He's been doing this for years and is one of the most successful players doing it. I remember first seeing him in 2009 and I'm sure people have complained about it multiple times.

LOL yes I remember this. It was definitely amazing watching him get up from the softest games ever to go sit on new tables. I always thought it was weird when I looked at top BB/100 winners for a stake and they were players that I had played basically zero ****ing hands with and I couldn't find them playing a lot of HUHU. Desktop775 was another guy that stood out.

There are maybe 20-30 players pulling that scam. So frustrating watching them doing this every single day being top BB/100 winners without Stars doing anything.

FWIW lifeisagame is worst of the worst. Sitting 15 tables seat 1 timing out with a non-raising hand and never ever posting big blind. But there are many others obv.

For Pokerstars Steve: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/18...23/index5.html

also I still dont recieve any reply to my letter.

We grant table caps based on the average time to act during the last month as well as the average number of tables a player played.

If the impression is that players who are only playing a few tables are an issue as well as mass-multi-tablers, the only real solution as we see it is to reduce the time to act you get at the tables.

As stated, we already do look at the average time to act of players who play very slowly. However, this program is specifically to combat players who are playing slowly because they are playing more tables than they can handle.
It is a fair point that we might not be aggressive enough with lowering Table Caps, so I will look into being more harsh with our next set of Table Cap adjustments. However, please keep in mind this will still not help with those who only play one or two tables at a time.

I’ve seen a lot of people complain that waitlists are too big, but I’m not entirely sure what the negative effect of a large waitlist is or what problem capping the number of players on a waiting list would solve. A clearer explanation of the problems people see with large waitlists would be appreciated.

We’ve recently discussed methods of making the seating and table starting mechanics more fair due to concerns like these.

If you think this player is grimming, please either PM me with his screen name or report him to Support@PokerStars.com.

I see multiple reports of specific users in the thread, but note that most of them are not exact userids. I’m happy to ensure we take a look at reports made here if the userid is correct, but suggest that it’s better to submit the names in private.

If you see any abusive behavior, we absolutely want you to report it to us at Support@PokerStars.com. We investigate every report and take blind abuse very seriously.

We are avoiding adding new heads-up tables until we improve our heads-up lobby, hopefully later this year. There are still plenty of players trying to play HU at games/stakes for which dedicated HU tables are offered, so while the HU tables might help, I don’t think they would solve the problem.

We plan to deploy two improvements to the ring games lobby over the next few months. You can check out our initial testing of the first new feature at the $25/$50 and $50/$100 NLHE CAP tables. There is only one non-dealing table of each type there. In the next few months we also plan to remove the ability for players to sit out at non-dealing tables. I expect these changes will greatly improve lobby clarity.

As stated above, we have developed this feature and are already testing it. We expect to roll it out more widely after clients are released with more accurate messaging during table closures.

Could you explain exactly what you think is broken about Table Starters? We see a some complaints about them in the forums, but we haven’t seen a good list of exactly what downsides people see to having them on the site. We also see some players say that they’re pleased with them in general and at some combinations of stakes and game types they are quite frequently used.

Even if some slow players only play a few tables that's no reason at all not to tackle the problem of those who are slow because they are playing too many. Someone playing many tables slowly is much more of a problem than someone paying a few slowly and its easy for you to deal with.

Thank you. i'll try to remain hopeful though it's hard to understand how you are still refering to our impressions rather than refering to analysis of the solid objective data you have.

Can you at least promise to come back with the results of some overall analysis of average time to acts in LHE and giving us some hard facts on how slow the worst players are, how many tables they play and how many of them there are. I dont expect names or even exact numbers but I would hope its time to move past 'impressions'. I expect its just a few and very little action by you is required to make a huge difference.

I doubt the tablecaps ever do something for LHE, since it's monthly averages, and given the low amount of tables at certain times of the day the slow players averages go way up.
Reducing table-time doesn't seem like a good thing either, so I guess we'll just have to live with it.

If there are people who mail on almost a daily basis and don't see any change, it's understandable they feel like something more structural needs to be done.

Default table cap is 24.
People who are slow at LHE play 10-12 tables. And I'm pretty sure, their table cap will never be lowered to this point. So this is a pretty useless feature for LHE.

PS Nick. can you confirm whetehr or not you will be considering LHE specifically.

Otherwise it does seem a pointless discussion.

1. it seizes up the lobby. with so few players willing to start games, the lobby can often have several full tables with large waitlists. a small number of players will sit alone, and there will often be zero games for players to jump into immediately.

eg players/wait

1
1
6 - 4
6 - 11
6 - 7
6 - 6
6 - 9

this is how it should look like, and would be if the cap was 3 players

2
2
3
4
5
5
6 - 3
6 - 1
6 - 2
6 - 3
6 - 3
6 - 2


2. players abuse the waitlist by endlessly rejoining the waitlist when they dont get the jesus seat. if they dont take the seat and then arent allowed to rejoin the list, the seats will open up for anyone willing to play to sit immediately. this will free up the lobby.

no it wouldn't.
take a 10 player waitinglist and see with how many players you'd like to play.
A table of regs doesn't keep running, a table with fish fills up. Capping the waitinglist doesn't make that different.

those 10 players arent contributing anything to the lobby liquity, there will still be the same number tables with capped lists, but those 10 players will have to either get games up, or leave. regs starting games means more reg vs reg huhu, more open seats, and a better playing environment.

Or maniacally watch the lobby for a waitinglistspot to come up.
really?

look at all that reg vs reg action.
the fix for this is capping the number of non-dealing tables, capping the waitinglist doesn't do a thing.
Would you change your behavior if this gets implemented? Would you play hu vs another reg while you wouldn't now?
Do you really think players now go: "I'm not going to play against another reg, because I can be no. 12 on some waitinglist."?

this would be such a waste of time that they would just quit.


capping non-dealing tables would be a good thing. stars have indicated they are looking into this. i hope something comes about.

there will be very few waitlists available. watching the waitlist for an opportunity to join it isnt viable. and while there will probably be a ton of non-playing tables, they wont get enough hands and realize that they will have to start a game to play. it would be even better if stars cap the non-playing tables.

Capping the waitlists is a horrible idea. The blind grimmers like joshbradford and jama would have a field day.

If I don't have enough tables running I constantly keep an eye on the lobby, this is not going to change.
"very few". Most of the time the majority of waitlists are 3 or less players anyway.
Watching the waitlists is surely viable, not to mention scripts to autojoin a waitlist, which isn't illegal right now.

You say "they", while my question was pointed to you.
Would you start playing regs hu? If so, why don't you do it now, if not, why do you expect other players to do so?
Nobody sacrifices EV for nothing.


On another note, while writing my above reply I watched the waitinglist for a bit: is using software to auto-join waitinglists while never actually taking a seat (due to afk I presume) against the rules?

obviously i wouldnt suggest what i suggested if i wasnt willing to start games. part of the reason for my suggestion is i cant start a game when all the table are full. no one will play me, and i have to wait for a rando to sit, usually followed by a ninja.

cap the waitlist at zero, and cap the non-dealing tables to 1 for all i care.

Kudos to you then, you'll be king of the hill when they cap the non-dealing tables.
capping the waitinglist won't change anything, and definitely not something capping non-dealing tables won't fix.

Capping the waitlists would be a disaster. If all the regulars start game-creating, and all the other regs are forced to join crap tables, you'll have loads of regulars doing the jama/joshbradford thing intentionally or not. Which means that everyone will have to start doing it.

if you think that capping the waitlist wont do anything, then why not just do it anyway? no downside with a possible upside.

i dont think it will go this way. its more likely to for a huhu game to start, a rando sits, and the players who cant join a list will ninja the rando. the final seats fill, rinse and repeat.

People don't like change, and pokerstars will never change anything unless it has an upside and is supported by the players.

Most regs will start to use scripts/software to join the waitinglists, which means it'll be nearly impossible for any random player to join a waitinglist, which basically comes down to forcing new players to play shorthanded.

Large waitinglists are not the problem. Players not willing to start games are. An excellent solution is capping the non-dealing tables, which will happen according to PS nick, so just be patient.

Either way, this is a big change, opinions about whether it will help diverge and it's clearly not supported by the majority of players. Let's leave the topic of capping waitlists alone and focus on things that are more supported and important.

This will definitely be a big problem - a lot of those who are sitting alone at empty tables are already buttoning other regulars when they decide join the table.

Simple Software Solution:
If someone times out the full minute from an initial waitlist prompt (ie: they are away from keyboard, get a prompt for a waitlist spot and never respond in any way), remove them from all their waitlists.

Sometimes at the end of a session I forget to leave waitlists and go take a piss, get food, whatever, and when my waitlist spots come up I just end up timing them all out. I'm sure plenty of others do the same.

Looks like king of the hill has been implemented across all high stakes NL/PL/FL 6m/full ring tables. There is no reason why this shouldnt be the case at all stakes.

Excellent! Let me suggest you remove the ability to sit out at a dealing table while playing (posting blind) on others. Otherwise there will be table campers all over just like on Party.