The end looming for EBJ on UB

The new schedule for EBJ on UltimateBet looks like a brave deer fleeing hunters and gasping for air waiting for the coup de grace :

Here's how it goes : twelve tournaments a day, one every two hours : buy-in 5+.50, except for the one and only guaranteed tournament (10+1) played at 8 p.m. EST for a whooping $500.

So sad. Such a great game slowly going down the drain :sad:

 

whats going on??

yeah it sucks
the future doesnt look to go for blackjack tournaments at ub (bet21)
they dont even have the sunday 5k anymore
whats this world coming to ??

:joker:

 

Are the Sit-n-Gos as popular as they ever were, or have the numbers declined noticably?

 

UB Tournaments

Hard to find any EBJ before noon now. SNG's do form during the late afternoon or evening but only ever 1 or 2 running at any one time.

Maybe this fall they'll add to the schedule. It's a shame they eliminated the $25 freeroll. I never played because they would get 400 people battling for $25 but they always got a lot of poeple to play and become introduced to the game.

They might have reduced it but I don't think it's going away any time soon. Ultimate Bet has given away a lot of gauranteed money. Their current format does away with this but people are still playing on the lower level at least.

Jon

 

the new schedule makes no sense

I actually tracked about 80 tournaments - comparing my buy-ins and entry fees to the projected share of the prize pool - prize pool divided by number of entrants - and even with the guarantees - these came out as negative equity - and pretty close to 10% - the guaranteed tournaments came close enough to filling up so that the 10% fee put them into negative equity in almost evey instance - of course I am not accounting for the bonus hand payoffs, nor the freerolls, nor the free entries into other tournaments you could win at times - but I seriously doubt that these, combined - put UB into a negative money situation on their EBJ tournaments - but - with operating costs included - might be pretty close to breakeven or a money loser -

but not to offer any tourneys over $10 entry? that just doen't make sense - they had plenty of people (well, for EBJ) playing in the $15 and $25 tourneys - enough to keep them operating

would like to know their reasoning here

 

Is that it?

Just opened EBJ on UB (3:45 EST) and, as of Monday, August 4 2008, no tournaments are scheduled.

 

Could be house cleaning. UB will be rebuilding its brand with a new name soon as it tries to rebuild its image. AP/UB merger will be named Cirrus or something like that.

 

Are the freebies going away as well? Man I hope not.

 

Looks like the freerolls are still there. Good deal.

 

The End Is Here!!!

Ultimate Bet has in fact shut down the EBJ format and all future EBJ tournaments. There goes that cash cow....

 

Official word from CS

"Dear Mr. xxx,

Thank you for contacting us.

At Ultimate Bet, we are always trying to enhance your experience at our tables. For this reason, as part of our new Marketing strategic plan :laugh: , the Black Jack tournaments have been removed :sad: until further notice. Rest assured that our main concern :joker: is to offer a new and improved tourney selection and promotions for your enjoyment .

Your comprehension and patience will be highly appreciated at this time.

Do not hesitate to contact us if you require further assistance or additional information.

Best regards,

Fabian
UltimateBet ~ Customer Support
'The Ultimate Poker Experience'"

 

Annie Duke is tourney director for ultimatebet dot com. I would email her, lol.

 

If you have a problem with UB pulling the EBJ tourneys, it's time to log on and send in your comments. If we all stay silent, there is no reason or incentive for them to change their minds on this issue.

I really don't understand the logic in killing this thing, seeing as how the infrastructure is already there. Even if the house has zero take, it probably costs them the same as the free EBJ tourneys (nothing) and those are still up and running. And, of course, we know they make *something* on EBJ. It might not be a cash cow, but the only reason I eve have UB is for EBJ and I know a lot of players that are in the same boat.

Seems like a really bad decision to me...

 

Blackjack Tournaments

Hi,

Bit of a blatant plug here but if you're looking for online Blackjack Tournaments then go to GameAccount.com or CasinoRIP.com

We run tournaments every day and on the 20th have a £1,000 winner takes all tournament which costs just 1p to enter.

Also I'd be really interested to know what you think of our tournaments and how we could improve them - drop me a line, bwalton@gameaccount.com

One last thing, sadly we don't accept US customers which I know will rule some of you guys out.

Cheers,

Ben
Marketing Manager
Game Account

 

Ben,

If you use the search facility, you'll find quite extensive reviews of GameAccount in this forum. I've been playing there for quite some time. (I even had my own affiliate link in my sig for a while, but I'll certainly defer to Ken in this regard. )

These two threads might be worth reading, although some of the content may be out of date -
https://www.blackjacktournaments.com/posts/15789
https://www.blackjacktournaments.com/posts/19559

 

Thanks Ken and Colin - very grateful for all of your help.

Question for you all, do you prefer Elimination Blackjack Tournaments compared to the type that we run at Game Account?

And would you enjoy Sit n'Gos? If so, what sort of buy-ins?

 

Terminology

Ben,

It's probably best that we get our terminology straight, in order to make sure that we all understand your questions and that you understand our answers!

'Elimination' can mean one of two things, I think -

In the general sense, most of the tournaments discussed here are either elimination or accumulation format (i.e. one or more players advance from each table or the chip counts from the players at all tables are compared.)

More specifically, the format offered by UBT is known as Elimination Blackjack (EBJ) and has the novelty that the player with the least chips is eliminated from the table at certain key rounds.

So I'm not entirely sure what you are asking, since (by the first definition, at least) I'd say you already run elimination tournaments at GameAccount.


Similarly, I'd say you already offer Sit-n-Gos, but your terminology for them is 'Cash Games'.

The main difference between GameAccount and other sites is that you only offer two-player games. Blackjack21.com offers these in Sit-n-Go form (known as mano-a-mano in their system), but also offers Sit-n-Go tables of up to seven players, plus multi-table tournaments in which each table may have up to seven.

In your case both the Sit-n-Gos ('cash games') and the multi-table tournaments are two-player only. I'd certainly be happy to see the addition of tournaments and/or Sit-n-Gos with tables of more than two players. But I do also like the two-player format, and wouldn't want to see that entirely replaced.

 

Ok by Elimination I was referring to Ultimate Bet's version which on X round you were eliminated. So I was interested if you liked that format ahead of the way we do things?

With Sit-n-Gos I was talking about a tournament style, so lets say 4 or 8 man tournaments that kick-off as soon enough players have registered - rather than having to wait for a scheduled tournament to begin.

 

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the UBT way, but opinions vary greatly! Of course, you have to start with more than two players at the table for the UBT elimination concept to be meaningful.

I think you used to have those, didn't you? They didn't seem to generate enough interest. Plus, there isn't generally very long to wait for the next scheduled tournament. If you do re-introduce them, I would suggest you just offer the same range of buyins as for the equivalent 'cash games'. (A cash game is essentially just a single-table, two-player Sit-n-Go.)

What I'd really like to see is an end to the five-round games. They do seem to be popular, so I guess they ought to stay as a 'cash game' option, but I would rather all the scheduled events were ten rounds (or longer).

Also, I gave up playing the forty-round games after the starting bankroll was reduced from 4000 to 1000. I'd be keen to see the min-bet/max-bet/bankroll figures adjusted to make that a more attractive game.