There has been a lot of interest in the forums lately about ratholing and various forms of table and seat selection. These are two of the three biggest challenges we are currently facing with ring games, alongside the state of heads-up tables in the main lobby. In this post I'll explain where we are on these issues. I trust that player feedback here will be useful in sharpening our plans for the future.

Note: for clarity, even though the technically correct definition of ratholing involves resuming play at the same table having pocketed some chips, we have effectively solved that problem with the 2 hour timer. The term is increasingly being used to describe returning to play at a similar table with a smaller stack, which is what I mean when I use the term in this post.

The ratholing issue, alongside accompanying debates about buy-in ranges, has persisted for years. Multiple different sets of buy-in range changes have not permanently solved the problem.

I'm going to avoid re-opening the debate about whether we have the right goal here. We've committed to taking action against frequent ratholing. The challenge now is to determine how to implement it. More on this later.

Grimming, Bumhunting, Table Starting, table seating scripts, and selective sitting out are also all generating substantial player dissatisfaction. We do have some plans to help deal with these issues somewhat in the short term and to a greater degree in the long term.

We plan to deploy Table Starters more widely later this month after a small bug is fixed. We expect that table starters will help us minimize seating gamesmanship at mid and high stakes tables in the short term, and will create a better seating situation at all stakes in the long run once group mode and the 'play now' button become the standard view for new installs of the client.

To clarify, group mode lists one line in the lobby per table type, with a single 'play now' button. Pushing the button gets you a seat at a reasonably full table if possible, otherwise gets you the choice of a shorthanded table or being put on a waitlist + table starter. There's no table selection, just game type selection.

When new players are joining tables using the 'play now' button, and this button puts players in the table starter list when there are no open seats available, regulars are likely going to want to make use of the tables starters. Multi-tablers may find themselves pleased to be able to start suitable tables without having to play shorthanded. With seating for these tables handled by our software, the opportunities for players to exploit seat selection are minimized.

At highest stakes where such gamesmanship is most common, we will trial Table Starters as the only way to start a new table. We may even remove the ability for players to sit out at tables that are not dealing and even cap the number of non-dealing tables that can be open at a time to end the trend of a lobby full of tables with 1 person setting in on each.

High stakes zoom may also help solve the problems. Before too long, Observeable Zoom pools that deal shorthanded will be deployed at our highest stakes. Don't worry, only hands that are fully complete can be observed. These Zoom pools will be visible in the normal ring games lobby. In the long run, 'Zoom only' may be the future at our biggest games, if players end up happily using the zoom option. Zoom does not allow for seating abuse of any kind.

At the player meetings I tossed out an idea for discussion: What if we removed all opportunity to select your seat or table? To put it another way, what if your only option was 'group mode'?

This is an idea that came from two player posts hidden deep in a regulars thread here on 2+2:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=2297
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=2288

I expected a pretty negative reaction, but heard more positive than expected in an overall mixed review.

Seating scripts and table selection (or bumhunting?) techniques are constantly becoming more refined. This trend is unlikely to reverse. Yes, table and seat selection have long been recognized as important skills for a professional. Players grapple with the choice of maximizing winrate by optimizing weakness of opponent or playing in tougher games with the hope of either improving skill level or triumphing through volume. But as seating skills and software become a bigger part of the equation at lower and lower stakes, we may reach the point where most people just want to get back to playing poker, even at the cost of losing seat and table selection. At some games and (higher) stakes, the majority of the player pool may have already reached that point.

This proposed solution would solve all of the problems being discussed, including ratholing. There are clear benefits.

There are, of course, multiple issues with the details of such a solution. Some might be solved by allowing a limited number of random-destination table changes per period of time, with a manual reseating counting as a table change. The impact on recreational players is also a big question mark. If we ruin the recreational experience in the process of eliminating the jostle to play against the recreationals, we may find that there are no more good seats in the games to compete over. This would be the worst outcome for everyone. We don't yet have a strong assessment of recreational player reaction to this option, though intuitively it seems likely that at least some portion of these players would dislike the loss of choice.

It seems unlikely that we'll head this direction anytime soon, if for no other reason because it's a drastic change and such things are not typically well received until/unless there is significant and widespread dissatisfaction with the status quo. It's definitely worth throwing out there to get comments and ideas, though. I'm interested to hear what you all have to say to the proper presentation of the idea. If much love is shown, we'll look more seriously at this option.

Let's get back to the more likely options for the near future. The obvious, often-suggested solution is to ban seating scripts. This solution has problems in execution and enforceability. If we are not able to find something better, we may be forced to revisit this option, but there are likely to be undesired side effects if we are to enforce such a ban properly.

We're interested to see how things shake out for seating in the coming months after we implement some of the smaller changes mentioned above. Combined, they could have a significant positive impact. If things get worse instead of better, we will likely have to take additional action. I'm happy to hear any ideas you all have to offer.

Besides the more novel idea discussed above, there are two commonly suggested solutions to ratholing. The first is to restrict the number of concurrent tables on which a player can buy in for the minimum or near it. Unfortunately we did some analysis and found that there is a meaningfully sized group of players who are multi-tabling 40-100bb NLHE, buying in for 40bb, but *not* ratholing. We are only wanting to target ratholing, not players who initially buy in for a particular amount. The collateral damage to this group has been deemed to great to proceed with this proposed solution.

The other idea is to simply identify 'ratholing' through some definition and prevent it in some way. I don't think it would be a good idea to eliminate ratholing altogether. It's not uncommon for someone to put their entire balance on the table with a short-buy, double up, leave, and then split it into two equal buy-ins to multi-table. It doesn't really matter if it's the player's last money or 25% of their bankroll, either way, on this scale this is not a behavior most people want to prohibit. It's ratholing on a larger scale that is causing troubles for our games.

The obvious next step is to allow a certain number of ratholes per user per period of time, for example 4 per hour. This would allow some flexibiilty for the 1 or 2 tabler with a short bankroll, but would end the mass multitabling ratholing strategy that is prevalent in NLHE and PLO games today. While imperfect, this is the leading idea thusfar.

Unfortunately it remains significantly flawed. It's more difficult to precisely define a 'rathole' than it might seem. If you change game types slightly, say from 6max to 9max, does this count as a rathole? What if you take $100 off of a $0.50/$1.00 table and use it to buy in to a $1/$2 table? Same amount, half the bbs. Is that a rathole? If not, this opens up loopholes for systematic abuse by players who start off at one stake and rathole their way upwards over time.

There are also potential loopholes for players who are actively playing on fewer than 24 tables at a time, which is particularly frequent at PLO. As an example, let's say I'm sitting on 12 $1/$2 PLO tables with $80 each. I double up at one table. I stand up with my $160, then sit down at an empty $1/$2 table with $160. I've reseated with the same amount -- not a rathole! Now I buy in to an active $1/$2 table with $80 -- fresh money. Now I leave my seat at the otherwise empty table with $160, not having played a hand.

The little scenarios like this add up to make it a nightmare to precisely define the enforcement mechanism.

I'm not giving up, but I'd be happy to have some help if you have some ideas! We do want to take action against ratholing and we do want to do it fairly soon. Even after a approach is generally agreed upon, it takes quite a bit of time to complete formal specs, develop the feature, test it, deploy the server changes, and then deploy the several different clients we maintain for our various licenses.

One final point: If at all possible we'd like to avoid 'manual' solutions for these problems. In general, we just have a *lot* of customers and deal a *lot* of hands... nearing 100 billion as it happens. Any committment to handle enforcement on a case-by-case basis is very inefficient in many ways. Costs are high, human review takes time, and humans do inevitably make errors. An automated solution is nearly mandatory.

This post is intentionally a bit less structured than normal to foster more of a brainstorming environment. I look forward to seeing your opinions and hopefully ideas on these important topics! If we're able to keep the conversation civil and respectful, I expect that will be more likely to yield positive results.

Thanks in advance for your contributions.

I applaud the effort you are putting in, and wish I could play on your site.

Thanks for help solve these issues.

Nice post. I don't fully agree with all the goals of Poker Stars but I am still happy to see the effort to improve the games in terms of fun and fairness.
What about commenting on popular idea of raising minimum buy-in to say 50bb or 60bb as an anti-ratholing measure ?

My problem with that is that some games are so heavily raked (CAP, LHE, low stakes PLO) that the only way to get an edge and to be a winner pre-rb is by table selecting a lot. If you remove that I don't see some of those games surviving.

rgd ratholing: i think 40BBs buy in is fine as long as you do something against ratholing.
In my opinion still teh best option here is to limit teh amount of tables where a player can buyin for 50BBs and play simultaneously to 6 or lower. If he wants to play moar than 6 tables he has to at least buy in for 75BBs?! or even 100BBs on table 7,8,9, etc. This solution will hit not a single recreational player bc none of them is playing moar than 6 tables ever so these recreationals will not even realize that you changed something. In the meanwhile this will get rid of all professional ratholing shortstackers, bc with only 6 tables it is impossible for them to continue there strategy (due to teh loss in rakeback mainly). AND even if they continue to shortstack which is absolutely fine with me, you will solve teh rathole/shortstack issue bc you decrease teh number of them overnight by 75% which would mean 1 or 2 shortstacks at a fullring table compared to 4-8.


rgd removing table selection: if that happens i will stick around and see what happens but it's very likely i'm done with stars. imo tableselection is still a big part of teh game and you should not just eliminate this. for all those people who bitch about it i don't understand why they don't play ZOOM exclusively anyways...

Great point.

Yep

This applies to most all games now a days.

Just look at your average table - you're lucky to find a single really soft spot and that's with table selection readily available! If you grab 6 random seats from the pool of all seated players, it's probably going to be 6 more or less competent grinders. At low to mid stakes Stars rakes from 5 to 20+ bb/100 per player. That's 25-120bb/100 raked off the table at a 6-max game. That's going to send the state of the games from bad to worse. Even when Full Tilt had this available as an option years ago, the most common result is that a table would form and almost immediately break. And that was back when the games were actually decent!

This is a very bad idea unless you're a high stakes player (as the people who suggested this idea are), or operate a poker site and think bringing the average edge as close to 0 as possible is in your best interest.

I agree that removing table selection would be great but only at stakes where rake is reasonable. Say 5/10+ NLHE.

Why not just allow players to buy in for less than the table maximum x number of times per day, at whatever tables they please. Once x is reached, their default buyin at all tables becomes 100BB or whatever. Presumably this system would drive out the 24-tabling pushbots without inconveniencing the recreationals, which appears to be goal?

Why remove the ability to table select? People who don't want to do that can already play zoom. If you remove table selection you might as well make all games zoom since there will be little difference between the two. I also don't see the difficulty in eradicating ratholers. A huge number of ideas have been proposed and many of them would work quite well. Just get it done already.
As things stand I will most likely be leaving stars if the ability to table select is removed. I would rather go through the hassle of playing on multiple sites than be forced to grind tables with 5+ short stacks and no fish for mostly rakeback.

As far as I understand OP, players who like to always buyin short but don't "rathole" are considered ok and Stars doesn't want to hurt them.
I find the whole focusing on ratholing silly and imo it will always lead to dilemmas as in OP as any solution focused on reducing but not eliminating abuse (allowing shortstack play but not too much of it from one account) will lead to increasing level of abuse anyway as people seem to always find ways around such restrictions.
That's why I like raising min buy-in. Not many people would mind 50 or 60bb as much as they do mind 40.

I mean, think about it: nobody wants to eliminate 100bb ratholing. If people move to other table because they don't liek to play with say 200+bb it's considered perfectly ok. When we talk about 40bb though suddently ratholing hate appears.
This shows that ratholing is not really an issue, shortstacking is. What all the elaborate solutions focus on is to give reg players possiblity to abuse rules of the game as long as they are not winning long term (then they become leeches ruining the games).
Fixing the rules (ie raising buyins, introducing new cap level and deep games, w/e) fixes all this stuff at once.

Hey Steve.

In general I like almost all your ideas and the direction you are taking things. I just would also like the min buy-in raised to 65-70bb which I didn't see mentioned as a thing in your post. Is this option even on the table?

That aside, I really look forward to seeing a post about how you guys plan on dealing with the heads up lobbies which are quite a mess (king of the hill possible?)

I have not read a SINGLE good argument against ratholing in this entire discussion over the past months. Most of the people posting just have such a hate against 40bb players that they try to do anything to remove them from their games. But ratholing in itself?

I enjoy playing for 40bbs, I always have. I switched to playing 40bbs way before there was any material out there and made it up as I went. I dont enjoy playing for 20bbs, 100bbs, 60bbs, 75bbs, 80bbs or whatever you throw out there.

The motivation for Pokerstars is NOT to make the games more enjoyable for you. Their sole motivation is increasing rake paid and this is done by giving players less choice in their playing style, i.e. removing the ability to rathole (or tableselect).

My typical day looks like this:
I load up every table I want to play at at NL200 and 400 and play until I have doubled up or increased my stack to a size I don't feel comfortable at and then I stop playing.
This usually takes around 90 to 120 minutes, the perfect length for a session.

I take a nice long break, do something else and return whenever the rathole timer is reset (2 hours from leaving the table) and play for another 90 to 120 minutes.

By doing this I can play maybe 2500 hands a day and I'm fine with that.

By removing the ability to rathole you essentially forbid me to play the way I want and either lose a customer or gain a new 100bb customer that fits more your profile of a high volume grinder.

Thanks to their monopol Pokerstars is betting on the latter since no pokersite rivals them at the moment.

You have to be very careful what you wish for with Pokerstars or it will bite you in the ass.

The games will not magically get better or more enjoyable for you just because you remove 40bb players or ratholers. There was never a time in online poker history where everybody played with 100bbs and everybody was a happy winning player. Poker is a negative sum game and it will remain like that forever unless you remove the rake. In the end the recreational players drive what we play. You can not win at a table full of 40bb professionals and you can not win at a table full of 100bb professionals.

I think we've learned quite clearly over the past three years that only stopping ratholing will stop ratholing. Yes, the smaller the range in buy-in, the less impact ratholing will have on the games. But, as long as there's a buy-in range, there will be an impact.

We have no interest in removing the ability to buy in for 40bb. Wanting everyone to play with deeper stacks is a different desire than not wanting players to rathole. It is true that stopping ratholing will result in deeper stacks on average, so it will please some of the people who want to play with deeper average stacks. But forcing non-ratholing players who want to buy in for 40bb to play deeper just isn't something we're going to do.

I understand that there are a lot of people who prefer playing with 100bb. I happen to be one of them. However, I recognize that this is not because 100bb poker is objectively a perfect amount to play poker with. In fact, it was most likely chosen as the max buy-in on some online poker sites 10 years ago simply because it is a round number and because there was a desire to limit how much could be lost on a single hand so that players didn't go completely broke without paying much rake.

The deeper the stack, the more complex the set of possible decision trees, the more strategic depth there is to the game. But this doesn't stop at 100bb, it's true for 200bb and then 300bb and then 400bb. It's true of 40bb compared to 20bb.

The truth is that several years ago, the maximum was 100bb due to very unsophisticated reasons, and common understanding was that the way to maximize your profit was to buy in for the maximum so that you could extract the maximum value from your good hands. Given the skill level of the average player at that point, maybe this was good advice.

So everyone got used to 100bb stacks. It's what many people are simply used to playing, and it's what we think of when they think of cash game poker. But 100bb is not special in any way other than it's what we're used to playing.

The game has evolved and now perhaps a different stack size is a viable alternative or even optimal. Perhaps it provides a mathematical advantage. Maybe current play is totally horrible and in 3 years we'll discover that a 52bb stack would just crush. I doubt it, but can't rule it out.

The people who are buying in for 40bb at the games now may be doing so because they think it provides the best opportunity to win, much the same reason that many people learned to buy in for 100bb years ago. These players have been building a preference for this stack size, much like 100bb players built a preference for theirs, and much like 20bb players built a preference for 20bb. If you take ratholing out of the equation, it's hard to make an objective case for one over another.

That people are used to a stack size is not a bad reason to offer games for that stack size. It makes sense to serve our customers! However, it doesn't make sense to force one set of customers who are used to 40bb stack sizes to adjust to please another set of customers who are used to 100bb stack sizes. There is no justification for playing favorites here.

We do actually offer a game in which players who want to play for 100bb can do so: deep tables. Some players do indeed enjoy these games. If stack size is most important to you, I suggest you check them out. For most players, it turns out that stack size isn't most important. It's more important that they win. We are not going to stack the rules to line up your preferred opponents and force them to play by your preferred rules. You can pick your pool of opponents or you can pick your stack size (unless you like 21-39 bb!), but you can't force your preferred opponent pool to play your game and neither should we.

I want to point out that the 20bb game is more complex than most 100bb players think. It's not an all-in preflop game all the time. The preflop raises are smaller, so 20bb gets a lot more bets in than you might think. I used to assume that the game was far more strategically shallow than it really is. If you spend some time talking to a top CAP player, you may find you agree. Most of them used to be successful deepstack players who adapted to maximize their winrate.

While today it's not nearly necessary (or some would argue even beneficial!) to convert to CAP to maximize winnings, over time it will always be necessary for a winning player to adapt. Opponents change, playstyles evolve, software changes. A player who is successful one year who remains static in all ways will very likely be far less successful three years later. Not all winning players who work on adapting will always continue to win, but pretty much all winning players who keep winning over a long period of time will have adapted to some degree. This is the nature of poker; it always has been and probably always will be.



We have players who are buying in for 40bb across 24 simultaneous tables but not ratholing at all. They would definitely be affected! It's not just 24 tables, there are plenty in the range of 7 to 23 as well.

One point about the impact of removing table selection:
As long as the 'targeted' players aren't driven off due to disliking the changes, this is a zero sum game. There aren't all of a sudden going to be fewer 'good seats', they will just be distributed more evenly.

Given that your avatar consists mostly of the word bumhunter and that you've been around and putting volume in for years, let's theorize that you are getting a lot of great seats right now. If you were to stop table selecting completely while nothing else changes for anyone, you would probably see a significant drop in your winrate, because those great seats would go to other bumhunters. I could see why this would be greatly concerning and could easily affect your choice of site.

But what if everyone else had to stop table selecting at the same time too? Then the impact would be much less. You'd get an average amount of great seats, fewer than you probably are now. Given your current focus and avatar, I'll suggest that you'd still find some way to get a minor edge on seating even within the new system, possibly by making full use of your allowed table changes. Your winrate would probably go down by some amount, but it's unclear to me as to whether it would go down enough to outweigh the benefits of the additional volume you could put in due to not needing to spend focus/time/thought on table selection. You might find that this also results in better play at the tables, but I wouldn't go so far to make that assumption.

The other thing to consider is that the people who would leave after the implementation of this system would likely be the most severe bumhunters. Is that a bad thing? It's a serious question.

I can state with certainty that all other poker players plus PokerStars would be better off if the #1 absolute worst bumhunter on the site were to leave. If there's a player logging in to wait and only play against a short list of a few really poorly skilled opponents, there's not much argument that anyone is benefitting from this, including PokerStars. It's safe to say this extends beyond the #1 worst bumhunter to some group of the worst bumhunters, down to some threshhold beyond which PokerStars no longer benefits from losing a customer.

I don't know where that threshhold is and have no interest in trying to precisely define it. We don't micromanage our player base that way. However, it's theoretically possible that making this change could result in players leaving the site due to being upset about losing the ability to bumhunt, but only or primarily players who are within that group of worst bumhunters who are above the threshhold. In this case everyone wins except for the extreme bumhunters who left. There are more good seats on average available for the rest of the players who stay as the extreme bumhunters aren't around taking them up. PokerStars doesn't have recreational players coming and getting drained immediately and with maximum efficiency by players who don't otherwise play a hand.

This is highly theoretical, but it does make the point that the scenario of losing table selecting isn't nearly as disastrous as it first seems even for most who table select. I do also think that some regulars would enjoy life more if they were to focus more on playing poker and less on getting the best seat.

Which specific number do you propose for X?

I wouldn't worry too much Jafeeio. I doubt Stars actual intent here is to get rid of professional ratholers. I simply don't believe their claim that they can't develop a reasonable automated method to detect them. The table churn through paired with average stack size already gives you a great metric that would detect the vast majority of them with minimal to no false positives.

More than anything this is probably some misguided (in that nothing positive will come from this thread) attempt at getting back a little bit of the good will they've been all so happy to throw away since they've gotten their monopoly and have [shockingly enough] seen their year over year player figures nose diving.

Of course I do believe that they would insta remove table selecting if they could somehow get public support for it. Fortunately players aren't that silly.

I talked with several players at VIP Club Live: London about why they chose to play their particular games. I spoke mostly with SilverStar and GoldStar players. The majority of ring game players played normal tables instead of Zoom. Their reasons were similar: They didn't think they would be able to improve their game playing Zoom or they didn't think it was as much a game of skill.

For those of you who play tons of hands and have a lot of stats on many of your opponents, it might not be much different. For those who play fewer tables and less often, and especially those who don't use tracking software, there's a huge difference. At Zoom they know little to nothing about their opponents on almost every hand.

Glad to hear it! There are probably more problems than solutions in the OP though. Happy to have your help solving them!


No. I've addressed already in another post.

I don't think it's a good idea to get into that here. I think the ratholing is clearly the more important issue to solve. Once we have a solution documented and spec'd, it'll be time to talk HU lobby.

I suppose anything is possible at this point.

I don't have the knowledge to answer this! Pulling a number out of my backside though, 24 seems a fun place to start. This is the default maximum number of cash tables, so even the 24-tabling recreationals who don't rathole (!) would be able to buy in short at every table. They just wouldn't be able to move to a new table with a shorter stack, which is the stated aim of what you're trying to achieve.

I think PokerStarsSteve make many very good points. I am overly very impressed with his last post and I believe maybe Stars knows what they are doing.
Few comments/questions:

So do you want to eliminate 100bb ratholing as well, or only below max buy-in ratholing ?

Well, my preferred solution to this problem which I posted many times but which doesn't get any support from 2p2 community is introducing new level (say 50bb cap) and deep games instead of standard games now. Chief argument against it is that somehow splitting player pool is bad. Barring that raising minimum buy-in a bit is a compromise between wishes of two groups of players:
-those who want to play short (either always or sometimes)
-those who want to play deep

I think both groups should have some option to play what they like and I am very happy to see you agree. I just don't think eliminating ratholing is the way to go to solve it. Maybe you guys come up with something that works in practice though. I would be happy to see it.

I again agree with every word of that but still thre is "unless it's 21-39" there I think that making it: "unless it's 21-49" is reasonable option to consider.
I am all for preserving options to play shortstack. I was probably one of the most vocal posters defending this in some previous threads.

Again I am happy to see this. I personally don't believe there is any significant mathematical edge in 40bb play vs 100bb (maybe there is some in 20bb vs 100bb). What matters though is not this imaginary edge but preferences of players. There was a reason you split the player pool to 20bb CAP and 40-100bb games maybe the same reason applies these days to split the latter to 50bb CAP and 80bb+ or w/e that might be.

This is another great point. I want to add that in today games a recreational player very rarely gets a chance to play against other recreational players (unless it's ZOOM). This is unfair and disheartening for them. It's no fun playing against all pros all the time and never see big mistakes made vs you. People who just want to start playing are at big disadvantage in today system. This is huge argument for removing table selection and I am all for that.
On the other hand rake is so high in some games that without being really picky you just can't beat them. My dream scenario is getting rid of table selection while reducing rake but I don't think it's gonna happen

Anyway again I am very happy to see your posts in this thread. It seems like you guys know what you are doing.

24 per hour? per day?

I'm thinking that if the number is at 24 or near it, then we're hamstringing those who legitimately want to change tables from time to time or who play two sessions in a day. If the number is too high it leaves opportunity for rampant ratholing. Also, as players typically play fewer concurrent tables at PLO than at NLHE, any number that's sufficiently high for a NLHE multitabler risks too much ratholing leeway for PLO.

I'm not trying to shoot down your idea; it's definitely a reasonable suggestion. We've batted it around a bit and haven't found a number that we think would work, but if folks here come to a consensus I could try to get some data and see how many non-ratholers would be affected by that particular threshhold. Such reports aren't easy or quick unfortunately.

I remember when US players had the option to play on a network that proactively addressed not only software bugs and glitches, and not only outright fraud, but general player satisfaction and community issues like these as well.

The US facing sites these days just hide from their problems and stick their heads in the sand. Way to go DOJ - thanks for "protecting" US citizens by chasing away the best networks and leaving us with criminal insolvent operations that don't pay their players.

I used to play a lot of LHE but the absolutely absurd number of players abusing the software glitches from midstakes all the way down to 1 buck games were incredibly frustrating.

These players are all mediocre regs yet they thrive in these games. They

1. sign up to every waitlist in the hopes of a jesus seat. When the free seat pops up and they dislike the seat they just press reject and join the same waitlist over and over again.

2. start two full ring and two 6max tables (fast/normal) at their stake(s) and will never post blind unless a recreational player joins. The table fills quickly and gives the tablestarter some free hands before sitting out as the big blind comes to them unless the rec player sat to their right.

3. join 3 or 4 handed games to the left of a free seat, sits out and wont post unless a desired player joins to their right.

In my opinion there are very simple solutions to combat this behaviour

1. Quarantine players declining a seat for the table/waitlist for a number of minutes.

2. Make all LHE tables fast and limit the number of tables with 1 player sitting at each stake (at least for 6max/full ring tables).

3. Autoboot players sitting at a table without posting blind nor having played any hands at the table and quaratine them for a number of minutes at that table.

Thats it! Fair and fun games for everyone.