As far as i know there isnt GTO solutions besides HU situations.

The term GTO is often thrown around loosely.

But I think WG makes a good point, even if you want to say "close to GTO" or "plays really well and hard to exploit." Any of those descriptors, if widespread in use, can quickly ruin games if sites don't take it seriously.

There has been bots in spins that went undetected for a while, yes.

Also wintersto is someone who came out of nowhere last march 3-4 tabling regs at 100s (much like pong did at the start) after pissing around at 15s/30s briefly.

He then was reported by a lot of ppl and disappeared for 3 weeks. Comes back to plo huhypers and now makes 20k a month.

I suspect that HUSNGs will be replaced by HU Zoom SNGs in a blind lobby (like the current Beat The Clock tab, just without duplication in the SNG lobby). I.e. we'll have a new opponent every hand, not just every SNG.

Prepare your plans B, folks. Stars HUSNGs as we knew them are going to RIP.

Reasons for your suspicions?

Look at MicroMillions event #115 (HU Zoom total KO). It would be consistent with Amaya's style of putting recs on the pedestal if it released an SNG version of that.

Haven't looked at the mm zoom event, but how is that going to work exactly? If I understand correctly what you are saying, every hand is vs different opponent. If I have 247 chips after the first hand at blinds 10/20, how do I get second different opponent with 753 chips?

You'll get a quasi-random 2nd opponent (out of those who're ready to play the next hand), he might have 1000, 500, 200, whatever number of chips. In further blind levels, the progressive bounty on the next opponent's head will be also rather unpredictable. And the entire prize pool will consist of bounties (unless there's an overlay), so there will be no bubble.

So let me get this straight. Do I gain anything from winning chips without putting my opponent allin? Like do I gain anything from going from 500 to 700 chips in a hand?

No, you'll get money only if you put the opponent all-in and win the hand. If you win all the chips in the entire tourney, you'll also win the bounty accumulated on your own head.

So if I finish the hand at 900 chips, next hand I can have 100 chips? I am sure I am missing something here......

No, your own stack will remain the same in the next hand, like in any tourney. The next opponent, though, will have a random stack, maybe smaller than yours, maybe bigger. In the latter case, he'll be eligible for your bounty if you two go all-in, but you won't be eligible for his. However, if the opponent's stack is bigger, then it will still be important for you to win chips in the hand because it will both increase your chance to win the entire tourney and increase the probability of you being eligible for your next opponents' bounties.

Got it, but still can't see how this goes from MTT to SNG. Technically it won't be a sng or anything close to it anymore, just hu MTT if they change to it.

It will be a multi-table SNG, different from a scheduled MTT in the sense that it will be available at any time and start once a specified number of players register. The total number of players in the tourney doesn't have to be capped - the SNG may be on-demand, i.e. have a late registration phase when extra players can enter, and it can even be re-entry, i.e. the existing players will be able to re-enter (paying the BI and the rake once more) during the late registration period if their previous entries are bust.

Yes, that's what I imagined, mtt sng on demand. I fear liquidity problems with that though.

they've had HU zoom cap for a while, this seems like a pretty big stretch of an assumption, recs enjoy the current lobby system they aren't going to change that for a crappier version that nobody enjoys

HU Zoom CAP doesn't have as much variance / gamble as MTT SNGs, though.

This indeed won't be running at high stakes; at low ones, there will likely be 8 regs willing to start a game so that recs see it going and jump in.

I dont think they will change that drastically.Its not then Hu sng but totally new format.And cant imagine how this will be more popular than normal Hu sng.

That game sounds abysmally bad as a full replacement for husngs and I think there's almost no way Amaya moves in that direction with the entire format. I think your huge assumption here is very unfounded -- hu zoom has been a thing for a long time and I see no reason to think husngs will be replaced with some weird zoom mtsng ko hybrid.

As we know since the removal of non-Zoom HU cash, Amaya doesn't care as much about popularity as about Amaya is surely looking forward to removing game selection to disarm divisions, however, I think it's also feeling the need to compensate for the resulting loss of recs' interest (stemming from the loss of the rematch ability) with something as gimmicky as it can think of.

If Amaya intends to put whatever weird format in the lobby, I'd love the company to test it alongside a battlenet 2-player SNG lobby, to let players express their preferences with their feet. But then again, promotional decisions will be based on 'the health of the ecosystem' rather than popularity.

Why would adding blind seating necessitate removing the rematch function?

It wouldn't, but I'm afraid that Amaya isn't going to let consenting adults shoot themselves in the feet (lose money too fast) by rematching the same stronger opponent over and over again - it 'cares' about the lifetimes of the bankrolls of inexperienced players the same way as iPoker did when it removed high stake games.

Edit: fwiw, the trendsetter of the poker industry when it comes to ecology - Unibet - intentionally has a battlenet lobby and no rematch button in HUSNGs:

I mean, that seems like to most daft situation available. You can have a rematch, but only if you add another table before the current game ends putting the "more recreational" player at a disadvantage due to not being so comfortable multitabling?

A rematch button is not something anyone can use to exploit unwilling players, outside of cartel/divisions making up rules like "sit/declining". I suppose if we do lose the rematch button, this will be the cause.

As far as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), at Unibet, the added table is vs a random opponent, not vs the same one. This act doesn't require the current opponent's consent and is more like adding a Spin & Go table than like adding a HUSNG table at the pre-merger Full Tilt.

Of course, in Stars' current lobby, rematching is an act of free will - if a rec doesn't want to battle the same player again, he won't rematch. Unibet's management, however, appears to believe that this act of free will is self-harming and shouldn't be allowed, similarly to psychiatric hospitals where suicidal patients are placed in rooms where there are no sharp items.

Besides, I'm not sure how the 'decline' button would work in a blind lobby.

If Player1 declined the rematch with Player2 and immediately registered into the pool again, would Player2 be guaranteed to get a different opponent (Player3)? If he then declined the rematch with Player3 after 1 game, would the system be allowed to match him with Player2 again?

On the one hand, if Player1 were a rec, he'd probably get frustrated by being sat against the same Player1 whom he rejected 1 game ago. On the other hand, if the system were set not to seat a player against rejected opponents too often, then there would be fewer games between regs and more rec-reg games than in a blind lobby prohibiting rematches (and Stars would like to see a decent number of games between regs so that more rake be paid), because regs will obviously be rejecting each other after 1 game, as rematching a reg wouldn't improve one's probability of getting a rec as the next opponent in the quasi-random lobby - there'd be no way to ensure the monopoly of divisions on sitting recs, therefore to need to battle into a division or to fight for a KotH spot.

And there should be no double standards, no 'fair play technology' adjusting the probability of regs being sat against each other - there should be the same rules for regs and recs - either everyone should be guaranteed that a rejected opponent won't reappear too soon, or no one should be guaranteed this.

The only way I can see a blind lobby working well with rematches is a penalty for rejecting a randomly selected opponent after fewer than N games, e.g. a forced 10-minute break during which the decliner is prohibited from re-entering the lobby.