This is a very good post. Thought processes like yours are your best chance to make stars reverse changes. "whah this sucks for me and other pros" means nothing. Showing them how it negatively impacts them as well might make them rethink certain increases.

Stars is not subscribing to a misconception, and the changes are not getting reversed. Only the blind and foolish are calling for this. Stars knows what it is doing, and is on a crash course with no steering mechanism. We are witness to inevitability.

The players are simply becoming aware.

The nature of opaque winrates creates a delay in this regard.

Unbelievable.. the guy posts 200 essays of gibberish and then finally makes a decent post and gets banned. It was the Nash guys gimmick account so it's par for the course.

Jamsym2- excellent post and spot on.

Petition for people to stop posting useless petitions on NVG.

This.

100 bb buyin was what made the ante games good as one did not have to start deep.

Most of these whiners are against the latest change because they cant play but deep, and they dont like defending, playing marginal hands. They would rather 3b or fold than play a marginal hand -- that poker is all about.

There is a small group of more aggro players who like it deep, and i dont mind playing against them, just that with changing or medium stack sizes, their style actually isnt optimal.

My natural style is in between but i like to additionally play many sizes.

Ratholing is a negative term not correct when rules allow it. It is the opposite of nitholing. Neither is good as the only style. Nitting, one track deep or not, bumhunting, are the cancer of poker and mean about the same.

The best format has no ante and the raise and reraise sizes are smaller, the buyin and rebuy is 50 bb and the cap 100 bb. This would change the way poker is played and would be more fun, skill and good for ecosystem.

It actually wasnt nlh that killed the fun and too many recs out of poker, but mostly nitting -- the ex-fish or the new rec -- and the wrong formats.

It is much more likely that stars is well aware that they will lose some customers but is making these changes to alter the pro:recreational ratio so that a greater % of each deposited dollar is raked. Stars also probably thinks that altering this ratio will bring back some % of the fish who leave since there will be less pros in their game.

The ideal situation for Stars is for all players to have exactly the same win rate and they are taking steps to move things in this direction.

Exactly, they are trying to have all players with the same winrate. I wonder what's next on their agenda to ahiceve this ambition.

Another petition?? LOL
We should have a petition for no more petitions, whose with me?

But seriously, when are you guys gonna get the message;
1) pokerstars does not want you
2) pokerstars does not care what you think
3) pokerstars will continue without you
4) petitions are pointless

Its getting embarrassing now. Your like a guy who got dumped by some hot chick and you keep showing up at the window with a guitar while she is getting banged by a bigger guy.... Move on dude.

its so ugly that amaya is forcing people to play whetever fits their liking and own self (high-rake-noone-withdrawals-inthe-end) interest.
Ofc you have higher edges at 200-250bb+ stacks vs any player who is weaker than you, regardless if he`s rec or reg. Was such a great format for cash games. So many recs loooved it. And stars just got rid of it, simply the same way higher edge tourneys like rebuys got murdered (or HU games, or any format where u can get edge to beat the rake).

`oh my god, pokerstars must be so nice, they worry about recs not losing their money too quickly.`
yea right, right, as if u actually gave 0 fk about recs lololololol. EVERYONE KNOWS YOU DONT. Jesus, to protect `poor recs who lose deposits 40% faster` u invent unbeatable high raked spins, get rid of majority of VIP system, increase all rake, implement transaction fees, and get rid of every single game format that has any decent non 0 edge in the game? This all happens in under 2 year time? jesus
Whats next? Maybe you adjust RNG in all ur games such that losing players always get best of it in the long run? And withdrawing players would get worse RNG? Maybe its already done? I mean we are trying to protect losing players hard right? I would be laughing at anyone spitting these thoughts 2 years ago, idk at the moment, who knows whats already happening. Someone could get some serious years in jail if people figure smth like that out (and we have rich history at this forum and further of tracking very dirty things in the poker world in the last decade).

nice nice, in the end I guess the plan here is to wipe last bits of value out of poker market and disappear in a year or so time frame (fits well with insider trading cheating & other questionable suspicious things happening).

Despite all of the terrible, misguided decisions Stars has made in recent months, this one actually makes sense to me.

These games are without doubt bad for the poker ecology because the recreational players lose at a faster rate. Obviously, it's bad for Stars as they make less rake off the players if they lose faster, but it's also a turn off for the recreational players themselves if they feel like they're losing too quickly and don't have a chance. In the long term, it's better for us regs to accept losing these tables, and the higher immediate win rates we garner, in order to maintain liquidity and a steadier stream of recreational money coming on the site.

To the people petitioning for these tables to be re-added, I understand your frustrations and definitely sympathise with you, but I'd recommend focussing your efforts on fighting Stars' more heinous and/or illogical decisions e.g. Hypers rake increase

very good post

No one forced recs to play deep games, they had a choice. Unlike now, where we're all forced to play whatever the hell PokerStars decides.

whatever online poker format u are playing, i can see its not lots of deep ante cash games. so you dont care as much.
but dont worry, whatever game it is that ur playing, assuming u play any online poker at all lol (if its reg cash game in any poker type, or any tourney format), they will come at you very soon, make some kinda of a change you wont be able to make money there very soon.
And then u`ll come back, and rethink ur post, of how `its fine to accept things they are doing (cose its for the best in the future)`. Just wait.

Gotta love how Stars and some people here patronize recreational players, saying that these changes will protect them.

They're not mindless sheeps! They can decide themselves what's best for their bankroll.

You're right and stars has a choice in what games to offer. It's pretty obvious they don't give a **** about regs anymore and they're doing whatever they can to make the most money for themselves.Vote with your feet.

And btw you never had a choice to play whatever you wanted. You had a choice to play any of the games stars chose to offer.

actually, while deep/ante format punishes postflop mistakes harder, it is also far more forgiving to preflop mistakes - you can play waay looser pre and call with a lot of speculative hands. Because of that, I think it's very friendly to recreational players, it also may match their live poker experiences better, with many multiway pots etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if higher winrates of best regs came mostly from bad regs who tried the format being crushed (the ever-so-hated "24-tabling nit" gets absolutely destroyed on deep/ante table). Obv recs' loserates are gonna be slightly bigger compared to regular game, nl50 with 50$bi shouldn't be directly compared to nl50 with 125$bi.

That's a very good point and I totally agree with your 2nd paragraph.

deeper stacked games give a much bigger edge to good players. the "forgiveness" of preflop mistakes are obliterated by the edge fish give up postflop playing deep.

of course the 24 table nit does worse deeper. they aren't good at poker.

Of course they have a choice, but it's an uninformed choice, and it's likely that they aren't even aware of the difference in the tables. Their lack of knowledge is exactly why we make money off players like these.

I've played hundreds of thousands of hands at deep/ante tables, and actually at the specific game I play the deep/ante games still exist for the moment, and while they're still around I will continue to play them as my win rate is higher on them. For any site to survive, it's imperative that they protect recreational players to a degree. Again, I fully disagree with the vast majority of the decisions Stars has made in recent months, it's just this one decision that I can understand. Like I said before, I'd rather focus my efforts on fighting the poorer decisions made by Stars, than the ones I understand.

Where do you play at the moment GrimisCool?

People need to give rec players more credit, they aren't all braindead zombie droolers. The same rec players would come back to the deep ante tables constantly, clearly because they enjoyed them and not because they smashed buttons in the lobby and accidentally ended up there.

Also I find it amusing that these tables which made up less than 5% of running tables (educated guess) were apparently some kind of goldmine that all regs were crushing on for 200bb/100. The reality was more like a few skilled big winning regs, then a large pool of breakeven/losing regs and finally a pool of losing recs.

poker ecology
poker ecology
poker ecology
poker ecology

You are:



This is "poker ecology":

Yes these changes will protect them. Yes they are pretty much mindless sheeps. Help yourself, visit your neighboring casino 2/5 game and see yourself.