zoom only hsnl might enable full time railbird junkies such as myself to actually have a life.

Possible solution? When you search a player playing zoom it does not tell you how many tables they are playing, so it would be difficult to positively identify one tablers and thus this situation.

i think a really good suggestion. it does also make it tougher to single out the fish from the list of players in the zoom lobby, i think (current system is to display a player's name with number of tables in brackets).

pokerstars do follow this thread and i'm sure they give good thought to these kinds of suggestions so any others people make are really useful.

fwiw, when i was starting out/playing play money i spent hours sweating 5/10 limit

plus they disallow observer chat at 25/50, which suggests people are heavily railing those games, right?

I really dislike the idea, it takes so much aspects away from the game and i fear some rec players will dislike zoom.

it plays a bit like the cap tables, everyone is 3betting like crazy and no one wants to see a flop

rec players disliking it are my worry. other than that i like the idea: moderately helpful vs bumhunting; good vs datamining; sessions start much quicker - just jump right in... it always sucks to start up, see a few juicy tables, never get on them, and never get any others going.

does create an interesting idea: the players themselves have to solve what reg:fish ratio they can survive with, as opposed to it being dictated by the size of the table.

small/med stakes zoom isn't going to necessarily be representative of how high stakes zoom will play, nor does "no one wants to see a flop" apply to high stakes cap.

If Stars is smart, they will introduce a Zoom leaderboard for players that agree (ie. sign up) to let them publish results.. and essentially they'll also be the new PTR.. but only for players that want their results to be known (and receive the potential rewards for allowing it). I think it would stimulate at least some action given that a lot (most?) of the top players won't want to reveal their results (so they keep getting some action at nosebleeds) which leaves the door open for marginal winners to put in a lot of volume and keep games running... provided the incentive for leaderboard stuff is decent.

2/4-5/10 cap a year ago played like that, maybe it has changed.

do you really think 5/10 zoom will play different than 2.5/5?

the thing which just annoys me most is, you don't know in which "mode" a reg currently is. some regs (obv) adjust their opening range dramatically (esp) utg/mp based on table and you can adjust pretty easily.

you never know that in zoom, you always need to play vs an average range. i have stats of several regs opening utg 30%+ in zoom (according to hem2) and have no clue if thats really the case.

so maybe a good strategy is to play one day super tight, and the next day super loose, people have no way of finding out how you play today.

If Zoom-only HSNL becomes an option, maybe some time later they can come up with a railbird mode that shows big pots that happened in the last X minutes. So railing would be way more exciting.

Since there are fewer games at high stakes, perhaps it's more ideal to have 3 or 4 handed rush, rather than 6max?

I'm sure that if the cap ratholers wanted to see flops, turns and rivers, they wouldn't be playing cap, but 100bb poker which nlhe is meant to be played as.

i really like the suggestion of 3-4 player tables, actually. 4 handed and 7 handed could be a compromise between having less players required to play, and still having something relatively similar to 6max and full ring (having 3 table types has potential to split up the pool too much, i'm thinking).

i'm responding to this trolling... i'm hoping to provide enough of an answer to avoid this deteriorating into a shortstacking debate. i don't anticipate making any further posts about this. apologies if i'm actually provoking the situation.

if people were playing with the motivation of seeing more flops, turns and rivers, then they should bet/raise/reraise less and fold less, on every street. if this is truly your motivation for playing, then you're suggesting that poker "is meant to be played" in the style of a loose passive fish.

maybe i'm taking your logic too far, so i'll respond to the idea that cap is just all-in preflop, or on the flop (admittedly i could just say "why does it matter?", but i have that terrible sensation that something on the internet is wrong, and i must address it!). my database shows that in cap i'm calling a preflop raise 26%, call a flop cbet 41%, and call a turn cbet 35%. those stats are probably quite different to your perception of how cap is played.

cap games might not be how you think nlhe should be played, but it isn't strictly nlhe anyway. for the people who do like to play cap, it's not necessarily a choice of how often they want to see flops, turns and rivers, it's because they believe they are either the most enjoyable, and/or the most profitable, which are the same reasons you play 100bb poker, and the reasons i play cap. there's nothing wrong with either of our choices.

can we move on now?

No, it's because sites made it unable to buyin for 20bb or less on normal tables and rathole.

I doubt anyone with IQ over 70 finds ratholing/cap enjoyable. However, that's the only way stupid people can make money in poker so they do it.

I like the Zoom-only Highstakes idea, would be great for Cap tables too.


This would look a bit less miserable if you had won much more than Rudder.

They could scale players/table to the size of the player pool.

They haaaaaaave to come up with some sort of ZoomBoard (Leaderboard).. I still like my idea of giving players the "option" to be a part of it (and thus keep the option to have results remain completely unknown without PTR/etc..)... but conversely, signing up gives potential to win incentives etc.. doitdoitdoitdoit!