CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

As far as I remember the movement on the leaderboard you played three players twice: arbiter expression, inhabitant obsession, majority moment

Jere deserves an amulet for his joke.
Looking forward to the contest!

Wow, it really shows courage to be able to kill an idea and move on. You have my respect.

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I came up with a new idea, it's not the best but maybe it will help you, smart people, to spark some great ideas out of it.

What about using a bit of the Swiss Tournament Style?

You can decide to play an Amulet Game. Within a timer of 5 minutes a player pool is formed.

Players will get matched who have the similar ranking and have not if possible played before.

If you win a game your Amulet ranking gets a +1, if not you stay at your ranking level.

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That is the basic idea. Not spectacular, but we can work on that.

Also what proved to be beneficial for me was that in the last hours of the contest "owner infection" got hold of the $50 amulet and probably didn't know about the contest and just hold onto it.
I cannot say for sure, but it seemed to me that he was playing regular games while holding the amulet.

You can argue if 2 hours limit for a non-active amulet holders are too much?
But it is important that you have the time if you are active and play amulet games.

It's now the third win in a row and I don't get any amulet, although one is available.

I was waiting for a game, than I decided to cancel it as I saw a different game open.
When I clicked "Cancel" it showed me the message as if I just left a game.

yeah, maybe 1 Cent games should not be included in the race for the amulets

Here are some of my impressions:

- When I got the message that I received an amulet, the game crashed on me.

- It's not fair losing amulet points while waiting for a new game. What else can you do than just be ready for the next game? I am aware that the waiting time might change with a bigger player base, but the concept itself is still wrong.

- I had an intense lenghty match with jere. Lots of back and forth. Strategy changes, high level. But it didn't give me a lot of points because the game took so long.
Strictly speaking on terms of amulet points why do I get less points for playing the game as I used too instead of someone else who just plays super risky all ins?

- As an amulet holder not knowing what the stakes are is giving the non-amulet holder a mental advantage. For me and probably other also it makes a difference if you are playing for 1 Cent or 3 Dollars.
I am aware that 5 Dollars are nothing in Online Poker, but this is not the living culture in current CM. 1 Cent is maybe the Online Poker's 5 Dollars. You are even advertising a minimum deposit of 2 Dollars and explain that you can play 164 penny games, this is estabilishing culture and a certain mind set. Given that there is a huge difference between 1 Cent and 3 Dollars.

- If you just want to get rid of the amulet (besides finding an opponent) due to the different stakes you loose a different amount of money (7 Points in a 3 Dollar game = 21 cents; or 0,0007$)

I am sorry, if my plain talking is harsh. No personal offense intended.

I rarely see these adjustments. It seems that people usually stick to their original stakes, probably aren't watching the Waiting screen actively and just wait for the gong.

I also prefer that the inactivity time is measured. People have to sleep or have other activities to do.

Even with the rising ante I had a couple of games who took longer than one hour. We didn't slow play, it was a lot of back and forth. We adapted our picking strategies, I had great fun with those games.

I don't want to be punished for playing the game as I usually do.

I fully approve of what Josh is saying: Hidden amulets; if you leave an amulet game early, your opponent ends up with the amulet, same treatment like non-contest games

I am also in favor of having a fixed amount for a tournament match. 1 USD though feels quite too much for me and I can imagine new players would find this intimitating. Maybe something in the range between 0.1 - 0.2USD.

The chance of winning a gold amulet has the possibility for a nice marketing aspect: Play CM and win real gold!
That should grab some attention.

What about to make an account and his results winnings/losings (for himself !&! the opponent) legitimate for the contest, the account has to play at least X-amount of games during the tournament time?

So if someone is setting up several accounts and let them lose against his main account, he still has to play X amount of games with each of the accounts to make them count.

Combined with the fact that you cannot play the same account twice once holding the same amulet, you have to play different players.

Edit:

I second jere's opinion about a mix of physical and cash prizes. The system could use more "in-game" money (in a diverse distribution).