I think this is very important, and the current situation doesn't sit easy with Stars' position that poker is a game of skill/far removed from casino games.

How do you market such a game to attract new players?

Steve, can you comment?

I would vote for that.

Thanks for the report.

Why does FLHE have a different rake structure and not PLO compared to NLHE. In other words whats the logic behind PLO having the same rake structure as NLHE and not its own? There is obvs clear structural differences.

+1 Hoopman, hope he, antchev, joeri and or others from PLO community can make the next meeting.

It's not only about attracting new players, but also keeping the ones you do have. When supernovas, who undoubtedly are some of the best players relative to the whole playerbase, are only doing 'okay' after rakeback - are you really confused why the other 99% of players aren't really sticking around to play very long anymore? Shouldn't the top 1% of players be doing absurdly well? As mentioned, the whole concept of poker as a game of skill?

Regarding the ratholing solution, about the concerns of players that play less tables than their table limit use this to abuse the system, instead of using the table limit as the reference number just use the maximum tables the player played at the same time in that 18-20 hour period.

Example:
A player, with 24 tbl limit, joins 6 tables buying in the minimum (40bb). The player joins a 7th table and didn't left any of the initial 6 tables, in this case player can buy in for 40bb.
At this point he leaves one table where he had 70bb. So he's still playing 6 tables and the maximum tables he played at the same time so far was 7. He now wants to join another table. Because this will be the 7th table and this isn't greater than the maximum he played he's still required to buy in for 70bb.
So he joins the 7th table with 70bb but now he wants to join an 8th table. Now since this is greater than 7 (maximum of the day) he can buy in for 40bb.


I believe you know what I mean. Basically, this way there's no need to lower the maximum tables a player can play.

this has been said before and I hate to repeat myself but :
when did they raise the buyin exactly?
20-100bb -> 20-50bb->CAP
50-100bb -> 40-100bb

----------------
There is no min buyin increase ever for holdem, just a decrease from 50 to 40bb

For Omaha there is

The goal was to check whether PLO100 is beatable pre-rake. Various 2p2 members had differing opinions in the matter, and while many believed that PLO100 is flat unbeatable pre-rake, others were not so extreme. The player rep did not yet publish his full results (he was waiting till after the meeting), but from preliminary numbers I've seen, the numbers indicate that PLO100 is beatable pre-rake.

Now that we know that at least one player is able to beat PLO100 pre-rake, we need to check how may players are able to beat PLO100, and for what amounts. Obviously, if one one player is able to beat it, that's not a big difference from no players beating it at all. Much more data crunching is needed, but the 2p2 community as a whole seems to believe that the number of players in PLO100 who are "true winners" pre-rake is significantly smaller than in NL100. I intend to check this myself if/when I get my hands on the data. The data will also help us figure out what we believe is a "fair" rake. I think most would agree that if the distribution of players' winnings post-rake in PLO100 would be the same as in NL100 then the rake would be fair.

Right now we don't have the true distribution of winrates, but I think it is widely believed that post-rake winrates are too small below the midstakes. As I said, I think that increasing effective rakeback could be a good solution to the current problem (although it's not my favorite solution). More number crunching, mathematical modelling and community discussion would be needed to figure out what the 2p2 community thinks is a fair solution.

For the record, many 2p2 posters are being harbinger of doom, predicting the death of PLO. I think they are vastly exaggerating, but that doesn't mean there isn't a serious rake problem which is harming the games in the short- and long-term, and I'm happy that pokerstars is willing to discuss possible solutions in the hope of reaching a solution that will be acceptable to most.

I hate to point the obvious, but any poker game is a negative-sum game (zero-sum before rake). This means that on any given table, someone has got to lose. Almost by definition, any long-term winning player in bum-hunting, in the sense that he's playing against players who have a negative EV. Losing players are always required, no matter what the rake is.

The problem with PLO is not in competitiveness. The problem is that reg-on-reg wars in the micros are unwinnable to either player, and costly to both because of the high rake. Furthermore, the problem is that regs need big losers on their tables in order to make a profit: small losers will not be enough, because the rake it too high.

A rake solution, through rake reduction or through rakeback, will solve this problem (assuming it reduces regs' rake by enough).

Excellent idea, except in needs a twist. The problem with your suggestion is that it wouldn't allow single-tabling recs to rathole even twice a day. If a player is single-tabling, bought in for 40bb, left with 80bb, logs off and logs in after 12 hours and try to join a table, he'll be forced to join with 80bb. I think that pokerstars wishes to allow this behavior, and I tend to agree with them.

However, a great solution would be to make the reference number equal to the maximum tables player at the same time, plus 4. So a rec would be able to rathole on 5 tables a day, but no more than that. And a 6-tabling shortstacker will be allowed to rathole 10 times a day. Seems perfect to me.

Your name was mentioned along with joeri's. I hope you are able to attend!

I think it's quite clear why PL/NL games have the same structures while limit has its own. I don't even know where we would start to make limit and NL/PL betting structures the same because the games with $1/$2 blinds in NL/PL are far from comparable to the games with $1/$2 blinds for limit. Buy-in amounts are completely different. Even players discuss winrates in completely different terms.

We showed these numbers to the players in the meetings, calculated in terms of post-rake and post-rake, post-rewards. Post-rake, post-rewards, PLO 100 Supernovas are doing as well or better than NLHE 100 players. BronzeStars are doing worse.

We didn't look at LHE for this meeting but we did note that PLO results were quite similar to a year ago, and we did look at LHE a year ago. LHE players were doing quite well with a high VIP status and not so well with low VIP status, with much of winnings coming from rewards. Much like PLO.

LHE winrates can be deceiving because they LOOK smaller when expressed relative to big blinds. When you multiply out to compare hourly winrate or winnings per hand in dollars compared to NL/PL games with similar typical buy-in amounts or bankroll requirements, the numbers are in line.

We are wanting to discuss further with more PLO reps a specific proposal that would result in a smaller portion of PLO winnings coming from rewards and a higher % directly at the tables, especially at stakes up to and including $0.50/$1.00 PLO.

*puts gun to head*

I assume you're saying that winning Supernovas in PLO are doing as well as or better than in NLH, and that winning BronzeStars are doing worse in PLO than in NLH. But looking at only winning players gives misleading results, as the swinginess of PLO means that there will always be big winners and big losers over the sample sizes you're looking at (at most 300K hands per player or so).

The right way to analyze winrates is to run a cross-validation analysis similar to the one gui166 ran (which was originally suggested by joeri): splitting the data in two, choosing which players to analyze using the first part, and then analyzing them on the second part. This analysis will show results that are honest to reality and much less affected by PLO's inherent variance. Unless you ran this kind of analysis, I'd say that the results you have give little information about true PLO winrates.

Thank you for your response, I really appreciate it.
BUT!
Could you be a bit more specific about the bolded part? I would like to know what is "similar typical" for you?
Something like...

NL__ with similar typical buy-in of ___$ or bankroll req of ___$ is comparable with FL__ with typical buy-in of ___$ or bankroll req of ___$.



Thank you.

No, all Supernovas. This is using our data that looks at 100% of play on our site, not data provided by a player rep.

stars is an absolute sweet spot right now -- virtual monopoly with their main competitors being a
obnoxious combination of scummy/stupid. there in no incentive/driver for them to lower their fees. and
they are following the most optimal line with its irate internet users -- "have a future discussion about
a possibility of a likelyhood of a..."

there only a couple of ways to force star's hand. one is thru -- joint community action. and another is
for 2+2 regs to sponsor or give part of their business to lowcost-sites. there are a couple of
lowcost-sites currently running -- svenska/seals. both have a rake cap of 2.5%. according to ptr, star's
rake roughly at plo25|plo200 is 14bb/100|6bb/100-- this is assuming the player is gold|supernova. what
that means is that a 6bb/100 winning reg is giving away 70% of his winnings to stars at plo25 and 50% of
his winnings to stars at plo200. if he switches to a low-cost site, rake roughly for plo25|plo200 is
8bb/100|3bb/100.plo25 player is giving away only 35% of his winnings, while plo200 player is giving away
25%. 25% imo, is still absurdly high(ideally should be less than 10%), but still baby steps, i guess.

both of these sites have 100+ plus traffic but there are problems plenty-- crappy software, auditable tax
trail, bitcoin volaitily. but even if you can't give them your entire business just spend some time there.
stars has got monopoly because of the "network effect". a newbie wants to play real-money poker, does a
google search for site traffic and then signs up with stars. but if the regs who care about lowering
rake, switch to a lowcost site, their traffic numbers jump and the newbieswill follow. if one of these
lowcost-sites crosses the 700 player mark, then stars will definitely follow with a rake cut.right now,
it would be stupid of stars to lower the rake. but if they are bleeding players to a lowcost site, it
would be suicidially stupid of stars not to lower the rake. so the best thing to to do on an individual
basis is to support these site and any new upcoming lowcost sites.

Please explain why you are not confident of this.

Obviously, because of mathematics, it is a highly counterintuitive position that warrants further explanation.

What multiplier are you using for this? x4?

This is a strange thing to measure. When you say "doing as well" do you mean in bb/100, or hourly winrate, or some other measurement?

I'll tell you why I'm saying that's strange. Because overall, BronzeStars and SilverStars in PLO100 are losing at a rate of probably around 16bb/100, perhaps even more (calculations spoilered below), which translates to around 30$ per hour for a 3-tabler. Thus, I don't know how much sense it makes to say that PLO BronzeStars are doing worse in PLO than in NLH. They're losing, after all. To maintain the long-term life of the game, it doesn't matter how quickly people are losing (as long as it's not too quickly), but rather that the 10% or 20% best players are winning at a reasonable winrate: this is what indicates to the player pool that they, too, can be winners.

Similarly, some Supernovas are breakeven multitablers, while others are excellent players: I'm not sure how much sense it makes to bunch them all together, analyze their total winrate, and compare it to the winrates of the same vaguely-characterized group in NLH.

Overall, there are at least two things that need to be maintained to keep a format alive:
1. bad players don't lose too quickly
2. enough good players win at a reasonable rate

Your analysis of the overall winrate in the player pool seems to address #1, while the 2p2 community is more concerned about #2.




Here is my take on an answer. When you decrease rake, you give money back to all players equally (roughly proportionally to number of hands played, for any given stake). Suppose that pokerstars can spare 10 million dollars per year to give back this way, which will translate to, say 2bb/100.

The alternative is to give money back only to people who care about how much rake they're paying. This is presumably what a modified rakeback system or VIP system will be doing. When you do it like this, pokerstars will have to give, say, 8 million dollars per year back and pocket the leftover 2 million dollars, but the players who want it will get 3bb/100 back. As you can see, in this method pokerstars saved two million dollars, and the rake-sensitive players got back 50% more. Who lost? The players who are not rake-sensitive, who are paying the same rake as before.

Of course, I don't know if this is what stars is thinking about. But this is one possible answer.

+1

It's quite unclear why CAP poker have same stucture as PL/NL games? It should belong same group as SNG hyper turbos that have reasonable rake structure.

Can you share data about small stakes CAP games?

Steve I think you are missing the point about PLO vs NL vs Limit


It's not because PLO and NL have close to the same betting structure that they should have the same rake structure. These games play way differently.

In NL you rarely see a flop. In PLO you rarely fold Preflop, just like limit.
In NL once you see a flop, a bet will often take it down, in PLO more likely to see a turn just like in limit.

In my opinion PLO is an hybrid between NL and Limit. In NL you rarely see a flop and go past the flop. In limit you never fold preflop and once you get it postflop you often have a showdown. In PLO it's you see way more turn than NL and less river than in limit, that's why IMO PLO should have his own structure, it plays way bigger than NL.

This so much

I would consider (prefer) the week of june 24th -28th. I can't go to canada in that time of july.