The Double or Nothing (DoN) Sit & Go tournaments were plagued in 2010 by cheating and collusion scandals. The DoN tournaments have been very popular with customers because half of the table would be paid out double the buy-in, but this inadvertently led to great risks of collusion and cheating. There had been a major scandal several months ago where a Chinese based group organized efforts in thousands of tournaments.
PokerStars responded by introducing the Fifty50 Sit & Go tournaments that work similarly to traditional DoN tournaments except the payout structure is very different. The major difference is that while the game ends when half the players are eliminated, just as in an original DoN, Fifty50 games payout 50% of the prize pool to the remaining players (meaning they get their buy-in back) and then the rest of the prize pool is awarded based on the remaining chip counts. What this means is that half the players will still earn part of the prize pool, but PokerStars Fifty50 creates the new incentive for players to play through the entire game.
The PokerStars Manager goes on to say, "The Fifty50 format is an improvement over the Double or Nothing format in this regard as there is always a cost for a player to make a decision that doesn't maximize the size of their own chip stack."
Some players will miss the reliable bankroll building aspect of the DoN tournaments, but there are advantages to the Fifty50 version. The rake fee is lower in most cases and players should enjoy a more realistic poker environment. There should be fewer situations where players are sitting out of the game, as occurred in some DoN games. It will be interesting to see if other poker rooms follow suit in refining their DoN games to more of the PokerStars Fifty50 model to to avoid the possibility of cheating.
