Yes, I think it's already showing. The removal of many normal speed tournaments and the lower blind levels already seem to affect the amount of players registrering. I've never played so many tournaments that barely reached over the GTD money as I have since the new schedule and the added rake on rebuys/addons.

Combine this with a worse VIP program (atleast I think it is, someone please correct me if I'm wrong on this), the fact that Starcoins aren't payed out for cashgames over $5-$10 (I really can't understand this, they can't loose any money on this). 

I don't know how the people running the show think. Yes a change was needed I personally believe that the changes should have been different. While the new tournaments fit my own schedule perfectly at the moment there is way too many turbo/hyper tournaments and micro Big tournaments with 7 min levels are semi-turbos.

I wouldn't have a problem at all if there was a bit more normal speed, like 10 min levels and also I can't seem to find any CAP tournaments, like 500 players or 1000 players. This forces players to change sites and let's be realistic, come sites are very much catching up to Pokerstars.

While I don't know if Highstakes players are affected in a negative way or not they usually play on so many different sites and Pokerstars still holds the biggest tournaments weekly and I can't see anyone leave Pokerstars for that reason and miss out on Warmup, Million etc.

For me as a micro/low stakes the changes are in reality meh. Even if turbos and the faster structure in short term is worse the play on these levels are bad enough that chips are donated with bad plays pre and postflop that it still adds up playing.

• timebomb
• timebomb
• BountyBuilder
• timebomb
• timebomb
• timebomb
• timebomb
• timebomb
• Big
• timebomb
• timebomb
• hot
• timebomb
• timebomb
• timebomb
• timebomb
• hot
• timebomb
• timebomb
• timebomb
• ....

What happened to all the normal speed lower GTD NL, 8-max, 1R1A ???? I used to come home and easily reg 4 tournaments that I can feasibly ship in under 6 hours. If I get home around 6:30pm from work I can't start anything that will keep me up past 1:30am if I make the final table. That means I need more non-turbo tournaments that take ~4.5-6. I can register for the slightly larger ones when I get home and add on a few smaller ones later and still be OK. There is no way I can play a BountyBuilder or Big on a weeknight.

I always considered looking to competitor sites, but never did until this week

I plotted out the Blinds over time in Matlab for a variety of MTTs. I think its already been said. But this lays it out visually.
Everything got faster but some more than others.. and the low-micro stuff is just bananas.. forget the $2+R (which is insane), look at the $3.30 micro lol!

One way to analyze these is to look at what point you have 10bb left when: you do nothing or have 3x/4x startingstack in the beginning and compare it to the old structure.
(for people who dont know logarithmic scales for the Y-Axis: example: 10^3 = 1000 so all the steps above are +1k until 10^4=10k then every step is 10k)

ps:I think the quality is good enough when downloaded but if someone wants to zoom in more or whatever, I can make a pdf and upload it here.

I think it is the nut worst thing Stars has done to the community as a whole. I'm a recreational player, so supposedly one of they guys Stars is trying to help if you believe the rhetoric from late last year. My schedule before this month would start around 14:00 UK time with the Big $5, and I'd be regging most normal speed tourneys between $2.20 and $13.50 until about 19:30, I would play the 2 2r's at 14:30 and 15:30 and the Hot $11, they were the only tourneys that weren't straight FO 10 min(+) blinds type tourneys. I would play the Big 5, 8 and 11 in that time, and play around 15-16 tourneys in total. So lets say that 25% of the tourneys I would play, were very big (3000+ runner) tourneys, with the rest being a lot smaller, lower variance affairs. It's nice to play the Bigs where I have a shot at hitting a very nice score, but I know that the bulk of my ROI comes from the normal, lower Gtd tourneys. I've just worked out what my Stars schedule is now. It's a maximum of 14 tourneys between 14:00 and 20:15, of those 14 5 are turbos, 4 are bigs, 3 are bounty builders. The other 2 are a $7.50 PSKO which will have a big field and a $5.50 deep stack. So now I'm in a position where 13 of the 14 tourneys I play, I will have to negotiate my way through 3000+ players to potentially win, and with the flatter payout structures they've brought in, run like an absolute god to make any decent profit.

I'm so annoyed about the whole thing. When Stars talk about doing things to help the recreational poker player they don't mean guys like me who manage their bankroll and play a couple of days a week, they mean guys who log in, deposit $200 and play 4 $50 tourneys or 2 $100 tourneys. I naively thought that when they made the changes last year that it would create opportunity for guys like me to progress up the ranks as some of the regs moved away from Stars and the game, but whats becoming clearer every day is that Stars don't want anyone to make money at the game, they just want them to lose it at a slower rate as that means more rake for them.

I'm going to take a look at the Party and 888 schedules to see what's worth playing there, even though I loathe their software. If I can't find much worth playing there thats lower variance, I might have to question if it's worth playing online at all. I doubt Stars will care or miss the rake I pay if I make that decision.

There's a thread on 2+2 discussing it at the moment thats got to 193 pages already, I'm going to c+p the bulk of this there too as I lost my last post with a misclick (gg!) just to put my 2 cents into the mix. I'm just so annoyed at the whole thing.

Just curious on what people think of Pokerstars new MTT schedule.  For me I hate it.  I have lost all the tournaments I usually play and do well at.  I also notice that there seems to be a lot of turbos and 6max tournaments going on now.  It seems to be missing a lot of regular speed tournaments now. 

What are people's thoughts on this?