Source - https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/c...t-164866.shtml

Update: The Spin changes happened in October 2016.

I believe the spin multiplier changes already happened a few months ago, but nice if it happens again.

The spin changes seem to be what everyone was always asking for in the Spin Discussion thread. Reduce some of the higher multipliers and give more lower ones. Sounds like they might have gotten it right there in a way that works for everyone.

I think they meant 25x or the 240x haha there cant be a Spin&Go with a prizepool of less than 2x but yeah i love it.

And where is the new multipliers frequency table?

So randomized HUSNG lobbies simply means no screen names displayed prior to a game starting?

Im guessing it will be something very similar to Spin&Gos u just register for the desire stake and the client randomly seats you.

Spin and Go is done blind, not randomly I believe. If "avoiding" is enforced, then it doesn't matter.

For buyins with a great deal of volume, there should be random pools imo, it would be less enforcement work on Stars part bc it would cut out any real chance of easy collusion.

Worried about HS HUSNGs in particular if blind lobbies + enforced avoidance is in play. I think rake might be too high for that system to work effectively. Just a prediction though, but we might finally see a huge dip in profit at the top end of HUSNGs if things are less efficient. If player choices are currently inefficient then I'm totally wrong.

How do random pools for HUSNGs work? Games start once 10 people have registered and players are matched up randomly?

yup, all that does is basically put the smartest botter on top of the hill.
stars wants to dry out husng as it has lower rake compared to spins, so this is the way they achieve it.

From the announcement:

This certainly seems to suggest spin-style blind pools instead of zoom-style public pools, but we'll just have to wait and see what happens.

In general are you guys ok with these changes? They seem bad for most regs, but good for top regs since players will be forced to play eachother (kind of like what happened with HU cash).

Update: Spin changes happened in Oct 2016.

The HU Cash point is interesting. The only thing is that regs do war a lot at mid-high stakes in particular in HUSNGs. In the old days of HU Cash, since you could just sit out if a good reg sat you, nobody really warred each other at many levels of that game. I remember $100 husng regs sitting 5-10 and just rejecting action until a horrible player came along. They were plenty profitable at a game they had no business sitting.

topregs will get pushed out by bots. the only thing stopping bots from tkaing over at the moment is the regs teaming up and defending against them.
with blind lobbies the regs will get pushed out by bots, and it will be simply a botfestival from midstakes upwards.
so yeah, amaya doing great once again.

Think the key is time waiting for a game. Recs wanna play. If it takes more than 5-10 minutes to full players pool - that sucks. Also what about rematches?

You don't think PS would be working to keep bots out of the game? I always thought Stars was the one site botters knew they couldn't operate on.

Which format do you think is at risk btw? I play low stakes regspeeds and turbos and I've never suspected any of the regs of botting. Am I just being naive? Also it seems like the higher the stakes the more proactive regs would be with identifying bots.

Edit: I'm assuming that you will be able to see screennames once a game has actually started.

low stakes wont be at risk, noone will be botting for 3$ per hour... 30s+ will get super tough though. and no, ps doesnt really care. they've been trying to push out every form of high-edge games, trying to push everybody towards low-edge, high-rake games ( spins ).

the reason a lot of bots got banned lately is the work of regs reporting the **** out of them and giving pokerstars prove. pokerstars was uncapable of busting any bots themselves.

stars is the only client who actually does sth against bots though ( kind of sad... )

Meanwhile wintersto killing it every month at plo hypers.

I don't get it, why would people stop reporting bots because of a battlenet lobby?

They won't.

But atm there is a big discouraging factor against bots at higher stakes as they would have to move up the cartel ranks, play a whole bunch of games vs knowledgeable regulars who can look through hhs afterwards for suspicious plays etc.

I'll openly say this- for example Mapokern played some games vs someone in our group, and we look at his hands afterwards which had almost no mistakes + he also made some very suspicious plays (both surprisingly good plays and unhuman plays). We then reported him and afaik he was subsequently banned. We have better tools to write reports than most tho.

If there is a battlenet system, then bots can just openly sit lobbies just like other regulars. Unless stars steps up their detection system bots are more likely to get away with what they do. I have more faith in stars now than 3 months ago, but it's still not as good as decent regs themselves.

Also if they make the games untrackable like spins, then it's even harder to catch bots. As only ppl in the games can report them.

Stars clearly didn't even have a system (at least 1 month ago) that flags new random "regs" coming up stakes playing close to GTO since this happened in spins already, but I guess in HU it's easier for other regs to report new faces due to worse liquidity.

All this pessimism is making me sick. HUNL is the only form of poker I enjoy playing. Looks like I need to find another hobby, eh?

Who's that?

While there is an argument to be made that things are a little different today, keep in mind that people were harping on poker is dead, HU is dead, HUSNG isn't even a skill game, the good ole days are past us, etc. since I got involved in online poker in 2007.

HUSNGs are still a lot better today at virtually every level than they were in 2007. The game was too small, and the edges were high but they were slowly realized, $hr was much less (1-3 tabling with a 10% ROI if you're a top reg, but games take 5x as long).

Any idea when this is being implemented on .com?

Libratus isn't even close to GTO as stated by its developers and you claim that there are bots playing close to GTO in 3-handed hyper stts? Makes no sense.