PG only want more money to move up to him, he does not care about the guys playing the lower stake poker at the sites. All what he has said is to benefit him as it is now, if this would have come a few years back he would probably not be at the level he is now. He simply want to give himself access to the player pool.

The only priority for the sites should be to attract the players who deposit new fresh money, reform the bonus system so it works for the depositors with different bonuses and promotions that make them deposit another $100 each month. The problem with doing this is that the current bonus systems would need to be reformed and this would hurt the grinders and poker pros a lot. If any changes were made we would probably face another sit out strike by the crappy grinders who can't beat the games.

i dont care if thats true or not, its non of my business and you should learn to stop wasting time on such topics, as the outcome true/false wont benefit OR harm ANYONE.

keep the goal (new fish) in mind and stop wasting time, thinking about if PG did this for himself/did not =)

Which of the topics PG has addressed speak to a casual/recreational player?

im not sure if that counts as an argument at all :-/
also i said that i dont care about PG and his intentions behind it as long as the goal is desireable

That's fine. The problem is not with regs table-selecting per se. The problem is that the current system results in the fish seeing that there is always a 15 player wait list on his table or tables. If a bunch of tables full of regs are being created and then immediately broken when they leave and get back in line, the fish who were never at the table never know and don't feel bad.

I'm not sure that tables breaking soon after a fish leaves is a huge problem - I doubt the fish actually checks on his table after he leaves. Sitting out when the fish takes a break and sits out seems just stupid and -EV to me: like berating a fish in the chat box while he is spewing. I don't play in high enough stakes games where I see this happen, but I would think this behavior would be treated like actively chasing away fish (which it is).

He has some good points

Maybe at high stakes. At lower stakes a table full of regulars and due to the rake, everyone loses. Must be nice to have such low rake ;-)

QFT.

Pineapple888 (the person SoLost was replying to), why do you think live pros don't immediately grab their chips and insta-cashout when a fish busts? And it's not like the online fish wouldn't notice this either. When you leave a table, the Stars lobby window pops back up... and often within ten seconds after a fish leaves, the entire table has quit.

Just because someone isn't good at poker doesn't mean they are totally unobservant and oblivious to what's going on, and some of them might even be annoyed at it. I know fish who have complained about it in chat (see the LHE thread "Attn: Stars High Limit Players" if you really are curious who was compaining), and others have reported similar stories too.

I believe Phil's "Must Move" idea is not a global wait list, but closer to live poker. It's exactly like the current lobby/waitlist system except:

- As soon as enough players are available (maybe 4 for 6 max games, but it could be more), that waitlist becomes a game. The new game is a must-move for the original table
- When a player leaves the original table, the oldest player on the must-move is moved to the main game
- The main game/must-move games are considered one game when looking at wait time. This means that if you don't like the main game, you cannot go back to the must-move without waiting 30 minutes or whatever the time normally is online.

I can see a few technical issues that might make this difficult for a site to implement, but the idea seems pretty sound to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8Y9-JlSRXw

this immediately popped to mind

How about giving a higher VPP multiplier to anyone who sits at a table with Mr Galfond? That might generate some action for him.

It is lonely at the top. In poker, being one of the best carries with it the curse that no one wants to play you, especially since the only players well enough rolled to play you got there through shrewd table selection, BRM, etc., very rarely just raw talent, and it stands to reason those who don't care about the above will sit Phil Galfond.

Calling table selection a "soft skill" is a rhetorical flourish by OMG meant to throw us all off the scent -- it is as important if not more than any other poker skill. Young heroes think poker is all about being Isildur, but they look the other way when the Euro goes broke. If you play poker to win money, playing without an edge is failure.

Now, I'm not saying players shouldn't play in -EV games once in a while to improve their skills, and it's not a bad idea imho to have a % of your bankroll set aside for ventures into the abyss of a tough table, where you yourself are the fish. But that's a matter for each individual to decide as part of their long-term goals as a poker player. We are hypocrites if we ridicule someone who is content with grinding their current stake with shrewd table selection, who has no interest in moving up to become famous and annoyed like Phil Galfond.

Cliffs: what else should we expect a player of OMG's caliber to say? Dude wants action and is just too f good. Sucks to be him!

Also, cliffs for Galfond's blog:

How can we rig the rules of internet poker so that the greatest players are given greater EV edges at the expense of weaker players seeking their own EV edges? So what if we who are great got where we are using the very edges we now want to ban!

How about if a tracking site used some algorithm or program to rank every player online, using solid statistics, not just actual money won at the tables?

Now, imagine a poker site then offers HU and 6-max tables that give handicaps to players based on these stats from the (presumably) reputable site. (To make things simpler, let's just stick with HU.) This handicap would rake the better player every pot and give an amount to the weaker player that would theoretically account for the edge of the greater player; iow should these two play infinitely, they would both be breakeven given the handicap rake.

I think weaker players would jump at the chance to play better players with remuneration for their lost edge, and I also think the better players like PG would recoil at the thought of playing at such tables (because great players care about edges, which ffs is why PG wrote this hypocritical blog in the first place!) but I could be wrong.

Phil is one of my favorite players and personalities, but he is missing a major point IMO.

A lot of the issues he is discussing is because there are too many sharks and not enough fish (LDO).

It is more like creating an open debate on which medicine to take instead of addressing the root of the illness to begin with.

The main problem is very little money is flowing up.

The HS regs are sitting around waiting for the occasional fish and then fighting over him.

A lot of those "fish" you are preying on are lower stakes regs taking a shot.

Years ago when you got to where you could beat a stake you moved up, but these days a lot of regs just open more tables at the same limit. You stay in your safe zone against easier competition and make more money.

If you HS regs want to improve the games "upstairs", you need to focus some of your persuasion on making "downstairs" a little more profitable. This would create more soft spots at each limit, allowing more players to gradually move up.

Low stakes players have no influence, high profile players have the influence, you should use it to get the money flowing up and it will inevitably address some of your issues.

Or you could do nothing about the root of the problem, sit around debating temporary solutions to a increasing problem, and keep fighting over that more and more scarce fish you are desperately searching for.

I do agree about the tracking sites.

So if we need to create more fish then we need to protect them from the regs. That's a small improvement we can make

I believe the
- breaks (instead of sitting out)
- global wait lists (no more signing up for specific tables/seats)

would help and do just that. It would also create better liquidity.

However to create a better poker economomy (= lots more players and lots more fish) the sulution is simple: get them a better chance to win and create more winners. When u win u stay when u lose people will everntually quit.

So how do we create more winners in the game and make the game more fun for not so good players?? the answer is get rid of the rake!!!


Today about 30% of players win. What if we could make it so that 50% of players win. This would make more players stay in the game longer. The 20% that used to lose or break even would stay now in the game cuz they would not lose any more.

But what about the poker sites? Well instead of charging rake they should charge a %age of your winnings. This means only winning players pay instead of everybody. Thus making all players that lose than what they pay in rake winners.

This of course will be very bad for the pros and sharks of the game as they will have to carry most of the burden. however they benefit most, so its fair if they pay more. I don't know how much the sites would have to charge off the winners but im guessing its a lot! However it would create such a better poker economy that this ultimately would benefit even the pros as there would be more players they can winn off.

Poker is a game where money is redistributed. Just like in our normal economy. Here we charge tax on income not revenue normally!

So in poker we should do the same, players should get charged if they win and only then. That charge should then be used to pay the site and taxes.

Thereby whatever money is being distributed is taxed. If you lose you will not have the burdon of also paying rake.

This of course is not easy to implement. Rake is a much simpler method. However if we want to improve the poker economy we have to come up with radical improvements.

What do you think about this idea?

The poker sites are cannibalizing online poker by raping lower stakes.

If you don't fix that, every problem you are discussing will only get worse.

I do not agree with the must move idea.

First off must move has been created for 1 player in a live setting where there a very few tables.

Live casinos will only have must move on games that run seldom and have few tables. Online where we play several tables it just does not help. Especially when we have more than 3 tables it would move people around like crazy. I.e. if you get seated you would be moved rather quickly.

Why not move poeple directly into the open spots and keep them there. Thus the global waiting list where the house manages the waiting list by putting people onto tables with the most open seats and if there are enough players to open a new table, start a new table.

So if we would simply only allow people to sign up via a global list than there cannot be bummhunting from a table selection perspective (of course we can still quit tables we dont like). this of course is bad for the regs who chose their soft tables but thats exactly what we a trying to do: protect the fish from exploitation and make the seat slection a little more random.

The sit out problem by regs is another issue we can solve with the break solution. With the break solution we force people to make a decition to either play or not play.

the no rake solutions solves that problem.

The HS pros couldn't care less, when you make +$100k/year on the tables you have enough money to put some aside for the future. When online poker retracts the HS pros will be among the first to exit the market and leave the MS pros to battle it out for the spot as a captain on a sinking ship. PG only want to rake in what he can before he abandon ship and find something else to do with his time and money. As it is he needs as much cash as possible to flow upward to him since it is not worth his time to step down in stakes and battle it out at the MS level. He need the MS pros to accept his proposal and work for him by transferring the money from the deposits at micro stake upwards to him, unless a wide range of players (grinders who put in a lot of volume) raise their voice in this subject nothing will happen and he looses out on what he believes there is left for him.

The HS pros are savvy business men and they probably understand the poker economy much better then the site operators. When they get as desperate as PG shows himself to be something is happening in the environment of the game.

I'll give you all some free advice:

Find a second source of income just to secure yourself if online poker would dry up the next few years. With the state of the world economy you shouldn't rely on new deposits at the same level as it has been the last decade. The liquidity average Joe had at his disposal has never been as high as it has during the last decade and what when liquidity dry up you need to ask yourself if people will put their money into food gas and rent or online gambling.

more like 5% at best...

This post is clear, and very well put. Thank you for posting. I thought similar things when Phil wrote this but you expressed it perfectly. I hope Phil reads this and thinks about it. I don't think there shouldn't be something done with HU but the main problem is really that lower stakes rake is preventing money from flowing up.

ty galfon hopefully the sites see this and start making some changes.. I liked UBs rule where you can only sit at 1 hu cash table at a time.

wow must move games is a great idea

exactly, this solves the problem that some people have with the "must move" games where people would join the must move, insta quit, insta rejoin the top of the waitlist