I of course realize that in many ways every mass multi tabling high stakes guy such as myself, is not the greatest for the high stakes games either. Realistically though, no one is ever going to stop people from multi tabling unless Tuff Fish gets his way and you can only play a max of 1 table! But what is very realistic is for Star to simply up the buy in for the games by 10 or 20 BB. We have all complained about it enough, but virtually nothing has changed. With that, here is my 2 cents on the matter......

Once upon a time, Sundays used to be a goldmine for high stakes players. There were loads of games to play because of all the tourneys that run that attract recreational players. Often those players would add an extra table or two at some of the higher stakes games. Others might get a nice score in a tourney, feel like they’re on top of the world, and try to parlay it into more money by playing the higher stakes games. Well, sadly those days seem to be over for now.

I actually don’t think the recreational players are not playing the games by choice. What I think happened was every regular on the planet learned to take advantage of Sunday’s juicy games, which then attracted all the talentless shortstackers, which then clogged up the lists and frustrated the recreational players from playing. I was looking at the lobby today after quitting, because the games were so terrible for the umpteenth Sunday in a row, and trying to envision myself as a recreational player looking for a game. I was trying to imagine what the recreational player looks for in a game and how I would go about finding a fun game to play. When I scrolled through the lobby, it would’ve been impossible to find an enjoyable game. Every single open table had 4 or 5 talentless shortstackers! If the table was full, it had between 6 and 10 person waiting lists full of regulars and short stackers. So even if a recreational player wanted to play some high stakes poker, he couldn’t! At least not against people with full stacks.

Many high stakes players act as if recreational players will simply show up and dump a bunch of money without giving it much thought. That simply isn’t the case. Recreational players, for the most part, have no desire to play poker against a bunch of short stackers. They may not even know that these short stackers are profitable, but what they do know is that they personally are there to gamble and try and win some money. How would you feel if you walked up to a slot machine and it said the max payout was only 10 or 20x what the cost of pulling the handle was? I wouldn’t play that machine.

Full Tilt poker gets it. If you want to play with a small buy in, there are plenty of CAP games. But the majority of the games are designed for at least a 50BB buy in, which is the way it should be. Poker Stars really needs to think this one through a little better. They are looking at their bottom lines, seeing more high stakes games run due to the influx in short stackers, and likely not feeling like they need to change a thing. But this company is so ridiculously profitable; they need to not forget what got them to that point. They got their because of great marketing, the best tournaments and cash games on the internet, and amazingly fair and reasonable staff members who treat their customers fairly, logically and with respect. I am not trying to take anything away from Stars, because overall they are an enormously well run company. But their lackadaisical approach to handling the great problem of shortstackers is going to hurt them in the long run if they don’t act soon.

Word travels quickly these days. In fact, thanks to word traveling quickly, that’s a lot of the reason Stars became so popular. The scuttlebutt was they were spreading some great games and had great customer support. As a result, their company was incredibly successful. Stars should never forget that and remember that it works both ways. If enough recreational players start realizing they can never get a half decent game with people who have more than a minimum buy in at the table, they are going to play somewhere else to find that game, or not play at all. Both outcomes are bad for Stars. As profitable as Stars is, it’s not worth even potentially damaging their reputation just because they’re running a few more games across the higher limits thanks to the short stackers.

Another point I would like to make is that there is of course no data to prove this, but the effect short stackers have on the games can even affect the mentality of the players at the lowest stakes. For example, among those not currently playing high stakes poker for a living, who hasn’t peeked at the high stakes game and watched in awe? I know I sure have. In fact watching the high stakes games as a $5 sit and go donkey about 5 years ago is what inspired me to want to be a high stakes pro someday. If I had pulled up the tables and saw a bunch of tables full of short stackers shoving all in for $100 or $200, I can’t promise I would’ve been as inspired as I was to make it to the higher stakes games. So while it may seem somewhat harmless to allow these no talent shortstackers to do what they do, it can have a compounding effect in my opinion.

I really hope Stars starts listening to their players and takes what most of us are high stakes players are saying to heart. This short stack bull **** needs to end. These people are ruining the action, chasing away the fish, and causing people to have to look all the way to the virtually unattainable nosebleed games to witness any compelling action. And for what? So a multi billion dollar company can spread an additional handful of tables when they already have nearly 30,000 tables open as I write this? It’s not worth is Poker Stars. Protect the integrity of your product and make people buy in for at least 30 – 40 BB and make them play some real poker, and make the recreational player feel like there is something on the table for him to win. No one gets excited to play zero post flop poker and play for an amount you can find at .5/1NL. They come to the high stakes tables to play high stakes poker. All we have now is the illusion of high stakes poker. In reality we have a bunch of talentless clowns chasing bonuses, shoving all in off a chart they printed out and ruining the most exciting, yet still attainable, games on the internet.

tl; dr

This.

If you're going to post on an extremely boring and well discussed subject, at least offer cliff notes.

Agreed, the short stackers definitely make the game play boring, I can definitely see how recreational players would switch sites or just stop playing poker because short stackers kill the action and very few flops are seen.

there are currently 22 full 5-10nl 6m tables running with waiting lists on ps now.

11 of them have 50bb minimum.

Solid post. Agree completely.

play at AP when the min is 20 bb and the max is 200 bb.

Then evidently every single open table was not one of the 50BB ones.

Roughly 50% of the tables running at 5/10 6-max NL right now are the 50BB type. So it seems clear to me that not every table is clogged with 4 or 5 shortstackers.

You can start 50BB tables to try to attract some more players too. You can also play a few more hands so that it the recreational players aren't deciding whether they want to sit down at some table with a 4% plrs/flop percentage and $40 avg pot.

Anyway, I think the best way to get more of the fish and recreational players into such games also has to do with ease of depositing.

leatherass ftw!

also

tl;dr

Shortstackers will always exist as long as the rules allow it. It's the market forces at work. It's much easier to be a profitable shortstacker than it is even a profitable winning NL100 or NL200 reg. Shortstacking is essentially a solved game

As it stands now shortstakers regularly break games. I don't know how many times in a day of playing i leave a 6m or FR game because of the amount of shortstackers and then other people leave shortly after. Shortstackers don't sit and play each other either.

damn took 3.5 months for leatherass to shake off his million dollar prop bet fiasco

I agree with a lot of what you said; and I hate shortstackers as much as the next guy...

But to go and say that shortstacking is not real poker is a slippery slope... Next guy is going to complain about something else not being real poker and they have to change that too...

leatherass doesnt start 50bb tbls. he waits for other regs to do it, then waits to see if a fish joins then he quickly jumps on the tbl.

Yes, I understand that's his strategy. But if I believed that the shortstacker thing was the reason why rec players weren't sitting down then I would consider changing my own approach to try to make the tables somehow more attractive to them instead of blaming others.

But I still don't understand blaming the shortstackers for the problem here when half of the tables have ZERO shortstackers because they are 50BB tables.