They didn't have hope before or after divisions of playing recreational players. They are now playing "good" regs but that doesn't mean there is a bigger skill disparity in these games. Some of the best regs aren't as good at playing recreational players - my ev vs the regs I've taregeted is something like 0.5% and vs recs ~3%
Many people kicked out were achieving rois of 5%+ with highly exploitative plays that couldn't adapt when playing regs



I don't know much about craft shops but if a new craft maker can join within a few months if they statistically prove they are one of the best craft makers then I guess that's a fine comparison

Dozens of people have been promoted - it's just that all those kicked have failed to make it back (and many have tried)

Watching twitch streams of Spin&Go's the constant chat request is, "Can we see some HUSNG's please?" And the streamer replying, "No action in the lobby. Sorry."

The HUSNG format continues to be really popular! Not just to watch but to play. But the simple request from a recreational player is, "Pokerstars can I please have a lobby system where I reasonably frequently get to play players like me?"

It is no defense to say a rec will always get sat by a reg, whether under sharky or under pre-sharky. That just means both lobby setups are bad for the long term health of the game, the enjoyment of the rec player. Pokerstars needs to provide a lobby where recs get to play rec. Fullstop. Or else they stop playing and regs have a lot to lose from that outcome.

If we must have cartels, I would prefer a world where the cartels beat up on other regs so badly that only the very strong regs survived at each stake so the reg to rec ratio was healthy enough that recs get games against other recs say one game in 3 or 4 (off the top of my head). In that world personally I'd waste a lot of money at $100 HUSNGs but I'm not stupid enough to sit as sharkbait in today's lobby.

One of the cartel problems is that there are too many regs maximum at each level.

I loved this whole post but especially the quoted part.

kk go raise your pitchforks at stars then.

I'm sure they will be happy to respond to your requests and concerns about the lobbies. As I say again- you don't play the format and don't have knowledge of what has gone on for the past years, and just based on gut feeling make things out to be more shady than they are (by using cartels, collusion, cheating in the same way you do when it comes to say multiaccounting collusion in spin and goes).

As mentioned before- beating recs is somewhat of a different skill to battling regs- and the cartel system favours the latter as it encourages reg on reg action. I don't make too many exploitative plays either so I would imagine someone else could crush recs far better than I.

You just don't like the idea that it's very obvious you will never be seated with a rec with a cartel system, and prefer the illusion that you could pre cartels. Perhaps as a casual reg from another game- you would like to have a chance to "bumhunt" hu hypers from time to time vs fish. Well, it was decided that you shouldn't be able to do this in order to reduce the no. of regs in the game via encouraged reg on reg action. Sorry you don't like it.

Talking about twitch chat wanting to see HU hyper action- why not ask some cash players to stream hucash for a few mins? Even if the stream tried to sit ppl on stream, most will sit out lol. At least in husngs action cannot be denied. Don't you see HU is fundamentally different to other forms of poker? Maybe introducing HU tables back in 2006 or w/e on stars was the biggest mistake made.

BTW, Nanonoko does sometimes stream HU play. He mainly streams MTTs and 6-max cash during the 5 minute on the hour MTT break. There are so many people streaming you can pretty much find whatever you want either in a past broadcast or currently streaming.

Today this happened to me. I had no idea about the software they spoke about before today, I am not the only one who received this email, my account has been frozen and I have not been acknowledged for the past 7 hours, but what concerns me most is the fact that, if a false alarm has triggered once and I have been warned, the next time I can be banned for life and forget about my BR.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1335

And primo streams some hu hypers too and so do many others. What is your point?

My point is that Nano is a 6-max cash reg, yet he streams HU cash sometimes and as high as $5000 buy-in. So not everyone sitsouts when table goes headsup at cash. Most 6-max regs don't sitout. Only weak bumhunting regs do that actually (such as most fullring guys).

Sorry, I keep forgetting to quote above which was what my last two posts were a response to.

I am the author of this blog post. I don't want to derail this delightful thread, but I'd be happy to discuss the post further here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...ables-1496225/

Why not make Fulltilt a pure recreational site banning all poker tracking software, etc.. And leave Stars as it is.

What's the name of this software ? Is it OK to have other charts open ? I would welcome clarification on this.

So that all the fish flock to FT and Stars is left with just regs? What a great idea!

It could be done by forcing players to play on Pokerstars if they win too much money on Full Tilt. It might work if it was two way so losers on Pokerstars were allowed back on to Full Tilt.

Then the best fish from FT will be forced to Stars only to get destroyed by regs and then be forced back to FT. The worst regs from Stars will get sent to FT only to destroy the fish and get sent back to Stars. Seems like a pointless system.

Yeah poker definitely needs even more segregation...

Hey Steve,

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...80/index6.html

Anyone at Stars takes cares about this?

Thank you.

I am getting better and rising through the stakes all the time, Whilst having made money along the away I obviously have contribute a lot in rake.

now tell me I will be forced to play a higher standard if I keep winning until I either be best in the world or start losing and I will stop over night.


there are many players like me and stars would not be wise to want to risk losing any of us.

If there was ever going to be a player segregation according to ability, which btw would be an awful idea, then the best way to do it would be something similar to world cup seeding, eg six max sng seeded two strong regs from group A two mediocre players from group B and two fish from group C. this would mean the fish never got totally flustered by five sharks and still stood some chance and the sharks could make money etc.

in reality this like all systems would fail, primarily reason for this failing is the games barely run anyway I mean seriously I struggle to get 25+ games running at a time as it is, which is barely enough and how the hell am I going to get the volume in with that sort of seeding.

didnt follow this thread , but is there a possibility, that hem and pt will be on the list for the prophibited softwares on pokerstars in the near future?

Easy money transfer to FTP then. Regs from stars who decide to play the fish at FTP will have to play with no tracker/huds.

So you get to choose. Nit it up or play poker.

So in a way, regs get spread out.

Any change that limits the unfair and advantage hudtards have over others is progress. So well done stars on that front. I welcome the proposed changes coming in the future. Cheers.

There are some calculator or so softwares out there that even integrate to the tables like a hud, 100 dollars or so per year. Maybe still on the white list. If such a calculator gives the pot odds and the hand range relative, on every street, it is more or less as good as a gto bot. Maybe what the plo bots were and are.

Would improve ones results as it is tough to do that as well in the head. Softwares like flopzilla, used for research, give some idea how accurate these softwares can be and are and can be used during play if integrated.

Not sure how much hem and pt can show during play with all the additional software, if they can give pot odds or even ranges, from hand histories, they can give a lot of stats during play and that could include past hand ranges. So not necessarily a live calculator.

Like pot odds and advice, rankings. I suppose such advice will be banned, but one can see how easily such can be done with some programming skill or by just looking around. Pot odds and advice tables are pretty easy stuffs and can be done in the head and with paper or not tables also, or can be put more or less in memory, resulting in possible ban.

If there is some legal live calculator, one is better to use one, preferably one that integrates and better still if with at least some sort of hand range percentage. Live meaning the moment. Best to check the white list when they have selected their line, that though seems to ban the manual ones also. But there can be other sites where they are still allowed .

I think hand histories should be provided on request and we should be allowed to download and store these ina data base like poker tracker etc, but it should not be allowed as a hud in life play.

Hi Pokerstars Steve,

Since datamining cannot be stopped, is it possible for the sites to at least allow players to change their nicknames easily? This would reset all existing database stats and make them redundant. It would also make targetting players less effective as well. What do you think?

@ PokerStars Steve


Does this mean you are finally going to act against Azn-Ra? The guy has very clearly been botting / using assisted software for over two years now on HUSNGs and you still refuse to act on it even after the whole community has sent in various emails to you over that time.

Does this mean that in order to get things acted upon now we need to take everything public through 2p2 and/or other social media?

Obviously this option isn't +EV for us as poker players either but if you still refuse to act on this what choice do you leave us with?