After listening to player feedback, we have enacted changes in the PokerStars software to speed up dealing in certain situations. A few other related changes have been made as well, though in most cases the time a player has to act on their hand has not been affected. Read below for more details.


Non-Satellite Sit & Go Tournaments
Hyper Turbo Sit & Go Tournaments are most affected by the changes. Players in these tournaments will have 12 seconds to act on their hand instead of 16. Several other dealing speed improvements including time taken between hands and speed of dealing cards once players are all-in have also been made.

All other Sit & Go tournaments have had dealing speed reduced, but not quite as much. Cards dealt after all action is complete due to players being all-in are now dealt twice as fast. The time between all hands being shown or mucked and the next hand being dealt has also been reduced by one second per hand.

Players in regular speed Sit & Go’s will now have 16 seconds to act on their hand, reduced from 18 seconds.

The time taken to start dealing after all players have registered and been seated has been reduced for many popular Sit & Go tournaments. Many Heads-up and Hyper speed tournaments now start after only a 10 second delay. Other popular tournaments start after 20 seconds.


Scheduled Tournaments, Satellites, and Step Tournaments

Dealing speed has been increased in these tournaments similar to the changes made in Sit & Go’s. Cards dealt after all action is complete due to players being all-in are now dealt twice as fast. The time between all hands being shown or mucked and the next hand being dealt has also been reduced by one second per hand.

Players in some tournaments will experience slightly different amounts of time to act on their hand. This is as a result of standardizing this setting across all tournaments.

Hyper-turbo satellites have been sped up drastically. These satellites will run at the same speed as hyper-turbo cash S&Gs.

These changes will not take place for all future tournaments, but will instead filter their way into the tournament schedule over the next few weeks.


Ring Games

As with all tournaments, cards dealt after all action is complete due to players being all-in are now dealt twice as fast. The time between all hands being shown or mucked and the next hand being dealt has also been reduced by one second per hand.

The delay prior to dealing the first hand of a session at a table has been reduced from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.

The changes to ring games will not have a significant impact on the number of hands played per hour at this point in time. PokerStars is considering further changes that may include changes to the amount of time players have to act on their hand.

Comments about playing experience at ring game tables are appreciated. In particular, if there is anything about the ring game experience other than players’ time to act that seems too slow or too fast we’d love to know.


Request for Comments

While PokerStars never stops considering player feedback, in this case we are particularly interested in response to these changes. Additional tweaks are possible if desired by players as a whole. Thanks in advance for any constructive suggestions.

Thanks to all players who have already provided input that helped us make this round of changes. Special thanks to all of those who helped test these settings on PokerStars.test and provided helpful input.

Love it

Good work Pokerstars!

yea!!!!!!!!

still 0 hands/hr for me

Thanks for doing this about seven years too late...

It's about time. You guys lost so much business to Full Tilt over the years from regs because your software was so damned slow. What took so long?

Played a few Hyper sats and should say - much better now. The thing is I only play 4-6 at a time, and for me - the more hands, the better obviously. I don't know if the heavy multitabling regs won't complain about that though.

lol seriously? i guess those regs who wanted to gain the extra 2 hands per hour are regretting their decision right now, huh?

I'm American and the software has been very slow (stopped actually) since mid-April.

Would appreciate if you could fix that too Stars.

K, thx. Youse guyz r da BESTUS in da hoile woild!

Reposting as this thread has been started.....




Why only "popular" SNGs? Why not all SNGs? And how do 180s not qualify as popular? Just had a quick look at 180s and there still seems to be far too long a gap between filling up and starting the first hand.

The only SNG which does need a decent interval between filling up and dealing the first hand is the 3.50r/180s, so that those who want to do an initial rebuy on these have enough time to recognise the table and do the rebuy.

Perhaps you can furnish us with an explanation for this delay, because I am struggling to think of any compelling reason to wait for more than a few seconds for any other SNG save that particular rebuy 180man. The clue is in the name. It's not called Sit & Stop, it's not called Sit & Wait, it's not called Sit & Wonder What We're Waiting For.

It's Sit & Go

I guess the idea is that you register for 180 men sng and go do something else while waiting for it to fill up - as it obviously is filling up a little slower than let's say 9 men sng. Hence the waiting for all people to see that it has started. Just my 2 cents.

WOW,I like it ,seems bit crazy a first ,but great change!

Higher Hypers ASAP pleeeeeeeeeaaaaaase

i like it

No idea how this will affect the hyper satellites since I can't play them. One worry is that if there is a disconnection and you have to log into a backup computer, you'll be toast.

pls do waiting lists like on ftp where they add u to wl on every table and as soon as one is free u get lobby with vpip/stacks/avg pot etc pop up

For once an update that's good

Still 0 hands/hr for me too :'(

Hello Steve.
I like all the changes, accept this one.

I like having that little bit of extra time when all-in pre flop to see what hand I am up against and determine my equity before the flop comes. I also like a little slower dealing of board cards to have a little better time calculating equity as the board-cards are being dealt.

Allthough I cant speak for recreational players, I would imagine they enjoy the sweat of being allin and having some time seeing the board cards being dealt, not that its over really fast. Would imagine it takes a little of the fun away for them. And many of them probably arent so skilled in calculating equity on different streets, so for them they might not be able to follow their equity very well when the cards are dealt fast, maybe taking away some of the fun and sweat.

This quick dealing of community cards after all ins is an amazing improvement!

I can't comment much about this yet because i havent played and cant play atm, but if the new speed of cards dealt after an all in is anywhere near as fast as party deals the cards, this is terrible and players who like to watch the all ins (mostly non 2+2ers who play for fun) will not like the change.

Players register for tournaments and leave their computer to go grab a drink or do something else. It's important to give them time to come back and play their first hand.

Tournaments that reliably fill quite quickly have no such issues as it's unreasonable to register and walk away from your computer. This is the criterion that was used to determine whether or not to have the extra time added: how frequently the sit&gos start.

No tournaments with 45+ players were altered to start more quickly at this time. We'll consider making some more changes in the future based on player feedback.

I agree to that. I like to play poker in the evening after work to relax a bit, now I have the same terrible Hurry...hurry...hurry- feeling like I have it at work all day.

Maybe I will get used to it, maybe I will return reading a good book to relax instead of playing poker.
I admit this would probably not be a great loss for PS though.

Yes is a huge improvement for 'YOU', and for me but such a bad change for the fish and casually player. Remember Paradise poker? When you hit a huge hand there is fire, sometime is lightning, it give a nice feeling for the casual player to slowly sweat a big hand. Fishes is our customers, and customers is our boss. I have no idea why star listen to reg who grind 16+ table. You lose the fishes, you lose the regs! You lose the regs, you still have the fishes, maybe even more fishes.

i play around 1800 hands an hour playing 20-24 tables of 6max/fullring cash. How many hands do i get more now ? 50?