I really believe that the way Party sets up their satellites so that it's VERY difficult to figure out what steps lead to what qualifiers can be VERY +EV for the studious player. Example 1: I was playing in the $150 super-satellite for the PPM V cruise last Friday night (finished 19/230....top 2 got the $13.5k cruise package). When we were down to 3 tables one of the chip-leaders asked "what does PPM V mean?" This player was in the tourney the whole time and had no idea what she was playing for!!She explained "Well, I played in some qualifier and won...and it took me to this."Of course, this also means that she didn't know what the qualifier was for either. I hardly blame her....it's pretty damn difficult to figure it out. Party does a terrible job in their lobby.It says stuff like WSPO or PokerDen sub-qualifier....One qualifier to the satellite for every 10 entrants.Then you have to find where the satellite is to see if you are available on that date.But there are different types of 'satellites' and 'super-satellites' and 'sub-qualifiers' and 'qualifiers' and what-not.They just don't run it very well. Example 2: Playing a $33 single-table qualifier for a semi-final the other day. Guy added it all up and said "first place gets $162...second place gets $33...third place $6...it doesn't add up...what am I missing"I explained that first place gets a $270 entry to the semi-finals...not the $162 entry to the super-satellite.Semi's run Sept 1-4....the super-satellites run every Friday night.He was still confused as to what the difference was but I think he mostly 'got it'. Now consider the players in Example 1 and Example 2.And consider that they might win a seat to the semi-finals in spite of their ignorance of the formats involved. And also consider that they certainly aren't the only ones who are confused by this stuff. there have been MANY players in single-table satellites chat-boxes wondering what the hell we were playing for. One guy I was playing with thought he was playing in a tournament for the Million-Dollar guaranteed online tourney that was going to run on saturday or Sunday. Consider that the tab on the left DOES say 'Party Poker Million'. So it's an easy mistake to make.They run these 'Qualify for the Million-Dollar guaranteed tourney TODAY' ads....so he clicks on 'Party Poker Million' thinking it's the same thing...and later finds out that he's playing for some spot on a cruise?? "How the hell did that happen??" he's left to wonder. why would Party run such things as 'sub-qualifiers' and 'qualifers' as well as 'Party Poker Million' and 'Million dollar guaranteed'?? Yup...you really have to pay attention to keep up with the folks at Party. Anyway, when those who 'accidentally' win a seat to the semi-finals go on to register for it are they going to know about the extra-starting chips? I certainly didn't know about this when I first started playing the qualifiers.(everyone gets 1k chips to start...but if you play 2k raked-hands you get an extra 2k in chips per semi-final). I suspect that most of the players will have 3k in chips to start the semi-finals...but I'll be curious to see how many players (the ignorant ones) only have 1k in chips because they just didn't figure it out or know about it. It's on the Party web-site of course...but it's not like everyone reads that.There's also the 'redistribute extra starting chips' button when you register. But I'm still guessing some people won't figure out what that means. Keeping my fingers-crossed that there's some really low stacks to start the tourney.The buy-in is the same for everyone of course. So the low-stacks are REALLY shooting themselves in the foot and are adding EV for all the full 3k stacks like yours truly. It's 1 in 54 players winning the cruise package. So each player that doesn't load up on the chips STILL counts as a FULL player towards the prize-pool. Of course...even if EVERYONE figures it out and starts with 3k I am pretty content in the knowledge that we get deeper-stacks to play the tourney with.The deeper the stack and the longer the tourney structure the better as far as I'm concerned. I'm in 3 of the semi-finals right now Sept 1-3 (and will hopefully win another one for Sept 4). These will be some fairly drawn-out deepish-stack tourneys (maybe even longer-levels too for all I know).1 PPM V finals package for every 54 participants.Each of the semi-finals now has only about 30 players signed-up. So I'm guessing we'll have 100 players in each semi-final and give-away 2 cruise packages apiece. I recognize some of the names from my regular qualifiers and they are decent, but not great, players.Looks like a handful of players are trying to get in all 4 semi-finals like I am. they just got around to converting my old $530 freerolls to the current $270 kind. So that means everyone else may have just had theirs converted too so maybe we'll have significantly more sign-ups in the next couple days (and more than I'm expecting). not sure. I do know that the activity in the single-table qualifiers has been pretty sluggish. Takes a while to start a $33 table sometimes which just shouldn't be happening. One other thought - The saturation of all these $10k buy-in tournaments may take its toll.the PPM cruise is NOT the big deal that it once was because now there's the WPT and WSOP circuit and all that other stuff ALL over the place. Online satellites for big events are everywhere.Hell, Party is even competiting with ITSELF for PPM V cruise customers (because of the speed-poker thing, the Australian poker open, etc etc).Demand doesn't seem to be as huge for the PPM cruise in my opinion.Perhaps part of the reason why they lowered the buy-in back down to $10.2k (they were trying to make it a $14k buy-in tourney...but then dialed it back...I think because they realized that they were NOT getting more and more players for it this year as they had hoped). So....here's the theory....if the semi-finals and super-satellites are not jam-pakced with players then they are going to have extra-cabins still available on the cruise.This means that they will possibly run another 'Party till you Cruise' promotion like the one I won last year.I played 20k hands of 10/20 6-max in 4 days to win the required number of party-points and win the PPM V tourney entry (they gave it to teh first 20 players to earn 30k points that week...I did NOT win my entry via any of the sateliite tourneys). So....come Jan and Feb when Party is really sweating the fact that they haven't sold all the cabins yet...keep an eye out for those types of promotions. Because you and I might be able to get on there via something like that. Also - I have seen in CardPlayer magazine an ad for the cardplayer cruises. And for the PPM V it lists the ports as Cozumel and Cayman Isls.this means that the cruise this year is a Caribbean cruise which Party had not been advertising on their website. Last year it left from San Diego and went down the Pacific side to Mazatlan and Puerto Vallarta.this year around the Caribbean so it will possibly leave from Miami (or maybe Tampa or New Orleans I suppose...haven't seen that).Teresa's best friend lives in Miami so that would work out conveniently if we were able to arrive a day early and visit. Okay - last thought. While Party had some problems in there (communication a bit difficult sometimes) Teresa and I just loved the cruise last year and this is pretty much the reason why I'd love to win another package again.The big tourney event is fun too (I placed in the money last year and won $5200)....but it's the cruise itself and the 60 or so tables in their card-room on the boat that makes it fun.I do recommend it. we couldn't have had more fun on the cruise if we tried. Because of that...I might just buy us a cabin on the cruise anyway even if I don't win a tourney entry.But we'll see how that goes.Hopefully I can just win a semi-final OR play another one of those marathon-sessions if they have to get rid of their extra cabins.

Source: Poker and other Random thoughts