Fellow Stars LHE players!
Most regs whos been playing cash games above the $.25/.50 level knows that a lot of players are using dubious methods to gain unfair advantages potentially affecting the recreational players gaming experience and most definetely hurting fair playing grinders bottom line.
Sitting alone unwilling to post blind, grimming, sitting out waiting for a certain opponent type/extreme bumhunting is going on all around the clock.
These issues have been up in several threads but I am left with the impression that Stars reps are unaware of fundamental differences between playing for bets and playing for stacks. Others could explain this more accurate than me but here is my take:
While its great to have position on a bad player in NL/PL games its not THAT important when your playing for stacks but in LHE a bad player often play decent in position but very exploitable oop. Position on a not very good player is just much more important in LHE.
Also, I believe Stars reps think these issues occur infrequently at low stakes which certainly isn't the case for LHE where grimmers roam all the way down to $ .5/1 stakes every day - more than indicating that being a fake table starter/grimmer is highly profitable in terms of BB/100.
PS Steve hinted in this
post that solutions must be software based as it requires great resources to investigate/infract T/C violators that occurs all the time. I think software updates affecting LHE only should be made.
What can be done to improve overall quality of our games? By overall quality Im thinking of making the lobby look less sketchy and removing the advantages these T/C violators have. Lets discuss it! I have a few suggestions.
Issue: Tables with one player sitting who basically never plays ring, sometimes at the exception that a very bad player joins to their right/general grimming/playing until table fills for free hands.
I think this is what hurts LHE the most. If you've just made a $200 deposit and browsing the ring game lobby you'll see action at almost every open low stakes PLO/NLHE table and when you open the LHE section there are approx. 10-12 tables of 6max/full ring tables at $3/6 at peak times with one player sitting. Doesn't that look extremely sketchy?
Possible solution: Stars wrote recently in a newsletter that they will implement KoTH at ring games which is just awesome news for cleaning the lobby.
On top of that I think they have to quarantine 'table starters' not posting big blind for maybe 10 minutes and of course autoboot them from the table. Booting/quarantining players who joins a running game and not posting their first big blind should be done as well.
Randomize which seat gets the button at fresh tables. As of now, I think seat 1 always gets button at new tables. Can anyone confirm this?
Issue: Freerolling waitlists in hopes of a jesus seat.
More and more players are using tablescan programs to sign up for every waitlist available declining almost all of the seats offered just to sign up for the exact same waitlist the very next second.
Possible solution: Quarantining players for signing up to that waitlist for maybe 10 minutes. Booting players for not paying their very first blind should be mandatory.
Should some of these changes prevail it arguably opens a new issue, seat scripters. I am not really sure what to do about that but I'm hoping PokerStars will resolve that problem eventually and from my point of view it can't get worse than it is right now.
At the very least these issues needs discussion!
tl;dr cliffs
- Stars should make software changes applying to LHE games only as the games differs from NL/PL games in ways some players abuse.
- KOtH should be implemented (is already underway as I've understand it.)
- Players should be quarantined for rejecting a seat offer from a waitlist
- Players should be removed and quarantined if refusing to post 1st big blind instantly after seating
- Randomize who is dealt the button at fresh starting tables.