Originally Posted by ment52

This is the way I see stars plan on zoom-only high-stakes.

a) Stars is killing high stakes on purpose. Losing players will drain their bankroll slower and highstakes players who are accustomed to a certain kind of lifestyle are forced to put in a lot more hands at lower stakes.

b) Stars management is frighteningly clueless and think this will actually work. Players will inevitably lose their rolls stuck on the site because the owners ran the site to the ground.

c) Stars management is pure genius, they will somehow manage to get every fortune 500 company owner to move to a country where online poker is allowed and play zoom on stars at all times of the day.

I think highstakes poker with all the bumhunting and miniscule amount of rake generated while the money changes hands quickly has been a pain in the ass to every site since the economy stopped booming and some of the countries that supply the most fish have restricted online poker. Now, after accidentally killing most of the games at nl200+ fullring introducing zoom (which never runs) stars figured they could do the same with highstakes and amazingly the regulars won't cause an uproar.

The benefits of zoom are clear: start a session instantly, no need to check the lobby every 15 seconds, bumhunting is less obvious. But there just isn't enough volume (read:fish) at high stakes to keep the game going, especially non-peak euro times without the help of USA and most asian countries that have banned online poker. What will actually happen is zoom gets launched, reg X joins, kanu joins right after, but after 10 minutes of HU (because no other reg is joining a tough HU game and no rich fish is online) its clear kanu's edge is too big, reg X sits out and it will always be the toughest reg online sitting alone, waiting for a fish. It's like a KOTH for ring games that punishes the best players, because when the fish joins he will have to share the fish with ~14 players instead of the current 4. Not to mention the downsides of zoom, disabling table dynamics and gathering reads slower.

Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre

How much time do we have now? 25s sounds quite fast. Sure we have a timebank but that gets eaten up quickly by 1 or 2 tough decisions.

Have you considered a tiered system where you like 20s preflop, 25s on the flop, 30s turn and 35-40s river? Or one where the decision time is proportional to the pot size?

Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre

How much time do we have now? 25s sounds quite fast. Sure we have a timebank but that gets eaten up quickly by 1 or 2 tough decisions.

Have you considered a tiered system where you like 20s preflop, 25s on the flop, 30s turn and 35-40s river? Or one where the decision time is proportional to the pot size?

Originally Posted by PokerStars Baard

Hello all,

We are planning to move away from the current system of ’Fast’ and ’Normal’ speed tables, and instead have only one table type in the Ring Game Lobby. This table type will be unlabeled, and the speed will vary based on the game, structure, stakes and how deep the buy-ins are.

Before going forward with this, we would like to hear your opinions on this suggested change in general and also on the specific speed we are suggesting for your particular game.

For High Stakes NLHE, we present the following proposal :




Players will still be able to use their time banks as before.

I will review this thread again in about 24 hours and then take your feedback to our team in order to make a final decision.

Best Regards
Baard

Originally Posted by PokerStars Steve

Current PL/NL times are 18s on fast tables and 35s on normal speed tables.

We would prefer to utilize simpler rules that are more easily communicated if at all possible.

Originally Posted by ###just100k###

can`t u just reseat with 2 clicks and reset ur timebank every 20 mins

Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre

Have you considered a tiered system where you like 20s preflop, 25s on the flop, 30s turn and 35-40s river? Or one where the decision time is proportional to the pot size?

Originally Posted by PokerStars Steve

We would prefer to utilize simpler rules that are more easily communicated if at all possible.

Originally Posted by punter11235

To solve stalling problem maybe something along the lines of the below could work:
-store the time which player took to fold if it's his last action in a hand;
-if this time is bigger than usual make the player "wait" in the poll which means this player doesn't get to the next created table but have to wait for another batch of 6 players
-if this time is much bigger than usual then make the player wait two batches

This way if you stall you don't get to the new table with players who just folded but with ones which will fold in near future (which hopefully is much harder to predict).
Additional bonus is that recreational player after tough fold will have some time to calm down the nerves

Originally Posted by PokerStars Baard

Hello all,

We are planning to move away from the current system of ’Fast’ and ’Normal’ speed tables, and instead have only one table type in the Ring Game Lobby. This table type will be unlabeled, and the speed will vary based on the game, structure, stakes and how deep the buy-ins are.

Before going forward with this, we would like to hear your opinions on this suggested change in general and also on the specific speed we are suggesting for your particular game.

For High Stakes NLHE, we present the following proposal :




Players will still be able to use their time banks as before.

I will review this thread again in about 24 hours and then take your feedback to our team in order to make a final decision.

Best Regards
Baard

Originally Posted by DonkeyFishFight

I think that lowering the time so drastically will hurt the experience for a lot of regulars (and recreational players) that play the normal speed tables - namely, when it comes to post-flop play.

Most decisions that are taken at a table are pre-flop, thus these have to take the most time. People taking an unnecessarily large amount of time simply to fold pre-flop has to be annoying to a lot of players, much more so than taking time to act post-flop - where the decisions are naturally more complicated and require more time. So I think you should focus your attention on the time allowed pre-flop.

To be clear: Currently, at a normal speed table, you have how many seconds to act pre-flop? 35 seconds?

If that's the case then that's way too much, and where a large part of the problem has to lie. Cut that to 18 seconds instead, (or maybe 15 seconds in un-opened pots, 20 seconds when facing an open).

For post-flop, keep it at 25 minimum, preferably 30 seconds.

I think this is easily the best solution. You "save" tons of time, make the recreational players happier and also keep the regulars happy. Win, win, win.

Originally Posted by Dengalne

What do you guys think about running the highstakes pool as a dynamic seat table.
First we start HU zoom up until we got 10-15 people.
Then we start playing 3 max until we reach 20+.
Then 4 max until we reach 30 people+.
Then 5 max until 50+.
Then we run 6max.

And ofcourse in the lobby it should be displayed what type of game is running ATM.
And the rake should be very low for the HU and 3 max players who are helping to start up the pool. Maybe something like 50 cents HU and then 1$ for 3 max.
Maybe we should skip the 3 max stage if its not popular and go HU>4max and also maybe cap it all at 5max to make it run smoother. That´s one thing for the 2.5-5 pool aswell it could be 5max and I think it would run 24/7 with insta tables. Who really cares if its 5max or 6 max really?


Also for stakes maybe you could consider 5-10£ round numbers and its like 7-15 almost 8/16$. 3 times higher than 2.5-5 to seperate them a bit.

Originally Posted by Stally

what is the benefit of the system? and wouldn't this limit most games to HU and 3max?