Well that was fast. Just two weeks after introducing Cash Game Leaderboards, partypoker has already decided to rework them. Fortunately, things have changed for the better, as even though there are more numbers to stare at, the leaderboards are now easier to figure out. There is also more opportunity for more players and the total prizes have increased. Let’s have a look!
Further tier division
There are still two main leaderboard groups: No-Limit Hold’em and Pot-Limit Omaha. Sorry, Fixed-Limit players, you are out of luck. As are heads-up specialists and Short Deck players. All other versions of NLH and PLO, including fastforward, are included in the Cash Game Leaderboards.
Previously, each game had four leaderboard tiers: Micro, Low, Medium, and High. Each corresponded to different stakes. It made perfect sense, but there was one problem. The stakes were denoted by buy-in. The first issue with that is does it mean min or max buy-in? But the sillier confusion was that the Low and Medium tiers overlapped. The Low tier’s top buy-in was $50, while the Medium tier’s lowest buy-in was also $50.
Thus, to alleviate confusion, partypoker also associated blind levels with each tier. That solved the problem, but then again, why even structure it that way in the first place?
The revamped tier structure gets rid of that confusion and adds three tiers:
High – $2.50/$5 to $5/$10 blinds
Medium – $0.50/$1 to $1/$2 blinds
Low – $0.25/$0.50 blinds
Lower – $0.10/$0.25 blinds
Micro – $0.05/$0.10 blinds
Mini Micro – $0.02/$0.05 blinds
Nano – $0.01/$0.02 blinds
There, much easier. Just stick to blinds to separate the tiers. In the fine print on the Cash Game Leaderboard page, buy-ins are also listed, but blinds are used as the primary descriptor. The bonus is that with more tiers, it will be easier for some players to make a run up the charts. For example, Nano, Mini Micro, and Micro players were all grouped together before, but now they are separated. Nano players likely didn’t stand a chance before in the bottom tier, but now they have one all to themselves.
Additionally, it looks like Diamond Club and Diamond Club Elite players are now included in the leaderboard, whereas before, they were relegated to their own, separate rankings.
Oh, players earn one leaderboard point for every cashback point they receive. One cashback point is earned for every dollar in rake generated.
More tiers, more prizes
With more tiers comes more prizes. Before, approximately $100,000 in prizes were given out each week across the eight leaderboards (four Hold’em, four Omaha). Now, with fourteen total leaderboards, the total prizes have been upped to $180,000.
Naturally, the prizes for the higher tiers are the most generous. There are also fewer spots on the highest leaderboards that award cash, but that is likely because more players compete at the lowest stakes than at the highest. For reference, the High leaderboards (everything is the same between the Hold’em and Omaha leaderboards) pay down to just fifteen places, whereas the Nano leaderboards pay down to 75 spots.
Of course the bottom prize on the Nano boards is $5, while the bottom prize on the High boards is $1,000.
