Looks like PokerStars showed some godwill towards HUSNG and TLB grinders. Thats obvs great.

Hopefully they will also look into PLO community and the health of PLO cash games and PLO Zoom. Not only look at the traffic, and short term growth in one game format replacing another, but hopefully make more steps to make the games more healty for everyones long term benefit.

Ok, let's give this a try:

Personally, I do see a relationship between health and traffic in poker games. I don't think the winrate/popularity dynamic for casino games is relevant. I believe a healthy poker game requires a critical mass of satisfied regulars to keep running/growing. If the % of winning regulars gets too low, I believe it will result in traffic declining over time.

What is an appropriate % of winners or an adequate winrate is largely defined by the regulars. If they aren't satisfied, they will switch formats or move down.

It's very frustrating to try and address these properly as I can't go into the numbers I've seen and any opinion based on them will always be subjective. If you go back and read what queries I asked to run, and that the results of those queries made me think the games are healthy should be encouraging. I was also allowed to post that Zoom is growing in popularity.

Thus I believe there remains a critical mass of zoom PLO50 regulars who are satisfied enough to keep the games running and even growing, which to me says that the game is healthy.

Whether the situation is "fair" or "just" or optimal for the future of the ecology is quite a different question. You can also argue that this critical mass should not be satisfied under the current conditions, but that's up to them to decide.

I'll email Steve and see if he can address the issues you mentioned

Can you clarify this? Who suggested taking the WCOOP ticket away from SNEs in May, and why?

Are you asking if player reps suggested removing the wcoop ME ticket? Of course not.

Robbin hooding was on the table which would have been bad enough but at least recs would have gotten something in return.
Not sure who brought up the idea but kinda sure it was Stars/Amaya.

Amaya concluded it was better to pocket it all instead of giving it to the recs.

Why would they give it to the recs?

Stars is not a company with limited cash flow. The promotions they run are intended to bring a profit to the company long term. The decision to run them will always be based on whether or not it's a profitable strategy. In no way will they ever consider having extra money from cuts in other areas as a factor in whether to pump money into recreational players. It's like their message from the thread on the new rake increases. "These increases will help Stars attract new players." If you believe that then you just don't understand the way their business is run. Any money cut from high stakes players will go to Amaya. You don't need to see the new changes to understand that. It's just the way money flows.

Well, allegedly that's what they suggested at the may meeting.
Guess "We are going to take 4% off your SNE value and give it to players with lower VIP tiers" sounds better than
"We are going to take 4% off your SNE value so our shortsighted, clueless investors are happy for the moment".

Yea, as I wrote in the May report, cutting the WCOOP ME ticket - or any cut to top-tier VIPs for that matter - was sold on the premise that they could then afford more promotions to recreationals that would make the games softer.

It should be pretty obv that this is not the whole story, but not much we can do about it except take our play elsewhere

After Stars implemented their new rake system, where the rake heads up was upped, it seems like starting normal 6max tables has become a lot harder.

Very few regs are willing to play HU vs someone decent at those stakes, and very understandably so because of the high rake. This causes the 6max tbls at those stakes, only to start when a recreational player joins. And this happends at a time of the year, where regs battle more than usual(SNE chase..) I play mostly 400 and 600, and can imagine it being even worse at lower stakes.

I think Stars should lower the rake or up the rewards at HU play on 6max tbls, to get more tables running. They could have lower rake for the first 60 hands or smth, just to make tablestarting more lucrativ and get more action at the non-zoom tables.

Is this something PokerStars could consider Steve?

Are we going to be privileged enough to see a report from PokerStars?

I was a supporter of these meetings until quite recently but, even notwithstanding the recent non-communicated "announcements", I don't really see a reason to continue if they again take 3 weeks to sign off reps reports and can't be bothered to provide their point of view either.

I emailed Steve a couple days ago asking him to reply to the questions raised in this thread. Also asked if he was planning on posting a report of his own.

No reply yet

fwiw, I think it's pretty clear raising HU rake at 6max tables is designed to "nudge" players towards Zoom.

Oh screw him at this point.

Also for PLOzoom, we know the wr are lower, but also the VIP RB rewards make up for a lot of the profits right? So if the regs are satisfied for now, what about the recs who are playing and getting raped fast, they don't have the VIP RB like regs do, so it's inherently unfair for them. What if they eventually be like F this and just quit this game because they aren't being rewarded enough for playing.

Also........why aren't winrates relevent. If there was a casino game in which 1% of players won 1$ and 99% lost 10$ every round, you would analyse it in that context, literally no one would play it, because it does matter how much people can win at the end of the day.

At this point what do you think is the motivation for such a delay in response. This is not the first time either.

Well, three options:

1) he's pissed at me for some reason
2) he's very busy or on vacation for xmas, etc
3) Stars have made a decision not to discuss the meeting

take your pick

4] all of the above

I never said winrates aren't relevant, the satisfied regulars I alluded to obviously need to have at least an expectation of a minimum winrate of xbb/100 on average. Their "presumed" EV has to satisfy them, if you will. The longer they play, the more realistic their expectations become.

One thing I should have added to the report:

I was asked to remove Stars' answer to my question on how they determine the health of any given game, but also didn't say how I felt about it. The answer didn't satisfy me, and I urge any future reps to pursue the topic.

Do you think they show you partial or possible bias data?

No, my dissatisfaction wasn't due to the data I was shown. Can't say more unfortunately

GGRJ,

Nice job with the meetings/thread, I think you did well in a tricky situation where you have very little power.

Also, thanks to Andreas for linking the thread in HSNL, otherwise I wouldn't see it.

What I'd like to see from Stars as a high stakes regular:

1. A switch to all zoom tables to promote game integrity, I don't think it's fun or fair to make winning poker dependent on who is best at getting the right seat, especially when Zoom has made it so we don't have to.

2. Lower $10/$20 through nosebleeds rake. I don't really understand why Stars even charges rake at big stakes because huge stakes games are effectively free advertising for Stars' business. By increasing rake so much they just decrease the frequency of these games running (with the exception of $2/400 nl/pl or $1/$2k limit where rake is negligible relative to winrates, unfortunately no one has the money to go blasting at stakes this big to avoid rake anymore!).

3. This is a pretty revolutionary proposal, so I'm going to take my time to explain why it's good for both Stars and for regulars.

It's totally nuts for Stars not to incentivize table starting. Online high stakes poker has gotten to the point where everybody has a pretty good idea how strong each player is (for example, we all agree on the #1-#10 rankings in order without a ton of uncertainty in PLO), and given we're by and large rational, the weaker regs aren't going to pay a bunch of rake to Stars to start zoom pools where they're -EV to begin with until a recreational player sits. The result is that the zoom pool lies fallow with a couple of boss regs sitting with no intention to play each other, until a recreational player sits. But the recreational player is much more likely to sit in if the pool is already running and they don't have to wait to get action. The result is a prisoner's dilemma where all the high stakes regs probably benefit from playing in immediately -EV zoom pools with all regs to get a later +EV zoom pool started, but each individual reg aside from the top #1-2 are losing substantially until the pool includes a few recreational entries. Most players already have to sweat high rake and variance, and so breaking out of prisoner's dilemmas doesn't seem to get done.

Stars needs to get the ball rolling here by reversing these incentives. Zoom ecology works like this: the bigger the pool is, the softer the games are. A corollary of this is that Stars should rake bigger pools more aggressively and rake smaller pools less aggressively. Stars should create an action generating incentive structure by paying regulars to play at the smallest pool sizes to break the prisoner's dilemma, and then scale up rake gradually as the player pool increases, capping it at some reasonable threshold. My (rough) recommendations: at 3-6 handed, pay each zoom player .5bb/100, at 7-10 handed make the pool rake free, at 11-14 players rake it half of normal, and at 15+ players rake it as it now stands. Note: I intend these numbers to be after VIP program incentives, I don't think Stars should pay players .5bb/100 AND give them VPPs.

The whole point of this structure is to foster big player pools by creating a gradual incentive structure to counterbalance the prisoner's dilemma faced by regs trying to start zoom pools.

Note also that this prisoner's dilemma does NOT exist (at least to the same extent) for Xmax tables because rational regs will never fill the last seat with a reg, a seat will be left open for a weaker player. Being one of the regs battling for the opportunity to play with the weaker player is an incentive to play, in zoom this incentive never exists because by definition a zoom pool cannot fill.

Another strategy is simply sitting out on tables and waiting to a fish sits, then quickly filling the table (we see both strategies in the NLHE lobby, for example). I think table starting should be incentivized less aggressively in ring games than in zoom, but still much more than it is now to discourage this behaviour.

4. The zoom rake in general is very high at all stakes. At an Xmax table (assuming rational regs who won't fill the table and battle) there's a very defined ratio of recs to pros, typically at a 6max table it's one rec and five pros, or 1:5. At a 6max table, it just isn't possible to play at lower ratios than 1:5, somebody has to fill the seat! In zoom on the other hand, you can get arbitrarily high ratios, 1:10 or 1:20 are fairly common at the $25/$50 stakes I mainly play. Zoom rake should be lower to offset this structural issue, that is, unless Stars has made an explicit decision to punish regs by raking the games more aggressively and diverting traffic to zoom by eliminating the normal tables (which they have at $25/$50 PLO and $50/$100 NLHE).

+1, very happy that you join the discussion Ben.

I personally think PokerStars should ban scribts seating scribts, and they can easily do that (I dont buy they cant detect it easily - and even if they can not do it 100% right now, banning the scribts by updating the TOC with the possibilty that people get heavily punished ...people wouldnt take the chance on being caught imo. Think there would be wast improvements overnight and players would also self regulate this trough reporting seat scribtors to PokerStars). First steps against seat scribts just happened (I definitive notice a change where there is no R (reservation) wars anymore), and there is a scheduled meeting in January in Toronto about the subject. So to me it looks PokerStars finally started to take this subject serious, and Im thankfull for that.

An all zoom solution doesnt cater for those regs that like to play normal tables, including xmas players. I could name a few 1k and 2k spots that rarely or never play Zoom (and therefore neither play 5k games) but think its bad sports outing sn in this thread. I actually believe 5k and 10k ante tables have to come back for reasons others (d2themfi and lefort I think it was) argued before, namely regs liking to battle those, create action that is gone right now (5k ante and basically all 10k action) etc.

I 100% agree about punishing tablestarting is crazy, and I dont think that was the intention of higher HU rake. Just a side effect PokerStars could easily solve. Really hope Steve chimes in on this subject, both tablestarting normal tables HU and incentives for starting Zoom.

This is one suggested solution from this thread about tablestarting on 6m tables, that there cant be much downside in.

I do agree on making zoom changes (more rewards or lower rake, doing it in smaller pools might be a v smart idea), but Im strongly against making everything all Zoom instead of taking the fight to 'get it right'.

Maybe at least incentiving starting Zoom is something PokerStars will agree too. Right now there is little incentive for the second best regs doing it.

On a sidenote having normal tables create some action, namely fighting over those, while Zoom there is no incentive to do so, can just 'freeroll' the system. There are also some reg only tables. Was 10 2k tables going this morning for example.

To make a personal example (and there is people starting way more tables then me for sure), Ive played 24179 (~6k HU, rest 3-4 handed) hands on normal tables 2-4 handed (not including Zoom) since 1 August without xmas player present (then the scribtors would be around... tables usually fill before I can play a hand if there is a xmas player seating), I doubt that volume would happen if I and the other regs didnt have an incentive to play these hands. Incentive being a secured seat if the games fill and some normal 6 max ante action even without a spot present. Most of my volume in this example is on 2k normal and ante tables.

In PLO the tables on 600--> 2k on peak hours will fill as fast as they get 4handed in my experience, so its really bad for everyone that there is no incentive getting them started.

Edit:

Nothing personal, but Ive to point out that your arguably the reg that benefit the most under this solution, definitive top3. I think Im neutral / benefiting some from such solution since I dont seat scribt (thats the core problem I think we should get changed, not the whole structure). While on average its bad for all players with all zoom compared to normal tables / mix, since Zoom taxed so heavily by the PokerSite compared to winrates thats possible. So long term I think its bad for everyone including you to jump into that solution.

Fair point, reading their report would actually be supernice, hopefully this is just a glitch and it will be posted soon along with PokerStars reps chiming into this thread.

Blopp,

"While on average its bad for all players with all zoom compared to normal tables / mix, since Zoom taxed so heavily by the PokerSite compared to winrates thats possible. So long term I think its bad for everyone including you to jump into that solution."

I agree with you given the way Stars is currently raking the zoom games. But I addressed this specific issue later in my list,

"4. The zoom rake in general is very high at all stakes. At an Xmax table (assuming rational regs who won't fill the table and battle) there's a very defined ratio of recs to pros, typically at a 6max table it's one rec and five pros, or 1:5. At a 6max table, it just isn't possible to play at lower ratios than 1:5, somebody has to fill the seat! In zoom on the other hand, you can get arbitrarily high ratios, 1:10 or 1:20 are fairly common at the $25/$50 stakes I mainly play. Zoom rake should be lower to offset this structural issue, that is, unless Stars has made an explicit decision to punish regs by raking the games more aggressively and diverting traffic to zoom by eliminating the normal tables (which they have at $25/$50 PLO and $50/$100 NLHE)."

I think whether regular tables or zoom tables are best for poker is a question independent of the rake question. On the other hand, the fact that Stars rakes zoom so heavily shows they either don't understand how much lower winrates are at zoom or they're specifically trying to raise the rake without doing so explicitly.

So we could also say get rid of Zoom as a solution (unless rake are changed there). That will be better for all players, esp if seat scribtors are stopped...

Or keep both table types but also higher rewards / lower rake for Zoom specific (my prefered solution if we cant get rid of Zoom).

Much appreciated, sir

I understand your desire for a Zoom-only lobby. It's a convenient and fair format of poker that I personally enjoy. That said, there's clearly too much demand for the preservation of regular tables from regs and recs alike for me to support such a drastic measure at this time. I'm sure you're familiar with the HSPLO poll where the overwhelming majority demanded the return of regular tables for PLO5k and 10k, for example.

Stars is currently working on a systemic fix for seating scripts - and also buttoning afaik - that should make regular tables significantly more fair in the future. Do contribute in the thread.

I like your ideas on incentivizing pool-starting/building at Zoom. Along with an accross the board rake relief/rewards boost for Zoom, they could make the ridiculously high reg/rec ratios tolerable enough to make zoom even more popular. The effects on winrate would be more significant the lower you go in stakes due to rake, obviously.

Steve, when is your report coming?

much respect for GGARJ for doing a great job