As many of you are aware, PokerStars is currently conducting a review of minimum, maximum and default buyins for big bet hold'em and omaha games. A decision will be announced and changes will be made by mid-April.

As a part of this review, I would like to request input regarding ratholing in high stakes PL/NL games on PokerStars. The current ratholing timer on PokerStars is 30 minutes. Would an increase to 60 minutes be desirable?

Please do not limit your responses to discussion of shortstackers. While PokerStars will read and consider all input, shortstack strategy has been discussed in great depth. If the ratholing timer were to be increased to 60 minutes, what would be the impact on high stakes games that do not allow 20BB buyins?

Thank you in advance for taking the time to offer feedback in order to help improve the games PokerStars offers.

60 minutes absolute minimum.

Several hours would be preferable.

well some SSers would just use another name to get around the timer. dont most ppl think matate is doing that already.

I love that the word "ratholing" has become an accepted term of art.

they'll just get replaced by another shortstacker anyways. they're endless.

ratholers will just create new tables

the minimum buyin needs to be increased

they'll just create new tables

edit : damn reefy youre quick

Best thing is to make seperated tables and clearly mark them as such. FTP has been implementing CAP tables for a long time and had generated a lot of action on them over the last years. Clearly there is a markte for a short game. But the thing FTP did nicely is that they clearly mark the different tables in the lobby.

Increasing re-enter time to 60 min is like a halfway solution, cause you 'll still have shorties and there are many of them. If you have a 30bb CAP table and the normal tables are 50bb minimum this problem is solved. Everyone has the choice where to sit and if you choose the CAP (short) table to play its your own choice.

Thanks for the responses.

Does anyone have any input that doesn't relate to shortstacking? Are there any ratholing issues at high stakes games with deepstacked players? Would increasing the ratholing timer have any negative effects for deepstack play?

60 minutes.

Do NOT make it universal policy to have 100bb tables. Too many subpar players simply won't take shots at the game with a full stack.

People are generally trying to decrease variance as much as possible and maximize edge with deeper stacks vs. weaker players.

This is a good goal for individual players.

But people won't take shots unless they have a (perceived) chance at winning. For weaker players this means playing shallow, increase variance, and hope they get lucky.

If you systematically push that out, a lot less money from lower stakes will make it to the top of the pyramid before it gets sucked out by all the grinders in the middle.

I am barely coherent right now because I am sleepy and tired. I am also sure the arguments have been rehashed over and over.

Bottomline:
1. all deep stack tables are good for grinders, and bad for poker economy overall.
2. increasing ratholing timer can discourage (or make impossible) for people to make a decent living grinding with a ratholing strategy.
3. increasing the timer wouldn't discourage people from taking occasional shots with a short stack.

There are some 50bb ratholers.

60 minutes is an absolute joke, it doesn't solve the problem.

24hrs is the only acceptable solution, it disallows rat holing completely

I hope your not thinking about removing the 20BBs tables completely?
That would be terrible news for HSPLO-players.

+1

the only issue i can think of would be when someone is multitabling with his roll. for example, someone has $15k in his account, and he is 3 tabling 25/50. he bought in for 5k originally. at one of his tables he is up 5k so he has a 10k stack. at another he is down to 1k, but he cannot reload because all his money is still in play. he wants to reenter the table he is up so he can reload on his loosing table, but he can't do that. maybe he gets annoyed so he leaves the games until the rathole timer chimes.

this might not be a big deal tho because i suppose there will be other games to join, and it is rare for a player to play with his entire roll, altho prolly more common in high stakes where it all he has online at the moment.

on the other hand, it would really annoy me if some guy stacked me at a table, and then was able to take my money and put it on another table just so he could multitable. altho it would also annoy me if he left that table to start a new one because he needed to reload somewhere else.

idk, you asked for anything negative so i juggled my brain to think of something for you. maybe there is a solution to this that someone else will think of. if not, i still think it is a good idea to make ratholers have to wait longer. i would say 60 minutes is not long enough. 5 hours sounds about right to me. an hour is nothing when grinding online. they just play another table for awhile until they deouble up on it, then switch again and the cycle repeats.

ratholing has been a horrible thing to do since poker was played in the wild west. i am surprised that pokerstars has let the ratholing loophole that multiltitabling provides go on for so long. it is a slap in the face for anyone who doubles someone else up to see them pop up at a different table with a smaller stack.

just a thought:

what if you extended it to all tables of the same limit/stake/game type/etc. but also capped it at the max buyin for new tables.

for example:

a player buys in for 25bb at a fast 1/2 fr table and then doubles up. if he leaves the table, then anytime he buys into a fast 1/2 fr table within the next 60 minutes it must be for 50bb. if he ran it up to 500bb, then at a new table he would only be required to buy in for the table max. if he bough into a table of 6m instead of fr, or slow instead of fast, or he moved to a different stake, then he could still buy in for the minimum if he wanted to.

i think this could be a great idea to consider because it would almost eliminate the ratholing loophole.

the time should be account dependent and based on the how many times the player has left and rejoined a table with a shorter stack in a period of time