and +1 to this

The thing that makes me hopeful this will work, is that it's not just 24 double ups that this stops, it's actually just 24 ratholes, so if a russian shortie builds his stack up to 62bb's, then he would normally have to quit the table at this point even though he hasn't completely doubled up.

I'm guessing that the 24 stack identities lock in place and apply across all stakes, as otherwise this 'solution' will definitely not work as 24 ratholes per stake per day is too much for sure.

I hope you are still letting players buyin for 100bbs when they leave a table, especially zoom. I assume most of the recreational players don't want to play too deep when they manage to run up a stack. And I know for a fact regs don't want to play 300bbs+ deep with better regs when they are shottaking bigger games.

Yeah, from what I hear, the stack identities cap out at 100bb's, so you will always be able to play 100bb's deep if you want to.

So there can be unlimited rathole at 100bb?

Correct.

I assume most people think this is fine. However I'm still a bit unclear on whether most people don't like ratholing due to:

(i) The ratholer is taking money off the table, and doesn't allow the opponent they stacked to win their money back, this can irritate recreationals and some regulars who feel they have been hit-and-run etc.

OR

(ii) People want to play against stack sizes that are large enough for post-flop play and implied odds, and it's easier to exploit opponents post-flop than it is pre-flop, bigger leaks can be made apparent post-flop etc.

I'm firmly in the second train of thought, I really don't care about someone pocketing money that they have won at the table and not giving me an immediate chance to win that money back. I don't feel like I need to win those specific dollars back off that same opponent to triumphantly get 'even' with them to prove a point or whatever; dollars are dollars and I'm just as happy winning the money back off another player, it makes no difference to me.

That's completely inconsistent. It's not ok to rathole with a certain stack but it is over 100bb?

Regarding actions Stars will take, tbh, the fish won't be affected at regular ring games but at Zoom, imo, they will. So just implement them on regular tables and leave Zoom as it is

Anyway, steve, what about the rest of the report from the player meetings?

Don't be a p*nis. You have to set the threshold somewhere.

100bb's works well for poker, right in the middle of all stack sizes.

That's not a logical answer. Right in the middle of all stack sizes according to whom? Ratholing is ratholing, period. Anyway I won't discuss this any further because at Stars the seem to have made their mind. Maybe if they realize they'll be losing tons of money they'll rollback.

For the time being I'm worried for fish. Like I said, specifically at Zoom tables.

It's a logical answer if people hate ratholing due to (ii) above and not (i). I think most people hate ratholing because it's annoying not to be able to play proper poker.

If all ratholing were banned, and players were forced to buyin for >100BBs, it'd surely just become a cool way of circumventing the maximum buyin.

This.

Circumventing the maximum buy-in to take advantage of fish is unfair. You could get someone playing $100NL tables sitting down with $200 because a fish is on it with a doubled stack, and the rest of the table whom are regulars only have $100.

By "proper poker" you mean mostly mediocre regs who don't know how to adjust to different stack sizes and are defending the only strategy they know how to play?

It's hilarious that you can rathole at 100bb+ because it's "right in the middle of stack sizes" when the real reason is it's the stack size they're most comfortable playing with.

I mean, no more bullsh*t... If Stars decided they wan't to defend 100bb regs, so be it. Just don't use makeup to conceal the real reasons.

ok for regular tables but leave zoom as it is

Suggestion: rather than having 24 identities which expire after 18 hours, have 180 identities that expire after 30 days.

pros: recreationals will never be affected, while pro shortstackers will only be able to rathole an average of 6 times per day.

You have thus eliminated the edge of pro shortstackers who exploit inherent problems with the "table stakes" system, while not affecting recreationals at all. win.

any comments?

by the way, to those who ask why ratholing 100BB is okay: it's not okay. It's just not possible to stop it while still maintaining a 100BB maximum buyin. The problem is that if the current solution allows identities with 200BB then there will be a way to circumvent the 100BB maximum buyin. I fully support abolishing the maximum buyin (a vestige of past days IMO) but if we are to keep the maximum buyin, we can't allow identities of more than 100BB, so ratholing above 100BB cannot be stopped. It's not particularly common anyway, so it doesn't seem like a major problem.

Once again, from what I can see, it is not really about the concept of pocketing won money off of the table. The real issue is there are too many of these shallow stacked people clogging up the tables and making full-ring in particular, a bit of a snooze-fest.

A lot of the full-ring regs LAG it up nowadays when they play vs other full stacked regs and recreationals, just in case you try to say that full-ring is a snooze-fest anyway by definition etc.

If I am wrong about the ratholing issue mainly being a problem because players can't win their money back, then I stand corrected.

Who cares about ratholing, start by lowering the atrocious PLO rake below NL100 then we can start talking about meaningless problems like shortstackers and the colors of the lobby.

Yes, your agenda is obviously way more important than other people's agenda.

No need to be so selfish, PLO is a problem right now with the apparent lack of winners pre-rakeback, but people still play the PLO games on stars so I can see why they don't feel they need to do anything from their point of view.

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.......sigh.

anyway, just wanted to chime in and register how delighted I am with the proposed ratholing solution. has the required complexity to minimise false positives from recreational, whilst very dramatically kerbing the problem presented by 'professional' ratholers.

vwp stars.

No need to be selfish, ratholing is a problem right now with the apparent lack of 100bb stacks @ 40-100bb tables, but people still play 40-100 games on stars so I can see why they don't feel they need to do anything from their point of view.

On a more serious note, if the main problem is that there are just too many shortstackers at your table, don't you think that creating 40bb cap (or 50bb) and raising minbuyin to let's say 80bbs won't solve the problem?

In this case, if a player wants to play shallow stacks, he will play 20bb cap tables. Medium stacks, oh here's 50bb cap tables for you, sir. 100bb poker? Here's 80-100bb table for you. Oh, you want to play deep? Here's 100-250bb with ante. Easy game.

I get that rat-holing is a major change and this is the first time 2p2 has heard of the proposed solution. Might I suggest that these posts are moved to a new thread to discuss this issue by itself?

With regards to the other items discussed at the players meeting could one of the reps/Steve/someone from Stars comment if the subject of antes in STTs/SNGs was discussed? A thread was started by Stars a while ago now in the STT forum and there was near unanimous support that these were the best method of moving the games forward and trying to make them more appealing to recs. However, from the report here it seems that this was not discussed at all...

On the same subject of making the games better for recs, more information on this 'new promotion' for SNGs would be useful. In the report here the rat-holing solution was outlined in lots of detail generating significant discussion, yet all SNG players were told is there will be a 'new promotion' and that's all the info given...

well done pokerstars!!!

+1. You can even get rid of the 100-250bb tables since nobody really plays them anyway, or instead of 80-100bb tables make 80-200bb tables if you really want to offer the deep option as well. That way you have the same number of games offered as right now, but the depth of the games you have options to play is more continuous and more logical.