Replay Leaderboards brainstorm

[Chasetheriver]

Replay Annual MTT Leaderboards

Replay has been hosting Leaderboards for just about everything.

The premise is that players can compare their progress with everyone else and have the incentive to capture a prize at the end of it. They are supposedly engaging and challenging for a significant percentage of players. I am genuinely sure they are.

In practice, on many LB, out of thousands of participants only a few get prizes and at the risk of sounding dismissive of their efforts, they win loads of chips in the games anyway !!!

With the forthcoming 2.5M and 5M MTT running daily, the current prize pool on the High Stakes LB is meaningless.

‘More Chips and bigger prizes’ is an obvious one, and I intend that will be the case from the start of 2025.

I would like to open the floor for players to post their expectations of what the Annual (and Monthly, if you like) Leaderboards should look like.

Anyone with the time and inclination can find numerous other threads with discussion about this. Please try not to post too many links, but feel free to credit ideas you like from other players.

What would YOU do?

Please try and back up ideas with relatively short reasoning. There are no bad ideas.

Rob

[Younguru]

First let me say that the Leaderboards are my favorite feature of the site. Without them I would play far, far less. Being able to see my name go up and down alongside some of the best players on the site motivates me more than any amount of chips ever could.

I like most of the status quo and have really only 3 suggestions:

1) Maybe consider further tier-sorting?
I see that a few years ago, 50k was removed from the “High” buy-in category. To me, further sorting would be reasonable, if not strictly necessary.

I play 100k, 250k, 500k, and 1M MTTs every day; I can tell you that there is a big divide in player pools between the former two and the latter two.

100k and 250k tournaments often have 60+ entrants with about 1/4 of the field still being silly players who aren’t really using any “serious” strategy.

500k and 1M fields are rarely more than 40 entrants unless it’s a PKO, and while the overall skill level does vary, sometimes there are hardly any pure punters at all.

If there is good reason to keep the tiers as they are then that’s no skin off my back. I just offer my experience that in practice, 100k and 1M are very different kinds of MTTs.

2) ‘More chips and bigger prizes’

3) More visibility/emphasize “bragging rights”
Like if you won the last Big Bang and you enter the next one, there could be a little crown next to your name during the tournament. Silly meaningless stuff like that is fun and encourages the field to go after you, increasing the challenge & creating more gameplay dynamics.

Right now we have “Achievements” which to my knowledge few players actively keep track of/care much about; what if you could earn “Belts” for the various regular tournaments and LBs?

“Win PKO Bounty Glory 5 times to earn the champion’s belt!”
“The Top 3 finishes for each month’s MTT Leaderboard earn gold/silver/bronze medals!”

Or whatever. Stuff like that wakes me up in the morning as I am toddler who craves validation and I will crawl on my knees through the desert if you tell me there’s a trophy involved.

[Chasetheriver]

Any more comments?

I am beginning the task of reviewing LBs for an end of year overhaul / pick-me-up.

FYI, the main LBs are all collected together on a single promotion page, which is a little bit buried.

Regular Leaderboards - Overview - Replay Poker

Rob

[dos-rios]

It’s obvious that the more tournaments you play in each month the higher your final ranking will be. I am okay with this format. However I would like to see a new category added to the monthly MTT leader boards. NEW feature: Add a column(s) that shows monthly rankings/points total that are capped at the number of days in any given month. I believe this will level the playing field and help give you an apples to apples comparison of relative players skill level /performance each month. You could also add a bonus pool to this new category.

[Pos111]

I think having years worth of no data leaderboards is a big drawback.

I like what @dos-rios is saying about having a first 30/180 for the monthly and yearly would be a nice feature. Of course some of the payouts could use some funding however, for me the biggest fix would be to allow those that are interested in seeing past performances of players to relish in or loathe over. If you are unable to keep the data due to constraints of your servers or w/e, maybe give out achievements for each year in each category to those that finish 1,2 and 3. Like " 2024 Yearly MTT LB - Hold’em Low 3rd Place", plenty of room in the “special” category for these.

[Younguru]

@dos-rios I think even more useful than a “x many days” cap would be to use something like the “best 9” metric already in place for LBs like Astral SnG

[Excaliburns]

Those old-fashioned video games had a best all-time score feature.

Why not leaderboards?

[RyRyRobe]

There probably needs to be a tweak in the Hold’em Tiers as Guru stated if all events get included (2.5M and 5M have been excluded so far as far as I know but should be included in 2025). The tournament point formula has a log base-10 scale that leads to slightly larger multipliers based on the buy-in component but that somewhat serves as a counterbalance to the field size component. (As one goes up, the other tends to go down.) But where these players regularly play and the skill level vary greatly. (50k’s and 100k’s don’t play like the 1M’s and yet are all lumped together.)

(1000 × ( √Runners)/√(Finishing Position))×(1+log10(buyin))

log(0) = undefined yet it seems the freerolls still payout some tournament points
* (must be a special case override I’m guessing)*
log(100) = 2
log(1,000) = 3
log(10,000) = 4
log(100,000) = 5
log(1,000,000) = 6

Potential New Tiers for Hold’em with regards to Monthly and Yearly

Hold’em Mirco: All Freerolls (exclude Rookie; include Premium) + 500 buy-in Bankroll Builders
Hold’em Low: Buy-ins of 1,000 up to 9,999 (which I guess ends at 7,500)
Hold’em Medium: Buy-ins of 10,000 up to 99,999 (which I guess ends at 50,000)
Hold’em High: Buy-ins of 100,000 up to 999,999 (which I guess ends at 500,000)
Hold’em Elite: Buy-ins of 1,000,000 up to 9,999,999 (which I guess ends at 5,000,000)

As for the payouts to these possible new tiers…
Hold’em Mirco - Reward, say, top 75 on LB
Hold’em Low - Reward top 50 on LB
Hold’em Medium - Reward top 30 on LB
Hold’em High - Reward top 20 on LB
Hold’em Elite - Reward top 10 on LB

I don’t know what the payscale should be but it seems like you are aiming for an increase in prizes compared to the current model.

Also…

While I normally don’t care for leaderboards (as in I don’t chase them outside of RPOS HRS and the occasional attempt at a Gemstone League given the volume I put in), I think it would be beneficial if the regular Leaderboards & Leagues weren’t buried within the Promotions Link up top. Leaderboard should have its own separate link alongside Dashboard, Lobby, Promotions, and Community.

Don’t tamper with the Gemstone Leagues’ LBs. Those seem to be perfect from what I have seen.

[LS_Larry]

@Pos111

having a first 30/180 for the monthly and yearly would be a nice feature

i think this would be great, having a “first” system where you can rank in a monthly and yearly LB not based on the amount of mtt’s played

[Younguru]

@RyRyRobe the only tweak I would make to your proposed new tier list is that 500k belongs with the “Elite” category. The 500k and 1M fields have far more overlap than 500k and 250k, for instance.

[RyRyRobe]

I’ll agree that there is overlap because an early bustout in the 1M leads to an often immediate register into a 500K. (And 500K seems to entice the nosebleed players enough to enter both stakes. A min cash in a 500K usually covers the costs of that 1M and 500K together.) BUT…aside from my log scale argument with powers of 10 being the stop gaps…the 500K’s are all shallow stack events (3k starting stacks) where none of the blind levels are 10 minutes long compared to the 1M’s and up. Hence, the 500K’s just don’t quite fit in with regards to structure (7-figure ones: deeper and slower and not as exponentially increased) and can end up playing more like several of the non-5k starting stack Opal League (250K) events (exclude Flying High and Over the Rainbow) and 100K’s just with smaller field sizes (30/40ish compared to 50/60/70/80-ish).

I would assume that there would clearly be very little overlap for the 1K Bankroll Builders players and, say, the 7.5K Sapphire League players in my Low tier suggestion. But…powers of 10 just seemed like a logical breakup point (I guess? shrug).

[_Rain]

Just sayin
Tournament Points Calculator
Save yourself some time, use this link and only enter high point tourneys

After spending a while figuring out the posted formula, thinking I was cool, a friend gave me that link, lowering my coolness considerably
Doesent work on freerolls but everything else it does

(calculators were illegal when I was in school)

[_Rain]

I do think there is need for some improvement in some of the LBs, specifically designed for you to play a ton of games to get your 30 best, if you play 180 games and win and someone that played 75 games is right under you, who is the better player?

[Younguru]

I think both are useful metrics; they measure different things

Lifetime tournament winnings doesn’t actually tell you much about who is the best player, but “All Time Money List Rank” is still one of the most prestigious categories used to rank players in real cash tournaments, just as “Total Bankroll” doesn’t necessarily mean much about your skill level, but that doesn’t stop me wanting to be ranked #1

I agree we should have both

[_Rain]

I know you have great stats; it would be very cool if Replay broke down all win percentages, ROI and showed those as determinations of player of year/month etc.

[lihiue]

I would think:
total winnings - total buy ins

For whatever period would be a decent metric for a leaderboard. Sure, it rewards volume too, but only if your actually winning, and not as much as tournament points or taking the best X results.

[southwestmba]

How about Leaderboards for total wins, podiums and in the money finishes per month and year Crosses the spectrum and it is a stat most people are interested. Can set a minimum of 20 player for it to count towards the leaderboard.

[TheKnutts]

In my opinion, even before the invention of the weekly streak tickets, but even more so now, that there should be some changes in the regular leaderboards for hold em.
I think the medium category should be for buy ins from 20,000 to 100,000. High should be for over 100,000 and low for under 20,000. JMO, have a nice day.

[Chasetheriver]

Some terrific insights here.

A First n Leaderboard for High stakes and embracing the relatively new Elite stake games are certainly worth looking into.

Paying more places is interesting, but I am personally leaning towards keeping most LB as is, although Top 50 of 10,000 does feel a bit tough.

There will be a review and things will be announced when decisions have been made. In the meantime, there is time to weigh in with more feedback

Rob

[smooth99]

@Chasetheriver

although Top 50 of 10,000 does feel a bit tough.

Sorry, but what does this mean exactly? Thanks.