Online MTTs have always been a staple of the virtual felt. As the industry has evolved, so has the online tournaments, which has changed countless times over the past decade. This leads us to question what general fundamental factors dictate the popularity of MTTs. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that perhaps the biggest guarantees dictate the most popular tournaments (although not always the case). However, this wasn’t so apparent during the infancy of online MTTs when there just weren’t many tournaments available and buy-in ranges limited.
So let’s take a look at what fundamental factors may dictate the popular trend of online MTTs. Immediately, we can point to basic factors that make up a tournament such as starting stack size, blind structures, payout structures, and shot clocks. Then we transition to the more dynamic factors that are constantly shifting to adapt to the market trend all while trying to figure out the tournament ecology which each operator is trying to sustain. These dynamic factors may be fiddling around with guaranteed prize pools and tournament fees, or introducing a wide-range of buy-ins to cater to players from low to high stakes. Whatever method a tournament director may choose to follow, the underlying decision comes down to using a dynamic model that allows one to be flexible to respond to the evolving market dynamics.
But the biggest question that everyone wants the answer to is what approach one should take to make these tournaments fun. How do we draw in cash game fanatics? Are tournament players a niche and an entirely different demographic? In the current era of online poker, everyone is wanting a quick fix, because let’s be frank, not everyone has the time to dedicate hours of their time playing a game that requires a lot of their attention and focus. The classic 9-Max tournaments also do not have the instant gratification offered by Sit & Gos. And even with a lot of time invested, the player may ultimately walk away with nothing if they do not make it in the money.
In the past, some have equated more fun with increasing the payouts, which allow players to finish ITM more often. Even when you don’t win the first place prize, at least a player will walk away with a profit and feel like they have achieved a feat. But on the other hand of the spectrum, this also means that they will not win as much each time. Nevertheless, deeper payout structures allow players to enter tournaments with larger buy-ins, which gives them a fighting chance to possibly win more money than they could not have done before. This in turn, will entice players to enter more tournaments, thus expanding the prize pools.
With all that being said, online poker tournaments are meant to be fun from low to high stakes and should not discriminate between casuals and hardcore players. Tournaments should be for players who invest their money not for an expected value in returns, but rather for enjoyment in the experience that comes for a shot at lucrative prizes. Perhaps, they are increasingly becoming more social, in some cases, with the addition of chat and emojis to make the experience feel like its live counterpart. Online tournaments also generally do not last as long as they used to be as back in the day. The need to offer tournaments on a daily basis with a variety of buy-ins, bigger guarantees, and satellites to bigger events has never been so apparent.