I am pleased to announce a consolidation of ring game table speeds that will take place over the next week.

Table Speeds will now be based on game format rather than potentially having “Fast” and “Normal” tables of a single game.

We have made these changes with the goal of simplifying our offerings and bringing them more in line with the way people use our software.

These changes were heavily influenced by player feedback, both from TwoPlusTwo and elsewhere. Thanks to all of you who offered your help and suggestions.

The time you are given to act in a hand will now vary based on what stage of the hand you are involved in. If it is the first betting round, and no one has raised, you will get less time than on later betting rounds or when the pot has been raised. This should give you more time when you need it without allowing excessive time on the easiest decisions.

The new time to act values are as follows:


Here are our original time to act values for comparison:


There are two other timings that used to differ between fast and normal speed tables that will now be standardized across all tables.

Players will receive a warning that their time to act is about to expire when they have 8 seconds remaining. This timing had been set to 8 seconds at fast tables and 15 seconds at normal tables.

Players who do not automatically muck their hands will have 2 seconds at the end of each hand to decide to muck or show. This timing had been set to 1 second at fast table and 3 seconds at normal tables.


Timeline
These changes will start being implemented on Wednesday, January 16th and will be rolled out in waves over the next week.. Lobby Banners will be posted in the relevant lobbies as tables are modified.

When your client is updated this week, you will notice that you no longer have the ability to filter “Fast” and “Normal” speed tables as this distinction will no longer be present. Those who prefer not to update their client promptly will still be able to see the tables with the new time to act.

As these changes are rolled out, the newly consolidated tables will be labelled as “Fast. When the changes are completely rolled out, the “Fast” label will be removed.


PLO vs. NLHE
In earlier versions of this plan, we had discussed giving more time to act in PLO games than in NLHE games. However, we ultimately decided against this.
Although PLO players take slightly longer to act on average than NLHE players, the difference is small. PLO players are already adapting appropriately by playing significantly fewer concurrent tables on average. Additionally, a higher percentage of PLO actions are postflop, resulting in a higher average time allowed to act under the new system that will soon be implemented.

Kewl

so there will be no more zzzzz in the chat anymore ?

cool

hmmmmmmmmm

i like it

I still see fast and normal tables on lobby (i have not played yet)

Why no distinction between 100bb tables and deep ante tables?

This change is not taking immediate effect but will be rolled out over the next week.

Until the next server restart, both unlabeled tables and tables that are labeled "Fast" will remain in the lobby. After the next server restart, only unlabelled tables will remain, and they will operate under the new table speeds described above.

Why do PLO players always get the short end of the stick? Didn't you guys ask for feedback in the HSPLO forum? Because you seem to have totally disregarded it

POKERSTARS: Time to treat PLO and NLHE as different games! by Napsus in HSPLO

Seems like PLO community dont like being lumped together with NLHE for these discussions and I personally feel its a joke that they specific asks HSPLO for opinions on tablespeed then dont listen at all to whats said in said discussion.

That discussion and some ongoing is located in the ******OFFICIAL STARS REGULARS THREAD****** in HSPLO.

No, a lot of people in plo threads were happy with the proposed changes. Only a few weren't.

Your talking about tablespeed? Or the min buyinn change where 90%~ wanted higher buyinn.

As far as I remember for the tablespeed and after reading trough first pages starting here http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=2809 I still believe Im right that most was against fast tables, also just read recent discussion.

Not to be a jerk but who are you? Saw (almost) all of the reg HSPLO posters saying its stupid with faster tables after skimming a bit but cant recognize your sn. Whats your sn on Pokerstars?

It's just from what i read in both ssplo and hsplo. I recognize that for high stakes, you guys do need more time to act, but at ssplo seems like a high percentage of posters agree with what ps proposed.

Was it really always 15sec on fast tables previously? feels more like 8 seconds sometimes.

PokerStars Nick,

In a vacuum these changes are hurting my bottom line cause they make me time out way more often, even though I only play 6 tables. Yet they largely benefit the playing experience of the recreational players at cost of the multitabling grinders, which is why I applaud them.

However, timing out a lot is annoying and can be very costly, especially when it's happening in big pots at stakes where the money is significant. I think this could be solved pretty easily by replenishing the timebank quicker. By combining the recent changes (i.e. less time for each decision) with a time bank that replenishes quicker, you prevent massmultitablers from stalling the games needlessly, yet you're giving thinking players some valuable extra seconds when they're struggling with several four/five figure decisions at the same time. Two birds one stone, really. This was discussed previously in HSPLO and there seemed to be strong consensus, so I hope we can get some other regulars to chime in as well.

Consensus was that 15second was bad, changing it to mostly fast tables is bad and that we need to get timebank back faster as I read it.

I also think that you will time out less times if you get autotimebank preflop first in, so people dont have to run tableninja to do this (disadvantage to rec's that they time out more often).

I can see its a problem on midstakes (3-6 and down) that people multitable and stall tables but I dont see people on highstakes (I define this as 10-20+, stars calls big bets 5-10+, whatever) complain or abuse the timing system. You can easily punish the worst offenders more often by capping tables until their average speed is fast enough will everyone have time enough when you get multiple huge decisions.

I personally believe highstakes poker deserve the time the community (not Stars) say we need to play proberly for such money when you face huge decions in though spots so often.

I'm sorry, my post may have been a bit unclear. I wanted to convey that there had been calls for increasing the time bank, which nobody had been objecting to or voicing doubts about so far.

I'm not claiming there's a consensus that the shorter decision time is right. Yet even though I personally dislike it in a vacuum, I can see the benefits of the decision time being cut in the grand scheme of things. Again, this does not mean I am convinced it's the right thing to do. I am just saying I can relate to both sides in the argument. Whereas the time bank replenishing seems like a nobrainer. But feel free to chime in with remarks and suggestions.

Thanks for clarifying CZI, replenisher is obvs no brainer.

Think 8 sec will lead to lots of timeouts for booth rec and regs, 100% less tablestarting cause you will time out to much, therefor a worse gamingexperience from the timeout perspective and less tables from tablestarters (Im not alone in saying I will have to cut down drastically on tablestarting with new preflopsystem with 8sec).

def +1 to a replenisher

also played around with the idea of increasing time to act based on potsize, u'd automatically get more time in pots that have swelled over, say, 100bb. This would certainly help discern between masstabling stallers and actual tough decisions. Obv you'd need some timebank too for the occasional medium-sized pot that isn't str8forward, but I think the potsize system could work.

I really like the idea of adding pot size as one of the variables for decision time. Similarly to a replenishing time bank, I think it is:

-Fairly easy for PokerStars to implement
-Not too complicated for recreationals to understand
-Not subjective/arbitrary (whereas for example cutting down tables of people who are stalling the games is rather arbitrary, so it's a bit of a slippery slope)
-Probably not subject to any abuse (again, whereas people whose accounts have been altered for maximum tables could resort to multiaccounting)

I can't come up with any significant negatives about having more standard decision time (unrelated to time bank) in bigger pots, but again, feel free to add arguments and discuss.

good change, should have cut down preflop time even more tho

people complaining are either playing way too many tables(and being a pain in the ass for everybody else at the tables in the progress) or like 100 years old

Very mature post cashy. What games and stakes are you playing?

Even if I 1 tabled (as I sometimes do), I would prefer more time for playing HSPLO and the old normal table system over this one.

Proposed improvement...

Preflop facing no raise

12 seconds

Every other situation possible...

12 seconds +1 second for every BB 'you' have invested in the pot

(Time bank resets after every hand)

Havent read through all posts, but here is my view on the new time to act rules.

I tried to fire up 20 tables yesterday, and I missed ALOT of hands preflop. (due to massive amount of fast tables) (probably 0.5-1% of hands). When I play alot of tables I auto fold alot of hands from EP to BTN, and the hands im going to play Im obviously not auto-folding, but however when I have alot of action/big pots I put all my focus and effort on that spot (which usually takes less than 8 seconds) but when mulitple of those spots occour, I found out that the hands I didnt auto-fold (I was going to play). Timed out, because of the fast-table preflop time rule. This was very frustrating.

Ive played million of hands with this 15 second warning timer and my mindset and decision process is set around this. I also think I maybe have the highest APM at stars, so I think this should be a warning bell to stars. The 20-tabling SNE chasers will loose some winrate because of this change. And many wont even go for SNE at all.

8 second makes me time out more and its an insult we dont have more time
if the arguments are recs think we are slow, we can cap tables on the slowest ones + as blopp says they are often used to superslow live 1 tabling and they can also choose to play more tables themselves. I really think stars should add more remove the fast tables and keep the time to act preflop as it is.

Thank you,
Regards,

Odd_Oddsen