Golden SNGs Review

Last year I complained about the fact that SNG players had a lack of promotions compared the the cash game players. Seeing that every billionth [cash game] hand there is free cash giveaways, and happy hour for cash too, it didn't seem right. Yes, we had the Battle of the Planets promotion, but that was an ongoing thing and is actually quite hard to achieve.

On the first week of December, Pokerstars had their 3rd Golden SNG promotion. They had one in June, October and December. The idea of the Golden SNG is that they are randomly chosen SNGs that have extra money added into the prizepool. It is a fantastic idea and a great way to get more players playing SNGs those weeks.

The snazzy golden coloured table when you get a Golden SNG!

The promotion started in mid June and was part of the road to 100 billion hands celebrations.

There are 3 different types of Goldens;

• 2x Multiplier - Double prizepool and Double buy in back for all players.
• 4x Multiplier - Quadruple prizepool and 4x buy in back for all players.
• 10x Multiplier - 10x prizepool and 10x buy in back for all players.

In October they had it again as part of the Carnival of Tournaments promotion, celebrating 800 million tournaments;

• BIG - 2x Multiplier and 2x buy in back.
• BIGGER - 3x Multiplier and 3x buy in back.
• BIGGEST - 5x Multiplier - and 5x buy in back.

Now seems a bit weird to name them this way since "Biggest" is smaller then the 10x from June's Golden SNGs.

December's Goldens part of the December Festival promotion and were like this;

• Bronze - Your buy in back.
• Silver - 3x Multiplier and 3x buy in back.
• Gold - 5x Multiplier and 5x buy in back.

I'm sure your noticing a theme going on here. Seems like these Goldens are gettting cheaper and cheaper. I managed to finally hit 2 Goldens in December and they were both Bronze ones :(. In fact it really didn't feel that much of a promotion, I have no idea why they decided to not 2x the prizepool, it seemed like the logical pattern. I mean, freerolling is nice, but then you are just playing for a regular SNG and that doesn't seem that special at all. What is the thinking behind this adjustment to the Goldens?

Maybe they increased the chance of getting a Golden and in turn decided to scrap the 2x prizepool? If that is the case then it doesn't really make sense to do that because well, Goldens are random and therefore people shouldn't really complain about getting/not getting them?

To me obviously the June promotion is the best, but if they only wanted to give away 5x then keep to the October promotion. Hitting the two Goldens where you only got your buy in back wasn't really that exciting and to be honest quite disappointing.

Now of course I'm gonna get a bunch of people saying that I should appreciate the fact that there is a promotion coz there easily could be nothing. The point I'm trying to make really is about consistency. If your gonna do a promotion, do it well and make it make sense. If it aint broke then why fix it? I like the Golden SNGs and thought that it was fantastic that finally SNGs are getting a promotion, but it just seems that Pokerstars are making them cheaper and cheaper lol... What's going on?