+1000

So everyone learns new strategies, experiments a little. I like it.

I don't usually do 100+ with antes, so something to learn. While everyone keeps commenting that poker had evolved, and wanted the changes - when it comes time for them to evolve WITH the changes, they complain.

The true colors come out, especially when you want to label the tables.

All the pros: more money to be made on new strat theories, the first to adopt wins, jmiller promises to never complain again, easier to find the fish (if what you all say is going to happen, happens), something for everyone.

P.S. - about the overlapping buy ins - they overlap on full tilt too.
PPS - labeling, there MIGHT be a copyright issue on that one (i.e. shallow)

nice nice , kill all shortstackers !

I will be unhappy until stars starts depositing directly into my account on a weekly basis

not the argument at all, but thanks. I'm an aggressively mediocre poker player. I don't like stress. Stress kills. I like fish. I follow them to their preferred game and adapt. This move has been about professionals not wanting to adapt and forcing fish to the pro's preferred game. That seems backwards.
I, shockingly, prefer to have the same amount of reward for less risk. As an advantage gambler, it's what I look for--reward/risk trade-off. My strategy wasn't optimal for playing against either type of player. It was just making the best of the situation that fish prefer.

but this does nothing to shortstackers

I love Stars, but I beleive they managed to make things even worse.

The 20-50bb table is a huge fail imo. They should reduce the max buyin for those tables, make them like 10-35 or something and it would be much better.

So play the new deepstack tables then? You can play looser on those.

Or even play the 40-100 tables.

There's much more options now.

I LOVE YOU POKERSTARS!!!!!!!!!

myturn - yes, they are changing the games. And players will have to adjust. This is not news. Your complaints are a bit silly. If such an overwhelming number of players are in favor of changes somewhat similar to this then you'll just have to deal. Stars is listening to their players. Somebody is always going to be upset by it.

I'm not convinced at all that this will make the games better. I think the 40-100 games could end up being quite similar to the current 50bb buy-in games just as you say. But that's not the end of the world. And your preferred way of playing doesn't mean that Stars should continue to have those games just to make you happy.

Everyone is going to have make an adjustment of some sort with whatever they game they play when it changes like that. It's up to you whether you want to participate in that or not. If it brings in more players while losing only a handful (perhaps you) and makes more of their player base happier than I can't see how it's a bad decision on their part to do something like that.

But they do have to be careful to not cave into further pressure when more players keep whining about how it somehow ended up hurting the games more overall. You will always have people saying that and there will always be losing players relying on that as their excuse among that group.

It appears Stars did a decent job of distinguishing a lot of that stuff in this debate and I'm hopeful they will continue to attempt to make responsible decisions in the future and not necessarily blindly bow to a mob mentality.

on a scale of 1-10 I'd rate these changes an 8 simply because of short tables being 20-50bb rather than 20-40bb. Shortstackers will still get less rakeback since they aren't eating FPP's from 100bb stacks battling each other and, although a lot of fish will still play the short tables, they will be much more dispersed among the table types. I have a feeling the 250bb ante tables will become the new 50bb min tables as far as reg:fish ratio but I honestly think that having 40-100bb as a middle ground rather than 50-100bb as a high ground will make a huge difference.

I don't know why many are so happy after having to wait so long for such marginal improvements. Stars continues to give the greenlight to shortstackers on 20-50bb tables, the labeling is awful, and the timer going to 60 minutes does little with the quantity of tables to 'still' rathole.

Clearly, Stars can do whatever they want, and they exercised that right to make a cop out decision. I am just amazed at some players saying they love the changes when they are so blah. These changes give me no reason to come back.

Well just as No Limit Hold Em took over from Limit Hold Em, and Limit Hold Em is practically invisible now. I realize that 20BB NLHE and 100BB NLHE are the same game techically. However eventually, people will use their various factors in determining what game they are going to play, such as profitability, enjoyability, and avialability. There will be some overlap in regs and fish that chose to play both forms, but with a divided player pool, people will have to eventually follow as to where the availability of games are. Although there always will be a niche type market for "other games," one type of game or structure tends to dominate, and this is how poker has grown.

If there is a 50/50 split in 20BB and 100BB games, then Pokerstars will have successfully appeased both parties. However just looking at how games at uNL and SSNL are formed, is that where fish gravitate too, the games follow. I guess I am just making a prediction that fish will be absolutely flocking to these 20-50BB games, as observed by current 50BB tables compared to regular tables.

I guess we all have a vested interest here whether we rathole or full stack, and hope our form of poker survives. Maybe my preidcition is wrong, but I find it hard to see 100BB poker surviving here at these lower limits especially.

So, tomorrow we will have the choice between :

- 20-50bb fast
- 20-50bb
- 40-100bb fast
- 40-100bb
- 100-250bb, ante, fast
- 100-250bb, ante
- 20-50bb fast, 6 max
- 20-50bb, 6 max
- 40-100bb fast, 6 max
- 40-100bb, 6 max
- 100-250bb, ante, fast, 6 max
- 100-250bb, ante, 6 max
- 35-100bb, fast
- 35-100bb, fast 6 max.

That will be great, we need to have a Harvard diploma to find the right table...

Imo, we need only 2 tables :
- 20-40bb, standard speed (between fast and slow), cap, 6 & 9 max.
- 40-200bb, standard speed, 6 & 9 max.

wrong again. it does 2 huge things:

1 - it stop shortstackers from playnig vs 100bb fullstackers. the guys raising 45s etc.

2 - the rathole timer has been doubled to 60 minutes. people speculated before that this increase would mean very little because there were so many tables available to the shortstackers. now, they will only have the 20-50bb tables to cycle through and there will definitely be less of them than there were of the normal tables previously.

you're spreading myths worse than sarah palin.

Give it more time. Everybody stop whining. Geez. We have no idea how things are going to turn out on Stars.

Holy crap. I just agreed with MT2R.

Call Guinness.

My problem is that this move is a bow to a mob mentality. Stars isn't listening to their players. True preferences are not revealed through panels, surveys, or internet forum discussions. True preferences are revealed through actual decisions on the site. It was clear that more deep players were in the 20-100 game over the 50-100 game. Yet, those players had their choices stripped away. Why? Because they are average joes that are not on 2p2 for hours per day or on the Team PokerStars Pro or whatever. The professional mob won out today. The average player lost choice.

We've seen the guy that buys in for 70BBs flock to the 20-100 game over the 50-100 game. Now, he can no longer reveal that preference. Furthermore, this is highly unlikely to be the vocal player who will complain about these changes on an internet forum, through a survey, or through an email back to PokerStars.

I will continue to push for changes that improve the game. It seems silly to just stop all arguing and not continue to re-evaluate. It was re-evaluation that led me to my current spot. I was all for raising the buyin way above 20BBs. Then, I saw how 50BB games went. I moved back to the 20BB min games, despite being a fullstacker and the presence of shortstackers, because 50BB min games sucked. My guess is 40BB min games will be slightly better, but still a far inferior spot to a 20-100 game (or 30-100 game).

I don't get you? Short handed shortstackers are the one that pay more rake I think. At NL100 I am paying 65$ every 1000 hands and at NL200 I'm paying 105$, could anyone tell me how much they pay as deep?

ok... interesting points

my counter is that is more of limiting choice of fullstackers. I was voluntarily choosing to play against the shorties, and I would raise with 54s almost every time against them

the game that shortstackers play has not changed at all

Um, it is silly to continue to argue, since they haven't even set the tables up yet - and a week or two (heck, rush took a couple months to evolve) will be the tell all.

Dude, give it up - learn some different strats, read a book or somethin.

The rat-holers win again as this changes nothing.

The casual player is afraid to lose 100bb so they will seek out the 20-50 tables in order to PLAY some POKER but not realizing that they are buying in to ROLL DICE according to a push/shove chart utilized by a simple-minded 24-tabling game destroyer just trying to make his $10 an hour.

If there are no jobs available and you do this to feed your family than that's fine and none of my business - but it's not poker - and it ruins poker - and this is not being addressed.

I don't see the problem with point 2.

Open 24 tables, cicle thru all the tables of NL400, then move down to NL200, take a 10 min break and repeat

No way will there be tons of shallow tables. Short stacking is only profitable when played against full stacks. Full Tilt implemented almost the exact same system months ago and the short tables are basically non existent.

Die short stack scum

I don't agree with MyTurn2Raise regarding casual players who like buying in for more than 50BB preferring to do this at 20-100bb tables instead of 50-100bb. He's not putting enough stock in other factors such as seats opening up much more often at 20-100bb tables. Many shortstackers win a few big blinds, wait for their big blind, and then leave the table.

I've thought for a while that the surveying of casual players by Pokerstars was the best way to understand their preferences. I've though of other ways and tend to run into roadblocks. This is what I have now, and first we'll look at players who don't buyin for the default:

For 20-100: Take the number of casual players who buyin for 50BB or more at 20-100 tables and divide that by the number of seats which opened up at 20-100bb tables. Discount this to some extent because 20-100bb tables are the default table. If this number, before discounting, is bigger than the same ratio at 50-100bb, it puts a serious dent into MyTurn2Raise argument, especially the lower the percent of players who buyin for teh default.
Players who buyin for the default should not be totally discounted from the calculations. Discount them somewhat - the discount doesn't have to be the same at 20-100bb as 50-100bb

Hello, I make 50$ hour at NL100