Yeah it's basically this from my point of view. Really can't be arsed with tables breaking, seat selection (playing many tables you really can't monitor the lobby properly, this way we all get an equal shot at the fish) and so on, I like playing short sessions etc.

The Zoom games can be really good sometimes too, I have a +ve EV pre-rakeback winrate over a decent sample at Zoom 100 and 200 and I'm an average reg that spews a lot...

I think SeaKing def. has some valid points, and I agree that Zoom's not poker in it's purest form, but I don't see why the games shouldn't be able to coexist.

GO ZOOM

Zoom is def a smooth ride, I'd love to play it if I knew fish kept spewing like at reg tables. Like SK said above, there's certainly a liquidity problem for midstakes too, can't see Zoom and regular co-existing at midstakes and games remaining healthy - unless the player pool gets a sudden influx of recreationals.

like a week ago I sat down at a regular PLO600 table on FTP and ran my stack to 5k vs a whale who was sitting two seats to my right playing 80/40/20. Can I look forward to anything similar at Zoom? Doubt it. The whale was clearly tilting and went after the money he. donated, such a dynamic won't develop when the tables and seats are constantly reshuffled

and only 9 tables 2/4 running. ridiculous.

my opinion is basically irrelevant with my current volume, but this really summarises my thoughts well.

Zoom has been a blast in the last couple days. Lots of action, no huge waiting lists, no blind abuse, no sitting out, bad players playing it too. Also sitting out and rejoining is so much easier and faster.

Zoom would solve the 6max bumhunting issue fairly quickly. I still feel a bit worried about not checking the lobby as often if I am in the ZOOM games and miss some super juicy games thought. Another thing is the very short time bank in those ZOOM games. Do I have to close the tables and rejoin in order to get a full timebank again?

A couple of quick things Seaking... I'm curious as to why you would care if regs are playing and not improving at all in the process. If you are a good player you should want a weak pool of regulars in your game instead of insisting everyone gets better.

Secondly- I agree about the fact that you don't see as many 70vpip whales at zoom and more importantly you can't take advantage of them like you can at regular tables. However, I think the fact that more recreational players are playing 20-28% vpips has very little to do with zoom and is more just a state of the changing of the times of poker in general. I played in about 30 tournaments at the WSOP this year and the biggest thing I noticed as opposed to the past was that the majority of amateur players were raising it to 2.2-2.5x preflop. They still however had no idea what to do after the flop, let alone any of the other streets. Would I rather play agians't a 70vpip whale than a fish whose playing fairly nitty pre? Of course, but that dosen't mean I'm not still licking my chops to play with the latter. It sounds to me like you need to improve your own game and stop worrying about what others are doing, maybe then you won't feel the need to btch so much at the tables.

I think the real method to make regular and zoom games coexist is to literally not have them coexist.

When Rush Poker first came out it was called a "fast fold" game. The "fast fold" name was hint enough that players were going to be folding more at Rush. Look at SeaKing and others posting above about the VPIP at zoom. Zoom/Rush's fast fold nature makes it a perfect candidite for antes. With antes on zoom if you folded too much you would be making a mistake. Furthermore, in zoom you are constantly going to a new table and PS/FTP have deemed it okay to exit and re-enter with the minimum. So zoom is a bit of a short/mid stacker's dream come true. If zoom was ante deep then you would have to return with 100bb minimum thereby solving the short stacking problem.

Regular poker and zoom would better coexist if they didn't compete. Love zoom or hate it, I think the best solution is to make zoom ante deep ONLY. Take one variant of poker and make it zoom only, deep ante is the logical choice. And make regular poker ever other version of poker except for ante deep. Instead of complaining about the different games cannibalizing each other, be man enough to seek a reasonable compromise fencing the games off from each other.

Coexist by not coexisting.

Surprise surprise the small stakes Stars thread is mostly chatting about zoom as well. I'm going to cross post what I wrote there....


I think the real method to make regular and zoom games coexist is to literally not have them coexist.

When Rush Poker first came out it was called a "fast fold" game. The "fast fold" name was hint enough that players were going to be folding more at Rush. Look at SeaKing and others posting above about the VPIP at zoom. Zoom/Rush's fast fold nature makes it a perfect candidite for antes. With antes on zoom if you folded too much you would be making a mistake. Furthermore, in zoom you are constantly going to a new table and PS/FTP have deemed it okay to exit and re-enter with the minimum. So zoom is a bit of a short/mid stacker's dream come true. If zoom was ante deep then you would have to return with 100bb minimum thereby solving the short stacking problem.

Regular poker and zoom would better coexist if they didn't compete. Love zoom or hate it, I think the best solution is to make zoom ante deep ONLY. Take one variant of poker and make it zoom only, deep ante is the logical choice. And make regular poker ever other version of poker except for ante deep. Instead of complaining about the different games cannibalizing each other, be man enough to seek a reasonable compromise fencing the games off from each other.

Coexist by not coexisting.

Wanted to touch 2 topics.

First of all I think that ZOOM is the future of poker, so hopefully I think regular tables will be mostly used for some HU matches soon.

Second, has anyone else got the feeling that after some short-term activity PokerStars again stopped caring about sitting-out, table camping and stuff? Guys like Hanster, MIB do it non-stop for the last few days.

Love the idea, but not gonna happen

deep ante zoom would be awesome

GGARJ, never say never. I wrote several things, so I'm not sure about which part or parts you say is "not gonna happen."

Back in the day, FTP did list ante Rush games in Rush lobby. So that is a "not" that has already happened. It was a different era and didn't take off. But times are different. This is the small stakes Stars thread, but today in the high stakes Stars thread urububu is in there screaming about zoom cannibalizing the regular games. I bet he would give his left nut and compromise a variant of poker only offered zoom style to stop having the regular games not running at all. I also bet SeaKing would be willing to trade off one variant of poker to zoom only and not have it compete with the regular games. Heck I think even Galfond on a somewhat different point suggested that high stakes issues like bumhunting, buttoning, scrpiting, etc. at super high stakes might be best served by making high stakes zoom only. So a zoom only mind think to a problem is possible instead of a "not gonna happen" mind think. And even if not zoom only, deep ante zoom offered in the zoom lobby is not some impossibility. Players would just need to campaign to have it offered. Poker sites are not somehow opposed to offering new games even 5 card omaha, badugi, etc. is offered.

I could go on but I'm walking around in the dark because your, "not gonna happen" was too vague a comment and possibly flat out incorrect. But I do wish I had a nickel for ever time someone said something was not gonna happen, like the people who predicted $500 zoom NLH and PLO would "never" run.

duuuuuuuuuude, chill, I didn't wanna upset you

I can't offer a very comprehensive explanation for my pessimism, but here's a try:

While it's certainly not an impossibility that zoom ante would be offered, with the current player pool it almost certainly wouldn't run. I just had djross shoot me some ante table leakfinder footage and he said he said he couldn't sustain 4 tables of either PLO50 or PLO100 long enough so he had to go for 2 of each.

Most fish prefer regular tables, many like to buy in short. Most regs on Stars small stakes wanna be able to VPP grind at zoom, so they prefer keeping things simple with 50-100bb stacks.

It's prob unfair/incorrect to say "never", but I think "not within the next couple years" is more than plausible.

I am chillin'. If my post came off with a certain tone it was un-intended. I am often posting and playing poker at same time and words come out dry and direct.

Plus there is plenty of room for you or me to not understanding the other. For example, you just mentioned some smaller-ish stake stuff in last post. However, I was mostly talking about deep ante for the higher-ish limits like $2/5+ zoom PLO being some zoom-ONLY variant that doesn't compete with regular games. My "coexist by not coexisting" idea.

The difference is that of one of those 1 tabling recreationals with 20 - 28% vpip went and 1 tabled a regular table instead, they wouldn't be playing that same 20 - 28%, they would be back to their "usual" 40 - 100%. The zoom format automatically helps fish play better which means smaller edges for winning players and the percentage of recreational player deposits that PokerStars takes of of the table rather than disperses amongst the better players is much greater. Recreational players change their overall strategy in the zoom format due to the fast fold feature being a massive crutch for them to play better. Once you remove that crutch they are back to playing just as bad as they were before. The most similar real-world example I can think of is adding bumpers to the bowling lanes of someone who throws a gutter ball 90% of the time, it should be as clear as day they are going to improve their score massively with the bumpers, but once you remove them they are back to throwing gutter balls all day.

I don't, as with everyone else who is concerned with maximizing profit I would prefer if everyone played significantly worse than they do now, I am just pointing out the facts and defending my original statement which was:

To which the responses were:

I wasn't saying that everyone that primarily plays zoom isn't good. What I was saying is that zoom certainly isn't the best option if you want to get better and maximize long-term profit while playing PLO. I feel the exact same way about someone who is 16 - 24 tabling small or midstakes PLO, if you don't agree with me ask either ChicagoJoey or OddOddsen, I'm sure they will say the same thing.


This isn't exclusive to PLO either, it pertains to all forms of poker. If you plan on playing at least another few years you should always be trying to maximize long term profit, take for example this thread:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/61...s-all-1353822/

To which someone responded:
Playing long hours MMTing for a decent hourly is one alternative to a "real job", but there are much greener pastures elsewhere


That said, I think adding deep ante zoom and removing 50 - 100bb zoom would be a very good and welcome change from the current situation. ~

ante zoom idea isn't that far-fetched since stars would make good bank if it ran anywhere close to the volume of the current version of zoom. and like seaking said, stars take from recretionals vs what the winning players win would favor stars a whole lot more. so in fact i see ante zoom as a very likely option in the near future.

thank god no one plays the zoom variation on eurosites yet.

Zoom with antes is a great idea, would make it so much better. Would there be any chance (and what do people think) of heads up tables with antes as well? I'm thinking it might not be the best idea since a lot of fish go there just to tilt off their last $$ and might not like antes, but I would like to see it.

Speaking of antes, I sat a reg (forget his name) from either netherlands or norway at a 50plo deep ante table for heads up and left suddenly. Internet cut out then I forgot I had that table up, if you post here sorry and we can play again if you want.

Seaking, I don't totally oppose to your line of reasoning, but what to add to the discussion that if you play way more hands (zoom), your learning curve will also be a faster.

Quality work SeaKing.. Thank you.

zoom is so ****ty, and now since it runs at 500, there are no other tables

Can you add more to your train of thought? Any practical/pragmatic solutions in your mind now that zoom is here to stay and going to run at higher stakes? I'm not putting words in your mouth, but a re-read of this thread would show several of the posters in here saying "zoom 500 would never run." Didn't take long for them to be proven wrong. But most problems aren't fixed proactively before there is a problem. So, any current ideas or thoughts from you other than to say zoom is ****ty?

Are you for or against my idea of asking PS to make zoom 500+ deep ante only? Take one variant of poker and zoom only it. It seems like the prefect storm solution, people who like zoom seem to like the deep ante idea. And some people who don't like zoom seem to like the idea of fencing off zoom 500+ to something different than the regular tables. Your thoughts??? Sounds like something both sides of the like/hate zoom idea can get behind (PLO). A petition something like...

"Dear Pokerstars, PLO zoom $500 is cannibalizing the regular tables at or near that same stake level. Can we get PLO zoom $500+ changed to deep ante only and have the regular deep ante tables removed, so that regular and zoom have their own exclusive poker variants?"

I like the zoom in the sense that it has the potential to bring more fish at the tables. However, the current environment is such that 2,5/5 zoom is killing the 400/600/1000PLO games and that's definitely not good in general. Poker is meant to be played with history, zoom should only complement the regular tables, not kill them.

Also, right now zoom is giving good opportunities for deepening the problems of ratholing/shortstacking, etc. Making it deep ante tables is far from the solution tho. I think zoom should exist at a current stakes ONLY IF there are enough games on the same stakes in the regular games.

friday afternoon....doesn't look normal, or does it? hopefully this is not because of zoom

this is exactly how i feel too. zoom is such a **** and will eventually kill PLO action, thx stars. so ******ed, and i can´t believe that this will end well for them long term. i don´t think recreational players like this format, this doesnt really feel like poker anymore, and i don´t see regs battling it out at zoom. ******et.
today i was sitting alone at 3/6, eventually started a table with another reg, table filled after a while, but broke very early (1/2 hour at max.)
right now there is no table, but 64 players on zoom. ***** ****.

and eventually 2/4 is gonna go down too, sooner than later.