For many, the New Year means a fresh start and an opportunity to make positive changes. Online poker rooms are no exception. The CEREUS Network, comprised of UB.com and Absolute Poker, has revamped its Tournament Leaderboard (TLB) for 2011 and will award more money to more players.
The biggest change has been made to the Multi-Table TLB, where CEREUS will be dishing out $116,000 in prizes to the year-end leaders along with $15,000 in total to the top 20 players each month. For the yearly TLB, the overall winner will receive $10,000 plus a $10,000 seat in the 2011 World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event. The runner-up will receive $5,000 and a WSOP seat. The rest of the top ten at the end of the year will also receive cash prizes and the top 100 will have the opportunity to play in an exclusive $50,000 freeroll.
At the end of each month, the player atop the multi-table TLB (for that month only) will win $5,000, second place will get $2,500, and third place will receive $1,000. Fourth through tenth places will bank $500 and the remainder of the top 20 on the monthly TLB will get $300.
St. Louis resident “C_SWEENZ” finished 2010 atop the multi-table TLB and won $10,000 plus a seat at the 2011 WSOP Main Event. “Winning the 2010 leaderboard was a huge rush and great accomplishment! I’ve played a lot of hands and learned a lot,” said “C_SWEENZ” in a CEREUS Network press release. “I’m looking forward to improving my all-around game by continuing to play all of the great tournaments on UB and making another run for 2011. Good luck at the tables everyone!”
“FUTUREPROQQ,” from Lincoln, Nebraska finished second in the TLB and will also play in the WSOP Main Event on the poker network’s dime; he also collected $5,500.
The Sit and Go TLB is divided into three groups: Diamond, Heart, and Spade. Diamond is for players competing in sit and gos with buy-ins of $6.50 or lower, Heart is for $6.51 to $25 buy-ins, and Spade is for $26 buy-ins and higher. For each division, a player’s highest total score for 20 consecutive tournaments is what counts, which means that you aren’t rewarded for simply playing around-the-clock.
There are only weekly TLB prizes for sit and gos. A total of $1,000 will be split among the top 50 players every week in the Diamond group, $3,000 will be spread among the top 40 in the Heart group, and $5,000 will be chopped among the top 20 in the Spade group. All monetary prizes are awarded in Tournament Dollars.
At first blush, the TLB formula seems complicated, but it’s really not. For multi-table tournaments and sit and gos, points are calculated by taking the square root of the total prize pool and dividing by the player’s final position taken to the power of two-fifths. Got that? In other words, the two inputs that matter are the total prize pool and the final standings.
The formula was devised not to take into account the buy-in directly so that the TLB field will be level for users of all bankrolls. The buy-ins come into play when determining the prize pool, but since more players will typically register for lower buy-in tournaments, the prize pools will tend to even out. Higher buy-in events have tougher fields and lower buy-ins have larger fields, both presenting their own challenges.
