I do have one question though. How many of the 1080 players in the UKIPT ME do you think were +ev after 14% juice and (let us estimate) £250 in expenses?
Ya so in any tournament the proportion of winning players is a function of rake (and expenses of course - I actually spent less than £250 this week even after losing 2 CCRs, brag). I'm not really sure how many players are long term winners in any tournament (I should probably have at least a good guess of this but I have no idea!) - it depends on the make up of the field a lot - for example if an elite player plays a SNG with 9 fish of varying abilities, the elite player takes a lot of the equity away to the point where by there could only be one long term winner in the game. In a tournament like a UKIPT which is generally somewhat scarce of >100% ROI players (although I'd hazard a guess that there are some albeit a handful) I'd imagine something like 30% of players are winning after rake, and maybe 5% are winning after expenses, which varies vastly depending on how many bottles of champagne they want to pop after busting.
It's true that for most players it's not going to be worth travelling to play a tournament series after expenses and expect to make money in the long run. If your sole income is from poker then you should be considering opportunity cost of either other live tournaments or online. Part of the attraction for even some mid-stakes online winners and very likely all high-stakes online winners is that they are going to have a positive winrate in pretty much every Stars run live series because there are many events they can play, all of which they should be winning in. If they are so inclined there's many ways to keep expenses down which increases their ROI. Game selection is important of course, but the attraction of playing an average of say £1.5k of tournies (IDK how many times good pros bust in the early levels but they'd be foolish not to take the re-entry opportunity if they consider themselves one of the better players so 1.5 buyins in a GUKPT is a guess) in a GUKPT versus an average of £2k of buyins in a UKIPT as well as the EPT behind it is going to be significantly different.
Fortunately for lots of people playing the UKIPT London, the expenses are relatively low. A lot of people live there so would pay their cost of living anyway (again no data on where people in the field are from but I think it's a fair assumption). For any travelling live pro I think they are going to have a hard time justifying playing either the UKIPT or GUKPT and no side events. For the travelling enthusiast I think the enjoyment they get from the tournament should weigh in more heavily, the buyin size should be a factor (£310 difference is quite a lot for most non-pros), and of course how high their return on the tournament after expenses should be a factor. So it all just depends on your situation as to which would be a better choice to play. If £250 expenses is accurate, and say GUKPT is £150 expenses, then this factor obviously weighs in far more heavily than the rake and we should all be lobbying Stars for UKIPT Middlesbrough.
I'm fairly anti-monopolies and I don't think it's great that Stars has all the power, but that's the way it is because they developed a competitive advantage through their superior software and premium customer support, as well as strong business ethics. Unfortunately the barriers to entry for a new or existing provider to compete effectively are very high financially and reputation wise. Stars is the best, it sucks to be dependent on them, but at least they're not too evil. One good thing is that since every other site has declined (Paradise, Party, Tilt), Stars now has a vested interest in broadening the market as a whole, and I think they are doing a good job with TV shows, Nadal, etc. It will be exciting to see what develops in a fully regulated US market and see if any of the big casinos want to battle. It seems like it's happening slowly and Ultimate Poker have established a nice niche in Nevada, but again it sounds like all the sites in New Jersey are continuing to suck at their operations as they likely always will. I think Party Poker are lucky that Stars are so incentivised to grow the market because that site would be dead in the water without Stars actually doing a good job, and it seems it's mostly down to incompetent management decisions.
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