Any update on the SNG's thing? Hoping we don't have to wait until Tuesday to know if they're also effected?

Not yet, Im expecting to not get too many more details until Tuesday now as they put everything together.

What is the point of these worthless no name pros Lock undoubtedly pays something (whatever it is isnt deserved) if the fish wont be able to come play them. The idea of signing someone as a pro is to draw players (new depositors aka fish) to the site so they can try to beat the said pro. No regs want to sit and play these breakeven no names and say "wow I played with a Lock Pro today". These pros arent accomplishing the whole purpose of their existence at this point. Start by cutting ties with them, obviously some incentive for these clowns to grind HU FLIP SNGS LOLOL

If sngs are encompassed in this change, I am leaving Lock and the network altogether. Maybe I am in the middle group now, but by the time I move from midstakes to higher I certainly won't be and then there won't be any games vs fish available.

This will kill sngs for the vast majority of regs. I might only rake $750 or so a month, but rest assured the reason husng players opensit for hours is to get games vs the fish. Don't kill sng action.

if this proves true, then there has been a lot of overreacting ITT. actually, the vast majority of people in this thread will benefit from this, especially because 1/2+ is getting desegregated. from a player's perspective, I think it is completely unfair to punish people for being good at poker. from Lock's perspective, it makes more sense than people realize imo.

depending on who makes the top tier and how big they play, it makes sense for the same reason some sites are eliminating high stakes games. megafish runs up his $100 account over the course of 2 weeks. megafish sits down HU with his $973.67 roll at $2000NL or PLO. megafish busts his account to a reg in 17 hands. that $973.67 will be cashed out eventually. I can understand why the sites wouldn't want this. high stakes crushers take money out of the player pool faster than other players and rake proportionately extremely little.

alternatively, why wouldn't the sites just disallow certain megafish from playing above a given limit? probably because customers don't like to be told "no." so instead, Lock keeps it out of sight/out of mind and just removes certain tables from their lobbies. it is a really disingenuous way of solving this problem.

I think most everyone agrees the poker economy/ecology is struggling and the sites need to do something. unfortunately it seems we, the players, have become guinea pigs for sites to try all new systems to figure out how to maximize revenues. however, if sites can figure out a system for maximizing revenues, and the combined revenue of the sites = the online poker market, it makes sense that players will enjoy the benefits of this system.

Shane, are you saying through your diagram that 1/3 of the players on lock are winning players? Since you have already stated that the mix of lock players is worse than the network as a whole, you are saying that around 40% of players on the your network are winning players? LOL. I find this impossible to believe.

Notice the big black line. Anything beyond that is a winning player. Furthermore, i don't even think this is by any means an accurate graph anyway, it's more a picture to show the system to you visually (but by no means the lines represent an accurate percentage). That's how i read it anyway: i'd be surprised if more than 25% of players are winning poker players on any site.

25 is much, much, much too high. 5% is a number I see thrown around for number of +EV players. obviously it depends on the stakes and there is no way of really knowing this because of the variance in the game.

there is a slight difference between +EV and winning player. winning player by their definition could be someone who's up money over 10k hands. so Shane claims some winners won't be in the top tier. but does that just mean winners over small samples? are they going to do some sort of analysis (doubtful)? are they just weeding out the high stakes regs (more likely)?

these questions are why I think too much judgment is being passed at this point. it seems to be the case that most people are going to be better off, at the expense of the elite players.

I agree. As i said, i'd be surprised if it's more than 25% (so entirely expect it to be less than 25%). I never looked into any discussion about this, nor any math/graphs, but just from thinking about it myself i'd have said roughly 15%. 5% wouldn't surprise me (i think it's little, but it's not unlikely)

Wow, 5% surprises me. I don't really know, but I would have guessed 20-25%.

Is there any benefit for a winning player to play on lock with the new policy rather than on any other skin on the network?

Are his chances better on Lock to enter the Mid group?

so im assuming all of these mother ****ing short stackers at 1/2 are from lock? now that the tables seem to be unsegregated there are about 10 tables running but are unbearable

yeah, you know lock, you WOULD actually get support from a large part of the community if u did something to eliminate short stacking "bots". That would actually drastically help the "poker ecology" without hurting legit grinders. go stick those ratholing mother****ers in their own group, that would be something.

To the few guys making defensive arguments for Fair Play, have you watched this video? If so, what is your reaction? You like the lobby and choices offered to a winning player?!? You think this is good for poker?!?
Yes, I'm making the assumption that Party's software will work similar to Lock's Fair Play filters.
Also, lol @ this obviously flawed garph. You're going to have to show your evidence/stats and work on this to convince this community. You think that telling players in this community they have no clue what category they might fall into (as if none of us have HEM and none of us have read on winning player %s) and drawing a picture to prove it is going to help?

responses like this
to reports like this
are not helping your cause. Eventually, you're going to have to define descriptions like "very different." You're going to have to define the boundaries better than "middle group will be by far the biggest when it comes to Lock players." You're going to have to improve on statements like "more of our regs will be in the middle group than they realise."

Otherwise, you can expect a mass exodus and ur site to crumble.

I suppose that's why it takes a week to cook up a press release? an educational information blitz?

I'll admit, maybe I'm overreacting b4 the facts are in, but the way this has been presented so far just makes me feel like I'm being treated like some child who doesn't know better and can't understand the complexities involved. After years of studying this game-- like so many in this community-- I don't appreciate the condescending tone or the attempts to deceive with crafted verbiage.

Yeah, that graphic seems benign, but it looks like a 10-80-10 split.

We've been told that network wide, its a 33-33-33 split.

If only 25% of players are winners, that means every winner will be in the top tier.

fu lock.

So the 33/33/33 is incorrect or just incorrect for Lock? Is that picture posted the distribution for the entire network or for Lock? If you have statistical evidence to support the decisions and to back up the things you are claiming then why not share it with us? I feel the same as one of the above posters, in that Lock is not giving us credit for having any intelligence and being unable to process the information so they don't give us any. Stars has frequently asked 2+2 members for advice on matters and I think that is something Lock should take advantage of also, especially since they are one of the sponsored sites here.

A lot of us have a decade+ poker experience and many of us have been successful in business ourselves. To insinuate, or flat out say, that we don't understand is insulting.

Have the people at Lock never stopped to consider that all of the complaints and outcry against how the company is being ran may indicate that it's not us that are the ones that don't "get it"?

33-33-33 is the way they're splitting the network.

Because of how the players are distributed, Lock has more of the middle 1/3 than the other skins.

How much more? What are the actual breakdowns for Lock? I can't find my ruler to do the math needed to interpret the official chart.

I don't know, but this is what it will look like network-wide, assuming that 25% of players are winners (which is generous, it could be lower, based on comments above).



If less than 33% of players are winners, then you're going to have some breakeven players in the top tier.

there are at least 2 short stackers on every single mid stakes 6m table that is running. no one wants to play with shortstackers, so im gonna go out on a limb and say this proves the network does not care about "poker ecology"

-fish don't like playing with short stackers, so this is not catering to what fish do/don't want

-these "pro" short stacking, rat-holing scum KILL fish in the long term, so this is not about protecting the fish

as far as i know, this concern/issue is not even being addressed by the network. the one thing we do know about short stackers is they generate a lot of rake.

so all we know is the network sides with whatever creates more rake, thats the only proof they are giving us.

.................FAIRPLAY IS ABOUT RAKE/KEEPING MONEY ON THE SITE

yeah, i don't think so. its not ok to have different sets of rules for different players that all pay the same to play. it doesn't matter what the percent breakdown is. it wouldn't make it cool for just 10% of the player pool to get ****ed for everyone else's good if i wasn't in that 10%, or 5% or any %. it doesn't matter.

The traffic already sucks pre-FP technology. I really don't see much of a future in SNG's if part of an already withered player pool is cut off from the rest.
If the Grind 4 Glory HU SNG tables are any indication of whether or not players are winners or losers (Lock vs Lock exclusive), then its definitely hovering in that 25%ish range. My understanding is cash game players have a higher pool of bumhunters, but in HU SNG's you can't sit out or run from an opponent so this probably explains why from a cash game player's perspective the fish % is lower than that of a SNG player's. Note I am talking about $100 SNG average buy-in level.

i'm interested in the math that makes it possible for this to be a big positive for the player pool without being a big negative for anyone. how exactly does that work? free ****ing money from the sky? i guess if you are playing someone and win money from them, its actually better for you in the long run to send them their money back to help the poker ecology.

LOL ofcourse this is bad for the top-end players, that's the whole point: to protect the total bottom from busting too fast (and thus possibly never returning quite often) and to stop the very top from winning too much without paying enough in rake in proportion. Things don't come free in this world, that being said, if you're in that very top echelon you should probably look at your options.