steve, this post isn't helpful. "it isn't ..if it where we can't ..but anyways it is secret". stars is not the NSA, it is the arbiter of the games. i never heard about a game where some parts of the rules are secret ..just because. you'd rather make things public, not at least because there is no secret anyways.

- tinkering with the client is banned by your ToS (that is ToS, not gaming rules). this should take care of most auto-seaters. why do you not enforce your ToS?

- this leaves scraping open. scraping is painful for coders, so i'd think no real problem here. and there are many ways to make things really hard for them.

- this leaves services open that provide running table lists. this is the only tricky case. as long as it's possible to have all tables open in observer mode (multiple virtual clients, multiple IP addresses for example), there is not much that can be done from this angle.

but on the other hand, there quite a few services from well known commercial software vendors. and they are bold enough to announce their superior scanning services with stars full knowledge.

even if taking measures would be painful for stars (and the players), there is still quite a lot you can do. from the top of my head ..delayed observation only ..random seat assignements (..). so i'd consider your post to be quite inaccurate. we are way past this for quite some time now.


please do so. it's high time for your integrity dpt to go public on the subject. i could throw in a quite longish mail exchange with them that may help to shed some light on the way they are thinking, but it would be hard to follow for the average player and i would likely be biased in my comments and explanations. i don't want that - you don't want that.

so i think it would be best for all if they get the chance to discuss things through in public.

If it's still possible I wouldn't mind having the member of the integrity team who sat in at the meetings explain how the scripts relate to the ToS, I think that could be pretty helpful.

I wouldn't say whether they are 'permitted' or 'prohibited' is any secret, but I would say that the reasoning as to why is a little unclear among players, thanks for the reply as well as taking the time to go into further detail about this issue yesterday.

Either way, I'll wrap up my report and get it emailed off to you early this week to look over, thanks Steve.

im surprised stars is looking lightly at high stakes CAP buttoning.. people can wait for top hands and shove 20bb for huge amount of money, just to have the regulars sitting there defending with crap hands like 77 etc

they allow it to happen at least 1 time per player with a warning, so every player can do this and create a massively -EV environment for CAP players

i would be furious in the grinders shoes


stars would seriously need to change that it requests people to be FORCED to press that they are ready to be dealt cards when new game starts (warning about potentially having to post big blind/small blind), before the button location is chosen, otherwise it will always be possible to do, many sites use this type of game starting

I would like to ask one serious question in regards to scripts. It's been repeated that stars can't detect/stop scripts.

So does that mean you also can not detect/stop people who would use scripts to auto fold? etc?

Here is a simple solution to test on the site:

1. Drop the rake 80 percent on all stakes across the board
2. Raise the minimum cash-out amount to 1,000 dollars/or euro equivalent
3. Do a duel incentive rakeback system. By the amount of money in the account in combination with the volume of play. This further cuts down on cash-outs.
4. Make Supernova Elite 200,000 vpps and Super Nova 20,000 vpps
5. Add fpp cash games and hyper turbos and rake them
6. Use the rake from the fpp cash games and hyper turbos to 'feed the bottom' by putting the cash value of these points into the play money players accounts to juice up the site

I disagree with the second bolded part completely.

If table selection is eliminated, then it means players are forced to play with players of equal or better skill more often than they do currently. If two players of equal skill play each other, they both lose and the only winner is the rake taker, Stars.

Therefore eliminating table selection can only benefit Stars, and hurts the player pool, since money is raked more times before it get's won by the best players and withdrawn from the site, due to edges being decreased all round.

I am also a little horrified about this beginners table concept possibly being introduced in the future. This is player pool segregation which keeps the really bad players from losing their money quickly, and the rest of the player pool has no 'easy' money that it needs in order for those players to survive the rake and eek out a slight profit.

Yes, poker is a 'skill' game, but a skillful, experienced poker player only has a small edge over a player that is a complete beginner, so poker is only really a marginally skillful game where with the current rake as it is, winners still need decent skill edges against their opponents in order to profit. Poker is still very different from other games like chess, and sports where skillful, experienced competitors have naturally large edges over weak opponents, (Rafael Nadal would beat an amature at tennis each and every time, but Phil Ivey won't profit every time in a heads-up match vs a complete donk running hot against him).

Therefore if Stars truly is recognising that poker is a (slight) skill game, then it needs to keep things like table selection and allow as many different ways as possible for experienced players to utilise their edge over weaker players, (whilst not significantly hurting the weaker player's enjoyment), so that the experienced players can still profit to the same degree. If it wants to remove table selection due to apparent concern that weak players feel they are being hunted, then rake will need to be decreased significantly in order to maintain the status quo of current player profit levels.

Steve does have a point that removing table selection wouldn't necessarily move money from regs to recs. I'm a reg and I don't table select. If no other reg could table select I'd on avg. end up with more recs and would stand to make a little more money. I realize I'm a minority but there are regs out there who would stand to gain.

I'm not advocating that table selection be done away with... but I see no reason that the interests of players who use auto seating scripts should be looked out for. Those players (who are mainly regs, and likely winning players) are using that software to further extend their edge over recs and players like myself are not given there fair share of the game producers.

I also find it very concerning that Stars looks at Grimming as a low priority. Let's be clear, it's stealing, period. When somebody plays their non-blind hands with no intention of paying their blinds, they are stealing from the other players. To me the stakes are insignificant, stealing is stealing and ten dollars to a low stakes player could be just as meaningful as a hundred dollars to a high stakes player.

Grimming reports need to be addressed ASAP and very stern warnings should be given in addition to having to reagree to the T&C's. A repeat offender should be banned for a period of time. And a third offense should result in a permanent ban.

This is all true however lack of table selection per se doesn't mean you would nto be able to choose who you play with. Recreational players would just be seated more fair.

Current situation is that within couple of months only scripters will be able to play with the fish ad mid+. It won't take long that people will move to the Isle of Man or as close as possible to have a better connectivity with pokerstars software.

Currently there is nothing like table selection anymore. There is the fight of the software and tools to get the best seat. The ideal solution would be to remove all table selecting tools but based on Steve info they don't believe that it would be possible.

They already created ways that make scripts less usefull (e.g. that only one new table is allowed to start at mid+). That one thing makes scripts less usefull.

If they tweak the table starters idea I would be more for the changes (e.g. that if you grimmed and quit you are banned from using it not for 30 min but for like 4h or so cause now given how slow they respawn there is no pennalty at all).

So now we have a situation when either we will allow the scripts wars which will make the games unplayable for most (cause the best seats will be domminated by regs that use scrips and/or have the best ping) or solution where you still choose who you play with but without all of that and based on Steve post that are our only options.

You're misunderstanding my point completely. Removing table selection will allow recreational players to hang onto their money slightly longer, but they will still lose it all eventually, so in the long term, removing table selection will not move money from regulars to recreationals, it will move money from regulars to Stars.

"mimimi im a bumhunter please do not take bumhunting away from me mimimimi"

Some posters on here believe that it is possible to detect seating scripts, and also detecting which players are always sitting down in good seats half a second after a fish sits.

Just because Stars can't be bothered to find a good solution to the seating script problem, it doesn't mean they should be doing away with manual table selection to try and combat in that way instead.

Also, the beginner table idea is sort of like what Party Poker introduced, only in a more transparent way, (Party Poker kept the losing players on their own tables and the big winners couldn't see these tables in the lobby and Party Poker kept this information from the player pool). This is a disaster for the games if this is introduced.

Does Stars actually have a way of detecting shared HHs? Often times when I read on certain forums I get the feeling that everyone but me is using mined/shared HHs.

I don't know what your username is and which game you are playing but I'll ask you this.
ok, you are playing anyone, any table, but who is willing to play you? Once your table is 100% regs, won't it break?
You might think you are not table selecting directly but the other players table select for you as the table you are on breaks most of the time when the rec is out.
You really think you'd be a winner pre-rb if you played regs only ?

They would need to take a screen snap shot or hack a password protected database. I don't think they do this so the no.

Yes the tables do break far too frequently at LHE and often it's due to 6 regs sitting at the table. But the same thing would occur if it was random seating and the table ends up with 6 regs.

The difference is I'd get a fairer shot at being able to start a table with more recreationals then I do now due to auto seating scripts that allow players to instantaneously sit when a rec starts a table or when he joins a full table they get first dibs on the waitlist.

I'm not, and never have asked for anything that a rec player wouldn't ask for himself if he was made aware of what's up against him.

I didn't say I was opposed to table selection. I'm opposed to seating scripts which allow users to always get the jesus seat. If they did away with seating scripts it would be a level playing field. Or if they went with random tables it would be a level playing field.

It seems what you want is a playing field where you and only a handful of people who are even aware of these scripts get the recs. If Stars would advertise in their lobby or email all customers that these scripts exist I'd seize my case. Stars doesn't want to do this as actually informing their customer base of recreationals what they are actually up against would ruin their business.

you can say the same about any of the tools regs use even basic ones like hm1, tninja, etc. A fish would not be happy that you use hm1 and think you are cheating because he doesn't.
Like in a sport everyone has equipment and tools as long as they are within the rules set by the authority.
I sense some hypocrisy in what you are saying...so you think the fish is ok with huds and table selecting but hates that you're doing it 3 secs faster.
If you want a random share of recs you can play zoom or use table starter. If you want a better share you waste some more time selecting.

I don't use seating scripts and would prefer them to be banned since it's more noticeable to fish when regs insta-sit just after the fish first sits down, but I'm not massively against them, if the scripts are still allowed then I will still play online poker.

I do table select however, since I recognise when a table is profitable or not, and I don't play if it is not profitable due to the rake. I play poker to win money and have some fun. If I can't make money, then I will stop playing.

No reply from PokerStars Steve whenever he gets caught in the lie.

His notion: Eliminating table selection just moves money around amongst different regulars only, and Stars gain no extra cash from this.

My notion: His point is BS since it reduces win rates across the board, meaning that the player pool's money gets raked more often before it is withdrawn from the site, which helps Stars out no-end.

Even if Stars were somehow able to ban seating scripts, what would stop players from opening non-active tables and snap sitting right after the fish? You may say that it is unfair for mass tabling regulars, but hell, regs who play less tables are supposed to have more time to think/table select.

Yeah, exactly, that's why it's best to just leave the table and seating options as they are. The method of finding a new table has stood since the dawn of online poker and it still works ok, with the seating scripts a marginal problem at best.

Getting rid of table selection is a big problem though, and shouldn't be implemented just because there aren't other options to deal with the seating problem. It's only being implemented so that win-rates can be brought down even further.

As edges have come down since 2007, the rake is still pretty much the same as it was back then. Stars keeps proposing solutions under the guise of 'improving the games' when their real motivation is to take away the reg's edges slowly but surely, whilst in the meantime they don't decrease the rake in proportion to keep the player pool withdrawals the same as 2007 levels.

This is because Stars are trying to increase their profits, which is fine, if it weren't for the fact that they are lying to us about this.

Ain't that right Stevo?

No hypocrisy at all as I too feel Stars should email all users that HUDs exist as well. I understand the business and know why this isn't being done and I don't blame them.

What I find disturbing is they claim they can't do anything about detecting scripters which I believe is just not the case. Can players on 2+2 tell who and who doesn't use a script? I can tell just by watching the lobby and viewing tables. What Stars doesn't care to do is spend the time/resources as it works as a double cost. The cost of catching scripters and also the cost of not having these people as players. Allowing scripters is done at the expense of other regs who don't get a fair share of recs. And also at the expense of recs who feel targeted.

Instead of even making a reasonable attempt at catching scripters (as I can tell with near certainty who they are without any tools) the solution they come up with and are considering going with is getting rid of table selection.