Hey folks,

i saw the news at pokerstragy.com

maybe, someone would like to know some facts:

they will
- leave the network in january 2014
- create/open an own network, with individual 3D-animated-software, partypoker-hillbillie-look-a-like
- focus freetime- and hobbyplayers
- remove the 30% rakeback
- patronize their customers, so you r not able to choose cashgame/sng-tables by yourself

- unknown, if they will create a new refund/reward/rakeback-system


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http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/po...t-Poker_79530/

good night at microgaming/poker.

That link doesn't work for me, but this news is a week or so old; i'm sure there's a thread on the topic here somewhere. The new software is called "big game" made by Relax Gaming, who do the fast-fold network. If you google to find more details on it

It won't be a new network, it will be stand-alone, with only Unibet (and Maria, a Unibet brand).

It won't be Party style as in players are segregated by age or skill.

There will be a loyalty system, and Unibet will spend a similar amount on it as they do on their current system (I know this because I made it - I'm working there as a consultant).

The aim of auto-seating is to stop bum-hunting. Bum-hunting harms new players and thus harms the ecology of the site. By making it harder to do, the games will become softer - i.e. it's good for everyone.

as an existing player am I likely to get a welcome bonus sciolist? I don't mind the auto-seating at all - it's far better than that **** party tried to pull.

edit: providing they're planning to actively police the inevitable abuse of the system.

Details aren't finalised yet - infact, it's one of the things I'm working on today. But right now it looks like everyone will get a welcome bonus - whether they migrate from the current software, or whether they join fresh.

2 question:
-the tables will be anonymous like on microgaming or not?
-given your more pro recreational friendly appproach will be huds allowed?

Players are allowed to change their alias & avatar when they like. They can save up to five identities in this way. They can keep the same one forever or they can change it every day - whichever they prefer. This lets people retain anonymity if they want it.

Huds aren't allowed. There are no saved hand histories and there is no observer mode, which will make custom huds much harder to build.

can you take notes on a player and still see them even if the player changes his alias/identity?

Nope and nope. The aim is to create as even a playing field as possible. If it was allowed, it would also provide an easy route for a hud to use.

The aim is, as it's in any bull****ty 'recreational player model', to rake players to death forcing them to play in games that arent beatable long term. Pokersites want money to be recycled as long as possible, so they can rake 99$ of every 100$ deposited.

I hope this turns out to be one big disaster but it will probably survive as a niche standalone site with 50 players at any given time playing 50 cap plo. It's so sad pokersites don't want people to be able to win longterm anymore.

the thing is it won't even work as an unbeatable field where the site can rake 99 out of 100. Stars has managed to do that for most games with the sne program.
This will happen only if the players are regs of similar skill.
If they are whales mostly some of the whales will crush almost similar to a reg.
There is a small skill gap between 2 regs but a large one between fish.

And yes it will most likely be a site with 50 players like all the others that tried a similar model before.

First, there won't be 50 cap PLO.

Second, you have it exactly the wrong way round. Games today are much tougher than they were a few years ago. This is because the skill gap is increasing, but also because people game select much harder than they used to. New players die off much faster, but there aren't an increased number of new players to fill the gap - infact, it's decreased.

You can't stop the skill gap. But you can stop new players being killed off as quickly by disallowing huds and by disallowing bum-hunting.

New players staying alive for longer means that the average game gets much softer.

I bet you £2 that six months from now there are more than 50 players on Unibet (according to pokerscout numbers).

There are no sites that have used a similar model to this before. There are sites that have done small parts of it, but that isn't much use in itself - when the aim is to keep new players alive for longer, tiny improvements won't be measurable to the regs.

But look at sites that are the most recreational friendly, like 888 or Bodog. Most people will say those are the softest sites on the internet, and both sites are doing pretty well (Bodog have their problems obviously, but that's not down to their recreational stance).

Well there is one misconception in what you wrote cause you have no data. It would be beneficial for you too talk with regs that used to play on Party when there was the segregation in a heavy form.
I used to be one of the biggest winners there and I can tell you how it developed:
-first the rakeback whores were out then
-the mass volume 1-2bb/100
-the last were to go the 4-5bb/100 regs seeing their winrates cut in like 1/2

Suddenly what Party achieved was complete polarization of their player base so (at least on nl100) there was a ton of crushers and fish and the weak to medicore regs simply stopped playing.

they lost like 50% of the traffic (and rake) and they didn't manage to achieve anything.

SImply changes like the ones planned for Unibet will get rid of "the middle class" so weak to medicore regs who rake the most and from poker room perspective are really good for them (due to their rake to winnings ratio)

There will be just games with huge whales and strong regs and overall the rake to deposit ratio won't be better (not to mention the traffic and rake you will lose).

Anyway good luck!

There is no player segregation like on Party. The solution we're using is to not allow table selection - that's all.

I agree that the people who will be initially harmed by this are the ones who survive purely by extreme table selection. But in the long term they will benefit too, because the games will get softer. The Party system meant that they never got to play in the new soft games, but that isn't going to happen at Unibet because we do not segregate.

The aim isn't to increase the rake to deposit ratio. The aim is to keep new players alive for longer.

This makes sense from a business point of view - if players stay alive for longer, they will make more deposits. Those players will also play on Unibet's other products, and we will make more money from them. Finally, if we can increase the lifetime of new players, we can afford to pay more for new players, so we can acquire more of them than our competitors.

Also, thanks for your thoughtful post.

I believe that we missunderstood each other. What I meant was that with so reg unfriendly solution you will get rid of mostly the good players from site point of view (so the break-even barely winning regs) who will be losers now.

Instead your new plateau will be huge very strong regs and losing fish with nothing in between so in the end you can get disapointed with the result.

I gave party example to ilustrate that any reg unfriendly changes don't make games more healthy they just further polarize the playing pool.
you will have huge 10bb+ winners and huge fish. So regs will have even worse rake to winning ratio. Sure the recreational players will be happier and maybe deposit more in the long run but the impact of decreased rake will be significantly bigger than the advantages of the changes.

Firstly the table selecting regs won't be the first to go. The first to go will be the break-even mass-mulitabling regs who live solely from the rakeback then bumhunters. Overall I would guess that any site likes the b/e regs (there is a reason why Stars have the SNE rewards program)

"the recreational players depositing more"
I understand the idea but is there any data anywhere that would support that point of view? I remember Dominik Kofert mentioned it like once is his post about not discriminating winning players" that there is no data supporting the idea that if fish can play longer with their first deposit they deposit more in the long run.

Just an example:
-fish deposits 500€ get broke in 3 days then like 2 weeks later deposit another 500€ get broke and is done
-fish deposit 500€ and is able to play with it for a month.

Do we have really data that in the 2nd case the recreational player will deposit more in the long run (so it would exceed the 1k deposits made in the first example)?


One other thing is that everyone mention how they get more and more recreational players friendly but I believe only 888 get rid off rev share model which is like the biggest problem.
If you value recreational player for like 100$ for the affiliate and the reg due to rev share model several times more how do you expect the games will look in the long run??

We have more and more crazy ideas to make it harder for regs to win but somehow no one see they hypocrisy in rooms action.
I wouldn't be suprised that 888 success had a lot to do with them never offering huge rev share (and they stopped offering it some time ago) and just going with huge CPA/CPA only + some free money to encourage people to create an account.
So maybe there are other less extreme solutions to this issue.
Anyway we will see how it will work out for unibet. We are in structrual decline in poker (according to pokerscout we lost like 15% year to year). So maybe the crazy ideas are what we need.

These kinds of datasets aren't public - PokerStrategy aren't going to have that kind of data either, and you have to remember that Dominik had an agenda here too.

In your example, what is much more likely in the first case is that the player deposits €500, loses in 3 days, then never comes back. The player that gets what they consider €500 of entertainment is more likely to return, and that's in all our interests.

I have data to support the idea that players are likely to lapse after a big loss. I have also looked at players with quite small samples of hands - the ones that lose the most are the more likely to lapse. The ones that win a little have longer lifetimes.

The aim is not to make it harder for regs to win. The aim is to keep recreational players alive for longer. By having a level playing field for everyone, everyone will come out better.

Aha, you made a substansive edit after I clicked quote.

We are making an effort to help break even and losing high volume players. I don't want to go into details of promotions and so on until closer to launch, but suffice to say we recognise these players are valuable.

The high volume break even players who do little table selection currently will come out better under the new scenario because the new players stay alive longer. The players who table select extensively will do worse under the new scenario.

That doesn't mean the big winners will become bigger winners. The ones who didn't table select much in the first place will end up pretty much the same.

There is a change in composition of the middle class player base: the ones who table selected extensively will be worse off, and the ones who did not will be better off. But the middle class remains. The top end players won't have a bigger change in win rates than the middle class because they weren't playing the bad regs who extensively table selected anyway (almost by definition).

But the low end players will last longer.

Yes, and when players 'last longer', you get to rake them longer, which turns into a net profit for the site. Please stop all your bull****, like you actually care, it's all really tilting to read.

Imagine a boardroom full of suits talking about 'awweeee the players lose too fast we should make changes for them!'. Then they chuckle and flip over a graph showing how much more they can rake their sportsbook-fishes if they just make them play raketrap-games.

Obviously we make more money when players stay alive for longer. How is that bad for anyone? Poker is competing with TV, football, computer games and so on. We want people to e.g. watch less TV and play more poker.

I don't get it. Why is it a bad idea for players to last longer before going busto. As long as they are still around, I have a chance to take more money off that player.

Or am I missing something here...

When a recreational player deposits 100$, plays 50 hands and goes busto, a site might have raked 20$, and the regular players have won 80$. When sites use a model where recreational players are able to play longer with their 100$, they might rake 50$, leaving only 50$ for other (regular) players to win.

So no, this is not 'good for poker', this is good for sites that make more rake, lowering winrates to a point where it's impossible for someone to play poker professionally. Pokersites essentially hate winning players, as the only money coming in is net depositing players. They just want a bigger piece of the cake, which i essentially understand as it's businesses trying to make money.

What i don't like is that it's always presented as 'good for the players'. It's not, as there's less money to be won for the winning players. I really hate big corporations lying.

I agree that if a player deposits $x that they will pay more in rake if they play for y+1 hours instead of y hours.

What I'm arguing though is that the player deposits $2x because they are alive for longer. They don't lapse because they still find the game fun, so they make more deposits.

Incidentally, under your assumption there is a problem - once the recreational player goes broke, what does everyone else do? Stop playing? They don't - they just play amongst themselves, and the money is raked all the same. By making the games softer, they have a better chance of winning.

I started playing online poker 11 years ago. New players stayed alive for longer then as the skill gap was smaller - but it didn't mean that the sites took all the money in rake and nobody won.

Thank god you are a programmer and not in marketing, you have no clue how sites and ecosystems work.

Thanks, but I am infact in marketing. I'm consulting on the loyalty scheme, some promo stuff, gamification, some modelling stuff, etc. I also spent a year at Ladbrokes, seven at PokerStars, and three playing cards for a living. I have a pretty good idea of how both sites and poker ecosystems work.

You must really hate poker then if you stopped playing and trying to make it impossible for professionals to win with it

Don't make me cry please