Hey Ongame reps:

What about fixing the REAL PROBLEMS, too?

Problemo numero uno is clearly the astounding number of professional short-stackers you have playing in your network these days.
They suck all the joy from the game by their push-bot playing style. Everybody hates to play with them - recreational players hate them as well as grinders do.

So - raise the minimum buy-in to 35 big blinds or more ASAP.

EDIT: I probably shoulda read the thread before posting...oh, whatvr.

The problem is that they don't f**kin care about us, grinders.They already told as so with the new Essence system. I just don't think it will change anything cause it looks that they don't want us there

But if they are breakeven players the system wont hurt them as much.

Only time will tell....

I think the recreational player hates them the most. I see fish leave because of that. I think I know how to beat most of them (or at least BE) so i dont really care that much but for the fact that its no fun to minraise or openshove when they are in your blind. BUT, I think ongame wont respond as they didnt answer any of my questions either

Oh for crying out loud.

Do you really think we grinders are so special?
Sure we provide services like keeping tables going, artificially increasing player numbers even making same ol mistakes on every table and thus allowing even the fishiest of fish to win some back and feel good. We also help them having a nice reliable cashflow, which is always a good thing.
But networth we mean 0 to the sites. We dont bring any money into poker ecosystem and even when we go on some crazy downswing its obvious we will either get it all back or quit the games we feel we cant master anymore, maybe come back when we improve. Not to mention RB usually covers all the swings anyway no matter how bad they are.
So yeah grinders are important for online poker community, but its those who keep depositing, when they are allready down, who make the money for the poker rooms, the rest or shall we say the small minority are just shuffling money around while taking some of it out of the ecosystem forever, same as the owners.

+1, but if this new system doesnt result in MORE FISH then it will still be bad for the site as alot of regs will leave in that scenario. Those regs still make some money for the site. If there would be only fish, the better fish will still win and cashout every once in a while, its just about balance.

Yes but our position is similar to employees that work for some normal company. We create liquidity+ generate most of rake. That's the money that poker rooms get. I always have thought that we have been a part of this "ecosystem".
It is not my job but I do it for the money like all of the people here and I want my fair share. They force me to leave their network (even fi my winrate there is bigger after changes I can get much bigger hourly somewhere else). I am not really happy about it, that's all.

You are wrong sir.
Ever heard of prop players? Prop players are players who get paid to play both in online and live casinos for lots of hands/hours. They exist for many years. Want to know the funny part? Most of them are winning players and casinos are actually paying them to stay at their tables.
Still thinking grinders aren't important?

ok guys, I may be wrong but according my first rough calculation it seems that thanks to the "Essence" we will get approx. 30% less rakeback...

If am right it will be about 1,5 BI/month for me, and I doubt that the number of fishes will increase so quickly that it will compansate this loss in the long term.

(with that said I wouldn't mind to play against only idiots with no rakeback)

Irrelevant except for sites/casinos that have to build traffic from zero each day.

Ongame have correctly evaluated the market and the worth of players, this system is better for them and for fish, neutral for breakeven players and worse for winning players.

Their aim is somewhat the same as stars, they want to influence our playing style with rewards structured to suit breakeven nit grinding rather than low volume high bb/100 play.

Basically keeping the rake/withdraw ratio as heavily weighted to rake as possible.

Please be so kind to share this rough calculation with us....

but is not that low volume winning player is making the most money out of worse opponent rather then rakeback ?? in terms of rakeback yes, he will generate less rake but those money arent that important as they are for nit grinder who plays 8+ tables ? in short : nit grinder needs rakeback, and low volume player needs highets bb/100 ??

I can check my rake through my aff. day by day. The rake registered by HM was always about 110% of the rake rehistered by ongame, but yesterday this difference was significantly higher.

If you are saying that nit grinders depend on rakeback more than winners then : yes this is true.

But under essence they will probably not be affected, their winrates are so low that they fall in the middle and will probably end up with the same deal.

Of course I'm going only on the information revealed so far about "essence" which is not comprehensive nor verified.

I think the worst of the change is, that now the system is not transparent for us players. Bonus clearing lasts longer, ok. But to dont know how long and if the points we earn are correct calculated is very bad.

Played this morning, 500 hands, 60$ rake and did not increase the bonus progress by 1%. Dont know where to find if I created a single point.

Under this circumstances im leaving. There is zero trust in ongame. This system just justify the points stealing a few weeks ago.

yb