The games dried up and were terrible at the end because of 18 multitabling and sharkscope. Obviously, they could cap the number of tables you can play but if can play at 5 sites at once it doesn't help. Maybe just have 1 central room and everything is just a skin variant with different gimmicks (rakeback, hotel comps, sports betting, etc).

Sharkscope is the bigger problem. No fish wants to see games instantly form around them and have a 20 person waiting list. Anonymous screennames are an easy answer but it allows cheating since cheaters know they are at the same table. So it becomes impossible to track long term suspicious behavior. Obviously folding KK UTG would set off internal alarm bells but cheating will be more sophisticated.

why is 18 multitabling a problem?

well i assume you are not that stupid and are going to say how they are easy to beat or something. But despite that they are still better than fish and dilute the fish to reg ratio (as fish do not mass multitable, if they multitable at all). Also they take so long and fish do not want to wait for each player to take 20 seconds to fold pre. However fast poker will solve this

show everybody's cards at the end of each hand?

Well 18 multitabling isn't a problem for the multitabler.

However, if someone is a very good multitabler, it is akin to placing 18 solid regs on the site, all of which funnel to a single account. Since making a living on poker would necessarily involve the money NOT being donked away, a good deal of the money essentially disappears from the poker economy.

Its simply the nature of any economy, when a small amount of people own most of the money with no intention of releasing it, the economy stagnates. In the poker world, this hits an extreme when a horde of regs multiply themselves over many tables, and its made even worse by the nature of poker's zero sum game I.E. the person who has their money taken is given no item of value in return.

Bar the tracking sites, prominently display what additional software players may be using (I'd prefer none) and police the chat function much more stringently.

just be friendly dont be a ******* and i know this is hard by try to chat more besides nh or stupid ****** donk. friendly chat makes the game funner and less stressful for everyone = longer and more frequent games. even just bs like herpderp hows the weather in Azerbaijan? oh really its crazy cold here in Minnesota

just try it, it works

correct PH balance

All this is good.

Keep fish happy? How about freerolls and satellites into big tournaments, decent rewards for small amounts of play, no HUDS, no sharkscope usage allowed while playing.

If I ran a site, I would not prevent multitabling, because otherwise a high-volume player will play on multiple sites and you would rather have him playing 10+ tables on your site rather than 1 on 9 of your competitors.

also definitely this. tracking sites are bad overall. they promote bumhunting,discourage game starting, make losing players not want to play and in the case of tableratings ****ing sell datamined hands or just offer stats on your opponents you've never played before. screw everything about that.

So much this , part of the fun for casual players is chat .

Played in a pub for a while about 2 years ago , only 2 of the regular players there ( from about 14 - 18 that would be there most weeks ) still played online.

Lack of chat , bumhunting , shark\fish ratio are reasons many stay away now.

Ban all tracking sites, any software that has "Never sit out/Auto click I'm back/Auto Timebank" features and most importantly ban HUDs. Why ban HUD? Because 18 multitablers also instantly recognize the green 66/5s

People either play online to make money and grind or to have fun and gamble...

You gotta keep the gamblers comfortable!

i think you are confusing sharkscope with ptr. regs dont bumhunt in SNGs. they simply register for all the ones that run unless they are playing at abi $100+ or super turbos which most fish dont play. ptr is not applicable to stars now and i imagine it will be the same scenario for ftp so thats one less thing for you to worry about and players need to opt in to sharkscope these days which also makes it pretty much redundant for sngs unless a fish wants to show how bad they are?

as for hem etc. pokerstars stopped the policy of being able to track what programmes you were using in conjucntion with the poker site years ago so this would be impossible to police/enforce.

people can chat if they want. stars now has little smileys all the recreational players can click on and see cute little images come up in the chat box. when ftp comes back they will be able to make dogs laugh and frogs frown with the click on a function button on their keyboard.