Very weird, theres a thread in InternetPoker by a mod who's having the same problem. I've been making usual cashouts no problem. Concerning tho

Hi guys,

i am back at stars see you at the tables

sick bump bro

Cool, what stakes?

Started with $25 this year but i am currently >$500. ran hot and will stick to PLO25 for a while (no zoom).

I only like zoom atm. The convenience and regular action is unmatched.

lol I wish I could say that. nowadays normal tables are closed so everyone who wants play midstakes at stars is forced to play zoom.

tbh It seems nobody winning this zoom game. i mean, it seems the best guys are making 3bb and the vast majority of regs are breakeven.

ok i get , poker is harder nowadays. but at normal tables there was a lot of guys making 8-12bbs at 200plo. and i think the same guys will make like 3-4bb at zoom.

how much good regs make at zoom ? is that low like I imagine or could be bigger ? (pls answer thinking about a normal/good reg who is not a genius )

The funny thing is that people will just look at winrates (EV or actual $ won) over a given sample and say oh the maximum possible winrate is at least x because a certain player is actually "winning" that much. In reality that player being looked at will almost certainly be one who is an outlier who has had significant positive variance on their side, if this occurs in pots that weren't all-in, which are the vast majority of all pots played, their run good will go unnoticed by the metrics most people are using to judge it. There are multiple players at 1/2 - 5/10 who are easily > 500 buyins above or below their actual lifetime expected value if everything were luck neutral.

Zoom is ****ing stupid, it always has been, glad to see people are finally waking up this fact close to a decade after I had said as much. I'm also glad that there are players who always saw thing as they were like urubu.

The fundamental problem with zoom is that the big losers are spread out at a worse ratio than 1:5. This means in high rake environments like 200z when you get a table of all regs everybody dealt into that hand is going to be losing. Another issue is that fish generally play tighter so edges are smaller which makes the fish to reg ratio problem even worse.

Poker is zero sum and pokerstars is like an opponent we have to beat. So when they cap reg tables and force people to zoom you know that zoom is much better for them. You never want to do whats better for your opponent because that means you are losing money. Don't let pokerstars outplay you, play reg tables on multiple sites.

I am going to counter the praise you just gave to urubu with regards to fighting fast forward poker.

Of all the poker sites throughout the years, Pokerstars has been head and shoulders above every other site when it has come to player input. So when Pokerstars came out with their version of the fast forward game created by Full Tilt Poker (Rush), there was a window for players to have a lot of input in how it was run on PS. Like I said, the game had already been created on FTP and was wildly popular. You were NOT going to un-ring the bell of fast forward poker, but you could say how it was run, especially on PS. And lets be accurate, right from the start instead of calling it fast "forward" poker, people were calling it fast "fold" poker. There is no way in hell a fast fold game should be short/regular, it should have been set up as a deep ante game.

I was here back then trying to get Zoom set up as deep ante, but urubu was derailing the thread with the word "no". That is essentially all he said. Maybe his english was a lot worse back then, but urubu derailed the thread with "no Zoom", "no", and "no, no, no". I don't know if I can find the posts from 10 years ago, but I was proposing that regular tables be set up as they currently were, but that this new Zoom game be set up as deep ante. and with ante large enough that if you folded too much in this fast "fold" game you would be making a mistake. And the high enough antes that you needed to play was also a smart way to keep the win rates high. A skilled player would benefit if the other players were folding too much and the skilled player would benefit it people played a lot of hands because players play like crap post-flop.

Any time I see someone complain about Zoom players (even fish) folding too much, I cringe and think back to when I was busting my butt to get the game played with antes large enough to fight for, but urubu was derailing the thread with "no." Any time someone complains about the low win rates at Zoom, I cringe and think about when I was trying to not only get it played with antes, but also played deep so that it would be possible to get a half decent win rate, but urubu was derailing the thread with "no no no." I was being pragmatic and trying to set Zoom up to be a different game and going for the win-win, I was trying to make Zoom so different from regular tables as to make either version be a high win rate game. That was ten years ago or whenever. People forget that stuff we take for granted now was new then. Auto rebuy and auto top up were new-ish, the idea of ante and deep games were new-ish. All of these new features could have been put together into a good Zoom game. Imagine a Zoom game that was deep and ante a-n-d had a forced top up so that every single hand from every single players was played deep stacked. That is what I was working on back then. Urubu was just derailing the thread with "no". Last time I checked how negotiating worked, just saying "no" without offering up alternates doesn't usually work out very well.

Zoom could have been a totally different game than what it is now.

Urubu is not the reason fast fold poker doesn't have antes and nothing you could have said in that thread would have convinced them to make it a deep ante game, I've also been saying it should be an ante game for years. Within the last few years Stars actually removed the deep part of deep ante games because the recs were losing too much and professional players had very solid winrates for the obvious reasons and this is exactly what they didnt want, they want to minimize winrates and funnel players into the zoom pools where it is becoming exceedingly difficult to have a positive winrate. It's an unfortunate fact about 500 and lower games that you simply need fun players to subsidize the rake being taken off of the table to make the game worth playing for many players. One thing that never really gets discussed is that the biggest reason downswings are so much larger in PLO than NLH and happen way more at like 25 - 100 is because of the difference in the rate that rake is being taken at. If you play actual breakeven poker pre-rake at 100PLO for 50K hands, you lose 50 - 65 buyins, at 100NL this would only be something like 24 - 30 buyins.

Been reading the replies to my post about zoom and I agree it is rather depressing. Is there a zoom level, maybe even z500 that the rakes doesn't absolutely kill you? How bad is the rake in zoom vs regular tables? Tbh Seaking's post makes me want to mix in NLHE due to the rake and it's effect on the beatability of the games.

That is some serious dream casting from you about what could or could not have been done in the past. I stated what I was "trying" to do, you stating what "could" be done must make you Nostradomus or something. But even beyond that, my post to you was because you praised urubu and I set that crap straight. He was in a 2+2 thread doing nothing more than derailing the thread. Unlike you, I damn sure am not going to praise someone who derailed a 2+2 thread AND then complain about the game format that he was derailing. That is some funny **** on your part. Furthermore, you are also doing a hilarious job of cherry picking and mixing the different owners of Pokerstars and pretending they all ran the company in the same way. Also, everyone that plays PLO knows it is a rake nightmare, you get no points for adding that into this discussion. Again you are mixing topics. Stay on point bro.

When Zoom was first introduced on Pokerstars, urubu was derailing the 2+2 thread on how it should be setup.

I thought this was only a problem up to PLO100, I even remember one thread where players with most hands on zoom PLO25-50 were losing before rakeback (this was when there was still the VIP program but elite was discontinued..?), so they were making money in zoom with platinumstar and some were supernovas.

Are you guys saying that even zoom PLO200 is hard to have a good winrate? I'm trying out at frespt (high rakecap) and is not going that well but I'm a noob and should probably stick to NL... Also opinions on Runitonce and GG the games seem to have lower rake at smallstakes, but I don't have access to those rooms unfortunatelly.

I really don't remember me derailing the thread just saying ''no'' without arguments, sorry if I did that.

You said something that is wrong. Zoom was not very popular when PS launched. PLO pools was always dead and only started to run often when PS changed the lobby and put the ZOOM pools in the same lobby as regular tables. If zoom was popular like you said, ps wouldn't have to do this. also PS made 25/50+ zoom only and the game barely run for few weeks until PS re-installed normal tables.

ladybruin why you think PS cap 4 tables max ? why they want us playing zoom ?

btw all this talk does not matter, everyone who want plays at PS is force to play zoom. I will be there this week or next grinding , damn it PS.

I never played zoom as a regular. many shots here and there but I don't have a decent opinion on this.

My guess is zoom winrates are 2x smaller than normal tables. the gape is huge .

at 200plo I imagine 5bb is very good already. but maybe regs are making 10bb and don't tell anyone while they are cashing easy money.

When there still was a rakeback (supernova) and maybe the rake/rakecap wasn't lower, the regular table winrates after rakeback at 200 NLH and PLO were like double. The usual better half being 6 bb, instead of 3 bb in zoom, not counting in the most exceptional players that there might be some more these days.

The main difference between PLO and NLH at that level was that not as many top30 (about 200k+ hands) players won at PLO; the numbers at Zoom were like 75% NLH winners, 50% PLO winners after rakeback. The losers were losing like 2-3 bb. NLH had a bit more marginal winners that might lose some at PLO. The better PLO winrates drop to half level after level as they play higher than PLO200 regular tables.

The zoom tables rate to need a higher skill level at PLO(200). There are more regular NLH tables running, and more higher limits running where the better players more likely are, not at (PLO)200z. The PLO and NLH 200 zoom winrates can be the same as bb/100 at that time and the risk of not being a (reasonable) winner at the regular tables of PLO and NLH 200 is/was small.

Look above, I didn't say it was popular on PS instantly at launch, I said it was wildly popular on FTP. But that is just a misunderstanding of words.

Be careful mixing owners of PS and their intentions. PS once again just got sold or is in the process of being sold again. But as I stated, the original owners were head and shoulders above any other poker site in terms of listening to player input. Zoom could have been a very different game than it is today had it not been for your derail. I have the memory of an elephant and I remember just how hard I and others were busting our butts to get it set up deep ante and I remember how you got in the way over and over and over and over and over again.

Next time you don't like a game format, negotiate in good faith instead of just derailing and saying, "no."

It's all in the past, but when SeaKing or anyone else tries to tell the story of the past incorrectly, then I'm going to set that crap straight.

nice info, thanks.

wtf ? what you say is ridiculous. I didn't have any influence at zoom or any decision .


who is buying PS ? do we have any hope of the site getting better for players ? not like was 5 years ago but at least not this terrible place that turned in last couple years. is it possible? any info you got ?

At least be a man about the past. You were either part of the solution OR you were of the problem. You damn sure were not part of the solution.



Purchase news

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/2...tfair-1753561/

How far is everyone in the platinum promo? I’ve tried to grind more and wanted to make a run. Currently at the 17th spot on the board.

only you think i was the problem in this thing. it is bizarre you saying this to me.

Okay, you are not a man. This can be put to rest now, the past is the past. And I don't talk to boys.