Hello high stakes players,

Even though i play small stakes I would like to ask for your assistance in voicing the concerns of the majority of poker players around the world about this issue.


Last month Party poker introduced a change in their system, where losing players can see all the tables, but winning players cannot see tables with beginners/losers, and even worse there is no information about how the system exactly works, how players are segregated and etc.

There is a thread about this in NVG, but it is mostly cluttered with spam and trolls.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...nrate-1305468/


Few days ago Revolution network announced they will implement such system as well.

http://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-room...players-01-03/


Many small and mid stakes players believe that implementing such rules will lead to the downfall of professional poker.

We would like to urge the high stakes poker players, the people with public presence, the people with connections and influence in the industry to raise their voices.

Thank you!

Wow this is some bull****. I know that they want to be more kind to the starting/losing players out there, but this is flat out ridiculous.

There are better options than this, for instance a cap of tables that the better players can join the starting players.

this is just a joke the gambling companies try to get all the money for them and give no one any chance to take money off the system. all people should just be transfermed into loossing players by sorting playergroups together that way, that there are no more winners and all the money is taking from the sites through the rake.

i will just stop playing on all sites who implement such a system. and partypoker is super impudent, because they didnt even tell the peiople about the changes. some clever palyers figured it out themself.

its a really problematic development. it seems that all sites only want to create an enviroment for the recreational players and punish all regs and winningplayers. they just dont see that both kind of players have value for them.


i hope that the pokercomunnity will stand together and get party and all othersites o take back descisions like that, as they are bad for all of us.

There is a reason pokerstars is the number one site on the internets currently, they run a tight ship. But even that aside, they keep poker about what it should be, which is playing the game. If you play you deserve to have an opportunity to win through whatever combination of luck and skill. The alure of poker is victory, without it there is no incentive, no consistent players, and no poker.

I understand that most of these sites are run by incompetent leaders, but if there is no poker, there is no rake. So it just absolutely blows my mother ****ing mind that in a multi billion dollar industry, the long term objectives are thrown to the wind and in their place short term money grabs are implemented.

The problem here is, there really isnt a solid system to counteract the measures that these sites take. And frankly, they are well within their right to do so. But its really starting to get pretty difficult to find a game when so many sites are making these aggressive moves. More and more sites remove high stakes, remove heads up, dont let me play certain players, dont let me cashout, lock my account for no reason, dont let me transfer, accuse me of things with zero proof and never even back it up with any credible evidence.

I think that hopefully, with the devolpment of a legal arena of play within the united states, things will improve. However they may just continue to get worse.

For what its worth, I think the bumhunting situation is even worse then this problem. I think the way poker should work is if you want to sit at lets say 5/10, you should be able to, and have to, play whatever 5/10 player that sits you. This would solve a lot of the issues that relate to most of these types of threads.

In summary, the player pool does not have the ability to change the situation. Airing out the way that the sites act can only be positive, but ultimately the changes have to be made by the sites themselves. They make the rules, we just have to play (or not) by them.

You do realize that pokerstars/ftp is the only online poker company? Every other website we play on is a gambling website, and they operate as so. Their casino/sports profits far exceed the poker profits aniec. All these shady companies are starting to realize where the market of online poker is heading, pokerstars. They see that poker is trying to become more legit, focusing on it as a skill game and focusing on beating the game itself rather than degening everything away at as highest stakes as possible (not that PS doesn't want that too).

They are aware that they don't have the resources/brainpower/money to ever compete with stars in terms of poker, so why the **** try when they can continue making billions in casino type games? Hell why not make poker as close to a casino game as possible? Hey we could just separate the winners from the losers, that way the fish dont feed the sharks, genuis! There will always be enough stupid advertisements and promotions on those POS sites to attract a tiny poker base, enough to make it +EV for their site to spread poker. Even if they have an AWFUL reputation (think ub after super user). Obviously i am exaggerating a bit, but this is the way the economy is heading, you will slowly see all sites but stars/ftp turn into complete gambling sites where poker will probably be played against a computer (only).

Lets hope there is some secret company putting together billions of dollars to make another legitimate poker site, because I would never expect any of these POS networks to ever turn around even with new owners.



Edit=It makes me ****ing sick how many "poker sites" that are attached to a big network market themselves. They don't give a **** about poker, they just need the word poker attached to their name new players don't feel like they are being scamed by 1 of the 2billion online casino websites called something like 1234winbigjackpot.com.

These networks are a huge variable to why people gamble in casinos and not play poker online (outside of usa ldo), they are so ****ing shady and have ruined such a huge part of the economies reputation.

Bumhunters whining about not being able to bumhunt. Ironic.

The sad thing is you probably think that is a good idea

The sites are doing this to make sure fish lose slower. That's obviously a money grab, but it's also a very valid point/problem in poker. Less winning nights = less fun for fish.

Any KotH system would just increase the exact same problems some sites are trying to adress. It could very well only be a short term money grab, but have you considered the possibility that a site like party poker thinks about the long term and might actually think this would be good long-term for the poker ecology?

It seems pretty clear that they realize that bad players are dying out, and they want to protect their limited fish pool by letting them filter into the unrestricted pool over time (players playing people of equal winrates will eventually cause a slow upward flux due to variance). If anything, it's a play with a long term horizon, in the short term they'll probably suffer from less games, not more. People that win occasionally and get more enjoyment from their play are likely to deposit more money/more frequently. I think it's a good idea from a business point of view, and it's more important on a smaller site, because the amount of fish is lower and needs more protecting.

In fact, your idea of some sort of HU KOTH would kill the games much faster than any idea presented.

That said, I think in many cases what's good for the poker site will not necessarily be good for the professional player, and this is a pretty clear example.

It is a good idea and should have been implemented years ago. Not implementing it was short sighted and why you have segregation now.

This is incorrect.

HU KOTH would 1) instantly generate rake from reg on reg violence, 2) balance out the poker economy naturally over the long course.

The only people it would hurt would be bumhunters.

And it would hurt the fish that can no longer play the bumhunters. They will have to play the top regs always, losing their money much faster, with less winning nights, less fun, and less reason to come back to poker. And in the end no fish = everyone loses. I know you seem to think every fish is a hopeless degen that will play no matter what, but that's just not true.

Your whole post is wrong.

1. No, it would hurt the bumhunters. The "fish" that bumhunters play are usually so bad it almost does not matter who they play. They may lose a bit faster playing someone really good rather than a mediocre bumhunter but it is irrelevant. They will still win where variance is concerned and that will be enough for those who need to win occasionally to keep playing.
2. The kind of fish that bumhunters play don't need to win to have fun.
3. They will not have to always play the top regs, they will have to play the reg who is online and willing to play.
4. Those who get sick of losing HU to the same people will switch to 6max, fullring, other games, etc. People don't quit because they can't win. They quit when they run out of money or when the game gets boring. You know who quits when they can't win anymore? Bumhunters. Because they're aware that they're losing and how much they're losing.
5. Bumhunters are a cancer eating away at the poker economy. They pay the least amount of rake and contribute nothing. You would be shocked how much money is taken out of the poker economy by some random who sits on 12 sites playing MSNL against complete droolers only vs the rake paid. Sites would be smart to do away with this cancer by cutting it out instead of this segregation bull****.
6. Fish that quit are replaced by new fish that are attracted via advertising. However there's a limitation on the amount of fish available to enter the player pool. Winning players rarely quit. So you have a constant or growing amount of bumhunters vs a constant or declining amount of fish.

It actually is quite close.

Take a look at pwin's latest financials, poker revenue is 23% of their revenue. It's lower than casino/sports (173.8m compared to 268.8m in casino, 262.8k to sports) but it's in the same ballpark.

And this is from a company that has a big sports background (CEO is ex-bwin) and has repeatedly failed in the last 2 years to boost its poker product.

If you look at regulated markets, online poker is one of the largest, if not the largest, segment of online gaming revenue. IIrc, in Italy for example, its about 40% the same as sports, with casino/bingo/slots at around 20%.

wasn't aware of this, thanks for the info

Which is basically everybody. Doing away with HU altogether, at least at midstakes, is probably the best way to do it from the sites perspective IMO. The KOTH situation on party at +5/10 seems like kinda a mess to me. Maybe the rake generated at HUNL compared to a systems like Stars HUNL is improved, I don't really know. But It's kind of a joke to see 2 guys sitting at 25 tables and if you don't want to play them you don't get to play 5/10 HUNL.