It's not a bad experience for me. I know who they are and what they do. They are actually very easy to play against for any experienced player.

The new players may not know why they are losing every chip they put into a pot against these players but they do know they are losing and most will quickly figure out they don't have chance and just give up, most forever.

If you pay any attention to the direction the poker industry is going then you would know that yes there is a shortage of new people willing to gamble, at least on poker. The reasons for that are many and mass multitabling is not even that high on the list. But it is a big factor when it comes to lack of long term retention of new players.

yeah, but i think there are also new players on 'higher' stakes ...

pretty much this and it's not up to us anyway

I agree with this, and removing multitablers might actually make the games harder to beat.

This is the fate of new players when they are outmatched skill wise. Some find inspiration from this, others blame bad luck, rigged sites, huds, multi tabling and what not. Everything except their lack of skill.

True compared to the poker boom in 2006, but not when compared to for example the games in 2002. I would say that one big factor is that it is hard for a casual to win any meaningful money. In 2002 the lowest nl games were $50. Compare winning $50 to winning $2 and I think you have one reason for many casuals giving up.

Absolute nonsense. Imagine a pool of 8 fishy new players looking for a game; would they do better against 1x you, or 64x you?

It shows something about the state of the industry that the educational tools available have allowed 'pros' to exist who have such a poor understanding of the fundamentals of the game.

Think about each individual new player. Would he do better against a more experienced player giving the game his full attention, or against the same player playing 24 tables at the same time?

You are missing the point that currently with several 24 tabling players in the pool it is hard to not have at least 2 of the 9 seats of any table not being occupied by a mass multitabling nit. If they could not multitable then the majority of tables would be completely filled by new/rec players. Yes you would have less tables overall but the experience would be much better for the new player coming in. For the experienced player who for what ever reason is not playing higher will find the tables much softer while the fish will last much longer and enjoy their splashing around.

Even though instituting table caps might be the right move, being a (heavily-indebted) public company might make such an action more complicated.

Reduced tables/player numbers, even if truly a good thing for the long-term health of the ecosystem (), might hurt AmayaStars's outlook/story/spin in the short-run (and that's a large part of their game in attracting a buyer or re-financing their debt so they don't default on their loans in the next several years (as their payment obligations balloon)).

they should just try capping it at 1 or 2 tables as an experiment at those levels, rather than kill it. forces the 12 tablers to move up, lets the newbs learn to play for real money.

but i suspect anyone that is playing those stakes has no intention of ever depositing 200 bucks and playing 50 nl. they are career 2nl players unless they learn to win.

This may be true at higher limits, but if there are any reasonable good players massmultitabling between NL2-NL10 they would have to move up, since they couldn't do 6 usd/hour or whatever amount playing a fixed range per chart with AHK script/tableninja, playing only 2-4 tables. Personally I have nothing against young people from poor countries grinding a living from microstakes, but I think the lowest limits shoud be for beginners to try out and learn the game.

Why haven't they banned Russians at these limits? It's not like Romania is a richer country than Russia, Poland, Ukraine etc. Also it's not like Romania has more 24 tabling shark/leeches at chump stakes for Westerners but fairly decent for these countries?

afaik Belgium and Romania are regulated markets and therefore have their own client (which makes such changes easier)

Yes I didn't take into account that removing multitabling would force some of the winners to move up. Thls would make the games softer.

If it was about making that stake a better experience for fish you'd be right.

Looks like they're just preparing to remove the stake completely - they've tested a rich fishy country (Belgium) and a relatively poor one (Romania) to see how former $2nl players react.

Hi, that number (average fish deposit being $20) came from Stars when they were defending something they did at some point (I know that hardly narrows it down!). Could even have come from Negreanu so I'd take it with a pinch of salt.

Fwiw, statement received from a PokerStars rep on the matter:

remove romanian players altogether, no gd for the games period. Take poland with them.

Not much u can do against it.
Sucks for me though since the only active zoom pool for omaha 8 is 1-2c... (tbh 1-2c is fun to play on...)
Have nothing against their rule but atleast make it for everybody.

No there are plenty of fish at 2NL and some at 5NL. But in general the pool is skewered towards robotic hand chart clones. It will interesting to see if the fish from Romania dry up at 5NL as that is fair bit of money to donk off quickly for somebody with a low paying job in that country.

The worst part of removing NL2 is it does nothing to solve the problems that exist, it just dumps most of the NL2 player pool into NL5. The 24 tabling nits will have the bankroll to play NL5 it just may mean they may have to reduce/eliminate their withdrawal amount for a month or two to maintain an adequate balance and/or have to reduce their table count for awhile. Meanwhile the $20 average depositors will just lose their deposit faster yet, get discouraged and quit poker forever even faster.

It depends on where they are from. In Western countries 20 dollars is the cost of going to a movie and buying food and taking public transportation. That player isn't going to be fazed by losing 20 dollars. If you go to any casino in a Western country you can't lose 20 dollars slowly unless you play penny slots at the minimum coin total per spin. Shoot I shot off 25 buy ins at 2 zoom last month and that would be one hand short stacking a 1/2 game at a legal poker game or underground in my country...

Stars seems to finally have realized that they have what i call a "3rd world reg-fish imbalance" and this seems like the first step of trying to tackle it

Romania etc are generally considered to be 2nd world (ie they would have been 1st world if Russian communists hadn't held them back for most of a century).

Fyp

Doesnt really matter. Any country where you can make an easy living grinding NL2 has likely a reg-fish imbalance which isnt good for stars bottomline

They are trialing removing 2NL in isolated markets and seeing it's effects, they are not trialing getting rid of players from certain countries a la Bodog.

Just to announce that they have brought back the $0,01/$0,02 games back in Belgium!