Quote:
Originally Posted by smody121
Thanks ChiRy good to see some familiar faces still around. Can you explain what the cartel/division system is?
At it's best, it's a system that rewards the best players that fight for a place at any given level and puts into place clear requirements for new players to pick off weaker players.
Basically, every decent reg used to take turns instead of face each other, there was no individual reason to reg war because you'd just lose your spot in line and you'd get no weak opponents unless you wait in line and don't face a good player.
Stars didn't have the resources nor interest in changing the lobby system, so eventually regs came up with a group dynamic where the very best players still don't face each other (unless they want to) but they are required to face weaker winning players. So instead of say 250 players refusing to play each other at a level like $60s, you have some of the better 100 players required to face that other 150 players. The result made it harder for regs to move up in stakes (have to win a certain amount of games over a specific sample to get into the groups) but allowed the regs that were inside the group to enjoy more concentrated winnings on average, since they were no longer sharing with nearly as many other players.
At their worst, they were political, unfair, protectionist mechanisms.
I think largely the issues at the $100s and lower that happened in earlier days are gone.
Also, a certain high stakes player dubbed the original high stakes group a cartel, so everyone of course copied. That word was an awful descriptor and has certainly hurt the image of HUSNGs/regulars quite a bit on its own, though the actions of some players did plenty of damage too (too ridiculous of EV requirements, "closing" groups, refusing to dump bad players, etc.).
Last edited by ChicagoRy; 02-27-2017 at 01:47 PM.
Reason: talking about 100s and below, at 300s+ rules and cliques change and aren't relevant to larger pool