It's hardly likely that a 200/400 fish will start blowing their roll at 1/2 if a bunch of high stakes pros won't play fair with them. More likely the fish will start blowing their money on other gambling games. Yeah sites make a lot of money but a healthy high stakes scene would make them hundreds of thousands more a year at low marginal cost.

This is true to some degree also, and i feel this is overlooked a lot by the players.
So all other things being equal the sites should prefer that any non-reg plays at midstakes or lower.

Nick, Baard and I all played online poker professionally before joining PokerStars. Several years ago Baard at I both regularly played the highest stakes games offered on our preferred sites at some point, though those stakes were much lower than those that you're playing now. Baard and Nick spend a significant amount of time dealing with violations of the new rules against sitting out, most notably at high stakes NLHE tables. We are aware of the dynamics here and at some point experienced them ourselves though admittedly to a lesser extent.

Have you reviewed the sitting out rules I linked earlier in this thread? If the players at these games think that there are regular violations of these rules, we'll be happy to work with you to enforce them more actively in the high stakes limit tables. Your help in identifying the violations is appreciated.

?? This and last response really don't show that Stars understand the players here. There's no violations of rules or unethical behaviour at FL, Steve you seem to be of the mind that this is the problem under discussion, not once have any of the guys brought this up! Just trying to find a solution to make the fish feel less used.

And as for tracking software to see when a fish joins a game..

Otherwise great to see you putting the effort in when to be fair it's all very insignifiant rake as far as you're concerned. Though perhaps a regular high stakes scene would make the site more exciting and better marketed as a brand. Scheduled games (especially advertised to all) can only be a win-win for you there.

Multiple players have mentioned scenarios where there are rules violations occurring. For example, if a particular player sits out and then others sit out immediately but remain at their seats, only planning to sit in if that particular player sits back in, it's a violation of our rules on sitting out.

The sit out rules are not ones you'll find at any other poker room that I'm aware of. They're new, and they're designed specifically to counteract the problems like those described in this thread.

So much for the integrity of the game. Why don't you fl pros just man up already and play each other and let the best man win.

Steve I applaud you and your staff for holding your ground.

OP, I understand your pov and you are a great player, you are probably one of the best players in this thread so why don't you just stop taking it easy on your friends on the forum and start crushing them already.

everyone else, instead of wasting your time lobbying to pstars like a bunch of parasites, why don't you use your time and energy on bettering your own game.

I'm a humble live midstakes grinder and never played online past 5/T but I have a suggestion.

At most cardrooms if a game breaks, the remaining players get to move to a different table at the same stakes and get free play till the blinds. I think this would solve the prisoner's dilemma right? If there is no other game or seats open at that stake, the player could get a 'token' for free play for the next time they sit down at those stakes.

Maybe there's something I'm missing and ofc this would need to be implemented by the PS software but I think it might be workable?

wow, what about must move tables.. that would be awesome

Interesting, well then according to this, not only are most of the regulars who aren't in this thread in violation of the rules, the regs in this thread are also in violation. Even the ones who are trying to make it better have been violating the rules within the past week.

hmm, yeah i just had to re-read those rules to refresh my memory. i had loosely followed the hsnl thread in which these rules were developed. my recollection was that they were written to discourage entire tables of people sitting out in the hopes that a weak player sits while only 5 people were there. I couldnt help but be thankful at the time that LHE had not degraded so far.

but yeah it seems that that rule should eliminate the worst of the sit out problem in our games, i.e. if the non-reg is still seated, you need to play until he's booted or you can't sit back in.

self enforcement via emailing stars until everyone is totally aware of what that rule requires seems like a good step.

Wow, this is great news because it solves the problem of sitting out when the non-reg sits out. I actually was aware of those rules from reporting someone who was blatantly violating them and it never dawned on me that we all were breaking them by sitting out when the non-reg sits out.

We all need to be diligent in reporting people and I think that part of the problem will end very quickly. In fact, just typing it into chat for the regs that are unaware should be sufficient in most cases.

@Steve or Poker Stars

Who should we be reporting this to? I know you mentioned reps on Skype but if we want to email, is it the general support area or highstakes area?

Not that I can even play on stars anymore, nor did I ever play past 10/20, but I think the must move tables for these higher games that are running around a non-pro is a decent idea. I think it would also help to bring more non-pros into the game since the must move would most likely have open seats.

There would be some obvious problems though that if this was implicated would have to be addressed. Like players leaving the main game to sit the must move, I think software could come up with something where people wouldnt be able to sit the must move if they just left the main or whatever.

I just think having a game with open seats thats running (wether that be a must move or not) would help feed the higher stakes games because obv a fish isn't gonna wait around on 8-10 person lists, they'll just move on to somewhere else.

highstakes@ via email, but the response time won't be as good. We simply aren't around all the time, but in NLHE and PLO it seems we've been around enough to have the desired impact.

Must move tables don't translate very well to online poker. The ability to multitable causes a lot of problems as well as the others that you mention. We thought this through in quite a bit of detail in response to a suggestion from a Team Pro member a year or so ago.

That doesn't mean an idea similar to must move tables can't work; please by all means keep thinking of ideas.

hmm so there actually are rules inplace to care of the biggest part of the problem...
What will be the consequence for breaking this specific rule?

I mean, if I would f.ex start to not insta-sitout today it would cost me a lot of bb -EV, so we would need some kind of reassurance i feel that this will actually be enforced.

And also, are u saying skype is the best way for us to contact PS support about this issue? If so, we need the contact info.

Hey, just wanted to say im out of the agreement.
I love it in principle, but when you have like 2-3 other tables going, it ends up being too much of a distraction to pay attention to when those 3 rounds are up.

Ive gotten stuck with the big blind about 6 times in the past few days, misunderstanding the sitaution.

I will however keep playing if someone "sits out" and theres a decent chance they'll sit back in.
Also, if their funds are getting low I wont sit out.

If they've left, or already went busto... I gotta play the hot potato game.

Im also very open to the idea of a scheduled regular game to see if it brings attraction.
Even if its filled with like otterkopf, jesuslebtnot, Tpirahna, KPR and valesco.

I will do the same as heisenb0rg

Quoting post 131 for henholland.

Scheduled game sounds like a fantastic idea and really casual-friendly. It would also give players a greater incentive to start new games if they know that casual players will be coming at a certain time and they are not just trading blinds for the longshot that someone sits down.

Can we have a superstarshowdown (this isildur vs some bravehearted challenger thing) for limit ?

Might bring some attention to the fine art of limited holdem and thus new players.

Having one of these vs isi would be the most entertaining spewfest of all time.

Damn, sorry to hear it's not working out. I didn't realize you guys had implemented the change already.

Now that we know it's against the rules to sit out and stay at the table when a non-reg sits out, nobody should be doing that from this point on.

And yeah, I definitely will not be sitting out when a player gets short either. This too would violate Stars sit out rules.

Looking forward to the scheduled games, fingers crossed that it improves the situation.

Yesterday it worked fine twice. Different games were started and proceeded for some hands.

Great, glad it's working for some people.

Here's an updated list of people participating:

asso999
JesusLebtNOT
TPirahna
Umumba
yanekk
henholland
Valesco
Pappe_Ruk
KPR16
Jahwe.rox
G Debora

omg!

If you were to set up scheduled games at the 30/60+ level, I would be in so fast, and wouldn't really care who I was up against. Fantastic idea. Set it up and I'll be in Canada a month later.

I'd play isil himself 2 tables 200/400 or 1 table 500/1k for a bit, probably too low to get railers interested though. Not great huhu but it'd be fun and I've always wanted to play w/ him. Maybe some Germans could get him on 4 tables 1k/2k.

I don't think this would work with any other player. I mean, I doubt there's any LHE player that's well-known enough by Joe Blow100nlGrinder to make them pay attention.