They may not win, but they can actually sit at the table with these guys without losing anything significant, perhaps winning through rakeback or eeking out a small winrate on top, while simultaneously dragging down the expert players winrates. Beginners shouldn't be able to do this, beginners lose, that's what they do at all games when they play expert level players at that game, eventually, if they put enough time and effort into learning, they too can win. There shouldn't be a shortcut, that's not how good games work, otherwise, what's the point in learning and mastering the game in the first place.

If the 50bb tables where as soft as the 20bb tables in terms of fish there would only be three main issues, the fact that the SS strategy is overall bad for the game purity, can more easily be duplicated by a bot, that a beginner get's this shortcut to success, all things that have been discussed at length already.

Unfortunately, in this case, there's more to it than that. The fact is, their are many more fish at the 20bb tables and we all know why this is the case, it isn't because they want to play a shorter stack table, they're fish, they don't understand the concept of big blinds, stack size etc., they just join a regular table. You know as well as I do, whether you'll admit it or not, if 35bb min tables were the "regular" table type at PS and the 20bb min tables were marked as their own "type" like the 50bb tables are now, the 35bb tables would be super soft and the 20bb tables, at least some of them, would be full of short 8 short stackers and 1 fish, the rest would be 9 short stackers.

I'm convinced that the SS strategy requires full stack reg's with wide opening ranges to be profitable, unless you're the very best SS'er, even then, you're all basically playing the same game so the variance would be huge and only a few people would win. You wouldn't like this situation anymore than I like my situation. I CAN win against nit's, I have a much looser game than them, so I eek at a steady winrate against them by stealing so many small pots, but honestly, my winrate against juicy fish is a lot better, we all know this to be the case, this is the basic tenent of table selecting. The way it's setup right now though, there's very few fish at the 50 bb tables. They're all at the 20bb tables getting torn apart one small bite at a time by the SS'ers, like a school of piranha's. Sorry, couldn't resist the analogy.

Anyways, there are lots of reasons for changing things. I firmly believe the following:

1. SS'ers can't exist on their own without full stacks with wide opening ranges
2. I believe SS'ers have an exploitative advantage
3. I believe that a beginner playing this strategy has a much bigger edge than any beginner should ever have and that's not fair to the experts who've put so much time into learning the game
4. I think the way the tables are setup on PS siphons most of the fish to the SS populated tables
5. I think the SS strategy would be easier to bot
6. I don't believe the current SS strategy falls within the spirit of the game or has anything to do with what the creators of the game intended, otherwise why even have the last two streets

All reasons that the min buyin needs to be bumped to 35 or 40 bb where this simple strategy no longer has much if any effect. I don't know that I can add much more to this discussion, I feel like I'm becoming repetitive or repeating what other people have already said and no one wants to continue reading the same thing over and over.

Hopefully for the long term good of poker, the stewards of the online game will improve it by making this small change that will help to maintain the complexity of the game that we all want to master.

LunaEqualsLuna: "There is nothing wrong with the games. Everything is great. There is nothing exploitable about a 20bb buy in. PokerStars is great!"

OMG, ROFL, seriously, laughing out loud over here. This is one of the best posts I've seen in this thread!!!

Luna, surely even you laughed at this one!!!

not so sure bout that...

OMG YES!!! hahahahha

I seriously looked for like 5 minutes for this pic online to post in this thread but couldn't remember that guys' name. Thank you! Soooo applicable

Actually i did laugh

If one is gonna have no content posts, at least make em funny I say.
Poker_is_Hard finally delivers on that front.

While I could go through all the reasons I disagree with the majority of this it is moot and done to death. You don't seem as unreasonable as most of the others in this forum, but I'm sure your low post count is the reason. Spend longer and we will have a Poker_is_Hard_II on our hands.

.Enjoy the games on FTP and I'll enjoy the games on stars and we both get what we want. I guess

gl

GL to you too Luna! I sincerely applaud you on your tenaciousness across this thread, truly impressive, you've fought like 15-25 people by my count (off of the top of my head, probably many more) virtually all by yourself. Unfortunately, it's not your debate skills that are a problem here, it's the inherent flaw in what you're trying to support.

I truly hope that somehow we both come out of this happy with the final outcome, but that's unlikely to be the case unless you become an avid full stacker because I'll never ever employ the 20bb/rathole strategy.

Cheers!

haha, you really should work in politics.

TRANSLATION
"I don't have competent answers to all the specific points you made. Therefore I will instead do three things that I do very well in order to accomplish my goal of appearing to respond to all questions and posts related to this topic.
I will:
1. Allude to answers that I "could" go through
2. Compliment you to deflect
3. Make a dig at another poster to deflect"

u 2

5 stars

This thread = tl;dr

Luna should just shut up. High content here post for ya Luna.

The posts of Dr Hyde are probably the best on this thread, but you are wrong on one point :

They can. Money comes from the fishes. Full Stacks make mistakes against SSer because they want to play looser vs the fish.

If the game was only 3 SSer and 3 decent Full Stackers, the only way the SSer can beat the rake is if the Full Stackers are playing very loose (3 betting a lot, calling open with SCs with SSer behind...). If the Full Stackers are playing tight, the SSer can't beat the rake (even with the FPPs), because it is too high.

If the games are only 5 pro SSer and one 20bb fish, SSer can exist on their own (because fish will pay the rake). If they are 4 pro SSer with 2 fishes, it's Byzance for them (fpps+ 1BB/100 in WR) !

has LunaEqualsLuna weighed in yet? I would like to know their thoughts before we proceed with the discussion

I see what you're saying here, probably why SS'ers talk so badly about nits. Sort of agrees with what I'm saying, about the wide opening ranges for the full stacks, but I see your point.

I wonder if this is the case if the fish are loose passive? Because the SS'ers would have to tighten up so much in this case to keep the fish from calling off too lightly that they still might not be able to beat the rake. If the fish is a lag spewtard running like 80/40 then I agree with you, the ss'ers would eat him up.

With this comment I was talking about what might happen if the whole table were JUST ss'ers, I don't think hardly any of them would make money because of the rake and a style that's so similar as to be hard to create a winning differentiating style, they'd nibble themselves to death. I guess maybe this is what a cap game is all about, I confess to not ever playing cap games so I don't have much experience in that arena.

The other point I had is that I think eventually the fish would simply stop playing in this environment, because I don't think that a two street game is what a fish really comes to the game to play, they're looking for excitement and some sort of complexity beyond push/fold, the SS'er strategy, whether employing it or playing against it, is far from exciting.

I think this is the biggest danger Stars is in if they never raise the buyin. Eventually, the regular tables will be completely taken over by the SS'ers (why does this remind me of the matrix?, random thought, sorry) . Anyways, at that point, I think the fish will start to realize they aren't having much fun at the Stars cash games and either stop playing all together online or move to another site where they can play more streets. At that point, since the ss'ers can't make money off of each other, the whole thing implodes. This seems plausible to me, time will tell.

lololol

Sorry, I took the first shot, should've waited until I could see the whites of their eyes

I approve...

can someone do a post count number by person for this thread? =)

This post is by Moonshine from the MSNL Stars regs thread. He is a former ratholer and is now one of the best cap players and a very good full stacker as well.

In the Zoo lobby, click the actual number of posts (between thread title and # of views). You'll get a pop up window with everyone's post count.

LunaEqualsLuna 222
jmillerdls 137
SNE2010 126
MyTurn2Raise 117
AirmanSpecial 115
dwalker012 114
excession 112

good post by Moonshine, but lol at latvian money. 1 lat (latvian currency) is worth 2$, so basically 100 lat's = $200 in hour, pretty nice salary if u ask me.

any sign's from PS? i hope they will do something about ratholers asap, 20bb min tables aren't playable.

DAMN!

is the Ruble still crap? Maybe we can use that

Tremendous post Moonshine.

lots of shortstackers make a ton above rakeback obv