why would I randomly wish to attack chadders? Don't detract from my points please on wanting INDEPENDENT research. Whilst many people attack chadders on these forums as he can be such a douche I am not one of them, I haven't even made 100 posts in my life here! So please when I make valid points do not try and say it is a personal attack on chadders. I know he is douchey but until now it hasn't directly affected me. So now I am pointing biased issues out and also commented on when speaking about pokerstars why does he use the word 'WE' and why in the last few weeks is he trying to remould himself? The act won't last long.

Wathever the end result becomes;

I will be happy if it becomes impossible to extract money with 0 chance of getting hunted
OR
it becomes possible to extract money with 0 chance of getting hunted at the price of spending non stop ****load of time (which cannot be automated or scripted)

A consent like approach is fine with me AS you first have to play and both have to agree

Chicagory, do you play on pokerstars?

I agree with Yay about the promotion, the current one is just not possible at the lower stakes.

I wish pokerstars would do a questionnaire to all hu players and get their views on it, that way they could get a true idea how everyone thinks not just a few on here.

How about this pokerstars? All software is banned, a player registers first for a HUSNG and somebody else if they want to play them presses register also? It really is that simple, like it used to be. You register to play. BAN ALL SOFTWARE, there is no need for it. I generally sit first and whoever joins joins. Sometimes I may be in games and see a particurlaly bad player sat so I will sit that game also.

It is a pokersite, people register first or second. Ban the software and then there is NO problem. And this is the comments of somebody who sits first 90% of the time. If you can't rely on software to seat you then you have no choice but to manually register to find games. Sharkystrator may seem like it increases traffic as people insta join players they have tagged as bad, but when they are sitting in queues or not joining a tag in an hour how good is that?

SO ONCE MORE BAN OUTSIDE SOFTWARE.

as for battlenet I am not an online gamer but basically would it be like entering a HU MTT? Just with less variance? Also in HU MTT the rake is less as you pay it just once.

Guys, what do you think about "rake per time" principle for battlenet system?

I own the site.

No, I cannot play on PokerStars since Black Friday.

I haven't been allowed to since Black Friday, unfortunately. It was my main site almost exclusively prior to that, I miss it.

I agree about the questionnaire, but I think they are doing that.

Steve mentioned reaching out to players to see how they felt about the changes. I assume that is done privately. There was also a PokerStrategy rep at the meetings who posted in his own thread on that community.

Between this forum and PokerStrategy those are two of the three largest heads up sng communities.

As for the promotion, hopefully if they see success with the current levels, they will expand it aggressively. In my opinion, they will likely look at their data, and it's either a profitable promotion that will be ran again (or expanded), or it is not profitable and will not run again. Hopefully it is a profitable promotion and lots of players play over 200 times and Stars then see how it does for a smaller requirement.

Guys, stars is never going to ban a program that merely automates a non-poker related action [e.g. registering for games]. The problem right now is that for a reg, there is a sharky tax; if you dont pay for it, you will be at a clear disadvantage. It has become very popular not just for bumhunters, but because it makes session management so easy. Something this popular is simply not going away.

With that said, the current setup is unfair to recreational players and even regs that dont give a ****, because unless they shell out more money, they will be at a disadvantage. For a program this simple, there is no reason stars shouldnt implement the ability on their own. Even if you hate sharky, you need to stop being blind to public opinion and realize you are in the tiny minority and it simply isnt going anywhere.

Once you accept that premise, it then becomes a question of how the feature should be implemented. You can leave it as it is now with a queue and auto-sit feature for visible lobbies, and if PS implements it directly, lag shouldnt be an issue. Or you could implement a "battlenet" system [which really is a misnomer because people are not matched up based on skill]. I think battlenet promotes more action in the short term because people who are not first in the queue can now play each other, but long term it will stabilize to lower volume than there is now because weaker regs will stop joining the pool if it means they dont even have a chance of making it to the front of the line.

The second option is best for the strongest regs. Many think thats fair, and I would probably agree. The problem is that there are clearly a large amount of regs that dont want that AND are being vocal about it. On the other side of the coin, there are very few people who are against sharky, so why not just implement sharky's abilities as a PS feature? Win-Win for everybody except the top regs, and even they are no worse off than before.

Pokerstars have said that their reasoning behind this proposed change is to make it possible for recs to play other recs. At low stakes this already happens; to make that possible at mid/high stakes I think that if they introduce a battlenet system then it will be a full-on matchmaking system, rather than chadders sensible idea of 'battlenet light' where you can avoid certain players. This system could be good but even small differences in its implementation could have unintended consequenses.

Chadders; how to recs get to play other recs (which is what stars want) under your proposal? I don't see how stars get what they want from this idea. Won't the recs still always end up playing a reg? (who isn't being sat by other regs who have him tagged)

p.s. ty for taking the time to go to meetings, at least players are being consulted by stars

Just because somebody has a motivation to be biased does not weaken their core view. The most relevant views are the most logical ones, not the views that come from people with the least a amount of bias.

I live in England. I then announce England offers a better education than any other countries of the United Kingdom (along with an accompanying argument). A good rebuttal of my argument would not consist of saying that you live in England so you will be biased and that someone without bias should've been asked instead. It may be true that some level of bias exists, but then there should be some clear flaw in my argument which you should be able to highlight, something which you are failing to do here.

You say things like his game is not strong and he is beaten by a lot of regs and only cares about selling videos. These are just flimsy attempts at discrediting him rather than dismantling his incorrect (I think we can infer that is your view point) argument.

On a side note, I really wish they put way more focus on teaching stuff like constructing arguments in schools rather than doing stupid things like religious studies, so few of the general population can actually put forward actual arguments against peoples fundamental points, instead resorting to insults and ad hominem attacks and not even realising why this is not a good way to go about approaching debates.

Separate note, I still think it is outrageous what happened then. I am assuming you played a lot and made decent money? Why on earth would you not move to Canada, or Mexico etc. Or does the site make enough money to justify you staying in USA? Are you secretly cleaning up on these new American only sites? I was going to get a greencard and move to New York just before black Friday, how sickening would it have been if I got to NYC a few months before it happened! I feel for you with black Friday and at least fulltilt players got their cash back....eventually.

What does w. r. t. means?

I like the idea of battlenet with shares. It's almost like nowadays, but w/o sharky tax, and we can play with other regs w/o the fear of starting a massive regwar. I think cap the shares number's are also fine. But it needs to done smart (there are different numbers of regs at different levels).

It would be cool to see (if they'll cap the shares) that who's share-list I'm on. Because if I only have let's say 15 shares, and only 5 other person put me on their list, then I'm ****ed.
They could even name this as FRIENDS or BUDDY list. (this way the recs won't get offended)

Also I think they should value somehow the rematches (not like this promo 250 game is too much).
Increasing the VPPs/games for every 5 game, giving out a "lottery ticket" for every 5-10 game (and you could win like some FPPs (500-1-2K or something like that), sng tickets, tickets for MTTs, something from the VIP store (like T-shirt, or some other ****) ), decreasing rake for every 20 HUs (like 2% decrease, and the bottom would be 20% decrease (if 2% fee, then it would be 1,6% at the end) ).

recs play recs at lower stakes generally, at higher stakes if a rec has the cash does he care who he plays? I believe a lot of the problems with lack of liquidity at higher stakes is down to the world economy. Why does it all have to be about poker? The fact Italian, Spanish and French players have also left pokerstars main site does not help as generally they were not the best of players. generally rec players who play at higher stakes prefer to play a difficult to an easy player. Also quote bluenowhere:

I really wish they put way more focus on teaching stuff like constructing arguments in schools rather than doing stupid things like religious studies,

Religious studies is now more relevant than it has been in a long time. Especially in the UK and many other European countries with the muslim/Christian thing going on. If you like RE or not the fact is many people still go to mosque/pray daily/go to churches etc so RE is a big thing still.

Would you simply not prefer a site where no software is used and you simply click register either first or second when you wish to play? Have battlenet also if they want as they own the site so can implement any changes that they want.

Battlenet system with avoidance will just result in a massive pool of regs eating up the recs as quickly as possible as there will be a massive number of regs compared to recs.

As for Sharky, I only started using it in mid feb, my stats since mid feb are 24780 games, my stats for the whole year prior to that are 28179 games so as you can see, Sharky has helped me play a lot more games so for it to be banned would make life harder for me. However I have seen what it has done to the lobbies and games since then and its destroying it. You used to have a few regs battling it out for the lobby with a few other weaker regs getting in there now and then. Other regs simply wouldnt bother moving up because you were going to get sat by a good reg because back then regs wouldnt want others moving up making it harder for them to manually reg for a lobby with it being busy.

Sharky has removed all fear of being sat by a reg, you still have 1 or 2 regs at each stake who dont care and play anyone but everyone else is happy to sit there and wait their turn.

Prior to sharky you would have about 1-3 bum hunters at each stake, now you have hundreds.

Sharky is a useful tool but its not good for the future of the game.

empty

ONE TIME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's been a little over 2 years since black friday.

Year 1, like many people, I really felt that federal online poker was likely to happen. I didn't think the casinos would refuse to play ball with the other interests to the extent that they have, I figured they would cut them in and take their piece of the pie, not risk no online poker to get the full pie.

By year 2, it was obvious that state by state was becoming the more likely (and lengthy) path. By that time, I was already planning to move, I have a gf enrolled in pre med, it's just not an easy move for us.

American sites are OK, but not secretly cleaning up. After BF I just poured every ounce of energy I have into my website and related stuff. If these countries continue to kill large segments of the poker playing population with terribly anti poker type regulation, I'm going to go down with no regrets about sitting my butt.

+1

I don't think so. If they limit the share/avoidance, so you can only avoid 30% of the winning players, who play at that limit regulalry (so the regs), you'll have more regwar, but you can avoid your friends, or regs (if they also think this way), who you don't wanna play with.

I think nowadays there are around 100 regs at 60s (if you count all regs, even mehh, and ok regs, and bad regs). Some players sit 50-60-70% of them, but only a handful, most of us sit only 5-10-15% of them, and some of the regs don't even sit the bad ones.

If you only capable avoiding 30%, you'll play 70% of them in the long run which is a huge jump.

Most of the regs will start to lose, or become BE, or win a lot less.

You'll probably gonna play half of your games vs regs. If you only lose -1% roi vs the avg of the regs (which isn't awesome, but it means, that you're better than the avg reg at your limit), and win with 4% vs recs, it'll mean that instead of your ~4% roi now, you'll only have (if i calculated it correct) 1,5% roi. Which is a huge difference.

If they wanna battlenet system, they should built in some share-system (capped prob better) at least, and/or lower the fee (maybe to 1,7%, or 1,6% instead of ~2%).

Btw I don't think the system will encourage regwars. It'll discourage accepting rematches, because you may need to regwar in the next random lobby also.

So it'll need a couple of promotions that'll encourage rematching (yeah, the +vpp for more games vs same opponent is OK, but 250 is A LOT, and something like Battle of Planets would be better imo).

Imo without reducing rake, new lobby system will be really bad for us.

Banning registration software will not fix the problems. It would just make things worse, especially for players without the benefit of living close to PokerStars servers.

Pokerstars existed and functioned perfectly fine pre Sharky.

We either need to ban auto reg software or do something to bring in more recs to the games via promotions.

That super skunk in Amsterdam sure is fine, huh bro?

I was the third player rep on the trip. First off, I’m a little disappointed with the promotion. Before the trip I researched the number of reg vs reg games there are currently, and the idea behind the promotion (when I mentioned it at least), was to get regs to start playing more games against each other and earn a bonus by doing so. The idea was that regs would have to play more games against each other than they currently are but then they would receive extra rakeback as a reward. I believe the number of games needed should vary by stake level. 250 games is far too high and made the promotion almost non-existent.

In regards to the lobby system, I don’t really have a direction I’m completely in favor of. I think the unlimited lobby approach like FTP has looks predatory and as Chadders said, make each lobby far less valuable. I think there are definite concerns with a piece of software that you are almost required to purchase to be $60-$200 reg. I definitely have some reservations about the “Battlenet” idea, but I think with the current direction HUSNGs are going and the growing number of regs, we are heading towards this: