hey sparky I know you can't talk about the rewards program thing but can you tell me whether or not I'll get the same return on my ftps after the new program is implemented or not? I wanna continue saving but I'm afraid I might take a loss so I'm contemplating whether or not I should cash them in now.

Are the reward changes coming soon ? It doens't seem worth it to play now if all your progress will be removed anyway.

Are the MTT changes going to be this drastic? I'm hoping so as they're close to it's death on ftp

this is not good, ultimately if this does not lead to player seeding eg good players been pitted against good players and bad against bad, it will eventually.

No Matter what you do, with the system unless you are going to rig the game or alter who players who get rid of or just ban the winning players, losing players will always get beaten.

I dont claim to be the best in the world, I know I am definitely not, But I have always been able to make money from the game.

Now the money I have made from poker is not anything wow, although I always dreamed of one day. However with player seeding which is inevitably coming I will constantly be pitted against the best of my stake level if I am going to win I have to be the best of the best. this means that ultimately the only way to progress beyond even $1.50 games will be to become phenomenal, and to be a long term winning player for a living been very good will not be enough anywhere near enough because you will be put against a table full of other very good players. the only way to get there will to be world class beyond world class.

this is headed in a direction where to regularly grind $15 sngs without going broke one will have to be in the top 100 standard in the world.

basically online poker is going to die live poker will be all that is left. for an income.

I understand that they want to "fix" what is seen as a broken poker economy. This is a good thing. However these changes won't fix anything. For poker to survive it needs to be possible to absolutely crush the lower stakes and move up to high stakes. The dream needs to be possible. At the moment a good player at lower stakes might win 5-6bb/100 but they're paying a lot more in rake. I think FTP would be the perfect place to trial rake free games with winning players charged fees (20% maybe) on cashouts. Have adds in game to help subsidize lost revenue. The problem with poker is that it is a negative sum game so eventually everyone goes broke. Making it closer to a neutral sum game will help extend the longitivity of the game. Just depends on whether Amaya wants to continue for as long as possible or just flog a dead horse for a couple more years, make a tonne of money and then focus on other ventures

My suggestion for this, instead of forcing everyone to always merge to six handed, would be to have a button similar to the "move table" button. I think there are enough people who enjoy short-handed play that you can't quite generalize what people want here.

It could be a button called "move me to full table" and that way the people who do want to play short-handed can continue and any players that have that button checked will be the the first ones to be moved to a fuller table. Maybe 3 out of 4 people at the table will all have the button checked, in which case the merge continues on as planned. This would also help if just one seat becomes available at a table, then the people with the button checked would be the ones who are moved into that seat, and not the ones who enjoy shorthanded.

Good changes/idea overall. I always thought it would be a good idea to take the rush/zoom poker concept (big pools with no game selection) and apply it into the ring games.

*I don't like the 6 table/per stake limitation - They are still ring games and play in the pace of ring games.

I would also suggest to bring back 2/4 and 3/6 limits instead of this one 2.5/5 limit for ring games. First of all It's just too hard for people to jump from 1/2 to 2.5/5 (both psychologically and practically) because it's 2.5x bigger. And now that you offer less tables a player can play at 1/2 it's MUCH harder for anyone to move up. Also if you offer 2/4 and 3/6 then a heavy mid-stakes grinder will have a chance to play 12 tables max (by mixing both stakes) instead of 6 and it's better both for the player/s and for the site because more games will run that way overall and more rake will be generated for you. And don't worry, by adding one more stake your lobby won't be messed (it's seems like it's your main concern nowadays), especially now when there is a pool for each stake.

As for the upcoming changes to the rewards program, In case you haven't made your final decisions yet. -

It has never made any sense to me as to why you always INSISTED to give a worst rewards program offer compared to PokerStars. You are the MUCH SMALLER site (by traffic and player liquidity) and you offer way less attractive rewards program than pokerstars ??? No sense. And now both FullTilt and PokerStars are operating under the same umbrella and still you are offering way less attractive program. And then you wonder why you don't grow (only shrink) since your relaunch and why PokerStars is SOOO much bigger. You could at least equal your upcoming program to their's. How do you want to attract grinders from pokerstars (or from anywhere else) to move (or at least start also playing) to your site when you don't give them any incentive to do so ??? With all the respect to the recreational players, the real engine for the games are still the regulars/grinders. Do you really think/vision a reality where 20-30 tables for a stake (at least for 0.25/0.50+) ran mostly by recreational players ?? It just can't happen, it won't happen. You NEED the multi-tabling grinders. You can't be mean to the grinders because if they go broke/can't grow up you have no business as well. A rewards program is a massive factor in most grinders' poker life/career, and you can't just totally ignore it and put all of your focus and efforts to attract recreational players. In order to grow up your liquidity of players (both recreational and grinders) you MUST be attractive to the grinders, as well. It's a simple fact. Before black friday FullTilt was about 1.5x smaller than pokerstars so a lot of grinders played on both sites, because there was massive traffic on FullTilt. Today it's out of the question for a pokerstars' grinder to move to Fulltilt because your rewards program is bad (and it seems like you will make it even worse for the regulars/grinders) and also because you have 20x-30x less traffic than on PokerStars. You don't have to be mean to the grinders for you to be good to the recreational players. You can just be good for BOTH recreational players and regulars/grinders.

Hey Shyam,

Great post, thank you for explaining your position. These are some really interesting changes and from FTP's point of view, it's smart, creative, and generally going in the right direction.

Have you guys talked about treating HU in a similar fashion to the new 6max changes?

For example, having an HU option where players are randomly matched up, giving everyone a fair chance to be matched with anyone, including fish on fish action.

If the choices are between having no HU system and having an extreme form of it, would you guys be open to the latter?

Call it the FTP Arena. I suggest these conditions:

1. Match Everyone randomly

1. Keep the "Add table button" so those who want to play more tables can

1. Should either player leave, they get a 30 minute, 1 hour, or 2 hour timer before they can sit HU again

I think with just these three conditions, you have a game that is constantly generating

A) Revenue
B) Action
C) no down time. In this extreme form, there really is no table sitting. You're either playing HU or you're not playing at all, and I much prefer to have this than to not play at all


As a result, a nice lobby effect that will be unique to only you guys and no one else is whenever anyone hits the HU button, they will get action, they will almost never get matched up w/someone who times out because he was too lazy to shut down his client.

Note: If you guys are really worried about losing new players because of HU, then market this revenue generating genre as a prestigious arena where gladiators do battle. New players can't play for the first month or unless they express interest in playing in an email

I just moved to Full Tilt and at first glance these changes seem like a step in the right direction (although it will be interesting to see how it pans out).

It's always a shame to see game types and stake limits being removed from a site although from a selfish point of view it should be beneficial to someone like me who only plays micro/low stakes 6max NLHE.

I am a recreational player myself. I have tried out other sites recently and it was extremely frustrating for me to be sitting at an empty table waiting to play and then having it immediately fill up as soon as a bad rec joined (and quickly die again when they left). I also couldn't stand dealing with all of the bs that occurs, e.g. regs playing their button HU when a table breaks and then immediately sitting out. All recreational players just want to play and hopefully have fun for a couple of hours, they don't care who they are sitting with. I currently play rush just so that I can avoid the stress associated with playing regular tables, but having seen these changes I might be more tempted to try out the regular games again now (which should be great news for the regs there if more recs have the same mindset as me!).

If you are a reg that plays full time and can only win by bumhunting then yes, your winrate will decrease. However I think that if the only reason you are able to survive is because you are bumhunting and using super strict table selection then imo you should probably reconsider whether or not poker is a 'career' that you should be pursuing. These changes should be beneficial to the good regs and the recreational players in theory, which imo is a great thing. Someone will always have the rough end of the deal; up to now it was the recreational players and good regs who were willing to start tables that got screwed over. Now it should be the bumhunters/scripters who will be worse off instead of everyone else.

As for the changes to the rewards system, regardless of what they are I think it would be fair if all players are notified via email at least a couple of weeks before they are implemented. Especially if there are any changes that will effectively cause people's account balance to decrease (i.e points reducing in value).

If that's the problem I don't see why you can't keep the heads up tables, but make it more difficult/inconvienent for new players to play on them.

E.g. a new account can't play heads up for the first 3 months. Or maybe he has to send an e-mail expressing his desire to play it and it takes a week to get it.

Like someone said to just drop heads up tables without even TRYING to implement any suggestions is just inexcusable. From a business standpoint I understand it's profitable, but then again eliminating any format where edges are big will be.

'Poker economy' in this sense is an obvious euphemism for site revenue. Player segregation + anonymous tables + banning HUDs would be 'great for the poker economy'.

I understand that the poker landscape is changing and sacrifices will have to be made, but to eliminate formats without warning, without even establishing a dialogue is showing the company doesn't really care about its customers anymore.

Anyone experienced same problem?

that is strange - did you pay rake on every other pot? Pots over Xbb?

Weird - the press release said rake at micro (up to 10nl) was going up and rake at 5/10+ was going up. Will have to ask someone and get back to you on that.

i really like the changes you have made to your ring games. of course bumhunters and seat scripters will come out and complain but i believe this will have a good effect on the games and i like that i dont have to worry about table selection anymore. just make sure people dont constantly sit up when they think their table it too tough, eg. if they stand up on one table they have to stand up on all tables or something similar.

Hey Sparky, thoughts on my suggestion?

+1
BANN Huds, make the VIP System more fish friendly but please dont increase rake at micros...
NL10 is the limit with the biggest rake, increasing rake makes it complete unbeatable

Anytime there has been a change to FTP value players were given a chance to convert at old rate. To be clear, because you seem to like to wildly extrapolate, I'm not saying there is or isn't a change to their value coming just that if there is you should be given a chance to convert at old rate.

I hope what you are suggesting is inevitable will not happen and I wouldn't want to work for a site that does that. I believe in random seating, I do not believe in the site artificially choosing who gets seated with who.

My personal issue with a system like that is it is essentially forced player segregation and you can make a slippery slope argument around that. Strictly my opinion though.

I know they looked at a lot of options for HU games and as Shyam said it's possible HU will come back in some form at some point in the future but they decided to make a bold decision and remove it totally for now. Your suggestion also doesn't stop the issue of HU being a brutally un-enjoyable experience for new players.

@Full Tilt Please consider adding an option to rail high stakes games again?

Just because a new player loses, doesn't make his experience 'brutally un-enjoyable'

FTP needed to do something with HU, completely removing it was not the answer.

Have now withdrawn my roll. GG

There are no high stakes games anymore

I don't recall saying a new player losing makes their experience brutally un-enjoyable, I said playing HU does. Plenty of players play other games lose and enjoy the experience enough to come back and play again, players who play HU are much less likely to ever turn up on the site again.

What is the problem with forced player segregation?

It would be just another mechanic for the site to profit more and make it more difficult for regs to win. Seems like the exact same thing they are already doing with these changes.

Lower win rates are inevitable with these changes, with the only winner being FT (if it actually works like they think it will).