Quote:
Originally Posted by PokerStars Steve
Table Selection, Anonymity, and Major Changes in General
Operators throughout the poker industry are dealing with the issues of game selection. Anonymous tables and segregated player pools are examples of 'features' that others have decided to implement. While we do have segregated player pools for .es, .it, and .fr as required by local law (against our advice), we do not have any plans to extend this further, nor do we have plans to implement anonymous tables.
Our challenge is to preserve the spirit and essence of the game as much as possible while still addressing issues that crop up over time. We do understand that it's important that there are winners in poker, a game of skill. There are plenty of things we could do to increase short term revenue at the expense of our winning players that we simply do not consider.
We do need to make sure that the experience we are offering to new and recreational players is enjoyable. Ideally it's so enjoyable that they want to recommend the site to others! When the behavior of our regulars starts to negatively affect this experience, we must consider action.
Such considerations and the resulting action do often cause friction with our regular players. This is to be expected. Those of you relying on poker for income may understandably be displeased when playing conditions or rules change meaningfully. It takes time to adapt, and time is money if poker is your income source.
Each player could also reasonably be uncertain as to whether they will be able to earn the same income after the changes. Even if winning players as a whole are winning the same amount after a change, any truly substantial change is likely to alter at a minimum the distribution of that money and likely also, at least in some cases, which players are winning the money.
The only reaction that could be expected from players who lose out is negative. Before changes are enacted, we get negative reactions from a much larger group who are concerned that they could possibly be the players that lose out.
All of the above are issues even when it's clear that winning players as a whole are going to be winning at least as much after a change as before. Sometimes there are also concerns that changes are intended to shift some portion of winning players' profits to PokerStars profits.
While such a situation has certainly occurred, this is very rarely our intention or motivation. One goal of our player meetings is to help players understand this fact.
The reality is that big changes *can* have an impact on this delicate balance. We are considering how we might make improvements in evaluating/determining changes as well as communicating to players during meetings that chould allow us to more effectively make bigger changes without affecting this balance or creating widespread concern about such an impact. It is not an easy problem.
The idea of removing table selection is a perfect example. While it would likely rebalance winnings between different regulars, if it were to alter the amount of money withdrawn by winning players at all, I believe it would be an very slight increase. It would of course alter *which* players win the money. However, the reason we are considering the change is exclusively that we would like to improve the recreational player experience by eliminating current table seating issues.
We are not on a firm path to implementing this solution, primarily because it's unclear that we would be solving more important problems for recreational players than we would be creating. We are continuing to evaluate this. In the meantime, I hope we can have some open conversation about how this really would affect winning players as a whole.
Keep in mind that if we make changes that improve satisfaction of new and recreational players and keep constant the percentage of deposits that are won and withdrawn by winning players, winning players as a whole will benefit, because the increased satisfaction of depositing players will generate a larger pool of money. Such an impact is win-win for regular players and PokerStars. These are results we hope to work together with you to achieve.
Note: While we don't currently have plans to implement 'beginner tables' like you now see on Full Tilt, these tables or something similar could appear on our site at some point.
I disagree with the second bolded part completely.
If table selection is eliminated, then it means players are forced to play with players of equal or better skill more often than they do currently. If two players of equal skill play each other, they both lose and the only winner is the rake taker, Stars.
Therefore eliminating table selection can only benefit Stars, and hurts the player pool, since money is raked more times before it get's won by the best players and withdrawn from the site, due to edges being decreased all round.
I am also a little horrified about this beginners table concept possibly being introduced in the future. This is player pool segregation which keeps the really bad players from losing their money quickly, and the rest of the player pool has no 'easy' money that it needs in order for those players to survive the rake and eek out a slight profit.
Yes, poker is a 'skill' game, but a skillful, experienced poker player only has a small edge over a player that is a complete beginner, so poker is only really a marginally skillful game where with the current rake as it is, winners still need decent skill edges against their opponents in order to profit. Poker is still very different from other games like chess, and sports where skillful, experienced competitors have naturally large edges over weak opponents, (Rafael Nadal would beat an amature at tennis each and every time, but Phil Ivey won't profit every time in a heads-up match vs a complete donk running hot against him).
Therefore if Stars truly is recognising that poker is a (slight) skill game, then it needs to keep things like table selection and allow as many different ways as possible for experienced players to utilise their edge over weaker players, (whilst not significantly hurting the weaker player's enjoyment), so that the experienced players can still profit to the same degree. If it wants to remove table selection due to apparent concern that weak players feel they are being hunted, then rake will need to be decreased significantly in order to maintain the status quo of current player profit levels.
Last edited by Pokie; 06-23-2013 at 12:31 AM.