I think the idea is to let casual fish play in the games that they prefer to play in, not try to manipulate them into playing the games that professionals want them to play in. Labeling the tables by "bb's" gives complete information to everybody and is an unbiased way to inform people about the type of table they are about to open.

btw i predict like this will kill off all nlhe action above 50BB within a year, except for high stakes where there will be some deep tables.

ltr ftw

Yeah I mean everyone's gonna lie and say they want what's best for the fish I'm gonna be honest I play 100bb poker hate shortstackers and want more fish to play in my games. A lot of the regs are like me and most of the shortstackers are the same way with the 20-50bb games. Nothing wrong with looking out for our own best interest but let's put it this way I use to play exclusively on Stars and mostly because of the shortstacker problem (even before FTP raised the min buy-in there were less shortstackers there) play on FTP paid 25k rake there so far this year and I'm not even a high-volume reg. So yeah they're losing money from people who leave for other sites because they can't stand shortstackers while the shortstackers really don't have anywhere else to go now.

w/e balls in their court but I'm gonna be looking out for myself here as is everyone else. Whether it's fair or not a system that makes most of the fish gravitate towards the shortstackers is going to lose Stars out on a ton of rake.

if this happens everyone will flock to FTP and Stars will have to make a change.

This is not the end of the world.

Well I'm not 100% sure what you are saying at this point. If you don't like the overlap, that's a separate issue from what the max buyin should be at the 20BB tables. Your arguments may be valid but Stars had to make some sort of choice for now. We'll see how it goes.

the stars lobby is going to look an even bigger cluster **** with having more tables to choose from. seriously guys just colour code the different table types.

wow, 20% bb ante is sick. great action

looks like i can still shortstack the mid stakes like i usually do everyday

nothing changed. i prolly have to start tables now tho

Exactly that.

People on both sides of the shortstacking fence are going to be worried about these changes because its hard to tell which games will become dominant.

If the 20-50 games fail I will be disappointed but I won't complain because players will have chosen not to play them rather than railroaded towards another game (as FT did). FT shafted a lot of players who paid them a lot of rake over the years when they made 'standard' and 'shallow' tables, for that reason I wont play there again. Pokerstars is presenting players with a fair and balanced choice and for that reason I will continue to give them my business even if the short games fail.

Mmmmmmm ante games! If these go regularly I will definitely send some business Stars' way.

I approve and believe that the 40bb games will look nothing like the 50bb games of the past.

Will be interesting to see how this works out. I'm still not 100% sold on the idea that most fish won't just play at 20-40bb and therefore you will be FORCED to shortstack.

Good to see stars finally did something though.

Actually the more I think abotu it I don't think this will change much of anything.

Stars messed this up - I can't believe it took them this long to come up with such a stupid system, I can't believe they failed so miserably.

Shorties are just going to start a million shallow tables since they can all 24 table never having to play a flop, the shallow tables will be at the top of the lobby too I assume.... so wtf does that change? Nothing. 20-50 becomes standard, 40-100 becomes the new 50bb tables ....and the 100-250bb tables run seldomly.....thats what will happen and it will only take a couple weeks - this really sux. I'm usually in a permenant state of love with stars, but I really don't get anyone who is happy with this. THIS WILL SOLVE NOTHING.

I get rakeback on full tilt - if this goes bad SNE quest is abadoned instantly. Im sure Full tilt could use the extra 150K for their new found need for more lawyers.

So far Jmiller's prediction that Stars making changes will end the incessant debating/whinging is a terrible fail.

Seriously, everybody, these are the changes, you're not gonna change their minds right now. Why not just at least give it a week or two before telling Stars whether or not they ****ed up?

Also, thanks Steve for such a clear and thorough explanation of the changes and how Stars arrived at them.

Why not 100-250BB?

I agree with you SNE2010, I'd rather be a optimist and see the glass half full, rather than half empy. All the major poker sites continue to grow everyday regardless of the legality state of them even in the U.S. It'll take a fairly large sample of time to determine how these changes are for the better or worse or no change at all.

Is it known how low of stakes the 100-250bb games with ante will descend to? Will we have .25/.50 with a .10 ante, .10/25 with a .05 ante?

Speaking on the changes, I'm going to be patient and just reevaluate weeks down the road. I'm undecided as to my opinion and trust that Pokerstars did in fact think this through rather then impulsively listen to less 1% of the player pool.

Yeh well there are some actual new players that really have no idea what they want. Whether they really want to improve their or are just trying to make a quick double up, introducing them to the standard buyin amounts is better for poker overall. If they don't like playing deep or commiting too much money, then I encourage them to move to the shallow stack tables.

I don't think it is a good idea to give new players the idea that 20-50bb stacks are the standard forms of cash game poker. They need to know that 20-50bb stacks are shorter than usual.

20-50bb tables need to be labeled shallow or at least the medium stack tables need to have the label 40-100bb labels taken out to imply "standard" amounts.

I can't see this happening considering Full Tilt did a very similar thing and there are very few shallow games by comparison. In fact, the FT games got better. I would have preferred 35-100 and 20-40 but hey, this is going to be much better! They did say they will review the buy-ins at the end of the year.

I think one thing people forget is that a lot of the fish that buy in for 20-40bb like running up big stacks and playing against bigger stacks, so the short games don't appeal as much to some of them. I'm a little worried about the fish that bought in for 30-40 and where they'll go, but hopefully they'll just buy-in for 40bbs.

My favorite quote:
Thanks stars!

HALLELUJAH!

BOOOM STASRS

I would like to see the shallow tables labelled 'shallow'

the regular tables labelled 'regular'

and the deep ante tables labelled 'deep ante'

I would like to see 20-50bb tables labelled standard.

no need to editorialize table descriptions

clearly stating the buy in amount was a good choice

shallow...

this will ruin plo