Mathbooks don't work the same as SNG Wiz, DUCY? Your comparison is stupid imo. Also there's a ****load of articles out there outlining ICM, you can learn it instead of just trusting an icon on the screen.

SNGWiz can be used during play and it is on the same boat as any other poker software there is - and so it should be equally banned.

Ban large monitors and multiple monitors too. ****ing cheats.

It's not going to get any better before the economy gets better.

Until the average Joe has disposable income again, then poker edges will keep getting smaller and smaller, as the casual player deposits are lower and lower.

Some shorter term solutions would be:

Banning HU tables
Cap at 10 tables or under at once
Lowering the rake to 1bb/100 across all stakes, capped at $5 per hand (fish are still going to lose the same amount of money, only slower, and be more likely to redeposit, and less likely to think 'rigged', more likely to think 'run bad'.)

MMOs are updating positions of 1000s of things (players, projectiles, ...) in 100s of areas multiple times a second. There are irc bots from 20 years ago that could host 100s of poker games.

I like the idea of lowering rake at lower stakes and increasing at higher stakes.

I think long term losing players keep reloading so long as they have money, so they are mostly effected by the economy. No point segregating them, as they obviously don't mind losing money that much. Some people treat poker like playing roulette, sometimes you win sometimes you lose, its just fun to play. Of course they are winning less and less, so perhaps things like stopping huds and limiting tables would help. And of course more bonuses for them to chase, bad beat jackpot etc etc.

The people who need protecting the most I think, are the new players. We don't know how much money a new player might bring in total. But one thing is for sure, if their first experience is a bad one, they probably wont come back. I think some writting has been done on how most regular players were winning players back when they started, this was either because they were naturally good or a bit lucky, or even ok with some run good. But the more good experiences we can make for the new players, the more they will come back, and if they are long term losers, the more they will deposit to chase that first win over and over again. (Hopefully not creating any gambling addictions here, just meaning to have the same as people who are not that great at 10 pin bowling or golf, who keep playing to get a strike or a hole in one!)

Not sure the best ideas, but we obviously want to keep completely new players away from multi table regs, if we can keep new players playing with other new players and or losing/not very good players, when they first join, then more good first experiences will happen, and these players will play/reload more often, or atleast come back occassionally instead of never! Not saying how long before a new players gets protection removed, but I think this is the group that needs protecting the most.

The amount of time i saw "lowering the rake is obv" in this thread, yet no one explain how this really achieve anything in the actual context. You think rake as any impact on fishes, you think they ll notice if rake drop or that they will last longer at a poker table because the rake is a few cents cheaper ??

This measure only benefit regs and go against everything those poker site are trying to achieve in regard to their poker ecology.

I ll say it again increase rake is a better idea, at least at 400NL and above .

And the solution o banning HUDS is not bad on paper but it s totally non enforceable, even if you hide the Hand history some third party software will be able to create HH .

Best solution in this regard is to give acces to simple hud stats available for all players directly on the poker site.

Maybe poker sites who have this ecology problem could try to do more to get bad players who bink a tourn to sit down at the cash table with their winnings. Regs would have no problem at all turning that into a lot of rake.

I cant see decreasing the rake helping to attract new or losing players, just don't see why they would care. Don't know the effect of increasing the rake, but can't see how lowering it would do anything.

Perhaps instead of segregating players by win/lose rates, you could do it by max number of tables open? ie when you sign up, you can only play one table at a time until you change your settings. So if you have your max table settings at 16 or 32 or whatever, you can't get anywhere near the newbies with only 1 table open. There will still be plenty of fish who want to play more than 4 tables or whatever, so they will be available, but this makes newbies more likely to only play other newbies/non regs. As they get a little better they will want more tables and then they become available to the sharks, and if they get eaten, they will be more likely to reload because they 'used to win', instead of saying 'I never win, I quit'.

Less rake = more money to be won by players = more people playing (fish or shark) = more volume of play = more rake. Everyone is happy.

This is so wrong.

Are you aware online poker is only like 15ish years old? It today is still an absurd huge economy with companies making billions of dollars every year. We hit out huge peak at 2004-2007 and from 2007 on it slowly was dying until BF. Black friday hit and the market got raped, we lost almost all of USA and other rest of world players due to the way the economy was at the time. It was black friday, the market crashed.

But think about the market today, even the day after BF. You can log into any poker site and find a poker game at many stakes 24/7. On pokerstars I can log on at 3am and 40table sngs if i want to( action will be a bit slower) at games that are still beatable (maybe not 40 tabling). You see regs making 6+ figures every single ****ing year, even in this market. You see break even donks working hard to improve, seeing them pro within time. Online poker is still massive, pokerstars is not going anywhere within 5 years and will remain a strong powerhouse. They are a genuis company and are the only ones actually growing online poker.

We are clearly in the worst days of the market in terms of profitability. However, the games are still beatable even at high stakes (if you are a sicko) and there still are horrible fish and awful regs logging on enough to make a serious living of this game. Pokerstars has the smarts, tools and money to keep growing the market. People still love poker, people enjoy gambling. Online poker is just going to get bigger and bigger over time imo. Would not be surprised to see a serious poker boom in the next 10 years (with usa).

Online poker still has a huge future, the industry is just a teenager ffs.

more money to be won by regs so it doesn t = to more people paying (fish or shark) , maybe just a few more breakeven regs playing a little more now that they can beat the rake so this = same situation as we are right now .

You're assuming fish never win anything, which is not true especially at the micro stakes. Fish DO win, but if they eventually donate it back they'll be glad to deposit more, much more than someone that never wins. With more money circulating, both fish and regs win more regardless of whether fish lose all of it back or not.

1. Live HUDs must be banned.
2. constant table changing at 200nl and lower must be restricted in some way
3. entirely remove table selection but allow real money players to see entire player pool
4. reduce multi tabling to 6-9

you're completely missing the point on why HUDs should be banned


Live HUDs give regs too great an advantage.

Is there any feasible way to ban HUDs?

It seems to me that there's just no way, as long as there are hand histories, someone can write something to collect them and display them as stats.

Anonymous tables? Unlimited name changes?

Poker sites can see your screen and lock your account?

A lot of people in this thread are very concerned with the poker sites keeping the regulars playing, IMO.

Yes you can ban them. that bit is easy you just write it in to the Ts&Cs. They are banned. the real question is enforcement.

Sky Poker bans them but players cheat. Sky struggle to detect the users and the only sanction is account closer and seizing whatever they have in the account.

Now the legal setup in the UK relies on the UKGC to get tough, which to date they have not, mostly because they regulate 1 tiny poker site. This year they will start regulating every major poker site in the world due to a new UK law and finally we have a regulator with some ooomph (not least as it is a regulator sites sign up to by dictat not because they picked the one they wanted).

The UK 2005 Gambling Act makes cheating at gambling a criminal offence with a max penalty of 2 years in gaol. Breaking the Ts and Cs of a site by using banned software is cheating IMHO (including bots and datamining).. If this was enforced on top of account closure and seizure we would have some real deterence. plus sites would have an obligation to catch users of banned software and report their suspicions of cheating to the regulator.

Now we get to the easier bit. Supplying software to remote gambling operators in the Uk requires a licence. Sell it to someone without a licence and that is a criminal offence (max 1 year in gaol). Now the UKGC currently says that operators are basically UK licenced sites only but in a peer to peer gambling scenario like poker "operator" can mean those offering bets remotely, which is what I do at a HU table. I take the loss or the win not the site. I am an operator. The UK could make the supply of HUDs to players something that requires a licence. If they do then they can enforce conditions like an interface that stops UK Licenced poker sites who don't want HUDs from runing at the same time.

Regulation of and criminal sanction for cheats is perfectly possible. Use a HUD against the sites Ts and Cs and that is cheating....max penalty 2 years in gaol.

How about the double whammy of "reduce rake" and "6 tables max". Yeah sure, sites should reduce their income on two fronts. It's just not realistic. I mean, multi-tabling I would especially like to see kicked in the balls but you're asking sites to reduce the income they get from a significant proportion of the user base to half or even a quarter of what it was. They'll have to hope they keep more of those fish to compensate.

I am one that is seriously opposed to any live/online cross over as they are two different games and should be treated as such, HOWEVER...

this is an EXCELLENT idea.

Well done.

Hope all is well Schneids,
Joe

Absolutely the best idea ive read thus far.This really would help the sites in alot of ways i think.And its not terribly hard thing to do.

A much easier way would also be to implement the "Quick Seat" to every level and table and to stop players from simply sitting and leaving looking for easier tables you can just put a LIMITR on how many sit/leave times per hour.
ie: you can sit and leave asap 3 times but then you cant get up the 4th time without having to wait X amount of time to sit again

leave theses 24 tabling nit alone !

im one of them !