Crap for railbirds. And therefore crap for Stars.

Sounds like it needs to be a modified form of Zoom with no quick-fold and a facility for railbirds to track Player X's tables.

i dont see why railing is important. this is mostly for 1020 and 2550.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but they're not proposing 'Zoom-only high stakes unless you're sitting with a poker celeb with a fan club', are they?

I could swear Rush specifically mentioned they would not let you sit with the same player on a new table when they're still to act at your original table.

Zoom only for High stakes in the long run is what there thinking about. Thats what they said on the 2+2 podcast.

Well they said high stakes may become Zoom only. That would include 100/200 and 200/400. At that level being able to rail the games probobly has more value than the rake.

Which loses them all their railbirds for highstakes games outside special formats like the showdowns. Unless they modify it for the HS format rather than using straight-up Zoom for a purpose it was never designed for.

I saw a thread somewhere on 2+2 where some one showed an email saying that from FT. So figured it must be the same for Zoom, but maybe it's not.

That's a lot harder to achieve with a small player pool though, without lots of waiting around. I'd think most of these players would want to watch hands anyway. Just a random reshuffle when the normal hand is over would work well enough, and it would mean other people could watch the tables because there's no information to be had from any of them.

now that i think about it, what is logic for tables being unobservable anyway?

also im happy enough keeping 100200+ regular tables since they barely run anyway, and will barely run with or without zoom

I would guess it is to stop players watching other tables to see their opponents suddenly appear on a new table having zoom-folded ahead of them. If they're never reseated with you, you will never see them - unless railing is allowed.

ok makes sense. well get rid of quick fold option and its perfect implement for 1020 to 50100.

A big part of the appeal for Stars is to stop datamining also.

Would love rush only for high stakes, one way to let railbirds watch would be to have the tables fully observable in an "observer mode" in which you can watch the action 5 minutes behind. Bear in mind that this would likely be 6max only though so observers could still rail high stakes HU matches anyway.

hm, the nl500 zoom pool doesnt really seem to get going

I'm in, let's try it

Can't run 27/7 at the moment, but looks like the FR runs ok at least sometimes. Over 100 players now in the FR.

Don't know how relevant this is but a few years ago I was eavesdropping on a convo between Howard and some other FTP ppl right around when rush first came out. Howard said in testing rush became smooth w/ around 35 players. Less than that and it was very slow.

I think it'd be good for the games if only for the fact that it wouldn't make seating such a huge deal + it would stop ppl from waitlisting down the block whenever a fish is online.

HS only at Zoom tables is probably THE BEST idea to make those games def much healthier. Bumhunting and datamining are slowly killing higher stakes action (they've already killed HU poker even at medium stakes ;(( ) and zoom tables get rid of both of them.

If someone is against is probably cos he wont be able to bumhunt anymore! Actually if you playing 4tables in 100plyrs pool you're still meeting the same players over and over again so notion that at zoom tables you cannot use reads is totally bullsh*t. It's even more challenging and interesting cos seats are constantly changing and you need to predict possible dynamic of current table really quick.

About spectators, I suggest creating just one "featured table" for every limit. Should be enough for railbirds. Being able to track chosen player due to this quick fold button might cause problem mentioned by ZeeJustin.

Problem with too small players pool to play smoothly might be overcome of doing something along the line of automatic size-adjust tables. For instance for player pool smaller than 20 instead of 6max run 4max tables until new players will come.

Oh I guess nosebleeds (100/200 +) might stay normal cos I couldn't imaging that at any time there will be enough plrs for zoom (or maybe im just too pessimistic and there is another chris moneymaker effect just around the corner ? ).

Bottom line: GREAT MOVE pokerstars. CONGRATULATIONS I'm impressed.

It obv doesn't solve problem with HU games. Of course zoom isn't an answer for HU. But there are other options like creating only anonymous HU tables. I hope that pokerstars just after finishing with zoom will put a lot of effort to bring HU games back to life too.

Fast fold is not a big benefit in a small player pool. Getting rid of fast fold solves the observation and info-leak problems mentioned ITT.

In pools with 7 to 11 players I don't think it is a good idea to make players wait to get their next hand - that is no fun. Just have two tables. Maybe make the game 9-handed so the tables vary from 5-9 players instead of 3-6 players? Maybe 7 handed so 4-7 players?

Why not?

Sounds good for a variety of reasons which have been discussed. As said, metagame in a small pool will only be slightly different than on regular tables.

@Scansion

You obv can't imagine playing standard zoom with table change after every hand, can you ? Maybe something like semi zoom, like playing at least 100 hands before table change might do but I guess there are easier way to go. Basically we need to get rid of heavy bumhunting and embrace more regs to play other regs. Why for example just don't set a strict limit of max open tables to just two or even one ? It will def solve problems with those idiots with opened table at every possible limit from NL100 to 25/50. It will also encourage other regs to instead opening new table themselves just join someone cos the chances of hitting fish decrease dramatically when you allowed to sit max at 2 HU tables.

Yeah I can, I think it would work well. Another option is just making it ~10 hands per opponent before switching, with an option to "stop" the table switching if both opponents want to continue playing each other. Also, your solution won't stop things; everyone will just sit at 1-2 tables and wait anyway. This has been answered a number of times.