When we get the decision Steve?

The reg moan about spins is essentially high variance making them hard to maintain an income or be confident of long term returns. Now HU the plan is never sit someone as good or nearly as good as you (the club). This is not about variance it is about ROI, beating the rake, playing a weaker subset of all players.

In spins the aim is in perfect world to get 2 recs but with seating s/w racing away in practice it will be squabbling over 1. So to reduce the varience further the in club play off a shared roll - this reduces the jacpot varience, reduces the in three handed game varience by tag teaming two against one. Obviously this opens up the new in club to not just a conspiracy to advantage players via seating but also then to colluding in game.

That collusion in game might be "just" a bit of soft play, just a collaborative play vs the all in small stack or it might be live collusion via Teamviewer or whatever...you can just about say that a club that is setup so people don't play each other but instead get seats with recs and collectively fight in the trenches vs potential other regs that want "your" recs is on the non criminal side of collusion as it is happening outside of when the cards are being dealt but the moment you make it three handed and the in club share a table vs one outsider - then it is bound to be active in game collusion even if it is just checking it down.

The real world friends and no friends allowed clauses are unreasonable for sure.
Remember, as diviosion members trying to make the current parameters work, we don't want to piss of Pokerstars by creating a scandal.

We can be as sure of collusion for sub groups of divisions as we can be of any other group (maybe more so as we have more to lose).

I think lower rake and blind lobbying would be good but if there is a seat script, the current system is as good as it gets.

I'm not sure if 2 vs 1 works in spins economically because of the effective rake and I'm not sure how much better someone's ROI would be if they did that but if it can overcome the rake, then that is an issue for sure.

I agree that 2 players colluding on a non-Zoom 6-max cash game table or a 6-max SNG is an unnecessary and growing software collusion risk for Pokerstars that they arguably should try to control and minimise by acting to ban table selection software and having an enforced blind queue. I would like to see blind seating at each 6-max table, too. In other words I would like to see non-zoom tables the same as Zoom for table and seat selection with the sole difference that you stay at the same table when you fold.

I'm not sure what you meant by "any other random example" as I think there is an arguable hierarchy of risk of in-game collusion inversely related to number of seats at the table. So 3-max is most at risk of collusion, 6-max less so, 9 max less again which means that the urgency of blind queues and banning table selection software should be prioritised accordingly.

Note I still believe (as a HUSNG rec) that before-game table selection collusion is unacceptable enough that I won't play HUSNG's as it destroys the fun. I have spent a lot of time making my cash game play as good as I can and I play cash seriously. But when I play HUSNG's I want to be able to have fun. I don't want to have to learn to be an expert. I don't care if I lose money at HUSNG but I do want the same chance as everyone in the pool to get someone with similar or less skill as me. Ditto Spin&Go.

Really opened my eyes to how badly pokerstars treats recreational players, I emailed them to ask:
Their reply:

This is just so wrong.

the fun part is that spinwiz or seatscript are not even touched by those proposed changes, probably because att he moment there is nothing they can do about it.
You market the fact of S&G pics random prizes and opponents but at the end if you spend from 19€ or more, you can choose who not play against as example all non-spinwiz users...

I suggest you reply back with the link to the spinwiz faq page:

Q: Is this software permitted by PokerStars?
A: Yes.

And then the link to their own "prohibited software" page, where spinwiz is clearly listed as permitted.

From a technical standpoint, in laymans terms, how is it that there can be third party software controlling seating for things like spin n go that Poker stars is unable to block?

Is Zoom as immune to this sort of things as it appears?

Are they really unable to prevent access for anything other than their client?

yes but at least they should not state the opposite on the first sentence to mullion mail ..is quite simple, if I can choose who not play against the seats are not random anymore

I would be certain if pokerstars wanted to block such programmes they could.

It seems like they don't want to, why else would they deny the existence of such a programme?

if you can find out who is seated you can target or not. its not easy to prevent this. even a queue that displays no info on who is in can be transparent if you can ask enough players: are you in?

Make seats occupied to appear anonymous, until a spin&go is full. Once the sng kicks off, you can see who you're gonna play with, but as long as the sng still needs participants, don't display player IDs. Solved.

You are a genius.....just exlain now where the player-IDs are displayed in the lobby, plz.

Hint:

You took my message a bit to literally. Since this sort of programs access the PS server in some way to decide whether or not to sit at a certain sng, just make the info anonymous so that it can't read ****, as long as a sng is not full.

I have no idea how a company that bases it's whole business on RNGs and partly on cryptography can't restrict these sort of practices. Let alone why they allow a program like spinwiz to be used in the first place, listing it as "permitted software".

Very good move! Thank you Stars, you took the first step.

You might also ask if they meant to deceive you in saying that someone would have to manually check all the tables for you when they approve all sorts of scanners, I like this one, on the approved list - Pokerstars approval on their home page, they even use a Stars logo! (you may need to wait for the homepage to scroll to get all the site logos coming up)

http://turbo-seatin.com/

Naturally this software will find you inside a minute or two, by someone manually pressing one click.

So when they say:

Are they lying or just ignorant?

That Stars email is just about the only thing that has shocked me in this thread BTW. Awful. Indeed t may even open them up to liability issues .

PokerStars may want to confirm a few things

• whether they have revenue sharing deals with any software suppliers on their approved list
  
• that they have not paid any third party software suppliers to produce software for their approved list
  
• on what financial basis they provide technical support to third party software suppliers (who pays for it Stars or the supplier?)

Simplistically, regulars don't register directly with Pokerstars, only recreational players do. Regulars register with SpinWiz which maintains its own queue of regs.

SpinWiz only allows the next reg in line to join the PokerStars queue: result reg gets to sit with the players who register directly with Pokerstars ie recreational players.

Reg can also choose to sit with any number of "friend" regs in the queue in which case SpinWiz auto-presses register so as to maximise the chance they will sit together.

In the 2plus2 forum for SpinWiz you will see new SpinWiz users complain that they requested 3 Spin&Go's thru SpinWiz and sat with their mate in all three Spin&Go's.

Let's say you form a little plan with 9 of your mates. The ten of you tell SpinWiz you'd like to be sat together. I think SpinWiz will only seat 2 of the ten at the same Spin&Go (not sure about this) so two of you auto-press Register at the same time (thru SpinWiz) and get sat with a rec. If the random prize is 2x beat up on the rec and breakeven. If the random prize is massive, beat up on the rec and share the big prize!

I don't know if this is profitable but it sounds like it!

And PokerStars approves this software! I can only hope because they don't understand it or how it can be used to manipulate the games and why it is completely unfair to rec players.

See above for cash games where tools can instaSit user-selected Pokerstars color-coding. So you code all rec players say green and get autosat with anyone you've coloured green (if there are any vacant seats because 100's of other regs will get there before you (also using seating scripts).

I should add that it is very easy to program your own SpinWiz type tool for you and your mates that would allow you to collude if you didn't want to use SpinWiz or you could create your own mates queue on top of SpinWiz, too.

For example, there is visual object software that is easy to program, see
Quick rego script

With above linked software you just need to take a PrtScr and use say Paint to edit the image, insert it into some simple code you'll find in the link and you'll have your own user interface on top of PokerStars. By default the visual recognition looks for better than a 70% match so even if PokerStars changes their UI you'll be sweet (unless they use Captcha or similar as part of registration!)

Then you'll need to code the harder part of server queue coordination between you and your mates but the interface to PokerStars is that easy.

Although i haven t got the sufficient amount of info , i have played around 800 spins
and never saw the colluding behaviour described here in fact it seems complete nonsense
due to the fact only very few players can be profitable long run in this format

If 2 guys invest 15$ = 30$ to win 15$ and theres rake i find it somewhat
illogical they can win because they will lose some % of the time
they will not win the 14$ everytime

+

I think Stars has showed it can track colluding behaviour and players would suspect if the same 2 play them 3,4,10,11 times

These kind of posts are way off and now some people seem in total dellusion thinking there is conspiracy everywhere

Im sorry its getting ridicolous , really!

It's easy to collude if you want to. I would actually say it's much easier to collude in cash games or regular sngs where you can register openly. There's a reason why 2 Chinese players couldn't join the same DoN when they were still running on Stars.

So regarding collusion in spinwiz... what is your point?

Btw I was originally against spin and goes being introduced because of the fact that collusion may occur if 2 players share a bankroll, even without consent. If you are in the SB and share a bankroll with the BB, you would happily flat a button open much wider since you don't care about "gifting" EV to the BB. It would be the max ev thing for you to do even without any communication with your friend. I voiced this concern before, and Pokerstars are aware of this and treat possible collusion in spins in a similar way to collusion on regular tables.

If anything, spinwiz allows horses from the same stable to avoid each other more often, and thus avoids such implicit collusion cases. If players are trying to exploit this, then it's stars' job to detect such activity same as any other forms of collusion. And btw there is no need for seating scripts if you want to collude in spins- just register 3 at the same time simultaneously as your friend and you will be guaranteed to be together on 2 tables ( at least for higher stakes).

^Yes half the ppl in this thread have no idea what's going on.

That's why the games need to not just be straight but be seen to be straight (if the aim is to make recs feel comfortable enough to deposit).

Would be a decent idea to split discussions like the current one like strategy discussion in 2p2 forums with a "beginner" section.

Those who never played husngs or played as/against cartels, those who never played spin and goes seriously etc can discuss in the "beginner" section to voice their concerns and misunderstandings, and someone more informed like pies01 can take time out to answer the questions.

Ofc just like the strategy forums the beginner section is self-identified, and pokerstars should and will look at all posts in both sections to see what the general consensus is.