Tetris Spin and Go's Reviewed!

So the Tetris Spin and Go promotion ended yesterday and I'm sad to see it go. It was a fun promotion, all be it a rather random one, but nice to have something different happening in the Spin and Go's space.

The promotion ran from Feb 15th- March 28th, in that time I managed to play just shy of 3100 games. 

On the 2nd day I did try playing the $1, $2, $5 and $10 stakes to get on all their leaderboards but came to the conclusion that it took too long and wasn't worth the time.

With 3 weeks left I thought it would be profitable to try and make the leaderboard on $5s and $10s. I would play the $5s until I "Game Over"' and then play the $10s as normal. 

In theory this was a good idea but the reality was that I didn't run good in the $5s and I barely made the leaderboard for that stake, only once for a min cash of $10 lol. My run in them was rather breakeven, and this in turn sacrificed my rakeback I could have gotten by sticking with the $10s. I don't really mind tho, its was kinda fun to play in the $5s, there are so many more recreational players there.

My results; 

• 7 leaderboard cashes for $410
• Best result was 11th in $10 leaderboard

My best result, I remember winning so many flips that session!

Its a shame its ended coz during the end of the promotion I had patched up some leaks and was making deep runs more consistently. Once you reach 100k points in the $10s you should be guarenteed a cash prize. But at that point the games can be pretty cut throat in terms of Game Over'ing, 3-4 losses can make you go from green to the end!

Some of the 1st places' scores are insane thought. Because of the way the scoring scales up, most occasions I've seen 1st place be almost 1/3 score to 2nd place... something like 256k 1st vs 180k 2nd place! Each extra win you get when you run deep give you an insane amount of points! 

Here's my 2 cents on the promotion;

PROS:

• Bigger field of randoms to game (in theory).
• Better and fairer way of getting on leaderboard. Sure, there's luck on the multipliers but because of the larger sample size needed good players will reach the prizepools more often.
• Graphics look great espectially the new skin with moving pieces in the background and the leaderboard information.
• I found it fun and exciting to participate in. Strange to want to get 2x multipliers but at same time feels like win/win to ship a higher multiplier too. Quite a buzz when you run deep, feels like your in an MTT.

Great background skin with moving Tetriminos

CONS:

• Lack of proper marketing. I have not seen any promotion of this whatsoever. I have even seen some Pokerstars ads on TV actually promoting Spin and Go's but no mention of the Tetris promotion. Seems strange considering the Tetris trademark is clearly part of this which must have been a lot of effort to negotiate using it.
• Doesn't seem to be relevant to anything and date seems arbitrary? Could have attempted to tie it in to some significant time period like Xmas, Halloween, or maybe coincide with the Tetris online world championships?
• Rather complicated to understand and their webpage is confusing.
• 2x games are harder as players get the most line clears by winning it. So although the promotion might attract more recreational players, their looser shoves might not happen as often in the 2x mutlipliers of which before they wouldn't have cared about.

I've tried to look around to see if the traffic for Pokerstars is higher during this period but could not find any data. It would have been interesting to compare it although this time last year was pre-pandemic and one would think that traffic should be lower. 

Without the numbers it's really hard to say whether this promotion gained more recreational players then usual. From my experience I don't think it did, if anything I think it brought back regulars since this promotion is good for skilled players.

Overall tho, I'm happy that it did happen and it shows that Pokerstars is willing to get creative and mix things up in the space which is good to see. I look forward to their future promotions!