a very small percentage (<0.05%) of the overall Starcraft 2 community. This brings me to the "meat" of my problem with the current Starcraft 2 tournament scene....there's too much talent chasing too few dollars. There's just no money in it. Now, I understand that there are plenty of people out there who say that the game should be played simply for the love of the game and that there's no reason that money should be a part of it, but if it could be, why not? When so many people are clamoring for Starcraft 2 to be taken seriously as an "E-Sport", and with so many eyes on the game (between Teamliquid web hits, stream viewers, professional match series observers, etc...etc...), why couldn't there be more money involved? I think the single most detrimental problem afflicting the Starcraft 2 tournament scene is that there's simply no money going into it. The best players in the world are winning $50 tournaments. Much the same as my earlier example, it would be like a decent poker player enrolling in small-stakes online tournaments, simply to discover that the best poker players in the world are constantly sweeping every single event. I believe the solution to this problem would be weekly buy-in tournaments. The Starcraft 2 community needs to stop relying on companies like Razer or individuals to donate money to prize pools in order for there to be any decent money for a prize pool. There would be a tremendous infusion of excitement and possibility for all Diamond players if small buy-in tournaments were to be popularized. Imagine a 64 player, $10 buy-in tournament. With only 64 players involved, you have over $600 in the prize pool. You could go 400/200 for 1st/2nd, or even pay out some decent sized prizes to the top 4. With just 64 players (at $10 a player) you have a tournament with a larger prize pool than 99% of the tournaments currently posted on TL. Poll: Would you pay $10 USD to play in a Starcraft 2 Tournament?Yes (819) 68% No (382) 32% 1201 total votes Your vote: Would you pay $10 USD to play in a Starcraft 2 Tournament? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
If you include a rake in the tournament, all of a sudden there are millions of possibilities. Imagine that it's set-up similarly to poker rake, where the tournament hosts would keep a small percentage of the buy-in. $10 tournaments would be $9 into the prize pool and $1 into the rake. There are an almost limitless amount of possibilities that could spawn from that rake, including, but not limited to: - People paying casters to cast their tournaments - Websites being supported by more than constantly plugging products or begging for donations - Teamliquid taking a small percentage of tourney rakes that they advertise, giving them money to pay coders/webdesigners - More incentives for sponsors or advertisers to get involved - People being more interested in taking lessons from top-tier gamers I understand there are some boundaries to initially setting this up. Paying $10 for tournies where you have almost no chance of winning is discouraging. But if these tournies continue for a while, ideally the best players would be playing in better tournaments. It's the same way with poker today. Negranu and Ivey and Hellmuth don't play in small stakes because it's a waste of time for them. They'd much rather play in the larger stake games. If there were a lot of money in Starcraft 2 games from people paying to enter tournaments, the $5 and $10 tournaments would receive no interest from top players. They would be playing in the $25, $50 and $75 tournaments. I know there are a lot of potential hurdles to this (local gambling laws, Blizzard's tournament registration policies, how money would be transferred), but I would really like to see the communities response to this idea. I know, from personal experience, that there ARE people out there willing to put SOME money into this game. I've seen it in the form of donations and I've seen it in people paying for lessons. As always, keep trolling/flaming to a minimum, constructive thoughts only, blah blah blah, love you. ~Destiny EDIT: Popular responses... Show nested quote +The best players are playing in small prize tournaments all the time, as is the point of the whole thread. If a player is ranked 100 in the top 200 and there's a 32 man or 64 man tournament with a $25 or $50 buy in, do you think that player is going to play in a 5 or 10 dollar tourney with a higher chance of winning or pay a lot more with a lot worse odds? I know this is going to come up a lot, so let me explain how free market principles dictate who plays in which tournaments. If there were three different tournies at the same time every Friday, one at $5, one at $25, and one at $100, you would only be able to play in each one. At first glance, you might think, "Wow, Idra or Huk are just going to register and roll one of the smaller tournies, this sucks!" But think about it from Idra or Huk's perspective. How would you feel if you were one of the top gamers in the world and you saw that you were taking $200 prizes easily in smaller tournaments only to find that 2000 rated Diamond players were winning $4000 for 1st place finishes in larger ones? I think this would only need to happen ONCE before pro gamers quickly moved to the higher buy-in tournaments. It would be foolish for top tier players to waste their talents in lower buy-in tournaments if other players of much lesser skill began to win large sums of money in the higher tournaments. I understand there may be legal boundaries to this, but I'm not interested in those right now. I'm just interested in gauging the community interest/response. If tens of thousands of people are in favor of an idea, they will find a way to make it happen. And if there's an opportunity for blizzard to generate more interested for a game, and some income from it, too, such as taking a small percentage of the rake of all the tournaments, I couldn't see them saying no. But that's an entirely different discussion altogether.
I know what you're saying, but still... Most of those tours are weekly, and if you add upp alll those tours every week with the money they bring its actually quite a lot.
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On December 14 2010 23:53 strongandbig wrote:
Just finished reading through the thread. A few thoughts:
TLDR Version:
- buy in tournaments for SC don't violate general gambling laws - in USA at least.
- exclude pros on teams from most smaller buy-in tournaments so different ppl win.
- use APM comparison to old ladder games or tournament-specific placement games as easy smurf detection.
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Full version:
1. At least in America, I think the "it's gambling that's illegal" argument is wrong. The law distinguishes between "games of chance" and "games of skill," and paying an entry fee (or equivalently, betting on yourself) is legal for "games of skill." There was a famous court case about whether betting in poker is legal or not; the pro-poker side presented a bunch of statistical evidence that the more experienced or "better" player (evaluated in some objective way) would beat the "worse" player consistently over the long term, and the court found that poker is a game of skill, so betting on it doesn't violate general gambling laws. Starcraft is a game of skill much more clearly than poker. (Some states have specific laws against betting on poker or against online poker, but AFAIK none do against starcraft.)
2. One way to make tournaments more viable for mid to high diamond players is to exclude salaried pros on teams from most of the lower-money buy-in tournaments. These guys have reputations and jobs on the line, so they have an incentive not to smurf. As for lower tiers, you could have tournament "placement matches" instead of just using BNet tiers to determine what section of the tournament someone gets placed into. (Higher tiers could get a higher percentage of the prize pool so ppl won't throw placement matches.). Then you can compare someone's APM in their placement and tournament games with SC2Gears as a simple form of smurf detection. Or you could ask them to submit a replay of an old ladder game in their BNet league and compare APM to that.
3. From actually reading the whole thread, it's painful how many times the same things get repeated. If anyone else says "oh no blizz TOS" or "oh no but top players will win everything" without adding anything new I will sigh and cast longing glances over to the mods.
There is still a huge discrepancy in mid to high diamond. Excluding salaried pros would just encourage people to not bother with teams if they are going to consistently win these more numerous, lower pool tournaments (Especially if they are online, it makes travel fare zero) (EG: If there are ~200 100 dollar tournaments a year, and you win half of them, thats 10,000 dollars but if you go compete in the GSL, you have the potential for 86,000, but could also not get anything if you fail to get to the semi-finals). It is also unreasonable to think that most tournaments wouldn't be streamed or have VODS made available, and people -want- to see their favorite players play, and win. By having named players, it helps to make the sponsors/hosts some cash from advertising and the like, which would, in the future make more tournaments available.
Using "APM" is honestly, a laughable method of diving players into groups. It is so easy to conceal your power level by playing slower when you know your opponents aren't at the same level as you.
LAN tournaments are good, but not everyone will be able to make it to one. Travelling costs could be a breaker for some players. Team sponsorship helps to alleviate some of this, but again, its still costs.
Pro players, despite being the best of the best, lose (Some seemingly only when it really matters). Huge tournaments are a good thing for businesses and sponsors, but honestly, not great for the players involved (Unless you are winning of course). From my understanding, Pro's actually don't get a huge amount of money for themselves. So betting ~100 of your own dollars where you could lose right away may not sit well.
I'd do it, but I'm not playing the game as my potential career path. I'm doing it for fun, and the possibility of winning and the experience would be worth the 100 for me, no different than going to the Casino with 100 and expecting to lose it for a night of fun.
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I would be willing to pay 5$ call me cheap but if i wanted to go to a tournament and get my ass kicked i may as well just donate money to tournament.
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While it's true that StarCraft 2's tournament scene and infusion of money isn't quite comparable with something as established as poker, I'm still smarting from how dismally Rise of Legend's tourney scene failed to take off, so I feel pretty grateful that SC2 at least has a tourney scene, even if it is a bit dominated by these few top-tier individuals. 
I think that in theory, your idea could work, Destiny, but I don't think that there are enough people interested to make it happen...at least not in the immediate future. I myself admittedly fall into the category of not being willing to pay $10 to participate in such a tourney . I'm better than average (low Diamond), but of course, that means my skill isn't high enough to seriously compete in even a relatively small-stakes tournament, such as the ones you're proposing =/.
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I like the idea. But I wouldnt say three tournaments in the weekend. You should just pay like 10 bucks and then u can enter different tournaments. so if I want I could enter 10, 1 dollar tournaments. And if there is lets say a 64 person tournament is should just be open till there are 64 people and start imediatly. (just like poker). Also there should be one on one for money!!
I would difinatly play
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Just charge for the stream and get some sponsors like in GSL, it is the best way to do it. In your system, at the beggining will be a lot of players, but after those players get kicked in the ass every tourney (after playing only one or two games, which could mean only 10 minutes easily), they are going to be discouraged and it will decline fast. Attract sponsors from the community with things like if you donate some amount you can play two games vs the winner or something like that, another thing is that usually in this kind of games people play for fun and if you can do it for free even in tournaments, what is the incentive for paying when you know that you are not going to win?.
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If you would hand out the money relatively early, I think mediocre players would participate. Let's say you enter a tournament, and after the first round you win 1/2 of you buy in. If you win the second round, you get 1/1 of you buy in back, etc. This would allow huge prize sums for the tournament winner, while giving an incentive for players to participate, because they only have to win a few rounds to get some or all of their money back with a shot at winning a lot more. Of course the tournament would need to be big, like more than 500 people, so that a mediocre player has a shot at winning even one round.
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I dont really understand the thread. If I were as good as those dudes I'd sign up for all these tournaments. It's free money and everyone loves money
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I think these buy-in tournaments would be much more appealing if something like the top 8 payed out, so you have a much larger chance of atleast not losing money. For example first would be like $300 then 2nd $150 3rd and 4th $50 5th-8th $10 or something along those lines. The idea would be if you place top 8 then you aren't losing money, and I think people would be a lot more comfortable with those odds.
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I dont really understand the thread. If I were as good as those dudes I'd sign up for all these tournaments. It's free money and everyone loves money
K20 he's saying that the pros wouldn't play the smaller prize pool tournies because if they did then players from lower levels would win the bigger ones. So, it would be a complete waste of time for them.
Overall, I love the idea. This can go so far, but can only be hampered by the community. If people are serious about making money off SC then this should work. I don't understand the argument that you can't compare SC and poker because poker has a "luck" factor in it. It's called calculated risk, and it happens in SC as well. When someone goes all in or does a cheese build you are taking a gamble.
I would pay 10$ to get into a buy-in, and anyone who can afford to or has half a brain should as well.
Edit: Also, on more thing I would like to point out is that the people who invest the most into the game will more then likely get something out of it. Also, this will also increase the demand for couching, since people will want to get better and have a increase chance of winning. So a low to mid diamond player or even a plat player pays 20$ for couching and then 10$ the entry fee and then wins say 200 or 300 dollars that is a significant return on your investment. So, to win a possible 25$ dollar buy in he pays another 40$ for couching. So, this will stimulate the amount of money that is going into SC. So, the pro player, while making money off tournies can also make some on the side as a couch.
So it comes down to the will to invest time and money into the game. If, some is serious about getting good and wants to make some money then they will undoubtedly see a return.
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id rather these people not be allowed... because cmon, when ANYONE can join... not one person below top 200 is going to win. NO ONE!
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I believe the solution to this problem would be weekly buy-in tournaments.
why need a solution when there is no problem - i think its fine as it is right now :|
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I think that, given the right circumstances with driven people behind it, an idea like this would take off. Destiny, I sent you a PM, as a lot of points aren't relevant to the thread. However, I do believe that this can not just succeed, but thrive.
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Your numbers for those tournament winners are wrong.
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I haven't read all the posts, but I don't see the gambling issue presented here.
I'll use professional golf as an example. Below the top tier tournaments, there is a mini-tour called the Hooters Tour. These are the guys that don't have status on the major tours and are trying to make a name for themselves.
On the Hooters tour, the entry fee for EACH tournament is between $900 to $1500. That doesn't include living costs for the week either. All together it comes out to around $2,000 to play in a week long tournament.
Usually the first place prize is $30,000 - $40,000 depending on the pool. A typical tournament field has about 150 golfers. The tournament is 4 days and there is a "cut" after 2 days to reduce the field to around 70 golfers. If you make the cut, you get paid. Usually, to make a profit on the week you need to come in the top 20 or so.
Is this gambling?
If paying $10 for a starcraft tournament is gambling, how come playing golf on the Hooters tour is not?
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On December 15 2010 01:14 DNA61289 wrote:Show nested quote +I dont really understand the thread. If I were as good as those dudes I'd sign up for all these tournaments. It's free money and everyone loves money . I don't understand the argument that you can't compare SC and poker because poker has a "luck" factor in it. It's called calculated risk, and it happens in SC as well. When someone goes all in or does a cheese build you are taking a gamble.
The "luck" in Poker is that you have zero control in the hand you get.
If you are dealt 2 7's and your opponent is dealt 2 queens and then the shown cards have a queen and a seven as the only significant cards. You will lose, 100% of the time.
You can beat any strategy in Starcraft2 by catching it early and responding accordingly. Proxy gates or Canon rushes can be beaten with good control, the same cannot be said about Poker.
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On December 15 2010 01:36 DreamSailor wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 01:14 DNA61289 wrote:I dont really understand the thread. If I were as good as those dudes I'd sign up for all these tournaments. It's free money and everyone loves money . I don't understand the argument that you can't compare SC and poker because poker has a "luck" factor in it. It's called calculated risk, and it happens in SC as well. When someone goes all in or does a cheese build you are taking a gamble. The "luck" in Poker is that you have zero control in the hand you get. If you are dealt 2 7's and your opponent is dealt 2 queens and then the shown cards have a queen and a seven as the only significant cards. You will lose, 100% of the time. You can beat any strategy in Starcraft2 by catching it early and responding accordingly. Proxy gates or Canon rushes can be beaten with good control, the same cannot be said about Poker.
but poker doesn't end with 1 deal.
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I completly agree with OP and I remember someone else posting about this during the beta (I think it was Morrow but I'm not too sure).
The thrill of having money on the line makes for much more exciting competition both for the spectator and the player.
I played poker some time ago but only very low stakes and the excitement of just winning a very little amount of dollars kept it interesting for me. ^^
I hope this post gets the attention it deserves and that we can move Starcraft towards becoming an even better E-Sport.
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We just need a movie like "Rounders" or "Hackers" to come out for Starcraft. Remember when "Hackers" came out so people could think hacking was some rebel-cool thing with hot chicks and arcade games?
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On December 14 2010 16:45 Hot_Bid wrote:
You're missing the point of why people play SC2. Sure, a small minority play with money as a motivator, but the vast majority (99%) play for fun. Most of the big names play these buy in tournaments that probably net them $10/hr (and that's if they win) because they'd be playing anyway, not because they feel it's +EV or something.
Thus, a buy-in scene is just not sustainable when the bulk of the people buying in can just play the dozens of other tournaments without buyins. The difference in experience of playing in a $10 buy in tourney vs a free-to-enter tournament is nothing to the average player. What does a buy in get you? In poker the experience of playing in a big tournament with high stakes is pretty fun. You even have a small chance to go really far if you're lucky. In SC2 for an average player paying $10 to play maybe 1, 2 Bo3s with 0% chance to cash? That just won't be worth it. Entry fees are fine when you're actually paying for an experience that nobody else can provide (MLG, etc) but for a regular online tournament, it's just not worth it.
You're right that most people play SC2 just to have fun. But that's exactly the point -- monetizing SC2 with a gambling system would go a long way toward making it more of an esport and less of a "fun hobby." And it would get a lot more people playing seriously. How many people would take poker seriously if no money were involved? And how many more people would take SC2 seriously if money were involved?
+ Show Spoiler +High five for UM law and posting in this thread instead of studying for torts!
On December 14 2010 17:00 vOdToasT wrote:
Buy in tournaments would be pretty awesome if the top 50% or top 25% got money, imo.
Let's say you have a 10$ payin with 64 people. That gives 640 dollars. You could easily pay the top 50% (the higher you placed, the more you would get, naturally)
I agree with this. If only top 3 got paid, HotBid is right, almost everyone would have no chance of winning. But if top half get paid, that changes everything. I'm pretty bad, but I'd pay to enter something like this:
$10 entry fee, 64 players
17-32 get their $10 back
16-9 get $15
8-5 get $25
3+4 get $40
2 gets $60
1 gets $120.
If you get past the first round, it's a break even proposition.
One might ask why someone would pay $10 for the chance to win $120 at most in a 64 man tournament. The margins are much higher in poker tournaments. But as people have already pointed out, poker involves more luck than SC2. So it's easier to predict how well one will do in an SC 2 tournament than in a poker tournament. And since there's less risk, the reward can be correspondingly smaller. + Show Spoiler +This is a big assumption, I realize. There's still plenty of luck in tournaments based on who enters and how the brackets turn out. But SC2 def involves less risk than poker.
Another key to making this work would be to set up something like Poker Stars. One reason I don't bother with free sc2 tournaments is that it's a hassle to enter, schedule, etc. If I could log on, click to pay $10, and be playing the tournament within 15 mins, like a sitngo style online poker tournament, I'd be much more likely to play. If it comes down to picking between a weekly $10 tournament and a weekly free tournament, however, HotBid is again right, a gambling system would probably fail.
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On December 14 2010 17:00 vOdToasT wrote:
Buy in tournaments would be pretty awesome if the top 50% or top 25% got money, imo.
Let's say you have a 10$ payin with 64 people. That gives 640 dollars. You could easily pay the top 50% (the higher you placed, the more you would get, naturally)
This is a very good idea.
You could also create tourneys where entry fees could be very small like 0.25 dollars, 0.50 dollars, 1 dollar and so on.
This idea doesn't have to be only for the hardcore players.
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The "luck" in Poker is that you have zero control in the hand you get.
If you are dealt 2 7's and your opponent is dealt 2 queens and then the shown cards have a queen and a seven as the only significant cards. You will lose, 100% of the time.
You can beat any strategy in Starcraft2 by catching it early and responding accordingly. Proxy gates or Canon rushes can be beaten with good control, the same cannot be said about Poker.
Even so, hes not really comparing the two games only the systems that are used to make money. If there are hundreds of tournies running at any point then by statistical margins you'll win one. So. like I said in my edit, someone who is serious about SC and wants to make money off it win understand that you have to put some effort into it. So, how much is 20$ couching and a 10$ entry fee to a possible 200 or 300 return? If anything, SC is a better suited for this kind of system because the people who invest more time will get more out of it. SC is not that hard to get semi decent at.
A bronze player will not make that much money, but if they invest more time and effort into the game and say get into plat or Diamond level then they will have a better chance of winning a tourny.
If people say this is a bad Idea then why do people pay to get couching lessons!? Currently there is NO incentive for me to get better because all the pros are winning all of the tournies. So, by reason alone anyone who doesn't invest 8-12 hours a day is a fool and shouldn't care about SC. But with this system it would increase interest in the game and it would reward those who put a decent amount of time into it.
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Exactly as I posted and Ultravires posted (albeit clearly than me i think) If in a 64 man tournament winning the first round or two made you break even and then every round after that guaranteed profit people would enter. You may not win, but people would think, I just need to win 2-3 games and I've doubled my money or so.. then that'd be tempting to enter. It gives incentive, your not going to meet pro players in every round at these tournaments so your chances of progressing are as equal as anyones, so it would be tempting to enter.
99% of poker players don't make a living out of it. But i'd bet a good portion of them, still make some money out of it.. and this is what keeps other players playing too. It's not going to make you rich, but if you get something back for something you'd be doing anyway, your more motivated to improve and keep doing it.
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On December 15 2010 01:57 UltraVires wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 16:45 Hot_Bid wrote:
You're missing the point of why people play SC2. Sure, a small minority play with money as a motivator, but the vast majority (99%) play for fun. Most of the big names play these buy in tournaments that probably net them $10/hr (and that's if they win) because they'd be playing anyway, not because they feel it's +EV or something.
Thus, a buy-in scene is just not sustainable when the bulk of the people buying in can just play the dozens of other tournaments without buyins. The difference in experience of playing in a $10 buy in tourney vs a free-to-enter tournament is nothing to the average player. What does a buy in get you? In poker the experience of playing in a big tournament with high stakes is pretty fun. You even have a small chance to go really far if you're lucky. In SC2 for an average player paying $10 to play maybe 1, 2 Bo3s with 0% chance to cash? That just won't be worth it. Entry fees are fine when you're actually paying for an experience that nobody else can provide (MLG, etc) but for a regular online tournament, it's just not worth it. You're right that most people play SC2 just to have fun. But that's exactly the point -- monetizing SC2 with a gambling system would go a long way toward making it more of an esport and less of a "fun hobby." And it would get a lot more people playing seriously. How many people would take poker seriously if no money were involved? And how many more people would take SC2 seriously if money were involved? + Show Spoiler +High five for UM law and posting in this thread instead of studying for torts! Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 17:00 vOdToasT wrote:
Buy in tournaments would be pretty awesome if the top 50% or top 25% got money, imo.
Let's say you have a 10$ payin with 64 people. That gives 640 dollars. You could easily pay the top 50% (the higher you placed, the more you would get, naturally) I agree with this. If only top 3 got paid, HotBid is right, almost everyone would have no chance of winning. But if top half get paid, that changes everything. I'm pretty bad, but I'd pay to enter something like this: $10 entry fee, 64 players17-32 get their $10 back 16-9 get $15 8-5 get $25 3+4 get $40 2 gets $60 1 gets $120. If you get past the first round, it's a break even proposition. One might ask why someone would pay $10 for the chance to win $120 at most in a 64 man tournament. The margins are much higher in poker tournaments. But as people have already pointed out, poker involves more luck than SC2. So it's easier to predict how well one will do in an SC 2 tournament than in a poker tournament. And since there's less risk, the reward can be correspondingly smaller. + Show Spoiler +This is a big assumption, I realize. There's still plenty of luck in tournaments based on who enters and how the brackets turn out. But SC2 def involves less risk than poker. Another key to making this work would be to set up something like Poker Stars. One reason I don't bother with free sc2 tournaments is that it's a hassle to enter, schedule, etc. If I could log on, click to pay $10, and be playing the tournament within 15 mins, like a sitngo style online poker tournament, I'd be much more likely to play. If it comes down to picking between a weekly $10 tournament and a weekly free tournament, however, HotBid is again right, a gambling system would probably fail.
This would be such a great system, and it could be applied with any entrance fee. There could be a $1 fee for people who don't want to risk as much - though from previous posts it seems that getting a payout for that little amount might be a problem. But if one were to play enough, it shouldn't be a problem to get a payout after a few games.
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On December 15 2010 02:16 gotlucky wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 01:57 UltraVires wrote:On December 14 2010 16:45 Hot_Bid wrote:
You're missing the point of why people play SC2. Sure, a small minority play with money as a motivator, but the vast majority (99%) play for fun. Most of the big names play these buy in tournaments that probably net them $10/hr (and that's if they win) because they'd be playing anyway, not because they feel it's +EV or something.
Thus, a buy-in scene is just not sustainable when the bulk of the people buying in can just play the dozens of other tournaments without buyins. The difference in experience of playing in a $10 buy in tourney vs a free-to-enter tournament is nothing to the average player. What does a buy in get you? In poker the experience of playing in a big tournament with high stakes is pretty fun. You even have a small chance to go really far if you're lucky. In SC2 for an average player paying $10 to play maybe 1, 2 Bo3s with 0% chance to cash? That just won't be worth it. Entry fees are fine when you're actually paying for an experience that nobody else can provide (MLG, etc) but for a regular online tournament, it's just not worth it. You're right that most people play SC2 just to have fun. But that's exactly the point -- monetizing SC2 with a gambling system would go a long way toward making it more of an esport and less of a "fun hobby." And it would get a lot more people playing seriously. How many people would take poker seriously if no money were involved? And how many more people would take SC2 seriously if money were involved? + Show Spoiler +High five for UM law and posting in this thread instead of studying for torts! On December 14 2010 17:00 vOdToasT wrote:
Buy in tournaments would be pretty awesome if the top 50% or top 25% got money, imo.
Let's say you have a 10$ payin with 64 people. That gives 640 dollars. You could easily pay the top 50% (the higher you placed, the more you would get, naturally) I agree with this. If only top 3 got paid, HotBid is right, almost everyone would have no chance of winning. But if top half get paid, that changes everything. I'm pretty bad, but I'd pay to enter something like this: $10 entry fee, 64 players17-32 get their $10 back 16-9 get $15 8-5 get $25 3+4 get $40 2 gets $60 1 gets $120. If you get past the first round, it's a break even proposition. One might ask why someone would pay $10 for the chance to win $120 at most in a 64 man tournament. The margins are much higher in poker tournaments. But as people have already pointed out, poker involves more luck than SC2. So it's easier to predict how well one will do in an SC 2 tournament than in a poker tournament. And since there's less risk, the reward can be correspondingly smaller. + Show Spoiler +This is a big assumption, I realize. There's still plenty of luck in tournaments based on who enters and how the brackets turn out. But SC2 def involves less risk than poker. Another key to making this work would be to set up something like Poker Stars. One reason I don't bother with free sc2 tournaments is that it's a hassle to enter, schedule, etc. If I could log on, click to pay $10, and be playing the tournament within 15 mins, like a sitngo style online poker tournament, I'd be much more likely to play. If it comes down to picking between a weekly $10 tournament and a weekly free tournament, however, HotBid is again right, a gambling system would probably fail. This would be such a great system, and it could be applied with any entrance fee. There could be a $1 fee for people who don't want to risk as much - though from previous posts it seems that getting a payout for that little amount might be a problem. But if one were to play enough, it shouldn't be a problem to get a payout after a few games.
Exactly. Just divide the numbers by 10 to get the results for a $1 entry fee.
I just want to add one more thought: I think the main reason that poker became so popular out of complete obscurity in the early 00s was that the internet brought competitive poker to everyone. On sites like poker stars, anyone can gamble like a pro, although with smaller chips, which in turn generated a market to watch the big dogs play for crazy amounts. The pro-spectating scene of course fed right back into the online-amateur scene, and they mutually supported each other till both industries became huge. I'm not saying that organized amateur SC2 gambling will necessarily have the same effect, but it would be a decent bet
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I don't think that players should pay for lower prize pools. However, it's also worth noting that it is reasonable (in my opinion) to ask for a buy-in if the event is not sponsored.
Basically, let's say Budweiser holds a SC2 tournament, $5000 grand prize. I don't think the players should pay, as the costs have more than likely been written off as a business expense.
On the other hand, if I were to throw together a tournament... A college student doesn't exactly have cash. Each player pitches $5, let's say 50 people show... that's $250 prize pool. This is fine, in my opinion, unless I'd take a cut of the prize to gain a profit... then it's not cool.
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I think one of the biggest arguments is "why would I enter a tournament I would never win?" well the idea is that you would be able to win...
Its not like they would organize 1 $5 entry tournament, where the first 64 get to play... no you organize like 20 $5 tournaments. The really good players will be spread out giving everyone a better chance of winning.
Say in tournmament 1 kiwikaki enters, but so does Huk, inControl, and Machine. Ok, now its a toss up as to what top player gets the prize.
Say in tournament 2 (people who entered after the original 64) happens to only have slush and LzGamer, well in a round of 64 these two players will probably win, but still they could get knocked out.
Say in tournament 3 (after 128 entrants) the only good player to enter is Liquid'Tyler. Now in a multi-round tournmanet anything could happen, and Tyler could get killed in any round of the tourney and then the prize is up for grabs.
Now, say in tournament 4 its just a bunch of random ~2500 +/- 500 point diamonds, no one famous, now who wins?
Say in tournament 5, Idra enters late, just for fun, well now this tournament is probably won by idra, but there is no progamer to take 2nd place.
Say in tournamnet 6 again just a bunch of random diamonds
etc... etc... etc...
While some tables in poke you get screwed at "oh hey look, Its 3 pros at my table, guess I'm not advancing"
other times you get lucky and its just a bunch of randoms. This is the idea here.
- - - - - -
Then to build off of that, you have like 10 $5 tournaments, 5 $10 tournaments, 2 $20 tournaments, and 1 $50 tournament running at the same time.
Sure, some progamers will enter the $5 tournaments, but most will hit up the higher ones just because the prize pool is twice as large without that much more competition. I mean, in the $5 tournament your probably winning ~$150 for first place. Decent money, but the $10 and your looking at something closer to $350, $20 and your sitting pretty around $800...
The $50 tournament will end up with a prize pool of ~$1,500 - $2,000 for that kind of money, people like idra, huk, jinro, etc... will sign up simply because they have a good shot of getting the $2,000 where a random diamond has no chance.
Do you think people who are constantly winning tournaments say Fenix will go "man I've won a TONNE of tournaments, and beaten out most of the best players in SC2... lets play some $5 tournaments and kill some noobs!" or will he go "well... I'm one of the best players in the world, lets make some bank, i'll enter one of the $20 tournaments, lots of prize money and the competition will be lower than the $50 tournament. I beat most of these guys in tournaments already so with less of them participating here this will be cake."
(Please note, just picked random good player's names in this, in no way have I actually ranked these players abilities or believe that they are only good enough to enter a certain tournament bracket. I just picked names that I know and enjoy watching.)
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I believe that this would drastically change SC2 competitive play for the better. I believe that it would make the skill level of every player in general higher.
You could even do tournaments for players in silver, lets say, and they wouldn't even have to be amazing to win.
The quality for spectators would rise because people would have more drive to win.
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Your idea is against blizzards current ULA. Not sure if that has been covered, im not about to read 9 pages of posts.
Believe me tournament organizers have thought of this. And for blizzard to allow your tournament to take place you cant charge a buy in.
Also please note StarCraft 2 has only been out for 4 months. Its in its infancy and is only going to grow. I can speak on behalf of l2sc.net, the site i run. Our first tournament was a 400$ prize pool, Our second tournament was a 3000$ prize pool, our third tournament will be even larger.
Give it some time and you will see more money put forth into bigger prize pools
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hmm one of the main problems here seems to be that we are still trying to generate revenue directly from the players. I wonder what the advertisement revenues for sc2 are like, as compared to something like baseball etc...
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whoaaaa wait slow down. you mean video game tourneys dont have as much money in them as old and popular as shit poker tourneys in a country where competitive gaming isnt as popular? you just fucking blew my mind open mother fucker. maybe e sports as a whole needs to get bigger before that fucking matters. it needs big boys and THAT TAKES TIME ASSHOLE
User was temp banned for this post.
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One of the only reasons poker is so big is that it's a huge luckfest and so bad players have no idea how bad they really are.
With StarCraft and almost anything else, just by playing 2-3 games with someone, you can clearly see who's the better player. The worse player will then not want to risk any money.
On December 15 2010 02:36 Nutro wrote:
whoaaaa wait slow down. you mean video game tourneys dont have as much money in them as old and popular as shit poker tourneys in a country where competitive gaming isnt as popular? you just fucking blew my mind open mother fucker. maybe e sports as a whole needs to get bigger before that fucking matters. it needs big boys and THAT TAKES TIME ASSHOLE
You're so getting banned, it was a pleasure reporting you.
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well Instead of arguing about it why dont u inform blizz and start up an site
then we will so how it goes
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I really like the idea of 50% of the players getting their money back. THOUSANDS more players would be interested in tourneys where they know they wont win the whole tournement but if they can win one round break even and win two rounds and profit. Im only mid-high platinum but ive gotten lucky and won against mid diamond players.
People are more prone to gamble with their money than throw it away. People get lucky games just like people get lucky hands in poker. (Just expect ALOT of cheesing.)
Also, the concept of buy-in tourneys is definitely a possibility, you just need consent from blizzard. MLG events have a 60 dollar buy in and the 64-128 passes sellout in minutes. If a 60 dollar buy-in sell out that quickly you should have no problem finding thousands to do multiple 10 dollar buy ins.
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I wish things like this would be this easy, but as with anything, if the price is more than free, the number of people willing to participate decreases about 98%.
By the way, some of the prizes at the end of the OWC were $200+, but thanks for including me in your original post ^^
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So, let me understand this clearly. You're proposing a new reason for creation of new people who cheese their way to tournament finals or turtle up in an island base, as if the number of people playing lame games is not enough. Joining a tournament with free signups is good. It allows casual gamers to join tournaments and play like they want to. But when people invest in something, they will do anything to win. Cheesing, turtling up in island bases, stupid allins for the sake of winning odd games will happen just more and it's just the opposite of what people want.
In poker, people bluff other people, and it's always funny and enjoyable to see people getting bluffed by jack high or anything like that. But, in Starcraft, people do all sorts of lame play like Thor Drops, stupid cheeses, turtling up at island bases. I don't know about everybody, but I hate people doing this. Yes, pulling off a good cheese is good too, and people laugh at it as well. But, if cheese happens in every single game of a particular matchup (cough, TvZ, cough), it's not. I don't know about you, but neither NewDawn, nor IdrA (nor ret nor NesTea) deserved to get eliminated by the stupidest plays from lesser skilled players (yes, I really think that mvp is not nearly as good as IdrA and most of the TvZ strats are ridiculously stupid. Even if mvp is really better than IdrA, i don't think anyone would disagree with the skill comparison between NewDawn and bitbybit or NesTea and rain).
I just want to see what people think about this:
Poll: Do you really want more lame play after GSL Season 3Yes (10) 91% No (1) 9% 11 total votes Your vote: Do you really want more lame play after GSL Season 3 (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
For the second reason why i think this would be a bad idea: Because casual gaming will be ruined so hard. I don't think that really 1024 out of 1024 people who join go4sc2 cup really do it because of money. Actually I would hardly believe that even 24 out of 1024 people join that for money (particular example is particular, again). And, yes. I'm one in a thousand. You can easily say that "Yeah but we can make tournaments skill level restricted.". I neither know that you already know this, nor give a fuck: Some people are so underrated or purposefully lose in the ladder for the sake of staying in lower leagues. And those people will chobostomp the people who is really silver level and wants to join a tourney and have fun with people of the same skill as him. Your idea is the e-sports equivalent of making basketball courts in the streets pay to play.
Poll: Would you pay to play at a basketball court?Yes (12) 86% No (2) 14% 14 total votes Your vote: Would you pay to play at a basketball court? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
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On December 15 2010 03:18 Metalwing wrote:So, let me understand this clearly. You're proposing a new reason for creation of new people who cheese their way to tournament finals or turtle up in an island base, as if the number of people playing lame games is not enough. Joining a tournament with free signups is good. It allows casual gamers to join tournaments and play like they want to. But when people invest in something, they will do anything to win. Cheesing, turtling up in island bases, stupid allins for the sake of winning odd games will happen just more and it's just the opposite of what people want. In poker, people bluff other people, and it's always funny and enjoyable to see people getting bluffed by jack high or anything like that. But, in Starcraft, people do all sorts of lame play like Thor Drops, stupid cheeses, turtling up at island bases. I don't know about everybody, but I hate people doing this. Yes, pulling off a good cheese is good too, and people laugh at it as well. But, if cheese happens in every single game of a particular matchup (cough, TvZ, cough), it's not. I don't know about you, but neither NewDawn, nor IdrA (nor ret nor NesTea) deserved to get eliminated by the stupidest plays from lesser skilled players (yes, I really think that mvp is not nearly as good as IdrA and most of the TvZ strats are ridiculously stupid. Even if mvp is really better than IdrA, i don't think anyone would disagree with the skill comparison between NewDawn and bitbybit or NesTea and rain). I just want to see what people think about this: Poll: Do you really want more lame play after GSL Season 3Yes (10) 91% No (1) 9% 11 total votes Your vote: Do you really want more lame play after GSL Season 3 (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
For the second reason why i think this would be a bad idea: Because casual gaming will be ruined so hard. I don't think that really 1024 out of 1024 people who join go4sc2 cup really do it because of money. Actually I would hardly believe that even 24 out of 1024 people join that for money (particular example is particular, again). And, yes. I'm one in a thousand. You can easily say that "Yeah but we can make tournaments skill level restricted.". I neither know that you already know this, nor give a fuck: Some people are so underrated or purposefully lose in the ladder for the sake of staying in lower leagues. And those people will chobostomp the people who is really silver level and wants to join a tourney and have fun with people of the same skill as him. Your idea is the e-sports equivalent of making basketball courts in the streets pay to play. Poll: Would you pay to play at a basketball court?Yes (12) 86% No (2) 14% 14 total votes Your vote: Would you pay to play at a basketball court? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
So much anger. i dont how this is the same as paying to play basketball. Betting on basketball games is something that happens (same thing as this will do). And its stupid to say that players shouldnt use particular strats like cheesing. Cheesing helps the game develop and it is, should, and always will be a part of the game!
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@metal I have actually bet on basketball games all the time :D
I understand where you're coming from, but its a whole new experience playing with risk as opposed to playing with nothing on the line. You are correct when you said there will be mass cheesing, but even in GSL there is mass cheesing with money on the line.
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On December 15 2010 03:18 Metalwing wrote:
TL:DR, thanks, but it's not for me.
I don't really understand this. You make it sound like cheesing will start winning tournaments left and right. If anything, players with a lower skill level that rely on cheesing would see that it takes quite a bit more strategy to win a tournament. I think that this would benefit the Starcraft strategy scene. If you think that the GSL season 3 perpetuated the use of cheesing, I believe you're wrong. MC did quick aggression against Jinro because he knows that Jinro had been focusing on long term macro strategies and was susceptible to early game aggression. It was a strategy, nothing more.
And the tournament scene certainly hasn't hurt the casual poker playing field. If anything, it's helped it to reach new heights. The tournament and casual scene helped to feed each other's popularity. Right now, the tournament scene is dominated by pros. But, as Destiny is pointing out, if the casual player felt like they could step in a make a few bucks off of tournaments, it would help to greatly expand the popularity of the game as a whole.
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I like the concept although legal restrictions will probably be too much. I think this concept might thrive because SC2 is in a stage when anything can happen and BO losses are very common such that it is anyone's game in a tournament. If going into 2nd or 3rd round in a tourney will double my entrance fee then sure why not i'll try to enter.
This is harder than in BW where you know exactly where you stand and a D player will never be able to take games from C or B players as often as a 2000 Diamond can take games from top 200 players.
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I think people are forgetting this is the beginning on SC2 so the money is still low outside of Korea, bigger prizes are always offline competitions because of cheating, internet, other abuses and value for the organizers and most of the top players have/will have contracts and receive salaries..
This type of tournament (weekly internet based) are just for practice/fun/prestige then money..
If you add ESWC, MLG, WCG, GSL, dreamhack,blizzcon, ECG, Arbalet, IEM, ESL series, smaller lans that will eventually appear in europe/USA there will be more money to win.
But i do like this system and i can see a future for it!
Imagine a huge tournament with 10$ or 20$ buy in with all the top pros and some other guys.. i bet lots of guys would pay just to have a chance at playing against the world's best!
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Great idea! I have always wanted a system that allows a casual gamer like me to play for cash. I think it would make the whole multi-player gaming experience a lot more exhilarating. Just like in Wc3 and DotA, Sc2 will eventually come to a point where ladder rankings are no longer sufficient incentives to make the game fun for the regular gamer who does not have the time or commitment to make the step up to the competitive scene.
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Very good post.
It really summarize my opinion on this.
If we want Starcraft 2 to grow bigger we have to invest a bit of our money.
I would even love to play in a 1 dollar tournament.
Why starting at 10 ?
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many people keep talking about "luck" in poker. the amount of luck between low lvl poker and low lvl starcraft is honestly not that different, and the factor of luck diminishes quickly as skill level increases in both sports..... unless you believe that the three different people that have won the world series of poker in back to back years are just the luckiest people in the world(doyle brunson won twice in a row and then got 2nd the third year)
but for the record the main problem seems to be the lack of tournaments, and furthermore lack of disparity of prizes in tournaments.
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There is definitely less luck involved when it comes to Sc2, which makes the concept of poker tournaments being applied to Sc2 even more viable and less of a legal concern. I think it is silly to consider paying entry fees to enter gaming competitions with cash prizes gambling when poker tournaments are totally legit and acceptable in society today.
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On December 14 2010 14:21 Jombozeus wrote:
The skill gap is MUCH bigger and VERY defined in Starcraft 2. Looking at a guy's ranking and seeing him 2600 Diamond while you're 1900 Diamond means your likelihood to lose is probably 90%. This doesn't inspire buy-ins.
this is so full of shit I don't know what to say... I almost never ladder, I have 900 ladder points 65% win rate and a 1400 bonus pool. I regulary enter these small tournaments (free buy ins) and knock off players 2500+. You're making ladder points wayyy to significant. The only thing ladder points can tell you is a general sense of how solid a player is once youre in the top range 2700+ or so. You can generally expect they will have solid play or well organized cheeses.
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On December 15 2010 03:25 Deckkie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 03:18 Metalwing wrote:So, let me understand this clearly. You're proposing a new reason for creation of new people who cheese their way to tournament finals or turtle up in an island base, as if the number of people playing lame games is not enough. Joining a tournament with free signups is good. It allows casual gamers to join tournaments and play like they want to. But when people invest in something, they will do anything to win. Cheesing, turtling up in island bases, stupid allins for the sake of winning odd games will happen just more and it's just the opposite of what people want. In poker, people bluff other people, and it's always funny and enjoyable to see people getting bluffed by jack high or anything like that. But, in Starcraft, people do all sorts of lame play like Thor Drops, stupid cheeses, turtling up at island bases. I don't know about everybody, but I hate people doing this. Yes, pulling off a good cheese is good too, and people laugh at it as well. But, if cheese happens in every single game of a particular matchup (cough, TvZ, cough), it's not. I don't know about you, but neither NewDawn, nor IdrA (nor ret nor NesTea) deserved to get eliminated by the stupidest plays from lesser skilled players (yes, I really think that mvp is not nearly as good as IdrA and most of the TvZ strats are ridiculously stupid. Even if mvp is really better than IdrA, i don't think anyone would disagree with the skill comparison between NewDawn and bitbybit or NesTea and rain). I just want to see what people think about this: Poll: Do you really want more lame play after GSL Season 3Yes (10) 91% No (1) 9% 11 total votes Your vote: Do you really want more lame play after GSL Season 3 (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
For the second reason why i think this would be a bad idea: Because casual gaming will be ruined so hard. I don't think that really 1024 out of 1024 people who join go4sc2 cup really do it because of money. Actually I would hardly believe that even 24 out of 1024 people join that for money (particular example is particular, again). And, yes. I'm one in a thousand. You can easily say that "Yeah but we can make tournaments skill level restricted.". I neither know that you already know this, nor give a fuck: Some people are so underrated or purposefully lose in the ladder for the sake of staying in lower leagues. And those people will chobostomp the people who is really silver level and wants to join a tourney and have fun with people of the same skill as him. Your idea is the e-sports equivalent of making basketball courts in the streets pay to play. Poll: Would you pay to play at a basketball court?Yes (12) 86% No (2) 14% 14 total votes Your vote: Would you pay to play at a basketball court? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
So much anger. i dont how this is the same as paying to play basketball. Betting on basketball games is something that happens (same thing as this will do). And its stupid to say that players shouldnt use particular strats like cheesing. Cheesing helps the game develop and it is, should, and always will be a part of the game!
Who is talking about
1- Cheese is evil and it should be punished? What I mean is, cheese would not be a problem if it wasn't the most viable strat in some matchups or races and easily punishable for others.
2- Betting on basketball games? I was actually talking about paying for a basketball court for playing it. Let me be more clear. You pay 10 bucks to the owner of a basketball court in the street, you play 1 hour, after that 1 hour finishes, you leave.
On December 15 2010 03:29 xOff wrote:
@metal I have actually bet on basketball games all the time :D
I understand where you're coming from, but its a whole new experience playing with risk as opposed to playing with nothing on the line. You are correct when you said there will be mass cheesing, but even in GSL there is mass cheesing with money on the line.
Exactly, this is what I'm saying. Even when the money on the line is not their very own money, people cheese this hard. If it's also their own money, people would cheese more.
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As someone who has rarely the time to play in tournements and likes to watch streams I want the stream/tournement in quality and then i would think about paying the organizer / organisation for that like every other product with the difference I also would like to support esports.
For example i know Take and HomerJ are organizing a huge tournament kind of Homestory Cup 2. I know many people allready donated money for that tounement and I consider to do that as well but when i google 5 minutes for the tournement and I don't find anything I rapidly loose interest in donating. For me the bad publishing of the tournement is a lack of quality so why should I pay? Same thing with GSL.
Everybody knows how bad the stream is so for me the thought of paying them for that is hilarious.
I do pay for ESL Premium for years now because the pure quantity of shows (for Germans at least) for that low amount money is just plain awesome even if I sometimes rage at ESL when they have their moments.
Next point is the number of tournements. The amount of tournements with a low price pool is sick and i can't keep up with all that stuff and if there is tournement every day with european and amarican top players it's just not that interesting to watch after a while.
So my opinion what needs to be done for getting money to esports:
-Sponsors should stop spending money on 3 events at the same time and do the big throw, I think Sony Erricson is pretty happy with their investment in GSL.
-Tournement organization has to become as professional as they can and minimize technical difficulties and stuff to almost zero. I know it is hard to get there without a lot of money but still.
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That's now how sports work. Every big tournaments need sponsors. What we need is the companies to realize that there will be return if they invest in esports. Tennis tournaments wont happen if there are no sponsors. There will be no sponsors if the game is not attractive to the big public. That's how it is. It will take a long time before any game will have real money in its competitive aspect.
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On December 15 2010 04:00 Diks wrote:
Very good post.
It really summarize my opinion on this.
If we want Starcraft 2 to grow bigger we have to invest a bit of our money.
I would even love to play in a 1 dollar tournament.
Why starting at 10 ?
Paypal fees, minimum transaction fee is something like 30¢
Just a question would you guys play in a tourney that looked like this?
64 players
$10 entry
Prize distribution:
1 : $240
2 : $120
3-4: $60
5-8: $30
That leaves a $40 headroom for paypal fees royalties etc.
I'm sure if you don't skim or rake the pool you can skirt a lot of legal issues.
Your odds assuming all of your MU's are 50-50 if 1/8 to get prizes which isn't the worst of odds even assuming you get 3 or 4 ringers in your tournament there is still 4 wild card spots that triple your entry fee. This sort of 40/20/10/10/5/5/5/5 distribution will probably attract the lower level players as well because of the increased amount of prize slots. Then on top of that sponsers would just add to the prize pool.
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2- Betting on basketball games? I was actually talking about paying for a basketball court for playing it. Let me be more clear. You pay 10 bucks to the owner of a basketball court in the street, you play 1 hour, after that 1 hour finishes, you leave.
No one's talking about requiring pay-to-play for every game. Free bnet ladder would still be avail to everyone. We're talking about totally optional sit'n'go style tournaments. So the better analogy is this: Do you want 1 basketball court where most everyone plays "for fun" or two: the "fun" court and the pay-to-play tournament court?
Edit: If you hate cheese, you should prefer two courts, at least if you're right that tournaments will attract the cheesy players. You'd be welcome to stay on ladder, which would presumably be less cheesy.
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If Blizzard were to initiate this, I suspect that Starcraft 2 would become the biggest e-sport of all time. The level of competition would be insanely high, and it would not only make games more exciting, but the level of spectatorship would inevitably rise as well.
Legal issues aside, it would not be terribly difficult to organize. Blizzard could simply copy the structure of any poker site out there. Start out by doing a few weekly tournaments to get the hang of things, and then increase the amount. If there were like 50 tournies to choose from on a saturday afternoon, I'm sure plenty of unknowns could win some cash. Also, they could use a payout scale that gives money back to players who get to the second round. This would encourage much more tournament play while still allowing for a decent payout to first place.
Blizzard could easily incorporate a raking system, which would make them tons of money. And they could use that money to pay for their new employees, because I feel like the only viable way to do these tournies would be to have Blizzard moderators in charge of setting up the games and observing.
Unfortunately, I don't see this kind of thing ever happening for Starcraft 2. Considering how many legal issues surround poker sites (especially in the US), this kind of thing would be waayyy too risky for Blizzard to do. It may be possible to do it in other countries with less stringent gambling laws, but I doubt Blizzard would even bother.
EDIT
I take back the gambling laws part, after reading a post by insanious. Apparently, MTG online has buy in tournaments with cash prizes all the time. I am suddenly a lot more hopeful for Starcraft 2 to do something like this.
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Also worth noting is the amount of time for 64 players to play, then the 32, then the 16 all the way to the winner actually takes an absurdly long time. A game can be anywhere from 8 minutes to 45 on average. You could potentially be playing a lot hours for ~200 bucks.
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On December 15 2010 04:58 DreamSailor wrote:
Also worth noting is the amount of time for 64 players to play, then the 32, then the 16 all the way to the winner actually takes an absurdly long time. A game can be anywhere from 8 minutes to 45 on average. You could potentially be playing a lot hours for ~200 bucks.
Very true, but currently there are plenty of players playing several hours for 0 bucks. This will at least allow some non-pro gamers to experience the excitement of playing in a tournament, while still having a chance to make some cash.
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I don't like the idea. This is not the direction e-Sports should be taken if you ask me. Some things shouldn't just be about the money
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only one thing: Starcraft is not the same as Poker, cause Starcraft haven't got thousands/millions of fishes, paying money and loose constantly.
oh an, when u want to realize this, u will need a sofrtware/or site, where maybe can cash in 20$ and play several tournaments with you're 20$ bankroll. And not cash in for every tournament.
And jeah, "Micros" should be availible, maybe 20c tournaments, why not?
omg, more andm ore ideas are coming to my head: the luck factor in sc2 should be to less to atract bad players thht just want to win some money with luck like in poker...
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On December 15 2010 05:04 orotoss wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 04:58 DreamSailor wrote:
Also worth noting is the amount of time for 64 players to play, then the 32, then the 16 all the way to the winner actually takes an absurdly long time. A game can be anywhere from 8 minutes to 45 on average. You could potentially be playing a lot hours for ~200 bucks. Very true, but currently there are plenty of players playing several hours for 0 bucks. This will at least allow some non-pro gamers to experience the excitement of playing in a tournament, while still having a chance to make some cash.
True, but these tourneys could easily be 4+hours long. Would you have set breaks? Every player would have to wait for his next opponent to finish, and there could be potentially huge backlogs of people, just waiting, they can't start another game because what if their opponent finishes? They're kind of just in a deadzone of waiting around, which isn't fun.
I'm not saying its impossible, if you worked out the kinks I think it could be awesome. I just think theres a couple of huge issues that need to be addressed.
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On December 15 2010 01:57 UltraVires wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 16:45 Hot_Bid wrote:
You're missing the point of why people play SC2. Sure, a small minority play with money as a motivator, but the vast majority (99%) play for fun. Most of the big names play these buy in tournaments that probably net them $10/hr (and that's if they win) because they'd be playing anyway, not because they feel it's +EV or something.
Thus, a buy-in scene is just not sustainable when the bulk of the people buying in can just play the dozens of other tournaments without buyins. The difference in experience of playing in a $10 buy in tourney vs a free-to-enter tournament is nothing to the average player. What does a buy in get you? In poker the experience of playing in a big tournament with high stakes is pretty fun. You even have a small chance to go really far if you're lucky. In SC2 for an average player paying $10 to play maybe 1, 2 Bo3s with 0% chance to cash? That just won't be worth it. Entry fees are fine when you're actually paying for an experience that nobody else can provide (MLG, etc) but for a regular online tournament, it's just not worth it. You're right that most people play SC2 just to have fun. But that's exactly the point -- monetizing SC2 with a gambling system would go a long way toward making it more of an esport and less of a "fun hobby." And it would get a lot more people playing seriously. How many people would take poker seriously if no money were involved? And how many more people would take SC2 seriously if money were involved? + Show Spoiler +High five for UM law and posting in this thread instead of studying for torts! Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 17:00 vOdToasT wrote:
Buy in tournaments would be pretty awesome if the top 50% or top 25% got money, imo.
Let's say you have a 10$ payin with 64 people. That gives 640 dollars. You could easily pay the top 50% (the higher you placed, the more you would get, naturally) I agree with this. If only top 3 got paid, HotBid is right, almost everyone would have no chance of winning. But if top half get paid, that changes everything. I'm pretty bad, but I'd pay to enter something like this: $10 entry fee, 64 players17-32 get their $10 back 16-9 get $15 8-5 get $25 3+4 get $40 2 gets $60 1 gets $120. If you get past the first round, it's a break even proposition. One might ask why someone would pay $10 for the chance to win $120 at most in a 64 man tournament. The margins are much higher in poker tournaments. But as people have already pointed out, poker involves more luck than SC2. So it's easier to predict how well one will do in an SC 2 tournament than in a poker tournament. And since there's less risk, the reward can be correspondingly smaller. + Show Spoiler +This is a big assumption, I realize. There's still plenty of luck in tournaments based on who enters and how the brackets turn out. But SC2 def involves less risk than poker. Another key to making this work would be to set up something like Poker Stars. One reason I don't bother with free sc2 tournaments is that it's a hassle to enter, schedule, etc. If I could log on, click to pay $10, and be playing the tournament within 15 mins, like a sitngo style online poker tournament, I'd be much more likely to play. If it comes down to picking between a weekly $10 tournament and a weekly free tournament, however, HotBid is again right, a gambling system would probably fail.
Chuck Norris approves of this message.
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Ninja edit, durp.
Good idea^^
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On December 15 2010 04:58 DreamSailor wrote:
Also worth noting is the amount of time for 64 players to play, then the 32, then the 16 all the way to the winner actually takes an absurdly long time. A game can be anywhere from 8 minutes to 45 on average. You could potentially be playing a lot hours for ~200 bucks.
The whole point is most top players do that for $50... This way they would be playing for a lot more money for their time. Would you rather spend say 8 hours to get $50 or 8 hours to get $200 but it cost you $10 to enter?
Thats the idea.
Also, since SC2 is not a game of chance the rules for gambling are a lot different. This is similar to an entrace fee to getting into a bar rather than paying $10 to play poker. Laws distinguish between say paying $10 to take a spot in a poker tournament or paying $10 towards a prize pool for a baseball tournament.
The really big problem is doing this with blizzard. I have to read the EULA but that might prohibit the pay to play for a huge prize pool type tournament, although you never know...
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On December 15 2010 05:08 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 01:57 UltraVires wrote:On December 14 2010 16:45 Hot_Bid wrote:
You're missing the point of why people play SC2. Sure, a small minority play with money as a motivator, but the vast majority (99%) play for fun. Most of the big names play these buy in tournaments that probably net them $10/hr (and that's if they win) because they'd be playing anyway, not because they feel it's +EV or something.
Thus, a buy-in scene is just not sustainable when the bulk of the people buying in can just play the dozens of other tournaments without buyins. The difference in experience of playing in a $10 buy in tourney vs a free-to-enter tournament is nothing to the average player. What does a buy in get you? In poker the experience of playing in a big tournament with high stakes is pretty fun. You even have a small chance to go really far if you're lucky. In SC2 for an average player paying $10 to play maybe 1, 2 Bo3s with 0% chance to cash? That just won't be worth it. Entry fees are fine when you're actually paying for an experience that nobody else can provide (MLG, etc) but for a regular online tournament, it's just not worth it. You're right that most people play SC2 just to have fun. But that's exactly the point -- monetizing SC2 with a gambling system would go a long way toward making it more of an esport and less of a "fun hobby." And it would get a lot more people playing seriously. How many people would take poker seriously if no money were involved? And how many more people would take SC2 seriously if money were involved? + Show Spoiler +High five for UM law and posting in this thread instead of studying for torts! On December 14 2010 17:00 vOdToasT wrote:
Buy in tournaments would be pretty awesome if the top 50% or top 25% got money, imo.
Let's say you have a 10$ payin with 64 people. That gives 640 dollars. You could easily pay the top 50% (the higher you placed, the more you would get, naturally) I agree with this. If only top 3 got paid, HotBid is right, almost everyone would have no chance of winning. But if top half get paid, that changes everything. I'm pretty bad, but I'd pay to enter something like this: $10 entry fee, 64 players17-32 get their $10 back 16-9 get $15 8-5 get $25 3+4 get $40 2 gets $60 1 gets $120. If you get past the first round, it's a break even proposition. One might ask why someone would pay $10 for the chance to win $120 at most in a 64 man tournament. The margins are much higher in poker tournaments. But as people have already pointed out, poker involves more luck than SC2. So it's easier to predict how well one will do in an SC 2 tournament than in a poker tournament. And since there's less risk, the reward can be correspondingly smaller. + Show Spoiler +This is a big assumption, I realize. There's still plenty of luck in tournaments based on who enters and how the brackets turn out. But SC2 def involves less risk than poker. Another key to making this work would be to set up something like Poker Stars. One reason I don't bother with free sc2 tournaments is that it's a hassle to enter, schedule, etc. If I could log on, click to pay $10, and be playing the tournament within 15 mins, like a sitngo style online poker tournament, I'd be much more likely to play. If it comes down to picking between a weekly $10 tournament and a weekly free tournament, however, HotBid is again right, a gambling system would probably fail. Chuck Norris approves of this message.
Great idea in theory however you forget paypal fees, or electronic transaction fees, the more payouts you have the more you loose to paypal fees so I think maybe top 16 or 8 payout would be more effective, because your 640 prize pool quickly becomes $600 past transactions.a top 50% payout is not viable however a top 25%/12.5% is.
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On December 15 2010 04:52 orotoss wrote:
Unfortunately, I don't see this kind of thing ever happening for Starcraft 2. Considering how many legal issues surround poker sites (especially in the US), this kind of thing would be waayyy too risky for Blizzard to do. It may be possible to do it in other countries with less stringent gambling laws, but I doubt Blizzard would even bother.
I just don't see how a video game tournament has anything to do with gambling. Unlike poker, it does not involve betting of money and is independent of random events that are out of the players' control.
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as i said, you shouldn't cash out/in after/before every tournament, rather you should cash in, be able to paly as many tournaments you like, and cash out whenether you want, but then the cash out fee is the problem of the player.
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make b.net like pokerstars for video games IMO
but in all seriousness, it would be awesome if there were buy-in tourneys, i wouldn't hesitate to throw my 50 or 100 bucks or whatever in to play, even if it was against some of the top players in the world. and it would motivate people to practice more and actually get better if they knew there was some money in it, and some low stakes tourneys that weren't just littered with professionals. Also, it would probably attract some seriously talented players who don't currently play SC2, simply because money will always attract the best.
also, its a great idea, but i SERIOUSLY doubt the actual viability of it. between blizzard and the anti-online gambling govt. of the united states, i highly something like that would be ever be allowed to be implemented. I mean, they are passing laws to make it harder to gamble online, why would they ever allow this and set a precedent?
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United States338 Posts
I really like this idea, and I think its an idea that everyone has had at some time or another.
Many states have strict anti-gambling laws however, so strict that this would count as gambling.
In order to do this legitimately they would have to deny service to people who live in say, Texas. Naturally its as easy as lying about which state you are from to dodge this issue when you make an account for the tournament service. The tournament service is really the big issue here. If someone is willing to invest the time to create a place where people can host their tournaments they will likely be rewarded for their effort by the players.
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On December 15 2010 05:24 AnAngryDingo wrote:make b.net like pokerstars for video games IMO but in all seriousness, it would be awesome if there were buy-in tourneys, i wouldn't hesitate to throw my 50 or 100 bucks or whatever in to play, even if it was against some of the top players in the world. and it would motivate people to practice more and actually get better if they knew there was some money in it, and some low stakes tourneys that weren't just littered with professionals. Also, it would probably attract some seriously talented players who don't currently play SC2, simply because money will always attract the best. also, its a great idea, but i SERIOUSLY doubt the actual viability of it. between blizzard and the anti-online gambling govt. of the united states, i highly something like that would be ever be allowed to be implemented. I mean, they are passing laws to make it harder to gamble online, why would they ever allow this and set a precedent?
because this isn't gambling... you aren't betting money on a game of chance. You are paying for the chance to participate in a tournament.
This is the same as: buy-in MTG tournaments, buy-in sports tournaments, buy-in etc...
This is NOT gambling, as you are not putting your money up in a game of chance that has a % chance of you getting more money back.
This IS you paying for the services offered, which give you the chance to compete based on your skills, to see if you deserve a prize, very different.
If this was considered gambling you would have A LOT less sports tournaments for money, since a lot of the smaller ones are buy-in tournaments.
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On December 15 2010 05:30 Insanious wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 05:24 AnAngryDingo wrote:make b.net like pokerstars for video games IMO but in all seriousness, it would be awesome if there were buy-in tourneys, i wouldn't hesitate to throw my 50 or 100 bucks or whatever in to play, even if it was against some of the top players in the world. and it would motivate people to practice more and actually get better if they knew there was some money in it, and some low stakes tourneys that weren't just littered with professionals. Also, it would probably attract some seriously talented players who don't currently play SC2, simply because money will always attract the best. also, its a great idea, but i SERIOUSLY doubt the actual viability of it. between blizzard and the anti-online gambling govt. of the united states, i highly something like that would be ever be allowed to be implemented. I mean, they are passing laws to make it harder to gamble online, why would they ever allow this and set a precedent? because this isn't gambling... you aren't betting money on a game of chance. You are paying for the chance to participate in a tournament. This is the same as: buy-in MTG tournaments, buy-in sports tournaments, buy-in etc... This is NOT gambling, as you are not putting your money up in a game of chance that has a % chance of you getting more money back. This IS you paying for the services offered, which give you the chance to compete based on your skills, to see if you deserve a prize, very different. If this was considered gambling you would have A LOT less sports tournaments for money, since a lot of the smaller ones are buy-in tournaments.
something tells me that our government would consider this online gambling. i think this might be more viable in a country like south korea, where starcraft is already accepted and ingrained into society.
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On December 15 2010 05:30 Insanious wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 05:24 AnAngryDingo wrote:make b.net like pokerstars for video games IMO but in all seriousness, it would be awesome if there were buy-in tourneys, i wouldn't hesitate to throw my 50 or 100 bucks or whatever in to play, even if it was against some of the top players in the world. and it would motivate people to practice more and actually get better if they knew there was some money in it, and some low stakes tourneys that weren't just littered with professionals. Also, it would probably attract some seriously talented players who don't currently play SC2, simply because money will always attract the best. also, its a great idea, but i SERIOUSLY doubt the actual viability of it. between blizzard and the anti-online gambling govt. of the united states, i highly something like that would be ever be allowed to be implemented. I mean, they are passing laws to make it harder to gamble online, why would they ever allow this and set a precedent? because this isn't gambling... you aren't betting money on a game of chance. You are paying for the chance to participate in a tournament. This is the same as: buy-in MTG tournaments, buy-in sports tournaments, buy-in etc... This is NOT gambling, as you are not putting your money up in a game of chance that has a % chance of you getting more money back. This IS you paying for the services offered, which give you the chance to compete based on your skills, to see if you deserve a prize, very different. If this was considered gambling you would have A LOT less sports tournaments for money, since a lot of the smaller ones are buy-in tournaments.
That's the best comparison yet. People enter into buy in MTG tournaments with cash prizes every week in every state, both online and off. And MTG is def more a luck based game than SC2. You shuffle a deck of cards, draw cards, etc. There's none of that in SC
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On December 15 2010 05:32 AnAngryDingo wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 05:30 Insanious wrote:On December 15 2010 05:24 AnAngryDingo wrote:make b.net like pokerstars for video games IMO but in all seriousness, it would be awesome if there were buy-in tourneys, i wouldn't hesitate to throw my 50 or 100 bucks or whatever in to play, even if it was against some of the top players in the world. and it would motivate people to practice more and actually get better if they knew there was some money in it, and some low stakes tourneys that weren't just littered with professionals. Also, it would probably attract some seriously talented players who don't currently play SC2, simply because money will always attract the best. also, its a great idea, but i SERIOUSLY doubt the actual viability of it. between blizzard and the anti-online gambling govt. of the united states, i highly something like that would be ever be allowed to be implemented. I mean, they are passing laws to make it harder to gamble online, why would they ever allow this and set a precedent? because this isn't gambling... you aren't betting money on a game of chance. You are paying for the chance to participate in a tournament. This is the same as: buy-in MTG tournaments, buy-in sports tournaments, buy-in etc... This is NOT gambling, as you are not putting your money up in a game of chance that has a % chance of you getting more money back. This IS you paying for the services offered, which give you the chance to compete based on your skills, to see if you deserve a prize, very different. If this was considered gambling you would have A LOT less sports tournaments for money, since a lot of the smaller ones are buy-in tournaments. something tells me that our government would consider this online gambling. i think this might be more viable in a country like south korea, where starcraft is already accepted and ingrained into society.
If they consider video game competitions gambling, they would have to consider all other forms of sports competition gambling. In fact, sports have more elements of randomness such weather condition, player injuries, poor refereeing decisions, etc. In Sc2, players have control over everything besides spawn locations and scv pathing while building structures.
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I think this is a great idea and honestly it seems like around here we've all been very "spoiled" by being able to watch pros stream (for free) to get lessons from them (on the cheap unless its idra of course ) and also were all allowed to atleast try to play in some of the tournys that happen occasionally but the majority are invite only or only have high tier guys in them at all. It seems like everyone wants this to be free but to have people playing high level all the dang time theres eventually gonna have to be a way to get more cash rolling around and I think the OP did a great job thinking about this similar to poker. I'd gladly pay 5 bucks every week to enter a tourny to help get this game and our community farther a long and more fat and happy ^^ Great thread Steven (and yeah there are tons of things that will slow this idea down if everyone would want to get it going but i mean comon, who the fuck is smarter than our community as a whole, i mean really? lol)
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Alright, let’s just assume some of us set up a website that runs tournaments like this, first you would need a few things in order to make it run effectively:
1) One (or more) people who simply update brackets, that is all that they would do... as soon as it is reported who wins (with replay from both players attached) then the brackets get updated. Would have to be done by hand in order to deal with complaints (so and so lied, etc...)
2) Streamers, people want the tournament experience and being streamed is part of that, not to mention everyone will want to watch the finals of the bigger prize pool games ($20 / $50 buy ins) since the finals will 99% of the time be between two named, talented players.
3) Web designer(s) who will run the website, make sure the code works correctly, and that everything is running perfectly.
Depending on the scale of amount of tournaments it will depend on how many of each roll there is... guaranteed you will need 1 bracket updater, 1 web designer, and at least 2 streamers.
Now whether you pay the streamers or not... they might get paid on a flat fee (something like stream games for us and get $100/week as long as you stream X number of games or more). People want to be casters, and well... if they can get paid to do it.
As well, the cost for the website and bandwidth, as well as having VoDs made available, etc... means there is a daily cost to running something like this.
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So then you would need to decide no number of players per tournament 64, 32, or 16? I would go with 64, just to make the prizes seem more significant but that’s just me...
64 player tournaments:
$5 buy-in: = $320/tournament
Now to decide on how much prize money? I would say $230, this gives $90 to cover: paypal costs (~$8 on $200), streamer costs (~$15), profit (~$67/tournament)
Then, what’s the prize distribution: $120/$55/$30 then $5 for places 4 – 8.
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$10 buy-in = $640/tournament
Prize Pool: $510, costs (paypal = ~$16), streamer (~$15), profit (~$99)
Then prize distribution: $275/$125/$60 then $10 for places 4- 8.
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$20 buy-in = $1,280/tournament
Prize pool: $ 1,100, costs (paypal = ~$35), streamer (~$15), profit (~$140)
Prize distribution: $650/$300/$150.
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$50 buy-in = $3,200/tournament:
Prize pool: $ 2,700, costs (paypal = ~$85), streamer (~$15), Profit (~$400)
Distribution: $1,600/$750/$350
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Then well... depends on how many tournaments you run means how much you can make, and if this can become an actual business... that you run with a few people and let it grown. Possibly hiring someone to do coding for you so that you can have: self-updating brackets, easily searchable tournament brackets, a way to be able to say paypal to the site $50 and get $50 in credits to enter tournaments to keep pay-pal fees down, etc...
For a single person... if you can run a single $50 buy-in tournament a week, that’s about minimum wage if you take $400 from the pay ins for yourself...
Obviously if this gets running for real, you can cut the profit taken per tournament down... if you run 1 tournament then it costs a lot to do so, but if you run say 500 tournaments then the cost is cut way down due to scale but ya.
This is an idea that could work, as long as its ok according to the EULA... since its not gambling there should be no problems concerning gambling laws, its just Blizzard sending you a cease and desist letter that you don’t want.
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Would take a lot more work and research to see if it’s do-able but if it is, would be an amazing opportunity for both SC2 and those involved.
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I think that the OP has some interesting points. It would definitely make StarCraft tournaments more enjoyable and more fun to participate in, because the prize-pool would be significantly higher. I would enjoy it if tournaments were using this kind of format.
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On December 15 2010 04:43 Metalwing wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 03:25 Deckkie wrote:On December 15 2010 03:18 Metalwing wrote:So, let me understand this clearly. You're proposing a new reason for creation of new people who cheese their way to tournament finals or turtle up in an island base, as if the number of people playing lame games is not enough. Joining a tournament with free signups is good. It allows casual gamers to join tournaments and play like they want to. But when people invest in something, they will do anything to win. Cheesing, turtling up in island bases, stupid allins for the sake of winning odd games will happen just more and it's just the opposite of what people want. In poker, people bluff other people, and it's always funny and enjoyable to see people getting bluffed by jack high or anything like that. But, in Starcraft, people do all sorts of lame play like Thor Drops, stupid cheeses, turtling up at island bases. I don't know about everybody, but I hate people doing this. Yes, pulling off a good cheese is good too, and people laugh at it as well. But, if cheese happens in every single game of a particular matchup (cough, TvZ, cough), it's not. I don't know about you, but neither NewDawn, nor IdrA (nor ret nor NesTea) deserved to get eliminated by the stupidest plays from lesser skilled players (yes, I really think that mvp is not nearly as good as IdrA and most of the TvZ strats are ridiculously stupid. Even if mvp is really better than IdrA, i don't think anyone would disagree with the skill comparison between NewDawn and bitbybit or NesTea and rain). I just want to see what people think about this: Poll: Do you really want more lame play after GSL Season 3Yes (10) 91% No (1) 9% 11 total votes Your vote: Do you really want more lame play after GSL Season 3 (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
For the second reason why i think this would be a bad idea: Because casual gaming will be ruined so hard. I don't think that really 1024 out of 1024 people who join go4sc2 cup really do it because of money. Actually I would hardly believe that even 24 out of 1024 people join that for money (particular example is particular, again). And, yes. I'm one in a thousand. You can easily say that "Yeah but we can make tournaments skill level restricted.". I neither know that you already know this, nor give a fuck: Some people are so underrated or purposefully lose in the ladder for the sake of staying in lower leagues. And those people will chobostomp the people who is really silver level and wants to join a tourney and have fun with people of the same skill as him. Your idea is the e-sports equivalent of making basketball courts in the streets pay to play. Poll: Would you pay to play at a basketball court?Yes (12) 86% No (2) 14% 14 total votes Your vote: Would you pay to play at a basketball court? (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
So much anger. i dont how this is the same as paying to play basketball. Betting on basketball games is something that happens (same thing as this will do). And its stupid to say that players shouldnt use particular strats like cheesing. Cheesing helps the game develop and it is, should, and always will be a part of the game! Who is talking about 1- Cheese is evil and it should be punished? What I mean is, cheese would not be a problem if it wasn't the most viable strat in some matchups or races and easily punishable for others. 2- Betting on basketball games? I was actually talking about paying for a basketball court for playing it. Let me be more clear. You pay 10 bucks to the owner of a basketball court in the street, you play 1 hour, after that 1 hour finishes, you leave. Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 03:29 xOff wrote:
@metal I have actually bet on basketball games all the time :D
I understand where you're coming from, but its a whole new experience playing with risk as opposed to playing with nothing on the line. You are correct when you said there will be mass cheesing, but even in GSL there is mass cheesing with money on the line. Exactly, this is what I'm saying. Even when the money on the line is not their very own money, people cheese this hard. If it's also their own money, people would cheese more.
If u dont like cheese u really shouldnt play sc imo.
and why would u talk about paying for a basketball court??
to get this straigth u do pay for the basketball court and some people do bet on playing the game. just as the OP said. If u mean paying for the court in the sence that you need to pay 10 dollar buy in and there is only 9 dollar going in to the price pool ... dude ... go plat some poker.
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Buy-ins would only work if there was a chance for every participant to win.
As long as nothing stops a top 200 player from participating in a buy-in tournament, there is no point in hosting one. Even in an 8-man tourney, it makes more sense for a top player to play in low buy-in tourneys - its better to have a 80% chance to win a 10$ buy-in tourney, then to have a 12% chance to win a 25$ buy-in tourney.
Buy-in would work (For me) if there were, say, a tourney website that ran a thousand 8-man tourneys at the same time, with players being randomly assigned to them. Unfortunately, it would still mean that anyone below diamond would have no hope of winning - and I can't see you getting enough people willing to pitch in 10$, or even 5$ to get the system to be so popular that top players wouldn't collect 95% of the prizes.
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Didnt Jinro write a great topic about this a while back?
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I've been thinking about bringing this up for a while, but you did, so now I don't have to XD...
I think this is actually a great idea...
Imagine if the GSL Open had a registration fee... The prize pool would be huge! [Bigger than it is now XD]
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I think a lot of you a missing one of the main points of the post. The ideal situation would be that, as a mid-diamond player, you're not going to be entering at 5$ buy-in tourney against Huk/Idra, because they will be playing $25 dollar buy-in tourneys with 5 times the prize pool. Thus you actually have a chance of getting far in the tourney rather than playing 1/2 rounds and getting knocked out by someone who far out skills you.
Huk/Idra won't want to steamroll 5$ buy-ins if there's a far bigger prize at some other tourney during the same time. In theory they could, but it would just be a waste of their time.
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I dont think that many players will participate if like top 8+ only gets payed out
Thats what i like about poker gettin ur money back in the early beginning of a tournament
And also why not doing stuff like 1v1 with money etc...
And everywhere i would add cents tournaments/games ,cuz ppl ALWAYS play different if theres money on the line even if its just a few cents and it makes more fun
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The thing is, this system can only be enforced by blizzard themselves.
Sit n Go structures work well with poker because there is a higher 'luck' factor involved. Meaning, no matter how good you are at poker, the worst player in the world can still beat you on occasion.
In Starcraft, its 90% skill. If 10 people continuously sign up for a tournament, 2 people will consistently win. Those other 8, would need to become legitimate degenerates for this to work. On paper, this would work out for a little while, until people realized they are pretty much just donating, and they never get the opportunity to win. That's why I said this could only work with the assistance of Blizzard.
Blizzard would have to enforce the hidden MMR to be in place, with a game minimum. People with 100+ games are allowed to enter Sit n Gos and they will automatically matched up against people within +-100 points of them, for example. So, people would more or less be winning a little over 50% of the time.
So, if you're interested in making this idea work, you need to get blizzard going on it.
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On December 15 2010 07:48 dittie wrote:
The thing is, this system can only be enforced by blizzard themselves.
Sit n Go structures work well with poker because there is a higher 'luck' factor involved. Meaning, no matter how good you are at poker, the worst player in the world can still beat you on occasion.
In Starcraft, its 90% skill. If 10 people continuously sign up for a tournament, 2 people will consistently win. Those other 8, would need to become legitimate degenerates for this to work. On paper, this would work out for a little while, until people realized they are pretty much just donating, and they never get the opportunity to win. That's why I said this could only work with the assistance of Blizzard.
Blizzard would have to enforce the hidden MMR to be in place, with a game minimum. People with 100+ games are allowed to enter Sit n Gos and they will automatically matched up against people within +-100 points of them, for example. So, people would more or less be winning a little over 50% of the time.
So, if you're interested in making this idea work, you need to get blizzard going on it.
Thats where "lower money rankings" come into it if out of 10ppl , 5 ppl would get money this wont happen adn u always will have a chance to make money
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On December 15 2010 07:48 dittie wrote:
In Starcraft, its 90% skill. If 10 people continuously sign up for a tournament, 2 people will consistently win. Those other 8, would need to become legitimate degenerates for this to work. On paper, this would work out for a little while, until people realized they are pretty much just donating, and they never get the opportunity to win.
Actually, this can easily be solved by having tournaments catered to all skill levels, ie having separate tournaments for diamond 0-500 players, 500-1000 players, 1000-1500, etc etc.
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Yes, I agree. Blizzard would have to randomly match you against people close to your rating.
Having a double or nothing 'sit n go' works. But, still it all has to be done by blizzard themselves.
The majority of the starcraft community is kids without jobs. You'll find that the 3 million will quickly diminish into a couple thousand participants.
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The tournaments that are $100 prizes or less are essentially not even worth the time of any pro to be playing in, and if there was an option to buy into a much more lucrative tournament the pros would do so. Does anyone seriously realize how LITTLE $100 is? It not even enough money to cover the expenses for playing in a given tourney most of the time. If someone makes 7 dollars an hour at McDonalds that would mean in two days they will make $112 dollars assuming an 8 hour shift on both days. The time it takes to get to the skill level to win in one of these <$100 tourney's is likely in excess of 20-30 hours per tournament, so from a purely career standpoint, the pros NEED buy-in tourneys to start up. Not doing so basically means that one either plays in the GSL or has to have a minimum wage job along with playing SC2 to get by. Long story short - if buy in tourneys start opening up then pros will almost immediately go over to them, anyone who thinks otherwise clearly doesn't understand money, economics, or professional sports in general.
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On December 15 2010 08:05 SichuanPanda wrote:
The tournaments that are $100 prizes or less are essentially not even worth the time of any pro to be playing in, and if there was an option to buy into a much more lucrative tournament the pros would do so. Does anyone seriously realize how LITTLE $100 is? It not even enough money to cover the expenses for playing in a given tourney most of the time. If someone makes 7 dollars an hour at McDonalds that would mean in two days they will make $112 dollars assuming an 8 hour shift on both days. The time it takes to get to the skill level to win in one of these <$100 tourney's is likely in excess of 20-30 hours per tournament, so from a purely career standpoint, the pros NEED buy-in tourneys to start up. Not doing so basically means that one either plays in the GSL or has to have a minimum wage job along with playing SC2 to get by. Long story short - if buy in tourneys start opening up then pros will almost immediately go over to them, anyone who thinks otherwise clearly doesn't understand money, economics, or professional sports in general.
haha you are exactly right. I make over $100 a day and i put in no where near the effort i put in to starcraft lol. You are forgetting one thing though, working sucks and playing sc2 rules. haha ;D just messin with you of course. I agree with your whole post.
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On December 15 2010 07:48 dittie wrote:
The thing is, this system can only be enforced by blizzard themselves.
Sit n Go structures work well with poker because there is a higher 'luck' factor involved. Meaning, no matter how good you are at poker, the worst player in the world can still beat you on occasion.
In Starcraft, its 90% skill. If 10 people continuously sign up for a tournament, 2 people will consistently win. Those other 8, would need to become legitimate degenerates for this to work. On paper, this would work out for a little while, until people realized they are pretty much just donating, and they never get the opportunity to win. That's why I said this could only work with the assistance of Blizzard.
Blizzard would have to enforce the hidden MMR to be in place, with a game minimum. People with 100+ games are allowed to enter Sit n Gos and they will automatically matched up against people within +-100 points of them, for example. So, people would more or less be winning a little over 50% of the time.
So, if you're interested in making this idea work, you need to get blizzard going on it.
But the idea is that pros will play higher stakes and leave the $5 tournaments to nubs. Same structure as poker. The stakes will sort players out by skill . . . no need for any MMR system. Of course, there will be some people who play in lower stakes than their skill could handle. That happens in poker too. Usually, though, people who work up a bankroll move up to higher stakes.
There are tons of people who play poker even though they lose money. It would be the same way if SC2 sit n goes were structured so that players who lose in the long run at least experience swings. And if break even takes only winning 1 game, and 2 is in the money, that's likely to happen -- there is still plenty of randomness in SC, whether you want to call it luck or not.
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The problem is that in order to play "real" poker, money has to be at stake. Sure, some people like the free tables but all of the competitive poker players are obviously playing for real money. Something has to be at stake for betting and bluffing to matter.
In Starcraft (and any video game really) you can play it "for real" "for free". Of course you buy the game once when it comes out, so your first game on b.net costs $50, but the marginal cost of every game thereafter is zero. Where's the incentive for the "casual competitive" person (the analogue to micro-stakes poker players) to put in money?
To be successful in the long run, competitive gaming needs to follow the model of professional sports and turn into a true spectator sport. If people will pay money to watch your event, other people will pay money in turn to advertise for it. If enough people watch and enough people advertise, you can make billions. The problem is gaining traction in an entertainment market with literally thousands of options for the consumer, where many of them may not have an interest in "video games". It can be done of course, the main spectator sports in America weren't always as popular (or consolidated into single main leagues), and not every person who watches a sport has a desire to play it.
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I think the flaw in the concept is that players can play in the low buy-in and high buy-in tournies at the same time. It seems like it'd be really easy if two tournaments were happening over a weekend to just play 1 series for 1 tourney, then play another for another tourney. So if I'm a pro I can technically take my chances in the higher buy-in tournies and at the same time own one of the lower buy-in tournies.
I would think that there should be a restriction to certain tournies based on league level. Maybe up to plats can only play in a $5 buy-in tourney, low-level diamonds can do the $10, higher-level buy-ins are restricted to Master league, etc.
Overall though it's a great idea, I don't think we can expect too much from sponsorship money right now.
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On December 15 2010 08:34 zidaneshead wrote:
I would think that there should be a restriction to certain tournies based on league level. Maybe up to plats can only play in a $5 buy-in tourney, low-level diamonds can do the $10, higher-level buy-ins are restricted to Master league, etc.
What if a rich plat kid wants to play for higher stakes or a poor diamond kid can't afford the higher buy ins? I think the solution would be having a range of entry fees for all leagues/levels of skill.
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On December 15 2010 08:34 zidaneshead wrote:
I think the flaw in the concept is that players can play in the low buy-in and high buy-in tournies at the same time. It seems like it'd be really easy if two tournaments were happening over a weekend to just play 1 series for 1 tourney, then play another for another tourney. So if I'm a pro I can technically take my chances in the higher buy-in tournies and at the same time own one of the lower buy-in tournies.
I would think that there should be a restriction to certain tournies based on league level. Maybe up to plats can only play in a $5 buy-in tourney, low-level diamonds can do the $10, higher-level buy-ins are restricted to Master league, etc.
Overall though it's a great idea, I don't think we can expect too much from sponsorship money right now.
Actually this can be regulated by strict rules.
Like once you finish your game you have to within 5 minutes contact the next person you play with. If he is not available to play within next 5 minutes (because he is currently playing a game in the high stakes tournament) he forfeits and you go through.
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On December 15 2010 08:53 Bladefury wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 08:34 zidaneshead wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I would think that there should be a restriction to certain tournies based on league level. Maybe up to plats can only play in a $5 buy-in tourney, low-level diamonds can do the $10, higher-level buy-ins are restricted to Master league, etc. What if a rich plat kid wants to play for higher stakes or a poor diamond kid can't afford the higher buy ins? I think the solution would be having a range of entry fees for all leagues/levels of skill.
On December 15 2010 09:33 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 08:34 zidaneshead wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I think the flaw in the concept is that players can play in the low buy-in and high buy-in tournies at the same time. It seems like it'd be really easy if two tournaments were happening over a weekend to just play 1 series for 1 tourney, then play another for another tourney. So if I'm a pro I can technically take my chances in the higher buy-in tournies and at the same time own one of the lower buy-in tournies.
I would think that there should be a restriction to certain tournies based on league level. Maybe up to plats can only play in a $5 buy-in tourney, low-level diamonds can do the $10, higher-level buy-ins are restricted to Master league, etc.
Overall though it's a great idea, I don't think we can expect too much from sponsorship money right now. Actually this can be regulated by strict rules. Like once you finish your game you have to within 5 minutes contact the next person you play with. If he is not available to play within next 5 minutes (because he is currently playing a game in the high stakes tournament) he forfeits and you go through.
Both solid ideas. I like the first one alot actually, multiple tournies with different buy-in amounts for each level of skill.
It'd also be cool to set up something like a cash game system for 1v1s or if you wanna get nuts do it for all game modes including FFAs lol, although that would probably be alot harder to regulate.
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i havent read the whole thread but no one has mentioned that there are about a billion legal implications that would come into play here and im about 99% sure this would be illigal in the US right now. techinically online poker isnt legal in america. and if it were ever to happen good luck playing for money legally under the age of 18. sorry kiddos..
i have heard of underground(ish) sites that already have these kinds of tourneys for cod.. none being very popular. Most people are probably scammin the crap out of each other on those sites anyways.
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Sounds like a great idea, if we can get around the legality of it all it will only be a matter of time and commitment. If blizzard is true to the community and try's to promote SC2's competitive play like they said than if they had any brain at all they would allow it and rake a small bit in. overall though love the idea.
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I really think this could work. It would have to start out small, of course, and have the tournament or at least just the money part handled by an all ready trusted community member. But if it starts to catch on it could be nothing but good for SC2, having weekly buy-in tournaments to give everyone a chance at winning some money. Ideally, it should sort itself out in terms of player skill, having the better players going for the higher prize pools. I know that if i was capable of winning a $10 tourney, but went and won a $5 one to be safe, then saw that someone i know is not as good as i am had won the $10, i wouldn't want that to happen again. If theres enough intrest i think someone should at least try it out.
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Can blizzard even do anything as long as there isn't some kind of company making a profit?
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I think a more realistic buy-in would be $1 tourneys where first prize is like, under $50. This would be great for those entry level competitive players and not be worth the time for most of the top players who regularly take small events.
There are a lot of top players out there I don't think you're going to be able to flood the scene enough to stop them competing even for $50 events. One thing I do like is that there's no real need for sponsors when it's buy-in and hence there's no real need to stream it. There's already a lot of congestion of events splitting up viewers and top players where you have like 4 events on at once which I think is detrimental to generating future sponsor interest. If you set up your event and have a target viewership and then a week before you're ready to go another huge event with all the top players is streamed at the same time it will kill your viewers and sponsors won't want to come back. Buy-in events without streams (maybe just stream the finals, or from replays?) would be a good way to keep prized tournaments out there that don't overlap with a lot of other streamed events.
Also something to consider is that if you aim to make tourneys for players who are too low ranked you might get in the ridiculous situation in which the casters and event organisers are going to be putting in more time and effort than the competitors involved put in to practice.
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On December 15 2010 10:24 woofwoof wrote:
i havent read the whole thread but no one has mentioned that there are about a billion legal implications that would come into play here and im about 99% sure this would be illigal in the US right now. techinically online poker isnt legal in america. and if it were ever to happen good luck playing for money legally under the age of 18. sorry kiddos..
i have heard of underground(ish) sites that already have these kinds of tourneys for cod.. none being very popular. Most people are probably scammin the crap out of each other on those sites anyways.
There is nothing illegal about video game competitions. There are plenty of LAN and online tournaments that involve other games with entry fees and prize pools. Sc2 does have many similarities to poker but they are fundamentally different. Poker has elements of randomness that the players involved cannot control, Sc2 has none of that. I have yet to hear of a convincing argument that the implementation of entry fees and prize pools for gaming competitions makes them a "gambling thing".
I do know of some of the sites that you mentioned. None of them are refined or reliable enough to be mainstream imo.
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i think it would be fucking awesome.
they should have kind of "sit 'n go" tourneys with less people as well, or allow people to have wager matches where they put money on a BO3, etc.
you could seriously monetise the whole thing and it would be awesome.
Blizz could rake every "pot", and make a shitload of money from this. Get on it Blizz!
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On December 15 2010 10:33 zidaneshead wrote:
Can blizzard even do anything as long as there isn't some kind of company making a profit?
Blizzard has nothing to lose and everything to gain. It will draw a ton of attention to the game, help many casual gamers make the step up to the competitive scene, leading to bigger tournaments and more publicity. I feel that this has the potential to really make the game huge, just like how online poker sites made poker explode in popularity all over the world.
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I 100% support this thread and the ideas it presents. This must happen.
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On December 15 2010 08:34 zidaneshead wrote:
I think the flaw in the concept is that players can play in the low buy-in and high buy-in tournies at the same time. It seems like it'd be really easy if two tournaments were happening over a weekend to just play 1 series for 1 tourney, then play another for another tourney. So if I'm a pro I can technically take my chances in the higher buy-in tournies and at the same time own one of the lower buy-in tournies.
I would think that there should be a restriction to certain tournies based on league level. Maybe up to plats can only play in a $5 buy-in tourney, low-level diamonds can do the $10, higher-level buy-ins are restricted to Master league, etc.
Overall though it's a great idea, I don't think we can expect too much from sponsorship money right now.
Few things that will make top players not do this:
1) Restrictions within site to 1 tourney at a time. That way you would have to go to multiple different sites / tourney operators in order to play in multiple games at once, which they already do...
2) People have to be available at a certain time or will forfeit. Say 15 minutes from when both players have been seated in their bracket. This way people that are in the tournament would have to be ready to play while participating, this means if you are signed up some how for a $50 buy-in and a $5 buy-in, and you are owning the $5, but your $50 15-min time limit is coming up, you'll drop the $5 tourney to play the $50 one...
There can be lots of rules to prevent people from playing more than 1 tournament at a time.
The problem is that if you separate by league then there will be say people in the top 200 who buy a game of SC2, make a new account, put them selves in bronze and just roll every bronze league tourney for no effort at all.
Not to mention, then in the platinum tournies then only the pros and semi-pro level games will ever win... you need to be able to spread out the players and well buy-in tournies first come first server to the brackets = the most random you can get...
One bracket might have 12/64 semi-pros another might have 0/64 semi-pros just randoms.
On December 15 2010 10:37 deL wrote:
I think a more realistic buy-in would be $1 tourneys where first prize is like, under $50. This would be great for those entry level competitive players and not be worth the time for most of the top players who regularly take small events.
At $1 buy-ins pay-pal takes $0.33 of the 1st dollar, then $0.03 for every dollar after that. Meaning that only $42 would come in for the total prize-pool + covering costs... meaning a $1 buy-in would have 0% chance of having a streamer, and would have a top prize of $15 ($10 for 2nd, $5 for 3rd, and $1 for 4 - 8).
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On December 15 2010 10:50 Bladefury wrote:Blizzard has nothing to lose and everything to gain. It will draw a ton of attention to the game, help many casual gamers make the step up to the competitive scene, leading to bigger tournaments and more publicity. I feel that this has the potential to really make the game huge, just like how online poker sites made poker explode in popularity all over the world.
I agree, I just see alot of people are wondering about the legalities of it, maybe because of what's going on in Korea, but it seems like as long as there's no entity making a profit off of it (besides the winners) then I don't think there's anything that they can really do about it.
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On December 15 2010 10:57 Insanious wrote:Show nested quote +[spoiler]On December 15 2010 08:34 zidaneshead wrote:
I think the flaw in the concept is that players can play in the low buy-in and high buy-in tournies at the same time. It seems like it'd be really easy if two tournaments were happening over a weekend to just play 1 series for 1 tourney, then play another for another tourney. So if I'm a pro I can technically take my chances in the higher buy-in tournies and at the same time own one of the lower buy-in tournies.
I would think that there should be a restriction to certain tournies based on league level. Maybe up to plats can only play in a $5 buy-in tourney, low-level diamonds can do the $10, higher-level buy-ins are restricted to Master league, etc.
Overall though it's a great idea, I don't think we can expect too much from sponsorship money right now. The problem is that if you separate by league then there will be say people in the top 200 who buy a game of SC2, make a new account, put them selves in bronze and just roll every bronze league tourney for no effort at all.
This is a good point, actually. Makes me think that if you wanted to turn whole betting concept into a big thing that Blizzard is the only company that could pull it off.
But you know what, I'll back track a bit off my first post and say that for now these kinds of tournies will at least lead to bigger cash payouts which I suppose is what the OP was really arguing in the first place.
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I'm not sure if this has been posted already but virgingaming.com already does this for console games. I believe that there are many sites dedicated to buy in competition that involve games of skill. That is how they get around the gambling laws. Just a thought I'm not an expert by any means.
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This whole post gets a response because it made me rage in so many different ways.
*deep breath*
Here we go!
On December 14 2010 23:56 stenole wrote:
Making online tournaments like this magnifies every aspect of cheating. Unlike online poker where the game is played out server side, on a client side system you are creating a heavy incentive to develop advanced cheating software. And you are also motivating people to use it. This is also a problem with current online prize tournaments, but it still does not become a community wide issue to the same degree.
This entire problem is easily solved by having the tournament admin review any questionable replays. If the tourney host is taking a rake (a percentage of the entry fees as profit for hosting the tournament) then he should be obligated to review questionable replays anyway.
On December 14 2010 23:56 stenole wrote:
Also, the OP suggests that this would actually increase sponsor interest, but would it really? At lower levels sponsors won't have any interest regardless. The sponsors will end up having their brand linked not only to the winners but also the losers of the tournament. Some will surely end up gambling more than they can afford. And sponsors may be asked why they would support this.
Yes, it would? More money would be in the game, ergo, more money would be available for sponsors to advertise for. Do you really think sponsors are that interested in generating interest for their products (the entire REASON behind sponsorships) to a crowd that cries over paying $20 for season passes to GOMTV?
On December 14 2010 23:56 stenole wrote:
The OP also claims it to be detrimental to the tournament scene, the most detrimental problem, that that no money is going into it. Is taking money from the players themselves the way to go? I think it would actually discourage a lot of players from entering tournaments.
YES!!! Where do you expect the money to come from?! Why do you expect money to come from only sponsors or donors? Does the NFL, NCAA, etc...etc... rely completely on sponsors or donors? Are tickets to their games completely free? Do you have to pay for cable television? etc..etc.. And players can still enter all the free tournaments they want, no one is telling them no.
On December 14 2010 23:56 stenole wrote:
And also, if you have more money going through the tournament system, it naturally follows that casters and admins will want more money and are less likely to do work for free. So in the end it's the players themselves who would end up suffering for tournaments to switch over to this format.
What is wrong with this?! People like Day9 or HD or Husky DESERVE to be making money! They've garnered a ton of internet interest in their commentating and casting. Why couldn't they actually get PAID for once, instead of relying on the revenue from a bunch of ads being displayed to people with ad-block who are too whiny to even pay for a GOMTV subscription in the first place?!?!
On December 14 2010 23:56 stenole wrote:
There have also been tournament organizers in the past who have not paid the winners of tournaments. This is bad enough without having to risk them running away with the buy-in money as well.
If someone e-mails you from "starcraft2game@hotmail.com" asking you to pay $100 so a nigerian banker can handle the prize pool, it's your own fault if you get scammed. If someone like Trump, however, were to run a tourney, do you really think he would ruin his entire reputation to steal $600?
On December 14 2010 23:56 stenole wrote:
I will admit that I am biased against money flowing through the gaming circuit in the first place and I don't think professional gamers are necessarily a good thing for a gaming community. If you really want to play for money, play bet games with friends. Or is it only right to take money from strangers?
"Is it only right to take money from strangers"???? You mean like 99.999% of every single financial transaction in the world? Or do you personally know Mike Duke, so you feel comfortable shopping at Wal-Mart, or are you on a first name basis with Gregg Steinhafel from Target??
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On December 15 2010 10:57 Insanious wrote:
The problem is that if you separate by league then there will be say people in the top 200 who buy a game of SC2, make a new account, put them selves in bronze and just roll every bronze league tourney for no effort at all.
8).
I know of a way to circumvent this. The users sign up for accounts in this tournament system and are only allowed to link paypal accounts or credit cards under one name or billing address. The system keeps track of the users' game statistics and has its own points ranking system to separate the skill levels, ie it is independent of the b.net ladder. This way, users cannot sign up for multiple accounts and they can only play on their friends' accounts for so long.
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On December 15 2010 11:14 Bladefury wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 10:57 Insanious wrote:
The problem is that if you separate by league then there will be say people in the top 200 who buy a game of SC2, make a new account, put them selves in bronze and just roll every bronze league tourney for no effort at all.
8). I know of a way to circumvent this. The users sign up for accounts in this tournament system and are only allowed to link paypal accounts or credit cards under one name or billing address. The system keeps track of the users' game statistics and has its own points ranking system to separate the skill levels, ie it is independent of the b.net ladder. This way, users cannot sign up for multiple accounts and they can only play on their friends' accounts for so long.
Most people have multiple credit cards, and can link them to multiple pay-pal accounts. Me for example. I have my credit card linked to my paypal as my primary means of transaction (billing address is my house) my gf has her paypal where my credit card is on it as a secondary means of payment. Her billion address different then mine... therefore... see where im going with this.
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According to this
SjoW has won 5 craftcups not 4 :O
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On December 15 2010 11:17 Insanious wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 11:14 Bladefury wrote:On December 15 2010 10:57 Insanious wrote:
The problem is that if you separate by league then there will be say people in the top 200 who buy a game of SC2, make a new account, put them selves in bronze and just roll every bronze league tourney for no effort at all.
8). I know of a way to circumvent this. The users sign up for accounts in this tournament system and are only allowed to link paypal accounts or credit cards under one name or billing address. The system keeps track of the users' game statistics and has its own points ranking system to separate the skill levels, ie it is independent of the b.net ladder. This way, users cannot sign up for multiple accounts and they can only play on their friends' accounts for so long. Most people have multiple credit cards, and can link them to multiple pay-pal accounts. Me for example. I have my credit card linked to my paypal as my primary means of transaction (billing address is my house) my gf has her paypal where my credit card is on it as a secondary means of payment. Her billion address different then mine... therefore... see where im going with this.
You're right. In that case, we would have to rule out paypal and only allow transactions to occur via credit card or bank transfer ala Amazon.
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On December 15 2010 11:27 Bladefury wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 11:17 Insanious wrote:On December 15 2010 11:14 Bladefury wrote:On December 15 2010 10:57 Insanious wrote:
The problem is that if you separate by league then there will be say people in the top 200 who buy a game of SC2, make a new account, put them selves in bronze and just roll every bronze league tourney for no effort at all.
8). I know of a way to circumvent this. The users sign up for accounts in this tournament system and are only allowed to link paypal accounts or credit cards under one name or billing address. The system keeps track of the users' game statistics and has its own points ranking system to separate the skill levels, ie it is independent of the b.net ladder. This way, users cannot sign up for multiple accounts and they can only play on their friends' accounts for so long. Most people have multiple credit cards, and can link them to multiple pay-pal accounts. Me for example. I have my credit card linked to my paypal as my primary means of transaction (billing address is my house) my gf has her paypal where my credit card is on it as a secondary means of payment. Her billion address different then mine... therefore... see where im going with this. You're right. In that case, we would have to rule out paypal and only allow transactions to occur via credit card or bank transfer ala Amazon.
Or you make it convenient and not separate the tournaments by league. Sadly that means only platinum or higher will generally play but its better than "ok we will have to finger print you to play..." simple is better than complicated. Pay-pal is simple, not separating by league of simply, simple means more people play means more prize money for everyone
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On December 15 2010 11:10 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:
What is wrong with this?! People like Day9 or HD or Husky DESERVE to be making money! They've garnered a ton of internet interest in their commentating and casting. Why couldn't they actually get PAID for once, instead of relying on the revenue from a bunch of ads being displayed to people with ad-block who are too whiny to even pay for a GOMTV subscription in the first place?!?!
From what I've heard (and this was from someone who read something so I'm not claiming it as fact by any means) but casters like HD and Husky already make solid coin from their Youtube channel getting so many hits. So I'm not disputing that they don't deserve to make some cash off of casting because lets face it it's their time being spent, but from what it sounded like they make more than most of the pro gamers themselves
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Sorry for not reading the entire thread, I just read the OP and would like to give my two cents in on the subject. Take it or leave it.
I completely agree with what the OP is saying and anyone that has knowledge on Esport games would know that this thinking leads to creating large and very strong communities under their respective games.
I personally have a vast experience in different "Esport games", but in order to keep this as small as possible ill just correlate two games. Before entering the world of SC2 I was really into Counter strike 1.6. Anybody with history in CS 1.6 knows the struggles it had to get through during its time as a top tiered game. CS is probably the oldest game that has competitive esports material and its the community and the community ran leagues that kept the driving force of this game going for ten plus years. Look at leagues such as CEVO and ESEA, it is their "pay to play" leagues that has really kept a once large vibrant community still running to this day even though it is relatively smaller.
The way these leagues run is a team will pay a fee to enter the league and will start out a the very bottom. After each season the winners and other highly skilled players of the league will move up into the next league (smaller league). Thus creating a more competitive field of play for everybody involved and a more enjoyable experience. Being such a huge community CS had a variety of levels in the league and everybody would pay the same entry fee. BUT, the prize pool would be higher for more skilled levels, this would stop the best teams from simply rerolling every season and just playing the terrible kids. On top of that obviously a small percentage of the enrollment fee would go to the website and stuff but usually it would go on to create even bigger and better things for the community. IE. More tournaments to go into, a LAN finals for the highest division which would be casted and streamed for viewer pleasure.
I don't really want to make this to much longer, I think this gives enough sight into how a pay to play system can actually boost and create positive outcomes instead of negative situations like some people seem to think.
Already you can see ESEA and CEVO attempting to jump in and create their own leagues for SC2 and I say. Give them a shot and try them out before going on to bashing them and calling them out for being pieces of shit for making it pay to play. Esports is growing! (if you have noticed already) Give these people a few months to work out the problems and I promise you they will deliver a great experience for everyone as they did for counter strike!
Edit:spelling mistakes.
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You talk about free market principles. As the wielder of a B.S. in economics, I'd like to remind you of another principle: the winner-take-all market.
In any market where a minority of the population can produce the majority of content, competition will be horrendous, and the percentage of people who successfully make a living off it will be minor.
Winner-take-all markets include actors, rock stars, and politicians. These people are famous because each of them can entertain (or govern, or serve) millions.
Similarly, a game of starcraft only takes a few minutes, and pros will be playing for hours each day whether or not they're earning money for it. Even if it's a $10 tourney, it's free money to a pro.
If you're worried about smurfs, set up a skype call to the actual player playing the tournament. You'll be able to look and see if it's the same guy in a mustache or not.
Better yet, host a local event and then put it online. Show pride for your city, give lesser players a chance to win money, and promote Esports to your local community, all in one go!
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you cant just infuse money like that, for several reasons. first, there simply isnt enough money to accomplish what your setting out to do, and even if there was, there wouldnt be. to create an environment where a free market would weed out higher players from playing in lower tournaments, the number of tournaments and the amount of money going into the system on a daily basis, and the number of players, would have to be insane. Not like it is now, you would need far more players, and far more money than is possible, you can't have a 10-dollar buy-in every week, you need hundreds of 10-dollar buyins every hour of every day, or free market principles will never weed out higher level players.
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Most FPS games have leagues where you can pay for your team to sign-up and the money it costs to do so goes towards the prize-purse for the tournament.
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I'm just gonna throw it out there, another large problem is there are plenty of younger people good at this game who don't have access to credit cards and paying online which basically eliminates the possibility of anyone under 18 participating unless they have understanding parents that don't mind them spending $10 to enter a tournament... Professional SC2 hasn't reached the level of poker where it actually makes some sense that you must be 18+ to play for money...
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On December 15 2010 11:37 Insanious wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 11:27 Bladefury wrote:On December 15 2010 11:17 Insanious wrote:On December 15 2010 11:14 Bladefury wrote:On December 15 2010 10:57 Insanious wrote:
The problem is that if you separate by league then there will be say people in the top 200 who buy a game of SC2, make a new account, put them selves in bronze and just roll every bronze league tourney for no effort at all.
8). I know of a way to circumvent this. The users sign up for accounts in this tournament system and are only allowed to link paypal accounts or credit cards under one name or billing address. The system keeps track of the users' game statistics and has its own points ranking system to separate the skill levels, ie it is independent of the b.net ladder. This way, users cannot sign up for multiple accounts and they can only play on their friends' accounts for so long. Most people have multiple credit cards, and can link them to multiple pay-pal accounts. Me for example. I have my credit card linked to my paypal as my primary means of transaction (billing address is my house) my gf has her paypal where my credit card is on it as a secondary means of payment. Her billion address different then mine... therefore... see where im going with this. You're right. In that case, we would have to rule out paypal and only allow transactions to occur via credit card or bank transfer ala Amazon. Or you make it convenient and not separate the tournaments by league. Sadly that means only platinum or higher will generally play but its better than "ok we will have to finger print you to play..." simple is better than complicated. Pay-pal is simple, not separating by league of simply, simple means more people play means more prize money for everyone
Excluding the players below platinum is excluding a huge portion of the community. I don't think it is that much more inconvenient to enter your name, credit card no., expiry date, and security code rather than your paypal address. In fact, I find it more of a hassle doing online shopping through paypal. You can't use paypal on Amazon yet it is the most widely used e-commerce site.
Back to the topic of free market separation vs. league separation:
I think it is true that the free market will indeed cause top players like idra and huk to lean towards the tournaments with higher prize pools. A single $4000 tournament win can make up for 20 $200 tournament wins. The tournaments with the highest buy-ins will most likely be made up of these players.
My main concern is with the non-elite players (below top 200?) that do not already play competitively, maybe due to time or job commitments. This is the scenario that I think might happen:
The 2 -2.5 k diamonds who do not already play competitively may be good enough to play in tournaments with high buy-ins, but feel that they cannot afford them or are more risk-adverse and thus play in tournaments with lower buy ins. These players are likely to dominate this group of tournaments, deterring the lesser players from participating.
Conversely, a lesser player may be rich and willing to play for higher stakes, but stand no chance against the pro-dominated tournaments with high buy-ins. It is also not worth it for him to participate in the small tournaments as the prize pools may not be significant enough to infuse the element of competition to his gaming experience.
The main advantage of separating the tournaments according to leagues is that you will know for sure the players you are competing against are around your skill level. Therefore, the lesser players will feel more comfortable engaging in them, knowing that they stand a chance to win the prize pool they desire to play for.
On the other hand, not being able to face a player of higher skill can also take away the competitiveness of a tournament that is made up players of varying skill levels.
About the problem of people creating smurf accounts and playing for their friends, I have mentioned a way to prevent this. Basically, players sign up for accounts on the system and link a credit card for their transactions. A credit card name and billing address can only be associated with one account. The system , keeps track of game stats, has its own points ranking system and runs independently from b.net.
I guess both ways have their pros and cons.
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some pros will play different tournament at the same time.
i think scaling the smaller tournaments to 1$ buy-ins (or even less) would be more realistic.
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On December 15 2010 12:20 Nub4ever wrote:
I'm just gonna throw it out there, another large problem is there are plenty of younger people good at this game who don't have access to credit cards and paying online which basically eliminates the possibility of anyone under 18 participating unless they have understanding parents that don't mind them spending $10 to enter a tournament... Professional SC2 hasn't reached the level of poker where it actually makes some sense that you must be 18+ to play for money...
What is your point? There are definitely enough Sc2 players who are above 18 to make this concept viable. Also, I am pretty sure that most kids these days have debit cards, which can be used like credit cards for online payments.
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On December 15 2010 12:10 Newguy wrote:
you cant just infuse money like that, for several reasons. first, there simply isnt enough money to accomplish what your setting out to do...
I disagree. People paying for lessons and donating to streams, prove that there is money. However, that money just isn't being invested in the best way to generate more money into the community
On December 15 2010 12:10 Newguy wrote:
to create an environment where a free market would weed out higher players from playing in lower tournaments, the number of tournaments and the amount of money going into the system on a daily basis, and the number of players, would have to be insane...
Yes, but you're forgetting the fact that if money is involved, more people would be willing to have tournaments. Thus, solving the problem of not having enough tournaments. And, as I said before, the money is there to have this system; it just needs to be invested better.
As far as not having enough players... do you have any idea how many people play this game? People just don't play in tournaments and who can blame them? Why would anyone invest the time to play in a tournament they probably won't win? (And even if they did win, they get $50, which is nothing) For the love of the game? I'm sorry, but "for the love of the game" won't pay bills. I can't spend 10 hours practicing, "for the love of the game." I could, however, practice if there was a chance to earn money.
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Poker is so popular because it's like 95% luck. Lots of terrible players go on huge winning streaks and think they're the next Tom Dwan. This is discussed in Sklansky's books (and many others). The large amount of luck is very good for poker pros, because it means that bad players keep coming back.
If you play chess (or SC2) against a guy for $100 per game, and you get blown out 3 games in a row, you probably won't want to keep playing. You'll want 10-1 odds or something. Poker is different. You may feel like you're a great player and you'll keep playing against someone who is a lot better than you due to the randomness.
So Starcraft is completely unlike poker. In SC2, if you are stuck in gold league, you know you can't beat diamond players. If you're stuck at 2400 diamond you know you don't have a chance against pros. So you won't be willing to put much money into a tournament prize fund. Poker gets gamboolers because bad players think they're good. That just doesn't happen in SC2.
A better analogy is chess. There's very little luck in chess (arguably none, unless you consider playing an opening your opp happens to be unfamiliar with to be luck). There is a bit more luck in SC2, because of the fog of war you don't know what your opp is doing and they may surprise you. But still, in both games players very quickly get a clear idea of where they stand on the skill rankings. So you should expect the amount of money in poker to be about the same as the amount in chess. In other words, hardly any, unless you're Carlsen, Topalov, Anand, etc.
***
One way to make people want to play tournaments more would be like they do in chess. If I pay $10 I want to at least get a few games in. If it's single elimination I may only get one game. But if you run it like a chess open tournament, where everyone plays a game every round, then at least I feel like I'm getting a good time for my $10, even though I know I have no chance of winning. These tournaments are a lot more complex to run, but they do get a lot of people willing to pay an entry fee to participate. I would be interested in a tournament like this, and I would even pay money to participate. You could offer prizes for "best bronze" etc so even the worst players may have some incentive to play and feel like they're part of the scene.
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On December 15 2010 12:59 ziggurat wrote:
Poker is so popular because it's like 95% luck. Lots of terrible players go on huge winning streaks and think they're the next Tom Dwan. This is discussed in Sklansky's books (and many others). The large amount of luck is very good for poker pros, because it means that bad players keep coming back.
If you play chess (or SC2) against a guy for $100 per game, and you get blown out 3 games in a row, you probably won't want to keep playing. You'll want 10-1 odds or something. Poker is different. You may feel like you're a great player and you'll keep playing against someone who is a lot better than you due to the randomness.
So Starcraft is completely unlike poker. In SC2, if you are stuck in gold league, you know you can't beat diamond players. If you're stuck at 2400 diamond you know you don't have a chance against pros. So you won't be willing to put much money into a tournament prize fund. Poker gets gamboolers because bad players think they're good. That just doesn't happen in SC2.
A better analogy is chess. There's very little luck in chess (arguably none, unless you consider playing an opening your opp happens to be unfamiliar with to be luck). There is a bit more luck in SC2, because of the fog of war you don't know what your opp is doing and they may surprise you. But still, in both games players very quickly get a clear idea of where they stand on the skill rankings. So you should expect the amount of money in poker to be about the same as the amount in chess. In other words, hardly any, unless you're Carlsen, Topalov, Anand, etc.
***
One way to make people want to play tournaments more would be like they do in chess. If I pay $10 I want to at least get a few games in. If it's single elimination I may only get one game. But if you run it like a chess open tournament, where everyone plays a game every round, then at least I feel like I'm getting a good time for my $10, even though I know I have no chance of winning. These tournaments are a lot more complex to run, but they do get a lot of people willing to pay an entry fee to participate. I would be interested in a tournament like this, and I would even pay money to participate. You could offer prizes for "best bronze" etc so even the worst players may have some incentive to play and feel like they're part of the scene.
Great points and analogies. Like you, I think that the concept of poker tournaments cannot be entirely transplanted into the Sc2 scene.
But what if there are tournaments catered to all skill levels? For example a diamond 2.5 k will only play against other diamond 2.3-2.7k players.
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I think this idea could definately work, but it would have to be structured more like a chess tournament, 7 round swiss or whatever, instead of knockout...
But again, the problem falls back to the issue that in a chess tournament, people pay to enter at the lower levels to get experience playing against higher people, get the chance to possibly win some games, and get the chance to increase their rating against people for the whole 7 games. For the people not in contention for the prizes, it's mostly about getting to play in a serious setting.
For Starcraft 2 players however, there's nothing really gained from doing this. You don't get any ladder points from playing in a tournament (maybe changed if Blizzard introduced a tournament system). You can play against higher level players without a tournament if you wanted (and I suppose had the social skills too). And there is no ability to have a 'Under XX rating' prize pool since in-game SC2 ratings are so inaccurate compared to chess ratings.
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Because MLG added SC2 to its circuit towards the end of the year, there will be a lot more MLG tournaments next year for the best to compete in, and larger prize pools for them will help draw them out. However, the accessibility of small online tournaments in spare time still will roll in a little extra dough for some pro players.
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Money for organizing tournament can come from 3 sources in my opinion.
1. Sponsor (like SteelSeries Tournament, and so on)
2. Player or community (Like OP suggest, a buy-in tournament or gosucup)
3. Investor (like Kespa or may be GSL)
Investor is not exactly similar to sponsor type. Investor do the tournament for purpose of direct profit such as what GOMTV is doing. While sponsor is likely to aim for marketing purpose.
If we want to inject money in to the industry (SC2 tournament). The best way should be from sponsor and investor because the amount of money from player and community will be hard to compare with what those sponsor.
There is not much we can do. The game it self has to be popular enough to attract the large audience in order to have big investor and sponsor.
Anyway, I encourage SC community to try the buy in tournament and see what happen. it might grow big, who know...
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On December 15 2010 13:10 Bladefury wrote:
Great points and analogies. Like you, I think that the concept of poker tournaments cannot be entirely transplanted into the Sc2 scene.
But what if there are tournaments catered to all skill levels? For example a diamond 2.5 k will only play against other diamond 2.3-2.7k players.
This could work. The only problem I see is that if you have, say, a platinum league tourney with a decent prize fund, there will be some unscrupulous players who start new accounts or dump ratings points to get into the tournament. This happens a bit in chess too (eg players drop from 2000 to 1500 to win the "best 1400-1600" prize), but it's much easier to do in an anonymous online universe.
I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but if the goal is to get non-expert players to put in their money to play, then you need those players to feel that the tournaments are fair. I could see this being tough to police.
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I agree with the guy above me, Ziggurat (props to you for having an awesome username btw).
You already kind of addressed this point at the bottom of the OP, but I think it deserves more elaboration because it's one of the fundamental problems with the idea.
The reason that SC2 tournaments can't operate like poker tournaments is because of the lack of variance. Chess is the best analogy we can use. If I'm a good amateur chess player, I will still lose 100-0 if I play a grandmaster. Idra would beat any Platinum player in SC2 100-0, or at least 98-2. But if an amateur poker player like me plays Phil Ivey in heads up sit'n'gos, I could probably win up to 25% of the games (depending on the structure).
This is what funds the poker economy. Amateurs love to play big poker tournaments because they know that even if they aren't the most skilled player, basically any donk with good cards and good luck can make a deep run. But in SC2 this is not the case. As an amateur SC2 player, I know that I am dead as soon as I face a pro in a tournament. I can't beat the pro, and unlike in poker, I can't rely on someone else knocking him out of the tournament for me early on.
To take an example, lets say we have a 500 man SC2 tournament with 10 pros and 490 amateurs. We run this tournament 100 times, and what happens? A pro will win every single time. In fact, most likely the top 4 or even the top 8 will be the exact same people in almost every tournament. But if you ran a poker tournament like this, a pro would win less than 10% of the time, and the top 8 would contain a huge variety of players from tournament to tournament.
This makes SC2 great for pros because the best player almost always wins. Unfortunately it also removes the incentive for amateurs to "try their luck". I'm not gonna spend $10 on a 64-man SC2 tournament unless I know that I'm one of the 4 best players in the tournament. Furthermore, if even one known pro signs up then my ROI is as good as dead. Weaker players will not keep throwing their money at tournaments they know they can't win, so eventually they will stop paying and just go play for free (unlike poker, laddering allows you to play the game without spending money).
TL DR: the only reason the poker economy is able to exist is because of variance. Since there is no variance in SC2, this tournament model cannot be sustained in the long-term.
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On December 15 2010 13:23 LionsFist wrote:
I think this idea could definately work, but it would have to be structured more like a chess tournament, 7 round swiss or whatever, instead of knockout...
But again, the problem falls back to the issue that in a chess tournament, people pay to enter at the lower levels to get experience playing against higher people, get the chance to possibly win some games, and get the chance to increase their rating against people for the whole 7 games. For the people not in contention for the prizes, it's mostly about getting to play in a serious setting.
For Starcraft 2 players however, there's nothing really gained from doing this. You don't get any ladder points from playing in a tournament (maybe changed if Blizzard introduced a tournament system). You can play against higher level players without a tournament if you wanted (and I suppose had the social skills too). And there is no ability to have a 'Under XX rating' prize pool since in-game SC2 ratings are so inaccurate compared to chess ratings.
This is a good point. In chess you can play online too, but no one really cares about your "icc" rating. People want to get decent ratings with FIDE, or the USCF, or whatever the association is in your region, and you can only get that by playing live games. Starcraft, by contrast, most people only play online.
Maybe as the game matures there will be some kind of official ratings system that has more meaning than bnet points.
Still, there might be some way to get people interested in online swiss-style tournaments. If people start offering them for, say, $2 to play an 8 game tournament, players might get used to the idea of paying a nominal amount for tournaments. I would be happy to do this, as long as paying the money wasn't a hassle (i.e. it needs to be simple). Especially if the tournament was well organized and well-run, it would be a lot of fun and well worth a small amount of money.
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On December 15 2010 13:35 FuRong wrote:
The reason that SC2 tournaments can't operate like poker tournaments is because of the lack of variance. Chess is the best analogy we can use. If I'm a good amateur chess player, I will still lose 100-0 if I play a grandmaster. Idra would beat any Platinum player in SC2 100-0, or at least 98-2. But if an amateur poker player like me plays Phil Ivey in heads up sit'n'gos, I could probably win up to 25% of the games (depending on the structure).
This is exactly what I was trying to say. And btw I think you would beat Ivey more like 40% if you play halfway decent (however if you played repeatedly he'd figure your play out a lot better than you'd figure out his, so maybe 25% is more accurate after a lot of hands).
One other thought about this is that it would be really cool to play bo3's in a tournament. Have you ever lost to a cheesy all-in and said "fuck I would like a rematch against this fucker"? If each match in a tournament was a best of 3, you would get your rematches. This would be something that I think would appeal to a lot of players.
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As a runner of local chess tournaments, I can tell you now that collecting an average ($10) amount of money from someone is a lot easier than collecting a small($2-3) sum of money
As for it being online, probably a lot easier through instant paypal transfers and the like, but there will always be hassle.
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On December 15 2010 13:34 ziggurat wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 13:10 Bladefury wrote:
Great points and analogies. Like you, I think that the concept of poker tournaments cannot be entirely transplanted into the Sc2 scene.
But what if there are tournaments catered to all skill levels? For example a diamond 2.5 k will only play against other diamond 2.3-2.7k players.
This could work. The only problem I see is that if you have, say, a platinum league tourney with a decent prize fund, there will be some unscrupulous players who start new accounts or dump ratings points to get into the tournament. This happens a bit in chess too (eg players drop from 2000 to 1500 to win the "best 1400-1600" prize), but it's much easier to do in an anonymous online universe. I'm not saying it's a bad idea, but if the goal is to get non-expert players to put in their money to play, then you need those players to feel that the tournaments are fair. I could see this being tough to police.
You'd have to make the pay structure heavily incentivize staying at your true level. So "best <1600" prize might be your buy-in back, and then "best 1600-1800" might be double that, or something.
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ZIGGURAT, STOP.
Seriously, dude, if you want to compare Starcraft 2 and poker, that's 100%. If you want to argue that you can't compare them, that's 100% fine. But for you to make incredibly idiotic statements like
And btw I think you would beat Ivey more like 40% if you play halfway decent (however if you played repeatedly he'd figure your play out a lot better than you'd figure out his, so maybe 25% is more accurate after a lot of hands).
Poker is so popular because it's like 95% luck.
makes me rage, as someone who has a very intimate understanding of the game of poker, ESPECIALLY when you claim to have read ANY book relating to poker.
NO professional will tell you that poker is even remotely luck-based. There is NO luck in long-term poker earnings, only odds and statistics. "Luck" is an illusion created by looking at a small sample size of a large number of hands. A player who gets AA dealt to them three times in a row is just as likely to have 27off dealt three times in a row as well.
On another note, I understand that Starcraft 2 has a much much smaller "luck" element involved in it than Poker, in that skill will dictate the winner of any single SC2 match much more often than any single poker match, but I believe that this is completely irrelevant to my argument. In no point in me talking about bringing more money into the SC2 scene via tournaments am I suggesting that "luck" need be a necessary element.
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the only reason i would bother paying is if i had a chance of making back what i paid, which i wouldn't so no, i probably wouldn't, especially when there are free tournaments all over the place.
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On December 15 2010 15:16 suicideMARE wrote:
the only reason i would bother paying is if i had a chance of making back what i paid, which i wouldn't so no, i probably wouldn't, especially when there are free tournaments all over the place.
would you rather go up against members of ROOT, liquid and others for a chance at winning
or pay and get a shot at winning against some 2300pts ranked dude?
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On December 15 2010 15:42 megagoten wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 15:16 suicideMARE wrote:
the only reason i would bother paying is if i had a chance of making back what i paid, which i wouldn't so no, i probably wouldn't, especially when there are free tournaments all over the place. would you rather go up against members of ROOT, liquid and others for a chance at winning or pay and get a shot at winning against some 2300pts ranked dude?
The latter for me. You can already face the pros for free in current tournaments.
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Seriously. And the pay structure would pay, say, the top 25 or 40% of finishers, not JUST first or JUST first/second place. With entry fees, the prize pool would be large enough so that a decent player has a chance at winning in a tournament. If there was an extremely talented player in your tourney, it's not like you have zero chance at getting "in the money", so to speak.
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I think the problem might be that a high ranked player has enough time on his hands to participate in all these tournaments, given the miracle of the internet. (Ability to play in a tournament regardless of location, thus summing it to a time problem)
A poker player has to physically be there for quite some time in order to actually win money.
However a pro-starcraft player has the time on his hands in between competing for big tournaments to do quite a few of the small ones, especially those middle tier semi-pro players like a lot of the foreigners you have mentioned in the tournies you used as examples.
For instance, Idra has enough time to stream, because he isn't constantly playing for the GSL, thus he has enough time to play in small tournaments if he wanted to. (He doesn't not because of time but more keeping his name out of those small fields and only attached to big gaming things)
There should be some restriction thus:
players are only allowed to buy into a certain amount of tournaments at a time.
Thus preventing pros who want to go for high amounts of money in the big tournies from picking up small amounts of cash on the side, because in reality they honestly do have enough time to do this.
I do like how a pay structure would actually make it worthwhile for small time players to play in tournaments and actually win something, but a lot of players won't buy into another tournament if they lose money in the first one.
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On December 15 2010 16:08 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:
Seriously. And the pay structure would pay, say, the top 25 or 40% of finishers, not JUST first or JUST first/second place. With entry fees, the prize pool would be large enough so that a decent player has a chance at winning in a tournament. If there was an extremely talented player in your tourney, it's not like you have zero chance at getting "in the money", so to speak.
Good point. Here is my thought:
A rather high level player that is a skill notch below the pros has the following options:
1. Enter a high stakes tournament with the risk of meeting a pro in the beginning stages and getting knocked out, or the chance to finish in the lower portion of the top 25 and win a small portion of the large prize pool. If the top pros are playing in these tournaments, chances of finishing in the top 4 and winning a significant portion of the prize pool is slim.
or
2. Enter a lower stakes tournament and dominate, hence winning a big portion of the smaller prize pool on a more consistent basis.
These two options may have the same expected value of winnings, but I wonder how people will make decisions in situations like that.
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As a mediocre hold'em player who has been playing low stakes on Full Tilt since it had less than 1000 active players and only a few pros, and as a mediocre SC2 player (~1450 diamond) but longtime SC player dating back late 90's early 2000's, I simply LOVE this idea.
I literally agree with every single point made in this thread and strongly encourage it. I watch your stream frequently, love your play style, it's very similar to mine (general strategy-wise that is, your APM, micro, and macro all are farrrr superior to mine), and I have learned alot from you. Thanks for doin what you do lol
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I agree with Ziggurat. I play Magic: The Gathering tournaments every week, and until I got good enough to consistently place highly, one of the biggest incentives was that for my seven bucks, I got to play close to four hours of Magic, win or lose. This also allows for players to play in larger tournaments, to see well they can do (and to an up-and-comer, it looks better to go 4-4 one tournament, 5-3 the next than get knocked out Round 1 then knocked out Round 2). If you want to get average/fairly good players playing tournaments (and not the TL version of fairly good), Swiss format is a brilliant idea.
The "best bronze" is a great idea, too. It doesn't have to be a big prize, but as a Silver SC2 player I know that winning my entry fee back for doing the best out of the players in my league (even if there's only like, 9 in a 256-man tournament) would be pretty cool.
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I don't see how having buy-in games will make any difference at all?
Right now, you say that almost every tournament is being won by top-tier players. Add in the buy-in and it's STILL true. The majority of good but not top players will still be making nothing, maybe even losing money due to the buy ins, which makes these tournaments very unappealing to anyone but the top.
The reason SnG's work for Poker is because no matter how awful of a player you are, there's still somewhat of a chance that you'll win some cash. The large luck factor is what attracts random people who just throw in money into the game.
For the same reason, this is why we don't have "SnG" hockey, football or basketball tournaments. The results are too heavily dependent on skill, so the average player would never want to put up money to enter and will just play casually instead.
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To encourage people who are afraid to not win anything to play those low stake tournaments,
How about a model like:
64 player tournament with 10$ entrance fee (640$ price pool)
everybody who reaches round of 32 gets back 2.50$ (560$ remaining)
everybody who reaches round of 16 gets back another 2.50$ (520$ remaining)
everybody who reaches round of 8 gets back another 5$, making everything from this point profit (480$ remaining)
250$ for first place
100$ for second place
55$ for third
25$ for 4th
50$ remaining which could be used for a variety of things, which were already mentioned somewhere before, like commentators, website administration, etc
due to wider price spread, would probably also somewhat diminish the interest of "pros" in the tournament.
might be too much paperwork, though, don't know, you tell me.
edit: could make it even more casual-friendly, like:
ro32: 5$ return (480$ rem.)
ro16: 5$ return (400$ rem.)
ro8: 10$ return (320$ rem)
1. 150
2. 70
3. 40
4. 20
again having 40 for other stuff
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I would suggest you alternatively look at this from a managerial or administrative perspective. When players start to pay money for something they are now purchasing a product in that tournament and expect a positive experience out of it. Funds will be drawn in to management and administration to unsure people actually enjoy the experience to a degree where they consider coming back. Consider that as soon as you start to handle money you become a company or corporation that operates at some level of profit.
It is possible to run something like this as a simple transfer of funds but the opportunity for corruption is also something to keep in mind. Unless you go some non-profit route but as is they way in free market economies, some one is going to take what you are doing and find a way to profit from it, reinvest and gain and edge.
Going the profit route will likely involve some level of government involvement and this will have rather large impacts, especially if you intended this to be international as you will be working with multi national regulation which means more administration costs to sort through it all. When ever something makes money the government wants their share as well as telling you what you can and cannot do. eSports regulation is rather nonexistent, but you make a good inference when you talk about online porker as this is where most legislature would likely be drawn from.
It is an interesting idea but it would require a well structured business proposal that could inspire investment from a bank or entrepreneur to get started. I would also suggest that it be broken down in to regions that do no mingle in terms of prize pool competition.
Not meant to be a discouragement, just the assessment of a Public Administration student
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The thread is growing and I haven't had time to read through all of it so sorry if I'm just repeating someones post, but here goes anyway:
Change the format for lower level and lower prize tournaments to have much more even prize distribution, example:
Tournament setup: 32 players, 5$ buy in, 10% of total goes to rake, costs, etc.
Prize distribution: 144$ total, evenly distributed at 2% increase to 4% increase per top 8.
Distribution:
1st: 24% - 34.56$
2nd: 20% - 28.8$
3rd: 16% - 23.04$
4th: 12% - 17.28$
5th: 10% - 14.4$
6th: 8% - 11.52$
7th: 6% - 8.64$ (they made money on SC2!)
8th: 4% - 5.67$ (they get their buy in back)
This means that if you just beat a few players, you have your money back and a chance to win up to 7 times what you 'bet'.
From the pros perspective:
It costs to enter and you only 'win' if you place 1st or 2nd. With evenly distributed prize money, the gain is very little for the smaller tournaments.
From the low level players perspective:
It costs to enter and there will be pros competing. With evenly distributed prize money you have a chance against your own level and you can 'easily' get your money back.
Would you play in a tournament where there was a small chance of pro players, and you had a 'high' chance to get your money back?
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On December 15 2010 14:52 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:ZIGGURAT, STOP. Seriously, dude, if you want to compare Starcraft 2 and poker, that's 100%. If you want to argue that you can't compare them, that's 100% fine. But for you to make incredibly idiotic statements like Show nested quote +And btw I think you would beat Ivey more like 40% if you play halfway decent (however if you played repeatedly he'd figure your play out a lot better than you'd figure out his, so maybe 25% is more accurate after a lot of hands). makes me rage, as someone who has a very intimate understanding of the game of poker, ESPECIALLY when you claim to have read ANY book relating to poker. NO professional will tell you that poker is even remotely luck-based. There is NO luck in long-term poker earnings, only odds and statistics. "Luck" is an illusion created by looking at a small sample size of a large number of hands. A player who gets AA dealt to them three times in a row is just as likely to have 27off dealt three times in a row as well. On another note, I understand that Starcraft 2 has a much much smaller "luck" element involved in it than Poker, in that skill will dictate the winner of any single SC2 match much more often than any single poker match, but I believe that this is completely irrelevant to my argument. In no point in me talking about bringing more money into the SC2 scene via tournaments am I suggesting that "luck" need be a necessary element.
I'm not sure how "intimate" your understanding of poker actually is, but it's not unusual to go on a downswing that lasts 100k hands. There is a lot of luck in long-term poker earnings. As for the outcome of any given poker tournament, that is at least 95% luck. No pro would disagree with these statements.
I also don't understand why this discussion would make you "rage". Just chill out and do your research
Sorry if this seems like derailing the thread, but the OP started it!
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Umm. Stating that the outcome of a poker tournament is 95% luck is crazyness. You would never see a small exlusive club of top players consistently coming to the final table if you were anywhere close to correct.
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I guess Helmuth, Chan and Brunson, Ivey and all the top pros are just the luckiest people ever.
On December 16 2010 04:45 ziggurat wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2010 14:52 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:ZIGGURAT, STOP. Seriously, dude, if you want to compare Starcraft 2 and poker, that's 100%. If you want to argue that you can't compare them, that's 100% fine. But for you to make incredibly idiotic statements like And btw I think you would beat Ivey more like 40% if you play halfway decent (however if you played repeatedly he'd figure your play out a lot better than you'd figure out his, so maybe 25% is more accurate after a lot of hands). Poker is so popular because it's like 95% luck. makes me rage, as someone who has a very intimate understanding of the game of poker, ESPECIALLY when you claim to have read ANY book relating to poker. NO professional will tell you that poker is even remotely luck-based. There is NO luck in long-term poker earnings, only odds and statistics. "Luck" is an illusion created by looking at a small sample size of a large number of hands. A player who gets AA dealt to them three times in a row is just as likely to have 27off dealt three times in a row as well. On another note, I understand that Starcraft 2 has a much much smaller "luck" element involved in it than Poker, in that skill will dictate the winner of any single SC2 match much more often than any single poker match, but I believe that this is completely irrelevant to my argument. In no point in me talking about bringing more money into the SC2 scene via tournaments am I suggesting that "luck" need be a necessary element. I'm not sure how "intimate" your understanding of poker actually is, but it's not unusual to go on a downswing that lasts 100k hands. There is a lot of luck in long-term poker earnings. As for the outcome of any given poker tournament, that is at least 95% luck. No pro would disagree with these statements. I also don't understand why this discussion would make you "rage". Just chill out and do your research Sorry if this seems like derailing the thread, but the OP started it!
And btw, he's actually really good at poker, but that's just luck right? I question whether you actually play any amount of poker because if you wouldn't say it's 95% luck. There's a difference between luck, skill and accidently making a correct play (i.e, a big portion of that 95% luck you're thinking of)
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On December 16 2010 04:45 ziggurat wrote:
I'm not sure how "intimate" your understanding of poker actually is, but it's not unusual to go on a downswing that lasts 100k hands. There is a lot of luck in long-term poker earnings. As for the outcome of any given poker tournament, that is at least 95% luck. No pro would disagree with these statements.
It's extremely uncommon to go on a 100K hand downswing if you're a winning player in the game you're playing. Does it happen? Yes. Often? No. Very rarely, maybe once in a career. 10,000 hands is borderline common for a winning player...but 100K you're experiencing an extremely rare period of negative variance or you're not a winning player.
Most people that have played 100K hands are on a 100K hand losing streak, by definition. A significant majority of players are losing players.
To state that 95% of a tournament is luck is baseless and emotional. You're likely confusing luck with variance. To win the WSOP Main Event, yes you MUST get lucky. But professional players have a much much higher chance of getting "lucky" because they put themselves in better spots when they get their money in the middle. You could theoretically win if you went all in every hand and played like a robot. It is almost unfathomable, however.
There's an entire city built on the fact that winning 55/45 coinflips has no luck involved in the long run. Phil Ivey will get the money in good much more than 55% of the time against a novice.
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On December 16 2010 03:06 Luggage wrote:
The thread is growing and I haven't had time to read through all of it so sorry if I'm just repeating someones post, but here goes anyway:
Change the format for lower level and lower prize tournaments to have much more even prize distribution, example:
Tournament setup: 32 players, 5$ buy in, 10% of total goes to rake, costs, etc.
Prize distribution: 144$ total, evenly distributed at 2% increase to 4% increase per top 8.
Distribution:
1st: 24% - 34.56$
2nd: 20% - 28.8$
3rd: 16% - 23.04$
4th: 12% - 17.28$
5th: 10% - 14.4$
6th: 8% - 11.52$
7th: 6% - 8.64$ (they made money on SC2!)
8th: 4% - 5.67$ (they get their buy in back)
This means that if you just beat a few players, you have your money back and a chance to win up to 7 times what you 'bet'.
From the pros perspective:
It costs to enter and you only 'win' if you place 1st or 2nd. With evenly distributed prize money, the gain is very little for the smaller tournaments.
From the low level players perspective:
It costs to enter and there will be pros competing. With evenly distributed prize money you have a chance against your own level and you can 'easily' get your money back.
Would you play in a tournament where there was a small chance of pro players, and you had a 'high' chance to get your money back?
No you need to split the prizes as so:
Where X7 is 7 times your entry fee payout
9-16 $5 ea (buy in back $120 remaining) X1
5-8 $7.50 ea (you made monies $90 remaining) X1.5
3&4 $10 ea (70$ remaining) X2
2 $25 X5
1 $45 X9
However this does not include the rake, if you include the rake you could probably cut prizes in places 3-8 to make monies. Now if you get sponsors, you can keep the money off the sponsors to pay for fees and profits, a bigger player pool would also result in better prizes. With 64 players $5 ea.
17-32 $5 ea ($240 remaining) X1
9-16 $7.50 ea ($180 remaining) X1.5
5-8 $10 ea ($140 remaining) X2
3&4 $17.50 ea ($105 remaining) X3.5
2 $40 X8
1 $65 X13
There is still huge prizes for 1st and second but players won't feel as bad because they get their money back if they win ONE match. These do not include rake/fees however a sponsor could easily replace that.
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too much skill in starcraft imo, the top players will be winning everything
only way a tournament would work is if it was all bo1 from start to the finals to attract the less skilled players
so that even the less skilled players would hav a chance of winning
tats how u pump money into the tournament
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why would someone dump any serious money into starcraft? What would the investor get back? If i were pepsi, what would i get in return for putting up 100k in prize money?
You'll see money put into SC2, when investors get more out than they put in. Tangible, hard core cash out.
I can see why razer does it, or MSi, because of synergy. But attracting regular large sums of money here in NA, never going to happen.
It also doesn't help to grow the community and generate buzz when at every corner many posters and pros remind the players that they're crap and their opinions don't matter (last sotg).
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On December 16 2010 05:37 ashaman771 wrote:
why would someone dump any serious money into starcraft? What would the investor get back? If i were pepsi, what would i get in return for putting up 100k in prize money?
You'll see money put into SC2, when investors get more out than they put in. Tangible, hard core cash out.
I can see why razer does it, or MSi, because of synergy. But attracting regular large sums of money here in NA, never going to happen.
It also doesn't help to grow the community and generate buzz when at every corner many posters and pros remind the players that they're crap and their opinions don't matter (last sotg).
While I do agree with you that in NA you would be hardpressed to find investors besides the obvious gaming/computer companies, it is interesting to note that the GSL is funded by Sony Ericsson
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On December 16 2010 05:27 red_hq wrote:
9-16 $5 ea (buy in back $120 remaining) X1
5-8 $7.50 ea (you made monies $90 remaining) X1.5
3&4 $10 ea (70$ remaining) X2
2 $25 X5
1 $45 X9
However this does not include the rake, if you include the rake you could probably cut prizes in places 3-8 to make monies. Now if you get sponsors, you can keep the money off the sponsors to pay for fees and profits, a bigger player pool would also result in better prizes. With 64 players $5 ea.
17-32 $5 ea ($240 remaining) X1
9-16 $7.50 ea ($180 remaining) X1.5
5-8 $10 ea ($140 remaining) X2
3&4 $17.50 ea ($105 remaining) X3.5
2 $40 X8
1 $65 X13
There is still huge prizes for 1st and second but players won't feel as bad because they get their money back if they win ONE match. These do not include rake/fees however a sponsor could easily replace that.
This is important. If players can make their money back on the first round, it means that they have a 50% shot at not losing any money...in the long run, they can break even (unless they are either really bad or really good). If the system is too top heavy, players won't want to compete with money, since they will only be feeding the consistent winners.
If the money is spread evenly throughout the players, then it encourages people to play. More people playing = more tournaments.
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For the same reason, this is why we don't have "SnG" hockey, football or basketball tournaments. The results are too heavily dependent on skill, so the average player would never want to put up money to enter and will just play casually instead.
Actually, these do exist and, in fact, the players don't even win any money at all. People pay to play in rec leagues all the time. It is even more prevalent in individual sports. Wrestling, jiu jitsu, fencing, etc. all have tournaments pretty much every weekend with entrance fees and no prize money.
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On December 16 2010 05:41 vicariouscheese wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2010 05:37 ashaman771 wrote:
why would someone dump any serious money into starcraft? What would the investor get back? If i were pepsi, what would i get in return for putting up 100k in prize money?
You'll see money put into SC2, when investors get more out than they put in. Tangible, hard core cash out.
I can see why razer does it, or MSi, because of synergy. But attracting regular large sums of money here in NA, never going to happen.
It also doesn't help to grow the community and generate buzz when at every corner many posters and pros remind the players that they're crap and their opinions don't matter (last sotg). While I do agree with you that in NA you would be hardpressed to find investors besides the obvious gaming/computer companies, it is interesting to note that the GSL is funded by Sony Ericsson
Absolutely, I watch GSL as well. But i suspect they sponsor because the analysis shows a net win on the money they put in.
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solution is easy, just make the tournament divided by the level of players, so all bronze players have they respective tournament for bronze, all silver for silver, gold for gold ecc
even if i'm the last in my league i will partecipate if i know that i compete with only the players in my league
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On December 16 2010 06:18 Garmer wrote:
solution is easy, just make the tournament divided by the level of players, so all bronze players have they respective tournament for bronze, all silver for silver, gold for gold ecc
even if i'm the last in my league i will partecipate if i know that i compete with only the players in my league
This is an incredible idea. Can't believe no one thought of this...it's perfect!
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Yep, many games have the system and I think it's great. I'm sure many people would pay like 10 euros to take part in a tournament, and then the prize pool would go up to thousands, and this could be a weekly thing and... There'd be a lot of money to win.
In my opinion that's much better than the 1000 man 50 dollar tournaments there currently are. I'm not sure how they'd be organized though... paypal to the organizer I guess.
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because the fee to run a SnG tournament is $10,000, good luck on finding enough people to pay that off.
This should end the thread barring anyone taking it out of context.
Once again, the fee you need to play blizzard to run a SnG tournament is 10k, so you need to generate enough profit from high school and college kids to make 10k, good luck with that.
Oh and for it working for poker, well thats because a majority of poker players dont rely on the talents of a young person (reaction speed anyone?) so they can play for a very long time, and it isnt physically draining on them. Anyone can invest money into poker, only a select few would invest money into video game competitions. People make the baseketball argument for eSports, that any fat slobby armchair ridden person is able to compete against the athletes jacked up on steroids, well this is tenfold for poker, anyone no matter the age, is able to compete in poker.
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On December 16 2010 06:18 Garmer wrote:
solution is easy, just make the tournament divided by the level of players, so all bronze players have they respective tournament for bronze, all silver for silver, gold for gold ecc
even if i'm the last in my league i will partecipate if i know that i compete with only the players in my league
This is an incredible idea. Can't believe no one thought of this...it's perfect!
In my experience, this does not work, at least not without significant differences in prize pools. The prize differences between a gold tournament and a diamond tournament are not sufficient to prevent people from playing down if the same pool allocation is used across tournament 'levels'. A top level player maybe plays a diamond tourney on Monday and makes $800, that doesn't mean they won't play down to win $200 in a gold tourney on Tuesday. Top 200 players can be found in tournaments with prizes of $25 every week right now.
Also, there's does not appear to be an effective way to police at-level participation. Even in our Gold-Silver-Bronze tournaments we inevitably have some suspicion of someone playing down from time to time even when the prize is just a coaching hour. Not sure why anyone in platinum or diamond would join in that tourney but there really is just no way to be certain.
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This idea depends upon one of two factors being present in pretty much every tournament.
1) People who are willing to pay to play games with big name players. If there are enough of these, every pro should be screaming for a way to make your idea a reality. If there are 50 players in a tourney and 25 are the best in the world and 25 are rich suckers who want to say they successfully cannon-rushed Idra once, it'd obviously be a HUGE money maker for the pros. However, I doubt there are quite enough rich fans who can't get a better experience for the dollar (see: gosucoaching) to make this a major factor. Although group play could be a good incentive: essentially you're offering the suckers several pros to play against for their money. Single elim tourneys would be much less successful.
2) People who think they're a lot better than they are. If 25 top players are in a tourney along with 25 people who foolishly think they're as good as the pros, the pros make money. Because of the ladder and the negative feedback between people who play often enough to think they're good and people who have money to lose in starcraft tourneys, I also think this is a small player pool that wouldn't be sustainable for the pros.
That leaves the third scenario. After a short money-making period you have tourneys with 50 of the top players playing against virtually no suckers. Now the cost of the tourney itself is a net loss for everyone. This last scenario is considered the default, because of Brood War history, and is one of the reasons why no one looks at ways around this legally.
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This is the issue. You bring up a topic like this, and you have a bunch of people say its a good/bad idea. A bunch of people throw out ideas to improve the idea. But, you get literally 0 people that are interested in making it happen. They pretty much want Blizzard to do it.
Allowing the big guns to step in is only going to make it turn into a bad idea. Online poker sit n gos are great, but the truth of the matter is online poker is horribly bad. Rake in brick and mortar casinos and online is making almost billions of dollars. Rake is a BAD idea overall. In the long run, it makes everybody a loser. It creates a pyramid where only the top 10% of people actually earn a profit if everybody continues to play.
Anyways, it doesn't take a genius to figure out a way to market this whole thing, or come up with ways to seperate leagues. All you really need is to set an 50 game minimum, and have the mmr rating. Have the sit n go listed, and allow people to register. So, a $10 sng will start when 10 ppl, of the same rating sign up. You don't need 5 different league $10 sngs, just one, and allow them to be sorted ot just like the current ladder system sorts you.
Why does a rake need to be taken? Online poker sites need to abandon the rake, they are making way too much money. Every sunday million stars hosts, they automatically earn 2nd place prize money. That's PATHETIC. Charge a monthly fee, a small monthly fee.
I'm actually working on creating a better system for sc2 tournaments and interested in bringing larger prize pools to the table. If you actually want to become a working part of this, PM me.
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On December 16 2010 07:20 dittie wrote:
Why does a rake need to be taken? Online poker sites need to abandon the rake, they are making way too much money. Every sunday million stars hosts, they automatically earn 2nd place prize money. That's PATHETIC. Charge a monthly fee, a small monthly fee.
It actually astounds me that people think this way. Are you trolling? It's a free market. Go ahead and build one for less and force them to bring their fees down. Or hell, just go build a free one and you can support it with all the donations you get.
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On December 16 2010 04:49 Ghad wrote:
Umm. Stating that the outcome of a poker tournament is 95% luck is crazyness. You would never see a small exlusive club of top players consistently coming to the final table if you were anywhere close to correct.
You're right, if it's 95% luck you wouldn't see this. And in fact, you don't see this. In the WSOP ME it's different players every year. I think Dan Harrington once made the final table two years in a row and it was considered a miracle. Of course that was back when less than a thousand people participated.
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On December 16 2010 05:16 South wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2010 04:45 ziggurat wrote:
I'm not sure how "intimate" your understanding of poker actually is, but it's not unusual to go on a downswing that lasts 100k hands. There is a lot of luck in long-term poker earnings. As for the outcome of any given poker tournament, that is at least 95% luck. No pro would disagree with these statements. It's extremely uncommon to go on a 100K hand downswing if you're a winning player in the game you're playing. Does it happen? Yes. Often? No. Very rarely, maybe once in a career. 10,000 hands is borderline common for a winning player...but 100K you're experiencing an extremely rare period of negative variance or you're not a winning player. Most people that have played 100K hands are on a 100K hand losing streak, by definition. A significant majority of players are losing players. To state that 95% of a tournament is luck is baseless and emotional. You're likely confusing luck with variance. To win the WSOP Main Event, yes you MUST get lucky. But professional players have a much much higher chance of getting "lucky" because they put themselves in better spots when they get their money in the middle. You could theoretically win if you went all in every hand and played like a robot. It is almost unfathomable, however. There's an entire city built on the fact that winning 55/45 coinflips has no luck involved in the long run. Phil Ivey will get the money in good much more than 55% of the time against a novice.
I am probably making too many posts on this, so this will be my last one. With all due respect to the OP and to South and others who agree with them, you guys just haven't played enough hand (and maybe watched a bit too much Poker After Dark). Variance in hold em and omaha is enormous. Many many pros have gone broke due to pure variance, and these are expert players who should be smart enough to know better.
If your point is just that in the long run luck evens out, then no one would dispute that. What I'm saying is that in poker, the long run is very very long.
Anyone wanting to get a better understanding of variance and "luck" in poker should have a look at the bbv forum on 2+2. Check the archives for lots of good discussions.
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Ok, citing BBV as a frame of reference just confirms you've got to be kidding (it's 2p2 btw). That forum is arguably the largest cesspool on the entire internet and is a joke even to members of that site...let alone to a logical outsider.
No one is denying that pros go broke. It happens all the time when people play above their bankrolls. Mathematically to play in a $300/600 PLO game with an incredibly low RoR, you need $100 million+. Very few pros have anywhere even near that. They still enjoy gambling...but if they played $25/50 at the best of their ability, they would arguably never bust. Regardless, I think people just take extreme exception with you saying "95%". That's absurd and obviously baseless.
And as much as I love Steven's vision, I don't think it has any real chance of getting off the ground because the ball just can't get rolling. The biggest hurdle in my mind is that it almost needs to be integrated. If Blizzard decided to do this, I could see it being huge...but I just don't see an outside company being able to offer a solution that people would really place enough trust in to "gamble" more than $5-$10 at a time.
Another issue is that poker has rich people that inject money in for the entertainment value. I'm sure there are some in SCII land that would pay $100+ to play in tournaments with the likes of IdrA but nowhere near the kind of injection someone like Guy Laliberte gives the poker community.
All of this is tangential and not what Steven was looking for (just a gauge of interest). I'll say that if it were integrated into the Blizzard software and I felt like there was an incredibly low chance something fishy was going on and I could play against people of my caliber, I'd definitely do it...I think it would be fun and interesting. I just think it's an incredibly large task and with gaming laws the way they are in the US, it would be a nightmare to implement. There is no way they would differentiate between this and poker in terms of deeming it "gambling".
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You can't lose what you don't put in the middle.
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I don´t believe the success of poker´s buy in tournament system suggests anything about how it would do with SC2. You say you compared the two because they both have competition with a wide range of skill, but I don´t see poker´s wide range of skill as a remotely sufficient reason for why buy in´s are successful in it. The reasons why poker´s buy-in systems work are reasons that come from the characteristics of the game/community and these characteristics are not found in SC2.
I don't think SC2 and poker are similar in a way that would be relevant (or at least relevant enough) to suggest SC2 would share similar success with buy-in tournaments.
While the poll is mildly promising, I question whether those who voted yes really would follow through with it..
Perhaps we could get someone to set up a buy-in tournament and see how it goes (assuming they don't get shut down..).
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tldr: i don't understand economics.
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I think this is what is needed for the game to become much bigger. Good write up, hope it happens I would enter every $5 tourney that came up even if I lose it would be fun playing for the potential of a win.
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I can't see how this would inject cash into the game. It would move it around but I can't see how it would develop it as an industry since the players would have to be getting cash from somewhere else to put into it.
To develop the industry you have to get money from outside sources.
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I think that while this can work, (I'm not saying it will work extremely well or anything nor will it likely fail hard) it really takes someone with initiative to start doing these sorts of tournaments and going from there. You can theorize about the results all day but much like the game we play, you need to test it. It takes a lot of small tournaments here and there locally to really get this going.
Another point, while I recognize that you're not suggesting that sponsored tournaments completely go away, in a game that is essentially pure skill, much like other sports, needs to have huge open tournaments, open qualifiers that are free and reward considerable amounts of money. This is healthy due to the fact that it gets more people involved, it gets companies involved, it gets the noobs involved. Yes noobs are important. They're the largest player base and you want them to get hyped up for a large tourney and spread the word. If they have to worry about money then fewer people will join.
The most obvious choice is to just try it. Try doing a straight buy in. Try doing a small buy in ($5 in the US, that's generally an amount of money people are willing to possibly "throw away" on something fun) and then have sponsors to cover the rest of the prize money.
Thinking about this.. I might just start a local SC2 tournament within my own community. Letting newbs get together, go head to head, and then show them some great play (via GSL and such, you don't want to cream them in the tournament). The better of the newbs will win some money, and the others will feel like their $5 was well worth their while to hang out with friends for an afternoon. Everyone "wins" a little.
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I would adore buy-in tournaments. It's something I always wanted SC to have.
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I read this as it was posted while I was at work today, but I didn't get a chance to reply with my awesome idea of awesomeness.
HERES THE PLAN
64 person tournament with a $100 buy in.
Sounds like alot right?
To compensate for this you payout starting at the round of 32.
If you make the round of 32 you get your entry fee back.
If all you have to do is win ONE MATCH to get your entry fee back, people would be more likely to enter... right?
People may ask, "Why not just halve the entry fee?"
BECAUSE!
This leaves $3,200 in the prize pool!
It would look something like this:
ro64- $0
ro32- $100
ro16- $100
ro8- $100
ro4- $300
ro2- $1000
Winner- $$1,600
The numbers could obviously be changed.
This would work well for as low an amount as $10.
Thoughts?
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It's a great idea, but here's the problem:
A 64 player tournament requires a minimum of 63 games to be played, to determine the champion. These games have to be hosted on Battle.net, with a trusted observer to record the results. This observer will have to sit through all 63 games, and considering the average starcraft 2 game is around 8-15 minutes long, that's 10+ hours. This isn't even counting waiting for the players and inviting them to the games, and the odd 30 minute games.
If the organizer kept 10%, that would be $64. That's at most $6/hour for the observer, and no money for site hosting/maintenance.
Sure, some people would observe for free, for the quarter-finals and upwards, but who's going to sit through the round of 64, which will be mostly comprised of average players? Who will do it every week?
Again, I love the idea, and I would be willing to develop the platform, but it seems like the return on investment isn't good, unless we can solve this problem.
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No need for observers. Sites like craft cup have a replay submission and reporting system that require input for both people, with adequate support for disputes.
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For those who are still in doubt about if we'll be willing to pay an entry fee or not, aren't we paying it already when we're participating in lans ? (sorry haven't read the whole thread, sadly i wasn't here when this thread started, would be glad to be pointed out if someone already said it)
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On December 16 2010 12:54 cloudhead wrote:
It's a great idea, but here's the problem:
A 64 player tournament requires a minimum of 63 games to be played, to determine the champion. These games have to be hosted on Battle.net, with a trusted observer to record the results. This observer will have to sit through all 63 games, and considering the average starcraft 2 game is around 8-15 minutes long, that's 10+ hours. This isn't even counting waiting for the players and inviting them to the games, and the odd 30 minute games.
If the organizer kept 10%, that would be $64. That's at most $6/hour for the observer, and no money for site hosting/maintenance.
Sure, some people would observe for free, for the quarter-finals and upwards, but who's going to sit through the round of 64, which will be mostly comprised of average players? Who will do it every week?
Again, I love the idea, and I would be willing to develop the platform, but it seems like the return on investment isn't good, unless we can solve this problem.
10% of $6,400 is 640 dollars... which seems good for 10 hours work.
BUT You don't even have to observe all the games. They CAN be played simultaneously. All you'd have to do is require the players to save replays, screen shot score screens, and report on a website. Also, you'd have very few disputes, and if you did, they could easily be settled by having a few mods.
Your idea that people have to receive payment to do things like this is a bit off as well. There's already a TON of casters who host/cast tournaments with no expectation of any monetary reward. On that same vein, I've seen casters put their own money up as prize money, just so they'd have pro games to cast.
Eventually, once a system was up and running, you could start taking a rake for site maintenance/full time staff. But to start it out, one would have no shortage of volunteers.
Someone also mentioned something about having "leagues" so that everyone in the tournament would be of similar skill.
A way to do this would be:
You have to complete and WIN a certain number of matches before being able to participate in anything higher than the $1 tournaments. Once you are deemed "too good" to compete in the $1 tournaments anymore you are moved into the $3 league and promoted or demoted from there.
This would work effectively because it would quickly allow the gosu's to advance to the $50 - $100 leagues where they wouldn't be allowed to compete in the $1 league's anymore. ANNND it would (after a while) only be plat-low diamond players in the $1 leagues. This would give everyone a pretty decent chance actually making money playing in the tournaments, and it would make the larger tournaments worth while for the pros to play in.
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On December 16 2010 13:03 Playguuu wrote:
No need for observers. Sites like craft cup have a replay submission and reporting system that require input for both people, with adequate support for disputes.
That's a good solution, I hadn't considered it. But then you let the players organize themselves, and find each other on bnet, as well as submit the results on time?
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On December 16 2010 13:13 Moody wrote:
10% of $6,400 is 640 dollars... which seems good for 10 hours work.
BUT You don't even have to observe all the games. They CAN be played simultaneously. All you'd have to do is require the players to save replays, screen shot score screens, and report on a website. Also, you'd have very few disputes, and if you did, they could easily be settled by having a few mods.
Your idea that people have to receive payment to do things like this is a bit off as well. There's already a TON of casters who host/cast tournaments with no expectation of any monetary reward. On that same vein, I've seen casters put their own money up as prize money, just so they'd have pro games to cast.
Eventually, once a system was up and running, you could start taking a rake for site maintenance/full time staff. But to start it out, one would have no shortage of volunteers.
I had a $10 entry fee in mind, which would make the max prize pool $640. Sure, if people were willing to pay $100, to enter the tournament, for a total of $6400, that would be a good return, I'm just not sure that's the case.
I'm aware that a lot of people would do this for free, I was mostly concerned with a) finding reliable people who would be available every week, and b) finding people to observe the round of 64, which would probably not comprise of many pro level players.
With a replay submission system though, this might be irrelevant.
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ALRIGHT, BROS. I've posted a hypothetical pay-out structure in the OP, people can stop bitching about 'if more than 2 people got money" etc...etc..
Also, people have been saying throughout the thread "if we divvy it up between silver/gold/plat" etc..., I've responded to this in the OP, this is IMPOSSIBLE to regulate. There would be far too many smurfs and far too many people switching accounts just to sweep lower tournaments.
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Hold on everyone.
What were doing is discussing what potential rake, and prize distribution is. While that is great let me make a point: Who cares? The idea is there, we shouldn't be arguing over "oh well first place should get X% not Y%" Thats irrelevant at this point. Lets look at this from a "what needs to be done" perspective.
1: lets make sure blizzard allows it // its actually legal. As far as I know Steve is waiting on hearing from them now.
2: This all would have to get built or we would have to use an existing infrastructure (see TL open system, Craft Cup or CSL)
3: Putting everything together.
4: discussion of possible payouts and etc.
See what I mean, discussion of payouts, rake and ETC are meaningless right now and efforts should be put towards more important issues. Whos going to program this? Where is it going to be hosted? Does bliz allow it?
I love the idea, but we don't need another 5 pages discussing how much the rake should be and etc etc
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^----yes, but even one step before your step 1. Step 1 really needs to be, "Is there an interest in the Starcraft 2 community for something like this," which is really why I made this thread in the first place.
But yeah, next step would definitely be getting blizzard approval, which I'm waiting on a response for.
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Good point, but judging by this thread, people love it. I sure as hell do.
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i remember a post a few days ago by esea, and they said the reason their other tournaments had larger prizes is becuase you arent allowed to charge for entry into a starcraft tournament without special consent from blizzard, something which blizzard apparently almost never gives.
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On December 16 2010 07:41 South wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2010 07:20 dittie wrote:
Why does a rake need to be taken? Online poker sites need to abandon the rake, they are making way too much money. Every sunday million stars hosts, they automatically earn 2nd place prize money. That's PATHETIC. Charge a monthly fee, a small monthly fee. It actually astounds me that people think this way. Are you trolling? It's a free market. Go ahead and build one for less and force them to bring their fees down. Or hell, just go build a free one and you can support it with all the donations you get.
Thanks for the advice Mr. Impossible.
I do plan on bringing a monthly fee to poker. And BTW: This is already being implemented into poker rooms in the US because the poker community has made it a point to show how a table running 24 hours per day takes over a million out of the game per year. Meaning, some doofus has to come drop a million in order for the first person to start making money.
It's incredibly arrogant to think that something can't be driven down when multiple people are making hundreds of millions of dollars.
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Let's discuss how to make this happen, please.
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On December 16 2010 16:48 dittie wrote:
Let's discuss how to make this happen, please.
I'll try to kick this off.
I have actually been working on this concept for the past couple of months. It is an online gaming tournament platform with features that make it fundamentally different from the concept that the OP brought up, but has the same general idea of buy-in tournaments with prize pools.
Basically, tournaments are automated and can be accessed any time of the day and week. The system matches up players of similar skill level and chosen level of prize pool. I have thought of the potential problems that may occur and have ironed out the solutions for them.
I have a pretty detailed picture of this idea conceptualized on a proposal, which I recently sent to various digital media related venture capital firms and government grants. I have made a presentation once and have another one lined up in January. Getting sufficient funds is one thing, having the right people to make it happen is another.
Doing this alone has been extremely hard. I have always wanted to work with others that share the same vision and have the ability to contribute in aspects that I am incapable of. I was really glad that the OP started this thread because it confirmed my belief that such a platform can be successful and that people are motivated enough to realize this idea. I want to team up with people that can contribute ideas, programming, web design, organization, basically anything that can help make this a success.
So, if anyone is interested to read my proposal or hear my ideas out, feel free to drop me a PM. To those who are planning work on or have already been working on something similar: Lets come together, pool all our ideas and resources, and turn this dream of ours into reality.
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On December 16 2010 06:52 Thorantham wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2010 06:18 Garmer wrote:
solution is easy, just make the tournament divided by the level of players, so all bronze players have they respective tournament for bronze, all silver for silver, gold for gold ecc
even if i'm the last in my league i will partecipate if i know that i compete with only the players in my league
This is an incredible idea. Can't believe no one thought of this...it's perfect! In my experience, this does not work, at least not without significant differences in prize pools. The prize differences between a gold tournament and a diamond tournament are not sufficient to prevent people from playing down if the same pool allocation is used across tournament 'levels'. A top level player maybe plays a diamond tourney on Monday and makes $800, that doesn't mean they won't play down to win $200 in a gold tourney on Tuesday. Top 200 players can be found in tournaments with prizes of $25 every week right now. Also, there's does not appear to be an effective way to police at-level participation. Even in our Gold-Silver-Bronze tournaments we inevitably have some suspicion of someone playing down from time to time even when the prize is just a coaching hour. Not sure why anyone in platinum or diamond would join in that tourney but there really is just no way to be certain.
you make a restriction where the diamond player cannot play in gold tournement. The problem is that you must be certain that there are only players of that level, for now i dunno in what way it's possible to resolve this...
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People and communities will be ready to infuse cash into SC2 when they put their money where their mouth is.
Have members of this community donate money, and have people play for that money. Start with a simple plan that's quick to the money (donations), and leave out hard to accomplish plans like corporate sponsorship, pay to get in tournaments, new software etc for now.
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you make a restriction where the diamond player cannot play in gold tournement. The problem is that you must be certain that there are only players of that level, for now i dunno in what way it's possible to resolve this...
I would say put an account age and number of minimum games on account restrictions. in addition to this make the prize pool for higher ends more significant than the lower ones. Those are my ideas.
Good luck men, Adun
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As a professional poker player myself, there are two main reasons why I think any parallels between poker and SC2 is flawed. Even a weak poker professional can make a comfortable if uninspired living, and he will not be jumping to play in a random $10 buyin tournament. However, for a Starcraft pro, the opportunities to make money and make a name for himself are far fewer. This motivates them to play in whichever tournament gives them the highest chance of winning, which leads to my next point...
SC2 has way less variance, which removes a lot of hope from lower-tier players. Even a super strong player like, say, Sheth might be reluctant to fork over $100 when he sees a roster of HuK, IdrA, Ret, KiWiKaKi, Naama, etc. on the signup sheet. So maybe he moves down to the $50 tournament. Now other super-strong players see that Sheth, Minigun, Bly, etc. are signed up for the $50 so they sign up for the $20. No matter how many tournaments you host, even a $5 or $10 tournament will ALWAYS be won by a pro or semipro player. For them, the chance at an easy couple hundred bucks far outweighs the chance at fame and glory from a series of unlikely upsets when they're putting their own money on the line.
That said, I do want to put forth some ideas for you that might make it easier:
-Blind signups. Players shouldn't be able to see who else is signed up for the tournament, or how many other entrants there are. This is the easiest solution for reg-dodging.
-Deep payouts. To go with point #2, top players are more likely to enter the expensive tourneys when they have a good chance of at least breaking even. First place won't be as glamorous, but we're going for a long-term sustainable model here.
-League system. I'm not sure how easy this would be to implement, but ideally you would have a system where if a player is overperforming in a certain class of tournaments, they are forced to move up and play for higher stakes. Players can always move up freely, but are "locked" from playing in the lowest leagues based on performance. Note that this should be TOTALLY independent of ladder ranking, only based on their performance in the league tournaments themselves.
These are just a few of the ideas I have. I've got a lot of experience running cash leagues and tournaments for various games, so if you want to discuss it further, let me know.
P.S. All those complaining about legality are missing the point. We're trying to discuss this idea to refine it and present it in a way that Blizzard would accept.
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On December 14 2010 14:21 Jombozeus wrote:
Fundamentally flawed. Poker has luck involved, Starcraft 2 has barely any.
If you had a million tournaments, the top 200 players will win a million of them.
The skill gap is MUCH bigger and VERY defined in Starcraft 2. Looking at a guy's ranking and seeing him 2600 Diamond while you're 1900 Diamond means your likelihood to lose is probably 90%. This doesn't inspire buy-ins.
You have never played poker have you lol
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On December 16 2010 22:40 Snowfield wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 14:21 Jombozeus wrote:
Fundamentally flawed. Poker has luck involved, Starcraft 2 has barely any.
If you had a million tournaments, the top 200 players will win a million of them.
The skill gap is MUCH bigger and VERY defined in Starcraft 2. Looking at a guy's ranking and seeing him 2600 Diamond while you're 1900 Diamond means your likelihood to lose is probably 90%. This doesn't inspire buy-ins. You have never played poker have you lol
Everything he said is completely true and accurate, what are you on about?
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Couldn't the same goal (=pro not sweeping all the tiny tourneys) be achieved by having cash prize tourneys at the same time and disallow parallel participation?
A harsher way would be to disallow participation if you have won before. But that would only work with a buy-in structure as the sponsorship-model build upon luring in the best-known names for the least amount of prize money.
Another approach would be to offer the same piece of computer equipment. No pro needs a third headset...
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On December 16 2010 22:40 Snowfield wrote:Show nested quote +On December 14 2010 14:21 Jombozeus wrote:
Fundamentally flawed. Poker has luck involved, Starcraft 2 has barely any.
If you had a million tournaments, the top 200 players will win a million of them.
The skill gap is MUCH bigger and VERY defined in Starcraft 2. Looking at a guy's ranking and seeing him 2600 Diamond while you're 1900 Diamond means your likelihood to lose is probably 90%. This doesn't inspire buy-ins. You have never played poker have you lol
To put it with the (freakin' hilarious) words of day[9]:
I have never had my opponent hatch 50 ultralisks out of nowhere and had him say 'Well that's Starcraft!'
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It's calculated odds. You might loose a hand because of luck, but if you are good you will in the end win.
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My site has been working on a similar but slightly different arrangement and automated lineup and filtering of matchup qualifications, and automated win recognition and pay out structure. Its a very complicated system so getting it right the first time is very important, but of course i love the idea thats why we have been working on it for a couple of months
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On December 16 2010 23:18 Snowfield wrote:
It's calculated odds. You might loose a hand because of luck, but if you are good you will in the end win.
In a poker tournament, the only reason amateurs enter is because of the element of luck. Yeah, they don't have an edge, but they have a chance. In SC2 that luck is gone, meaning it's almost pointless for even extremely strong players to pay $100 to join a tournament where the very best in the world are playing.
Imagine a chess tournament where many 2700+ Grandmasters are playing. If you asked a 2600 or even 2650 if he wanted to stake his own money to play in that tournament, he would emphatically decline. SC2 has more variance than chess, but WAY less than poker.
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On December 17 2010 00:22 Cel.erity wrote:Show nested quote +On December 16 2010 23:18 Snowfield wrote:
It's calculated odds. You might loose a hand because of luck, but if you are good you will in the end win. In a poker tournament, the only reason amateurs enter is because of the element of luck. Yeah, they don't have an edge, but they have a chance. In SC2 that luck is gone, meaning it's almost pointless for even extremely strong players to pay $100 to join a tournament where the very best in the world are playing. Imagine a chess tournament where many 2700+ Grandmasters are playing. If you asked a 2600 or even 2650 if he wanted to stake his own money to play in that tournament, he would emphatically decline. SC2 has more variance than chess, but WAY less than poker.
I think in a BO3 the amateur player definitely has a chance to upset the more skilled player. Look at actionjesus. If I am playing someone I know is way more skilled than me I will definitely cheese/all in them as that is my best chance to win. There is a reason why you can 4gate/3rax/even maybe 6pool your way into diamond.
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On December 16 2010 16:45 dittie wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
Thanks for the advice Mr. Impossible.
I do plan on bringing a monthly fee to poker. And BTW: This is already being implemented into poker rooms in the US because the poker community has made it a point to show how a table running 24 hours per day takes over a million out of the game per year. Meaning, some doofus has to come drop a million in order for the first person to start making money.
It's incredibly arrogant to think that something can't be driven down when multiple people are making hundreds of millions of dollars.
You're welcome. The reason they take flat fees in casinos has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that they feel like they're making too much money. Do you realize how asinine that sounds? It's easier than doing a percentage rake for the dealers and it speeds up the game which is already incredibly slow. In many cases it's larger than the amount of rake you'd end up paying, especially if you're a tighter player. Over the course of an hour in a normal casino @ an 8-9 handed table, you might play 15 hands. At most casinos near me, you pay a $10/hour seat charge. If you're playing at ultra low stakes like $.50/1 you'd almost never average paying $10/hour in rake.
I never said it couldn't be driven down. I simply implied that if you *could* take in $500 million a year and you decide to be "nice" to the players and only make $1 million, you're a fool. So many sites try and fail because they don't have the capital to advertise like Full Tilt and Poker Stars and they can't attract big name players. There was even a site that had literally no rake whatsoever (done by Dutch Boyd I believe). Look how that turned out. Good luck getting Negreanu or any household name to leave Poker Stars and come to your site when your goal isn't to make money, it's for the "love of the game".
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If the fish don't understand how substantial the rake is (and they don't) then it won't affect where they play. The pros will play where the fish play.
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Flat fees would be silly, rake works fine. You're essentially paying a "tax" on pots you win. Also, rake doesn't really affect fish as much as it affects people who actually sit down to make money. Fish win their pots based on luck, so if they walk away from the casino a winner, it's usually with a substantially higher amount of money than what they walked in with. A fish will never say "I came in with $100 and I'm up to $120, but this table is playing very tight so I don't see there being any EV+ in me staying here, so I think I'll leave."
Most fish enter a casino and leave broke, so rake doesn't affect them. Rake only affects a good player who's playing over the loooooong term. If you profit on multiple occasions over a long period of time, rake is going to affect that profit. Rake does not, however, affect you if you walk in and go bust over and over and over and over again.
BUT I DIGRESS, comparing poker to SC2 in terms of how much money you can make/lose to rake is invalid. There is much less variance in SC2 and much less luck involved. The comparison I use for my example is only valid in-so-much as how I would like to set up the buy-in and pay-out structures, not how much money a person can expect to earn in the long run when comparing SC2 to Poker. The whole concept of a "fish" doesn't really exist so much in SC2.
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You should respond to this answer in your OP:
While it may be true that the world's best players win all the small $5.00 tournaments, would you also consider the possibility that the reason for that is because there aren't a very large number of tournaments that happen everyday and thus someone with large amounts of free time on their hands could actually attend a large amount of these small tournaments?
Think back to your "SC2 isn't poker" argument and ask yourself, who would win most of the poker money if poker never had small house games and that the only poker players you would ever play against are online and tournaments only happened every few hours instead of every few seconds?
Sure, I can log onto a poker website and go to a sit-n-go, chances of me running into a pro practically zero. However, SC2 isn't like that because of skeptics saying no to cash buy-in tournaments.
The reason why SC2 has "pros" dominating the tournaments is because there is not enough tournaments. We need to fan the flames. Face it, there are tournaments out there that have 0.25cent buyins right now and winning $5.00 for 4 hours of my time in a ro32 isn't worth my time. There already exists tournaments that "aren't worth the Phil Ivey of SC2"'s time. If this gets any bigger, we can snowball it into something LIKE poker (even though, lets not kid ourselves, nothing will ever be that big for a while).
Poker started out the same way SC2 did, except it was way back then. No online shit, tournaments were won by the few pros because there only existed a few tournaments. Well no-shit, if I was the best at something and there were only 2 conventions a year that paid out any sort of consolation, I'd be attending them too. The same can't be said if there were more events than there were hours in a year.
The bigger this is the better. Skeptics should burn.
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I agree with a lot of that, Sinatra, but if tons of tournies were to pop up, it would still be for pitiful sums of money. $50 tournies now being won by all the pros is almost as lame as tons of $50 tournies, where some noobs can win, but you still need to finish first or second in a ro64 just to cash.
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I think it'd be a very good idea for Blizzard (from a company perspective) to have almost a "gambling" part to the game, where you can wager real money (while Blizzard keeps 10% or something like that) against people you know or even randoms.
Frankly it'd be morally terrible but it'd make Blizzard tons of money. Likewise Blizzard could even host tournaments on B.net with buy-ins...
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On December 14 2010 14:12 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:
A lot of people have been shooting down the parallels I draw between Poker and Starcraft because Poker has an element of luck involved in it that's entirely absent from Starcraft. While this is true, I believe it to be irrelevant to my example. I only used poker as an example because it's a sport where a lot of people with a huge range of skill can compete, and, due to the way buy-in structures work, almost ANY person who knows how to play, and practices hard, can earn money at SOME level.
I believe with different buy-in levels for Starcraft 2 tournaments, this same result could be achieved. The better the player you are, the higher in buy-ins you will trend to. The noobier you feel, the lower the stakes you would be comfortable playing. A bronze player will not enter a $200 buy-in because he knows he's simply throwing away his money, but an S Class, 2-time GSL champion will not enter a $5 buy-in tournament because he doesn't want to see someone of a much lesser skill win more money in a higher buy-in.
Actually it is completely relevent. You NEED a very large pool of losing players willing to donate and keep the system going. Without the luck factor that you have in poker, this pool will be much smaller. Very few bronze players (the majority of the SC2 population) will be willing to throw away even $5 regularly when they have zero chance of winning. A system like poker MIGHT work, but it will be very fragile without this base and I think it will still mostly rely on sponsorship money to keep it together. Even online poker is somewhat fragile at the moment with the legislation (not only in the US) preventing the fish (the BASE) from playing.
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You do need a large number of losing people contributing in order to have big winners, I understand that. But I think it's easy to come up with that large number. People paid $60 for the game and people in America pay anywhere from $40-$80 a month for an internet connection. People pay $25 for pizza + drinks, $30 for movie tickets/concessions, etc...etc...there's tons of money people spend on entertainment, so why not $10 for a tournament where there's actually a chance to earn a return?
Online poker is nowhere near fragile at the moment.
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There is literally NO chance to have a return for the vast majority of people, that's why. Very few people are going to regularly pay $5 to get face-smashed in 2 games (in a Bo3) vs. some random player when they can get that for free on the ladder.
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blizzard hold the rights to you making money out of there product, readup on the agreement you've agreeded to when you purchased the game, (back of book)
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Variance attracts fish. Anyone can play heads up against Ivey for a couple hands and have a 20% chance of coming out on top, but how many people could honestly say they've got a 20% chance to beat Idra, even in a BO1? Being outskilled in starcraft isn't fun, and without lower skilled players willing to give away their money for fun and the experience, the gambling system simply doesn't work.
You shouldn't be comparing starcraft to poker so much, there are lots more useful parallels to be found with regular sports. Other non-gambling sports like football only allow high-skilled players (ie the top 0.05%) to earn money, why should SC be any different?
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On December 17 2010 13:51 m1LkmaN wrote:
Variance attracts fish. Anyone can play heads up against Ivey for a couple hands and have a 20% chance of coming out on top, but how many people could honestly say they've got a 20% chance to beat Idra, even in a BO1? Being outskilled in starcraft isn't fun, and without lower skilled players willing to give away their money for fun and the experience, the gambling system simply doesn't work.
You shouldn't be comparing starcraft to poker so much, there are lots more useful parallels to be found with regular sports. Other non-gambling sports like football only allow high-skilled players (ie the top 0.05%) to earn money, why should SC be any different?
In the original post, I wrote:I understand there are some boundaries to initially setting this up. Paying $10 for tournies where you have almost no chance of winning is discouraging. But if these tournies continue for a while, ideally the best players would be playing in better tournaments. It's the same way with poker today. Negranu and Ivey and Hellmuth don't play in small stakes because it's a waste of time for them. They'd much rather play in the larger stake games. If there were a lot of money in Starcraft 2 games from people paying to enter tournaments, the $5 and $10 tournaments would receive no interest from top players. They would be playing in the $25, $50 and $75 tournaments.
One reason I haven't been responding to a lot of posts is because the points have already been addressed in the OP. Please don't bother repeating them if you have nothing new to bring to the table about them. =\
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On December 17 2010 13:51 m1LkmaN wrote:
Variance attracts fish. Anyone can play heads up against Ivey for a couple hands and have a 20% chance of coming out on top, but how many people could honestly say they've got a 20% chance to beat Idra, even in a BO1? Being outskilled in starcraft isn't fun, and without lower skilled players willing to give away their money for fun and the experience, the gambling system simply doesn't work.
You shouldn't be comparing starcraft to poker so much, there are lots more useful parallels to be found with regular sports. Other non-gambling sports like football only allow high-skilled players (ie the top 0.05%) to earn money, why should SC be any different?
Personally i think its a great idea because the people that stand no chance in making their money back or gaining money wont even bother registering, where as the people that do tournaments commonly and actually have skill will make their money back and have it be a high end tournament every time. and don't use poker terms where they don't fit please.
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On December 17 2010 11:58 Steven.Bonnell.II wrote:
I agree with a lot of that, Sinatra, but if tons of tournies were to pop up, it would still be for pitiful sums of money. $50 tournies now being won by all the pros is almost as lame as tons of $50 tournies, where some noobs can win, but you still need to finish first or second in a ro64 just to cash.
That's why you make a deep prize pool, where the top 25% of players cash. Weaker players will still cash often enough to be satisfied, and they'll get the adrenaline and experience of playing in a real tournament. I think these tournaments also need to be double elim, to give as much replay to the weaker players as possible.
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64 player tourney idea. $5 buy in. Single elimination till Semi-finals.
$320 dollars total $32 in rake $288 prize pool. 1st place $66 / 2nd $36 / 3rd $20 / 4th 8 dollars / Round of 8 (losers) $7 / Round of 16(losers) $6/ Round of 32 (losers) $5
64 players with an initial 4 player pool stage ( like World Cup). That way you get to play 3 games at least, that way newer players don't get one and done'd by a difficult draw. Then if you get out of that stage into the tournament you get your money back.
The point of this tourney isn't to make huge pots but to give a small venue for newer less experience players to play under pressure and learn, while getting a good chance to make their money back.
And if people who are super afraid of pros sweeping tourneys, there can be multiple tourneys held at the same time, so Pros would most likely head to the higher money tournaments.
Note: Not all possible angles have been covered by my short post.
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al lot of people think that the pros will win all the money. I would say that there would possibly be enough interest that the pros would never enter every tounrament ... not even close to (as long as the tournament starts when there are enough players). Just as in poker u should just pay 10 dollar and then be able to play 9 tournamenst with it. Also there are post that I really like that say the following: when u win the first round u earn ur moeny back and after that u slowly earn more and more money ... the number one wouldnt get as much as when only the top three win but it would let people keep playing for money and have a lot of fun with it as well :D
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Lol I love day9's opinion of starcraft2/poker comparison. Poker u can get lucky on the river with a 1 outer. In starcraft when you're dominating and winning a game, 20 ultralisks don't suddenly pop up out of nowhere. lollll
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I know how to play Hold 'Em....barely. I live in Las Vegas, and I've considered paying a $40 buy in to play in one of the sit and go tournaments in, well, any random casino. I've never done it, but I would have no problem paying $5-$15 to participate in a SC2 tournament, provided there are some restrictions as to who can play.
It would be scary as hell to play against a WSOP winner, but you could still POSSIBLY win because the game has a luck factor involved. I'll tell you right now, I would not pay $0.01 to play in a tournament that HuK is playing in, because I will never ever ever ever ever win and it would be a waste of money.
I like this idea though, as I think it's very progressive and moving our E-Sport in the right direction. I think we some guidelines and restrictions put into place, this kind of idea could be very productive and really encourage more players to participate competitively. As far as discouraging top players from participating in low-tier events, that idea works well on paper, but it may be different in practice.
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On December 18 2010 05:15 vitriol wrote:
64 player tourney idea. $5 buy in. Single elimination till Semi-finals.
$320 dollars total $32 in rake $288 prize pool. 1st place $66 / 2nd $36 / 3rd $20 / 4th 8 dollars / Round of 8 (losers) $7 / Round of 16(losers) $6/ Round of 32 (losers) $5
Yeah, I feel that payout is a little too deep and too top-heavy, though. There's basically no difference between 32nd and 4th place. My thoughts were more like...
Top 16 payout:
60/40/25/25/15/15/15/15/10/10/10/10/10/10/10/10 = $290
If you really want to pay out to the top 32:
40/25/18/18/11/11/11/11/8.../5... = $289
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In High school i played poker with friends. We had 10-20$ buy ins all the time. Not sure why like 33% of people said no unless they are like dirt poor. I had a part time job and was still able to afford it.
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I don't know if this is mentioned anywhere in the thread, sorry I didn't read all of it.
SC2 is being compared to poker all the time, some agree some don't but in reality from a pro sports point of view, it's a lot more like snooker. Imho the most suitable structure for SC scene would be like that of snooker.
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There is a large problem I have come across trying to run a buy in: fixed prize pools.
Blizzard requires you to fix your prize pool, not sure if they just mean minimum the email was very unclear. Your fixed prize pool requires you to have a solid prize pool ie: $700 invariant of how many people sign up to a buy-in. I am not sure if you can increase it but that means if you expect 64 people at $10 ea and only get 50 you're in the hole for $140. It is still unclear if you set the prize pool to $640 and get 128 people whether or not you can even let those extra people sign up is still unclear. And you can't have a SnG either because blizzard also asks you to set a date. But I will be sure to post any more developments I come across with blizzard here.
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I've said this a number of times...the fact that poker involves an element of "luck" and Starcraft is pretty much void of luck is irrelevant to me comparing the buy-in/payout structures of poker and Starcraft tournaments.
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I have seen that you already responded to the "element of luck" argument, but i think you didnt get the point:
If someone wants to earn money by playing a SC2/poker tournament, there HAS to be someone else in this tournament losing money.
So why would someone participate in a tournament to lose money?
A: The player is aware of it, but participates anyway because he wants to play.
B: The player does not realize he is losing money.
Why A is true for poker:
Some sort of currency is essential to play poker. While it is possible to play with playmoney, the game is way more exciting when played with real money and there are people, who are willing to lose some bucks in exchange for some entertainment.
Why A isnt true for starcraft:
As long as free sponsored tournaments exist there is no reason to participate in a buyin tournament with no/little chance to get in the money at all.
Why B is true for poker:
short: (huge) element of luck
long: A losing player (a player who has a negative expected value) will occasionally win money in a tournament. A winning player( a player who has a positive expected value) will regularly lose money in a tournament. This means you cannot determine if you are a winning or a losing player based on your results as long as you dont have a huge sample size of tournaments played(we are talking about thousands of tournaments)
Why B isnt true for starcraft:
short: no(/little) element of luck
long: If you lose to a player on balanced maps, no build order loses involved you can be pretty sure he is better than you. If theres a tournament full of people, who are probably better than you, you know you will lose money by participating.
So basically what will happen is, in week 1 the 64 best players will participate in the 64 man tournament(lets assume top8 get paid) with the highest buyin. after that, at least 32 players will realize they have almost no chance at getting top 8 in that field. In week 2 there will only be 32 players left ( + some idiots who won money in the second highest buyin tourney). So there are less than 64 players participating, generating a smaller prizepool and a tougher field, thus making it unprofitable for even more players.
The 32 players who dont participate anymore will move down to the second highest buyin tournament, making this tournament unprofitable for other players, which will then move down also.
So every week every tournament is getting tougher, until no one can play any tournament profitably.
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So basically what will happen is, in week 1 the 64 best players will participate in the 64 man tournament(lets assume top8 get paid) with the highest buyin. after that, at least 32 players will realize they have almost no chance at getting top 8 in that field. In week 2 there will only be 32 players left ( + some idiots who won money in the second highest buyin tourney). So there are less than 64 players participating, generating a smaller prizepool and a tougher field, thus making it unprofitable for even more players.
The 32 players who dont participate anymore will move down to the second highest buyin tournament, making this tournament unprofitable for other players, which will then move down also.
So every week every tournament is getting tougher, until no one can play any tournament profitably.
this is the main problem im seeing. if the very best players are participating in the top tier buy in tournaments then almost all the players who dont think they can beat the best will move to second highest. then the players below the players winning the second tier buyins will move to the 3rd, and so on. this would mean there would need to be a lot of tournaments in order to give everyone a chance at winning money, and im just not sure theres enough people willing to participate or organize these tournaments, but your poll does look promising so i hope im wrong
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I think SnapCall's post best illustrates why people believe that luck is such a huge factor in this SC2 buy-in tournament idea, and how it makes comparing poker to SC2 a false dichotomy, of sorts.
Poker does indeed have a great deal of luck involved (or at least enough of the illusion of luck to keep bringing fish back into the game). The only way for a few to make money playing SC2 in these sorts of tournaments is for many people to lose money, again, this is true.
However, with the buy-in and payout structure mentioned earlier in my post, I believe it's possible that people from a wide variety of skill levels will be able to profit from these tournaments, or at least will believe they can.
Let's say they first tournament is launched. In this hypothetical tournament with my previous pay-out structure outlined (top 8 receive money), it's almost a guarantee that those top 8 will want to participate again, as their next tournament buy-in will essentially be "free". The next 8 will probably want to participate again as well, as they were only 1 place away. So 16 are probably going to re-register. The next 16, from the ro32, may feel like they could get "in the money" with a lucky bracket reshuffle. That leaves us with the final 32 that you mention.
In a perfect world, skill will be distributed appropriately through-out the buy-ins. People of greater skill will play in higher buy-in tournaments (as there is more money to be won) and people of lesser skill will play in smaller tournaments. If someone is playing in a $25 tourney and they keep struggling to get past the ro64, or can never get past the ro32, perhaps dropping down to the next tourney (where they see some players finishing in the ro16 or ro32 that they KNOW they can beat) would be appropriate for them.
The only people who would really feel like they could NEVER compete would be people playing in the absolute lowest buy-in tournament who are unable to get out of the ro64. The prize money near the top could serve as motivation to improve, but they could also just play in the tourney for the chance of getting a good bracket shuffle so they can make it to or near the money. These players would be playing for such low stakes ($5 or less) that they wouldn't feel like absolute shit for throwing away the money, especially when you take into account how much money we throw at entertainment in our daily lives.
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I think the implementation of anything like this would be key. You couldn't start with too expensive tournaments, because only those confident enough in their abilities (Pros, top ladder players), would play at all. But if you say started with small prize money tournaments, with prize pools comparable to, or slightly larger than what exists now, you could attract top players. Then you increase the "buy-in" for subsequent tournaments, while keeping the earlier ones in place. This would hopefully make it so better players kept moving on to the next tournament, allowing lesser skilled players to move in behind them.
Or, could you possibly implement something similar to requisites for each tournament? i.e. You must place in the top 8 or 16 (Somewhere where you make money) of a lower buy-in tournament before you can move up to the next level of "buy-in", with exceptions for pros of course. This would make people want to play in the tournaments, to get the feeling of "progression", but would also limit them from joining 50$ tournaments and losing in the first round, putting them off the idea forever.
Also, just because of how the community sees it, instead of "buy-in", should we call it "Tournament join fee" or something. It seems lots of people attach connotations to "Buy-In" that put them off the idea.
I've never really played poker for money, so I would appreciate it if you told me if these suggestions were any good, or already implemented, or if they're total crap.
Thank you. :p
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Wow, i have been playing online poker recreationally for the past couple years and have always wished that i could play sc2 in the same way. On most sites the smallest buy-in tournaments start at $1 or $.90 +.$10 rake. Everyone seems to be complaining about pro players sweeping all of the tournaments on smurff accounts but i doubt that would happen. Even with the ability to play multiple tables in poker, pros don't bother playing the low stakes games when they can make vastly more money playing the 1k plus buy-in games. I think if someone set up a site like fulltilt or pokerstars but for starcraft 2, there would be a massive influx of money into the sport. Think about it. All of the people over 18 would probably think nothing of throwing on $10, $20 or $50 onto an account (as so many ppl do in poker) so they can play a bunch of $1-$5 tournaments. And from there people will, like in poker, grow their bankrolls to the point where games are being played for hundreds or thousands of dollars per match. You could set it up exactly the same way as the online poker lobby system, allowing for tournaments, 1v1 matches that are best of 1's/3's/5's, as well as all sorts of team games. This could eventually be expanded to variations of starcraft such as dota or even star battle??? (similar to how there are 10+ different types of poker you can play at online sites). It would start out slow at first, with pros starting at the lower stakes (as most sc2 pros don't have the $$ of a poker player) but as they quickly built their rolls they would move to higher stakes. And once the system got to the point where people were making large amounts of money playing, there would be a massive influx of newer players looking to do the same thing. I have been all for this idea for the past few years and think it could be expanded to other video game platforms, but sc2 is a prime candidate due to the way the matches work. If anyone is interested or has plans to look into / start this sort of system, please send me a pm. I would be willing to invest a significant amount of money into the idea.
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Well you're also forgetting about local tournys that have buy in for prize pools. I know that Edmontongamers.com had a bunch of local tournys with buy in of about $10.
I think that there's already a lot of local tournys doing this but they're obviously not as well publicized and talked about since they're usually not streamed.
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Well i didn't read the whole thread but one thing that should be done is letting people in the round of 16 already win a small amount not just ro8. This would sure mean less money for the top but they will play again anyways, and so much more of the lower placed people will try to play again.
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EPT
