This is the saddest thing DirtyTaco has ever heard

after the colluders move to 5050 will stars close the 5050 too?

Personally I think the cash game players are all just "lol dons" and think they are stupid. The other SnG regs want them closed so the fish have to move to their game. Some may have a moral objection to the fish that are cheated and don't know about it cause they aren't on 2+2. I highly doubt that is the case for most people though. Cheating really didn't go on that much imo.

At the $20 level the rake for the turbo Dons was $.80 while for these it is $.96. Someone did and analysis earlier and said Dons lasted around 33 minutes on average and fifty50s lasted about 21 minutes on average. The non turbo fifty50s are much more reasonable but they hardly run at all so it really doesn't matter. My guess is that the fifty50 rake is going to be consistent with their new standard sng rake structure. They either don't understand or don't care that the edges is fifty50s is going to be way smaller than in other types of SnGs because they are so short and just because of the game format itself.

I was half joking when talking about why stars is doing this. Really I think stars thought that they could just make everyone switch to fifty50s no problem. Then they could make the same money without having to put as much into collusion detection. The only other reason would be the moral objection to having a format that could be easily cheated in. Once again I highly doubt that that is the case. In the end, I really don't know why stars did this. It doesn't make much sense to me. I'm guessing that they thought they couldn't split the player pool by allowing both to coexist. That is flawed thinking imo. I can only assume that stars did this cause they thought they would make more money in the end. IMO, they're wrong.

I hope every complainer has taken the time to email Stars not only about this but about the Hyper Turbo sat fiasco too. 2011 has been a pokerjoke

[ ] happiness
[ ] laughter

DON regs might be complaining but yours is the most rage-filled post I've seen in the whole discussion. If this is you when you're happy and laughing...

A lot of wasted breath ITT.

So what's everyone's opinion on Fifty50s (the game/strategy not the rake) I find them tedious and unintereting so far, thinking of bailing already.

FYI 50s are not getting DON regs they are filled by Russians, Germans Spaniards and South Americans

HORRID

There is so much wrong with this paragraph especially the lines highlighed. As I mentioned in a previous post in this thread PokerStars only seemed to react to cheating in these games when another player reported it even in cases where it was obvious and should have been easily detected by the most lol of fraud detection algorithms. Sometimes I could tell there were cheaters in a game just by looking at the list of registering games in the lobby. They weren't watching out for us.

The chinese don cheating scandal should have emphasized this point. That was a case where an affiliate set up a "poker school" and pokerstars claimed they were aware of the special situation and keeping a close eye on those players but it was other players that uncovered that they were cheating and how they were doing so. Then it took a lot of convincing by them to get pokerstars to really look into it and do something about it.

It always baffled me how I could see some regs make huge mistakes when it was obvious to me that there were two players colluding in the game. For example, short stacked colluder shoves, med stack reg calls to try and knock him out, big stack colluder squeezes to get reg out of the hand, which he does and folds, short stack colluder has big stack colluder dominated and wins, reg gets knocked out a hand or two later. Lucky for him I'm paying attention and he gets a refund. I get nothing since I won the game.

There's always going to be people trying to cheat in poker whether in cash games, dons, live or online. The poker room needs to be able to spot them and take care of as many as possible and it's the responsibility of players to help out and catch instances that the poker room misses to help keep the games clean.

But with so many regs only looking at the table to see if they have KK+, AK or if it's been folded around to them in the SB, the players that should have been the most qualified to clean up the games were asleep at the wheel. I partially blame them for not helping preserve the game that was so important to them.

At some point I realized that just playing the standard DoN strategy wasn't working for me anymore so I opened up my game, payed more attention to players to try and pick up reads and play a better post flop game. After that it was even easier to catch cheaters.

If more players tried to help protect the games this change might not have been implemented. I'm pretty sure that I was responsible for more players getting refunds than I received refunds myself which shouldn't have been the case if other regs were vigilant.

I don't think cheating was rampant, at least not at the lower stakes. Out of the tens of thousands of games I played there were only a handful of instances where I spotted it or received a refund.

I wish pokerstars could have developed a way to enhance their fraud detection tools to work in these games and that regs helped more but I suspect one of the biggest problems is players that don't know better sending a lot of false reports like "OMG I was cheated I shoved my 3bb stack on the bubble with AA and got called by 78s and T4o and lost, I want my money back!"

We all had a very good thing going here and by "we" i mean us players and PokerStars. We should have tried harder to keep it going.

I used to have the sentiments you expressed in that paragraph where I thought pokerstars was protecting the games for us but it has changed drastically. This decision only makes things worse in my eyes because it's like they just gave up.

Cheaters will find other games to be profitable in, a couple I caught in DoNs had most of their success in 6max turbo sngs, and with pokerstars giving up like they did here they shouldn't be too afraid of getting caught. At least that's the message I get out of this.

I don't like the Fifty50's from what I've seen so far, even though my limited experience had pretty good ROI. I might have liked them better if they were maybe Sixty40s??? But I would prefer if the DoNs stayed.

im moving my 130k rake to other site...no problem.

80K here, my next choice is on another site. Not that I think Stars should reconsider or will just saying they probably lose more rake than they expect even with juicing the 5050 players...unsubscribe..enjoy

just got an answer to my mail from full tilt about implementing DoNs:


Hello xxx,

Thank you for your feedback.

We appreciate your suggestions on how we can improve your online poker experience, and we'll consider implementing that on Full Tilt Poker. We encourage you to always let us know ways we can improve your online poker experience, as many of our features were created based on feedback from our players.

If you'd like to recommend additional features or improvements, please feel free to visit our Online Poker Forum at http://pokerforums.fulltiltpoker.com and post your comments under "Feedback and Feature Requests".

Good luck at the tables, and if you have any further questions, please let us know.


Regards,

Robert
Full Tilt Poker Support

----------------------------------------------------------------------
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account details over the Internet. Full Tilt Poker staff will
never ask you for your password. For your security, always
keep this information a secret.

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Original Message Follows: ------------------------

Hi,

I heard rumors about you may adding Double or Nothings (DoNs) in near future. Is that assumption correct?
Would absolutely be a great move, considering Pokerstars is removing them soon.
You would have definitely one high raker more





would be pretty awesome... hope dies last


btw: lost 52$ don reg :/

+1 many more players should follow your example!

DONs on FTP... just imagine, having low variance on FTP... what is this i don't even...

man I'm so ****ing hard right now.

That would force me and alot of other multitablers to play on another site since the regular SNGs would not start fast enough to be able to multitable.
This was the reason I quit Ipoker and Ongame to begin with. The DONs took too much traffic from the regular games.

just for comparisons sake in a turbo $5 50/50 vs a DON in DON if you finish holding 10chips you obv double up -rake in that same 50/50 if you finish with 1500 chips you make just over $2

Count on it. Stalling, or as you put it, timing the blinds, is an accepted strategic tool that has been discussed widely in the Official Double or Nothing Forum, or at least it was a year ago (I haven't checked it out since I've been playing more MTTs).

In fact, I remember one post where a player said that he managed to kill most of a blind level when a hand was checked all the way down. DON players who convert to 50/50 will be trying to apply their DON skills to the new format whenever possible, including timing the blinds.

wp

Exactly. It's not softplay if it's the right play, either in the moment or metagame.

Hadn't really thought of this comparison between high-stakes cash games and high-stakes SNGs, but it's a fair point.

Having $15+1 yet $55+5 is pretty ridic. 6.67% rake vs. 9.1%.

If they had 5-6% rake on SNGs it would be much more reasonable.

I don't like the blind structure. 6 minute levels in a non-turbo, seriously? I thought that regular speed was 10+ and turbo was 5 minutes. Now you're even changing your definitions.

One of the good things about DONs is that you don't have to make a lot of early tough decisions, as you can fold 90% or more of your hands. That's why it's so easy to multitable. Decreasing the time between levels to 6 minutes makes it a turbo, it makes the tough decisions come more quickly, and it increases the luck factor. And it's a turbo, whether Stars wants to call it that or not.

Not everyone wants to play turbos, and by deleting DONs and setting up 50/50s with 6-minute levels, you've angered another subset of your players--those who prefer not to play turbos.

Once in a 4 bet pot against the nittiest of regs flop came AKQ 2 suits we both had sets and checked all the way to river because he could have top set in that spot so many times and he probably thought that if I didn't have him beat I could easily have a hand I'd go all the way with that had a good chance of outdrawing him.

Looked especially weird considering a few hands earlier I shoved JJ in a KKQ flop against a different player. (Called by AT and held btw)

Wasn't soft playing against the reg just knew in a 4 bet pot in the 1st level bottom set probably wasn't good. I have no problem playing hard against regs. In fact I prefer it since I know their game better than a random.

Though I'm sure that there are regs that softplay each other. I've even seen it openly discussed in chat by someone that replied in this thread.

Then there's the "Team play" from the russian websites. Don't mean to cast a wide net because there are a lot of russians that play and are probably legit but there are plenty of times I've sat a table with a couple of russian regs that were sitting next to each other. My stats would show SB attempt to steal over 60% and 40% from the button but in this game the russian on the right of the other russian never stole one blind from the SB, always from the BB even though there were plenty of opportunities and he needed chips.

RizeAgainst, Pokerstars, along with so many naive people, you don't know DON much. The more you speak, the more ignorant you proved yourselves. Regulars soft-play against regulars in DONs? No way. You define "soft-play" wrong.

You may have heard the the Chinese collusion scandal. You may know that it's hard to identify cheaters in DONs. But I totally disagree when people say "you need to be friends with the regs in order to win in DONs". People who said this just can't beat this game because of their lack of knowledge. Reasonable plays are considered "soft-play" by these nerds just because they don't know the plays are reasonable. Why do regulars want to help other regulars? They play in the same game. They have to fight with each other. If you help one other, it also reduces your chance to win. Originally you need to beat 5 people out of the 9. Now you sit with 2~3 regulars and you help them, and try to beat 5 people out of the 6 unknown or fish? Are you out of your mind?

What I see, (and I do) in my level (20s) is regulars exploit regulars. I shove regulars' BB just becoz I know they know calling all in is -EV. I reraise all in with any two cards becoz I know regs will fold since a shortstack is there. I call regulars' all in with 72o when I am not in danger, since I WANNA BUST THEM. Sometimes I call their all-ins much wider becoz I WANNA LET THEM KNOW you are not supposed to steal my blinds. I wanna let them know I'm not afraid of making -EV move just to make you -EV for more, by calling your shove. I wanna be the bully, I wanna people to be afraid of me. I wanna to have everyone sending chips to me!!

And why do people keep thinking that regulars soft-play against regulars?

1.They don't know that vs SS, cooperation play (everyone calls to eliminate the SS) is the correct play. They don't even know cooperation play is NOT soft-play. They don't know Dan Harrington teachs everyone to make cooperation play on satellite bubbles or even significant payout jumps!
2.They don't know that based on pot odds, a lot of the time BB needs to call all in with almost any two cards. They whine about people calling their all in with 84o but not calling against regs...and don't know that they are too short and have no FE.
3.They don't know that even pot odds suggests a call, the chip odd (or ICM) may still suggests a fold. Sometimes vice versa. They don't know that sometimes the decision is based on how many chips you have after you lose vs after you fold, not on your pot odds.
4.I agree that regs may shove less frequently against regs. But that's becoz of FEAR, not becoz they are intend to be KIND to each other. I shove 100% under certain circumstances, and I know other regs will know this fact. Hence I know he's calling wider, and hence I adjust my shoving range by not shoving any two against him. This is basic poker strategy. No way this is soft-play.

Still don't believe so? Let me tell you one REAL story, from some online heros. Thier names are Shaun Deeb and Dan "djk123" Kelly. I played with these two guys in the WSOP $5k event last year. Dan was on my table from the beginning, and raising and 3betting almost every hand. Nobody can do anything about it. Three hours later when JC Tran got busted, Shaun Deeb moved to the table. Shaun was raising UTG and showed 52o after everyone folded. And Dan just shut up and tighten up at least 3 notches. You call this soft-play? No way. They played so just becoz they know each other and they know each other plays well. But do they intend to help each other? Impossible.

There are so many ignorant people online. They say a game is rigged, unbeatable, and/or unfair. But the truth is themselves don't have the ability to understand it and beat it. Simply as that.

Bernie "jordyun"

~~

Some other stuff for people who followed my previous post:

Pokerstars Steve and I actually had a phone call yesterday. We discussed a lot, including why I don't think this is a good decision, and why Pokerstars WANT to make decision. It was quite a good conversation, even though we still don't agree with each other . I'm not supposed to post here about what he said during the call (he said if he wants to do that he'll do that himself), but basically it's just their marketing strategy to provide something that is ("looks", I quoted) fair to players. Obviously Pokerstars and the players have different opinions on it, but lets see what happens. I actually bet with Steve that the SNG traffic will be reduce by at 25% after they shut down DONs. Let Pokerstars know who is right, and when they find out they lose so many customers and money, they will know their decision is wrong.

~~

To other regulars:

I hate you. I hate you when you called my all in with QJo (and obv I have Q2o). I hate you when you re-shove 3500 on bubble expecting me to fold when a SS is there with 100 chips. I hate you even more when I called with AA and was sucked out by your 93o. I hate playing with you, since you reduce my ROIs. BUT I do appreciate everyone of you to speak up for DON players. I believe we can all find success in other sites and formats.

Bernie "jordyun"

"Disaster" = me starvingwriter. I ganined the feel for this format and was able to multi approximately 32 non-turbos per session. My itm is a consistent 60%. I was earning around 1.20 per 10 dollar table not to mention the vpp's. I would sometimes get tired by all the m-tabling so never stuck to doing it 6 days a week like most. I would play around 6 sessions per day (9 hours of play give or take a lil) then would take a break and play the day after the next one. I did plan to start girinding more often though till i found out they are pulling the plug. On average I'd make between 200-300 per day (not inc points) i played and would do this about 15-20 days per month for the past 1 1/2 yrs.

I resent anyone who lumps all don plaeyrs together as nits. I think it would be interesting for me to tell you that i am a consistent heads up sng winner which anyone knows, is the TOTAL opposite of don's. I adpapted to tight play for this format. I will never go back to heads up on a regualr basis cause u cannot multi much, a good roi is 5 percent (not the 10 percent i had in dons) and you have to play much higher limits to make the same money cause I only play non-turbo heads up which means 3 per hour at best (more like 2 1/2). with that format, i would have to play a $525.00 or higher. The swings in heads up are mindf*cking even for a great hu player (ie skilled_sox and dario minieri). Don's are not the highest earner (u can make much more in heads up or cash) but they are sooooooooooooooooooooo consistent and there are basically no big swings whatsoever (if ur good at them).

I suggest that anyone who is serious about sticking with don's do what i am doing in a minute. We all should move our traffic to one site. I am in the United States, but i'd like to say something to my fellow poker-playing european don'ers...come with us to a u.s. only site. This way, we will have all the traffic in one place. It would not be of benefit to the Euro players to go to a non-us site. Stick with US players so we can all get back to heavy don traffic. It seems cake is the only answer. Their traffic is low now but we can make it our new home (If most of us regualrs stick together by going to one site rather then breaking up to different sites, this will create reliable traffic for multi-tablers all on cake).