Thanks. Yes, it's a much more fair system for online play. The existing format only exists because it is what emerged from B&M play, where conditions are completely different than online. Due to the parameters of online play this system is chronically exploited now.

I do like this quite a lot.

I loled

True story though

I am just asking you to consider if it is possible that the player is sitting out for legitimate reasons before making a report. In some cases a player might be legitimately away from the table for five minutes, while in others it will be obvious after a few seconds that someone is abusing the sit-out function.

The above is also the reason why it is difficult to specify a time frame in the rules.

Yes Baard we knew your point but honestly people won't be reporting any case less than obvious abuse.

However, it's occurred to me that Stars' enforcers won't know who's the fish and who are those sitting out after the fish has. The regs prob take it for granted that it's obv to them with nice colour coded badges and being instantly familiar with names, but a mod turning up even 10-20s later to see 3 people sitting out, whom does he punish? Can go back through hand reviewer I suppose.

they boot/warn all players... another problem w this rule.

They should take one of the former highstakes players from the US, who knows everybody and who knows the problems to enforce the rules. Or someone else who wants to quit playing...

I'd imagine 95% of the reports at least were in cases where it was abuse of the "rule." gjw makes a good point, it's not the easiest problem to address but until there are warnings sent to individuals it's pretty silly to think people will adhere to this rule to their own detriment.

haha awesome idea.

I nominate Dr_Olson

Ill do it for free

Mark can do it if he pays everyone 1bb per hour. Slightly cheaper for him than playing poker, seems fair.

When players are deemed to be breaking the rules, we do send them warnings. Repeated offenders lose their playing privileges, starting with a 24 hour ban

the problem with posting the last BB could be solved easily. If the hand is HU but the previous one was 3+handed, give the BB position and thus the advantage in the hand. Like HU in the old party days.

We are now ready to get scheduled high-stakes limit games underway.
For those who are not familiar with this concept of scheduled games, it basically means that a group of players get together and play at specific times each week. We will then advertise these games in the Fixed Limit lobby in order to reach other players that might be interested in playing. This way, there will be times during the week that players can be certain to get action.

The Ring Game rules will be strictly enforced during these games.

Since the $50/$100 game seems to be running quite regularly, we thought we would try to schedule a $100/$200 game once or twice per week. However, there is nothing stopping you from agreeing at the table to move to other stakes or to multiple tables.

So we would like to agree on a time that is suitable for most players, and also get an idea about which players want to participate. You can contact us at highstakes@, but a discussion here would also be useful.

I'm definitely in. I won't be back on Poker Stars until March 15th but you can count me in for any games. Pretty much anytime works as well. TPirahna

Why not 500/1k or 1k/2k?

The choice is up to you, the players. If you agree that this is the game you want to play, we will promote it in the FL lobby and be at the table while you play.

We could also have more than one game per week, with different stakes on different days.

Just a reminder..

We are still looking for participants for these matches. We have a couple of players interested, but we need more if we want to create the buzz we are looking for.

Sorry if I missed this information in this thread, but does the "sit-out rule" apply to all of the games, or highstakes only? Btw, if for high stakes only, what is the meaning of "high stakes"? 15/30+? 30/60+? 50/100+?

Baard, does name mean nickname or real name?

And please comment on Johnny's idea. This would be the solution of all the sitout-problems.

6players sitting out with 8 on the waitlist for stars 100/200 right now.

I havent followed the last few pages of this thread but i'm pretty sure the sit out rule that stars has implicated still is in effect? They obv just don't care?

Stars obv just doesn't care about their own rules, right.

Well it seems that way doesnt it? This whole thread was started on the basis of the sitout/button problem, stars comes in and says there are rules about sitting out which they will enforce. I have a hard time believing all 6players went to the bathroom, for 1.5 hrs.

This is being enforced on some level, I received this email today in response to sitting out at 3 different tables (along with 4 other players). We were all booted from the tables as well.

This is encouraging:

PokerStars ring game rules (http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/policies/ring/), article 10 & 11 states that unless you have the intention of playing, you should not sit down at a ring game table. We are sending you this e-mail because we recently were deemed to be in breach of the above mentioned rules. The infraction was specifically sitting out at a $200/$400 FLHE table. In the same period, you were observed playing at other tables.

As you may be aware, we have recently had many issues with players camping out at tables either waiting for presumed 'fish' or blocking other players from getting action. When we talk to players about this problem, we invariably find that everyone is blaming everybody else. They say that they have to block seats otherwise they will never have the chance to play against the weaker players.

Whatever the reason may be, this is against the rules and repeated offenses might lead to players losing their playing privileges for a period of time. Now, we don't want to ban anyone, so we are trying to find an alternative solution to the problem. We are two ring game managers here at Poker Room Management (Nick & Baard) and you can add us on Skype . Just include your screen name in the add request, and you will have a chance to be in direct contact with us. So from now on, if you see a table where players are camping out, send us an IM on Skype instead of sitting down and being a part of the problem.

By doing this we are hoping to clear the high stakes games of this problem which, quite frankly, creates a lot of bad blood between players and is very detrimental to the friendly atmosphere we strive to have in our games.

If you have any comments or questions, feel free to reply to this e-mail address, and we look forward to seeing you playing at our tables in the near future.

oh nice! Still waiting for my first warning

i thought last month or so it has been as bad as ever before so i thought maybe they had given up enforcing it

lol tpiranha is the biggest promoter of this rule, willfully disobeys it ,and finds it "encouraging" that he gets the standard warning email??

this has been a total failure to date. if you're unfortunate enough to be warned you're now at a disadvantage to all other regs who can freely follow the status quo. i actually had a seat at the table cody mentioned w aces*****. i sat there for a few minutes while he was afk and figured it wasnt worth the risk of losing playing privileges, so i gave it up only to be replaced by umumba. the same lineup continued to sit out for hours with no repercussions as far as im aware.

totally ridiculous behavior by stars. i still prefer they go back to status quo, but at the minimum they need to enforce this. im also still of the opinion that its effectively unenforceable and somewhat ambiguous, but anything is better than randomly singling out a few players with vague threats over behaviour that's widespread.