It depends on whether FTP's non-Rush ring game traffic stays as low as now. E.g. the traffic in FTP's jackpot SnGs is so low that there's no sense in making a SpinWiz version for them (thank goodness!), but I thought that 1) cash NL is generally more popular and there would be more incentive for a coder to write such software, 2) FTP's cash game seating mechanics would be eventually applied at Pokerstars too.

Richas has given a good overview of the capabilities of SpinWiz in his software rule thread posts; what annoys me the most is the sitlist, i.e. 1) the ability of strong regs to hunt weaker ones down and force them to move to a lower stake, which wouldn't happen to some of them if seating were totally random, 2) the higher average softness of opposition (bigger frequency of games vs two non-users) enjoyed by low volume strong regs because too few regs dare add them on the sitlist, 3) the lower average softness of opposition for those who choose to play more tables and tick a lot of regs instead of waiting in the queue.

I understand that this meritocratic approach is considered fair, but it denies the spirit of the 'blind lobby', creating a 'transparent sublobby of regs within a blind lobby', i.e. one doesn't know what recreationals (non-users) he'll play against but has some freedom of choosing which regs he'll target, but can't avoid being targeted if he uses the wizard (he is more or less forced to subscribe to it because otherwise his opposition would be much tougher than random, often consisting of 2 wizard users).

From a poker site's perspective, a meritocratic system of cartels / sitlists results in less rake being generated because it discourages the regs from remaining mediocre and playing at a lot of tables*, in which case they'd both generate games more efficiently and not skin the fish that fast.

* The issue of them timing out too often may be dealt with in more efficient ways than discouraging them from playing at all; e.g. stricter individual table limits can be applied to those whose average acting time is over half the maximum, and an efficient system of hotkeys and table focus management can be developed to lower their time to act. I was talking about some regs who play 'way too few' tables, e.g. get 15 cherry-picked Spins an hour via SpinWiz when they could get 50 games an hour (which they'd be perfectly able to play without timing out) if they were ignoring the queue ('registering manually').

And of course the fact that two players can dramatically increase the frequency of them being sat together, by ticking each other, increases the profitability of creating a collusion ring

Wow I hadn't heard of Spinwiz - how is that not banned!

A lobby with no games at all, just plain blank. How clean would that be? The cleanest! #GoForIt

i am unable to launch fullltilt after downloading the update on windows vista, does anyone know if there is any issue?
I get error message from Windows "fulltilt.exe has stopped working" as soon as i try and launch the client, i have tried complete removal and reinstalling but no success

any clues anyone?

Totally agree, i'm a rec player and i like to see who and what the table is like as i like to play against certain people and certain numbers of players at tables also, this feature won't entice me to play/stay at all , infact i feel like leaving now, i hate this feature. I also loved Razz and mixed games albeit the action was very low on those games lately and i like to rail tables also, now this is all missing, only Rush i have left now but since most sites now offer fast poker i might aswel take ein from FTP and put it on to 888 poker with my other money and play there as i already have money on PS.

yes it is

please don't pretend FTP is doing this bcas its "good for the poker economy"
all they want is a lower winrate/rake ratio by removing the game with the highest winrate

and to the 6max people who thinks their games will be better, i have some bad news for u, people who spend years honing their game don't just quit, they will try to adapt. the HU regs will either move to a different site or transition to 6-max(don't u realise most of the HU regs comes from a 6m background???)

people seem to have this misconception that bumhunters are "bad", i don't think thats the case, i think they are just the people who recognise the opportunity cost of having a low winrate high variance bloodbath with another reg(i mean ffs phil gandalf is like the biggest bumhunter out there). to think that if u ban HU tables the bumhunters will all go work at mcdonalds or something is just absurd, they will still be around making 6 max games suck

if you really want to do something "for the poker economy" then lower ur rake:
1). recs will lose at lower rate-> hence encourages more deposite(according to ur logic)
2). encourages action since the required perceived edge is lower for 2 regs to battle

but ofc we all know u r not going to reduce the rake, but instead u will probs increase it

so to FTP:
don't u ever say~ i just walked away, i will always want avatars

Why was Full Tilt once so AWESOME that made everyone want to play there, and what changed to make so many players leave and not come back even though Full Tilt were bought by the same group who own poker stars.

Obviously BF was one the reasons, but after the same group who own Poker stars bought Full Tilt so money security should not be a excuse as much now.

ode to amaya:

amaya amaya
war on the sharks,
amaya amaya
rake these tards
baning HU is just a start
no more nosebleed, break railbird heart
make a living playing cards?
rake 10bb/100 u won't go far

do you plan to make changes at the rushgames aswell? e.g. restrict to only 2 entries per stakelevel or stop the 3 and 4handed games and force 6handed games?

Right after the changes my thouths were like "May be its the right direction", but after trying it out and more thinking bout it I can say "Congrats to FTP managment! You killed the games and the spirit of the TRUE FULL TILT POKER."
Destroing the best theatre for nosebleed battles ever existed is too much. You transformed the old good flagship of online poker into another "****-room", as we say in russian comunity.
U had the best variety of games/tables in the business, yes since black friday non NLH/PLO games dried out, but I dont see any reason to remove it. From time to time some regs\friends were battling at 2-7 or mixed games! And the best place for those battles WAS FullTilt. Stars suck in terms of table types they offer for different games, the logic of their table grid for non NLH/PLO is degenerated.
Insted of making your VIP program competitive vs euro ****-rooms and PS and ensuring liquidity in your beloved NLH/PLO you killed the cash games lol. Just make it ALL RUSH, since you decided to kill the variety, fast fold poker format is the most fair for all the participants, rec or reg.
I totally understand why Unibet quit MPN and made their poker room not really recs friendly but more reg deterrent, its coz all their profits were made from sports book and casino, and poker room ON the poker network full of regs from other sites actually was bad for Unibet`s income. And I really doubt FTP has main income from casino games => I really dnt understand why you ruining liquidity and your profits as a result.
I bet if you asked the comunity before u made such a drastic changes, we would come up with fair ideas for HU and all other stuff.

@shyam, I really think you should bring back heads up with soft koth(same as stars for 10 20+) but to all stakes, with the lower stake,the more table.
like this youll get more rake cause regs will have to battle and everyone will be happy.

worse case scenario if you really want to boost your income you can make your rake 1$.

HU should be 25/50 and above only at least.

I know one other person had an issue but I think it was slightly different to yours. I can only direct you to support@fulltilt.com and if you send them as much info as you have they will put you in touch with a department that can sort out any bugs you may be experiencing.

Sorry wish I could be more help but the support team are good with these issues and it may take a few emails back and forth but they will get it sorted for you.

Looking at the lobby now and it's a freaking graveyard above .5/1. It's significantly worse than basically any time I've looked at a similar time of day in recent memory.

Don't be stubborn and dig your feet in the sand because you want something to work that isn't. Not saying it's crazy if you give it a few days or weeks to see if it picks up, but when there is just so much less action, it's time to switch back.

Aside from the rake changes you are slipping through here somehow under the guise of 'good for the game' the biggest problem with the lobby right now is there are just so much fewer games to be played and so many peoples preferred game is either not running or just removed entirely. People don't sign in to the site to throw themselves on a list and wait. People sign in to PLAY. When a game they want to play has one person or no people sitting (which is more frequent now since sitting can mean a much longer wait) you just discourage people from signing in and playing at all.

Again, cleaning up the lobby and making things more recreational friendly are good goals to me. Making it harder to find a game and removing game types recreational players enjoy is not a good way to do this.

Let's be honest, they did this because they think they'll make more money out of it (which means it's better for the poker economy, as the profit more from it). If they do, it was well done.

Regs don't matter. This is business.

Just watch Pokerscout. Half the traffic than they had before... i dont think they make more profit out of it

Just been away for a few days, login and literally there are no cash games running for the stakes I play now. I thought the life was slowly coming back to FTP with player numbers etc. For sure streamline and chop some of the old games but the site just looks dead now. Been playing on FTP since the beginning and it's a sad day as I still think the site it superior to many others out there with regards to the software.

Pretty sure that Pokerscout need to adjust their tracking for the new lobby and you will see some changes in the next couple of days in their FTP numbers. Its highly unlikely that you will see a drop off from peak at 1500-1700 to 650 just because of these changes. It is possible that right now they just see "one" table running per stake when scanning and did not count all the different tables per stake. Rush alone should have nearly as much as the peak number suggest

edit: right now it is off peak time and I see more players than the Pokerscout numbers for the current time are suggesting (and thats for NL only I didn`t even check the omaha tables)

Not the first time such a ridiculous statement comes up itt, without any reasoning whatsoever ... Just WHY ????

oh... sorry. i was thinking that they should revert it back like it used to 10 years ago when HU was only for highstakes. it made it exclusive, hence the railbird factor.

at least give the highstakes players room to play at FTP HU nosebleeds.

If you have only one stake group then sure it's probably fine. Personally, I play any full ring running from 100nl - 2knl although it seems you've withdrawn the 2knl game. That still leaves me with 12 different games displayed in the lobby when I'm only interested in 4. Filters are important.

Update on this - I asked one of the developers if he could think of an easy solution to this problem and nothing immediately sprung to mind. Think it might be something that falls through the cracks so to speak as a result of the recent changes. Asked him to update me if he comes up with anything but obviously they are still very busy and this isn't going to be a priority to find a work around.

Sparky,

please give detailed information what the rake will be, esp on the stakes where it will be raised. Would be interesting to see how many bb/100 that comes to, but I'm sure you wont be telling us that, since writing down that number will show just how ridiculous that is.
Nobody will be able to beat those games, the regs can't go up in limits and the recs and fish are broke quicker too.
The sensible thing would be to limit rake on the lower limits to 3-5 bb/100 max.
As it is now, on a NL10 table, you are raking 10 bb out of an allin pot with two 100 bb stacks, dont you see thats ridiculous as it is?
What you should be doing instead, is possibly rake the medium pots slightly more percentage wise, say 7 %, but lower the cap to like 50 cent on NL10, 1.50 on NL25...
If you would at least use the rake income for excessive main stream media advertisements, but I havent seen any of those lately and frankly i dont expect any more. So where will the new players come from? Sure, if you have like 40 % fish and semi-fish like in the old days, 5+ bb/100 can still be beaten, but thats no longer the case.
If you dont pull a giant rabbit out of your sleeve soon, these changes will be driving FTP off a cliff for good.