Def a good question and a major reason why recreational 1 tablers hate playing.

This is why Zoom poker may bring back LHE's popularity imo.

You really have to blame the genius who decided to create a top heavy VIP program which pays virtually nothing at the lower levels, and obscene amounts at the very top. If players don't want like 6% RB they need to either be a high stake player or putting in a lot of volume.

If you are complaining about people taking too long I assume you play micros, because at those stakes the volume required for players to reach SuperNova pace is simply absurd, and you have many people on 24 tables trying to reach certain VPP goals.

Don't you find this quite an ironic choice of thread title then. If you don't want to respond to the concerns of winning players since they apparently don't make up enough of PokerStars userbase to matter then why post this on 2+2? Winners do make up a small percent of players as a whole, but they make up a much larger percent of those that post on 2+2. Perhaps changing the thread title to "PokerStars Roundishtable (winning players not welcome)" would be more apt?

Lee Jones:

Simple question:
What is the definition of a beatable game?

Good question Digger although there is pretty much zero chance of an answer I'll ask the question as well.

Lee, what is the definition of a beatable game?

notice the vip questions dodged again!

Please please don't raise the table cap.

I personally feel like bots are the nr 1 threath to the future of online poker. Do you agree?

You've been the best site combatting bots. One of your sollutions is to make you type a word within 30seconds, o how there is someone behind the computer. I've had this feature twice in over a million hands last year. I feel like this test should be way more frequent, and it should be tested in multiple variations. Can you tell us something on the work of pokerstars on combatting botting?

zoom for pokerstars.be?... pokerstars.eu has it now, but no word for us

and for ps.it ?

I agree with this, but I think it should be adapted to multitabling. I was asked this once and timed out everywhere while typing. Maybe make it so its a popup so you notice it, as well as being able to either type or say it ?

we want 2-4 zoom!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lee, to your last point about the rake. I know absolutely that this stuff was looked at and analyzed by you guys, perhaps not accurately in all cases but looked at nonetheless , before black friday.

I was on the private forum internet panel thing that developed out of similar vip complaints a couple years prior. Isai would post in there and participate too. We were given some of the numbers that they were looking at to try to balance out the vip system and things like that. Other issues like the multiple currencies and the fee for transferring were addressed too.

I had a push in there in the 6max 5.5x vpp thing vs fullring getting 6x for example and was engaged in some discussion as to how they looked at it and felt they were ok to do it that way.

Maybe this isn't directly what you were referring to I guess. But it sure felt like they were at least looking at it SOME. saying that Isai never thought about that stuff before black Friday at all dies not strike me as correct just based on a couple of comments I remember him making over there. That's not to say he was obsessed about it or anything. I have no idea.

Also, Isai had his own pseudo-shill account on here that posted sometimes. Been pretty much proven. He was quite proud of pointing out the value they gave the players on cheaper rake, better vip rewards, etc. I remember other comparisons to other sites by stars reps as well. There us definitely a fair amount of awareness there.

Sure, maybe there is some catching up in some ways being done. But the implication that it was never brought up seems incorrect to me. (Obviously there is a good chance you would not know any of this)

Any plans to add the 8-game to zoom?

Bob, thanks for posting that. Are you saying that Isai had a recent shill account? If so, it would be fun to know who that was. I only remember a shill account from a few years ago that was in the 2+2 archive. Thanks in advance for clarifying.

I don't play micros fwiw. I play full ring and it is/was as bad there when I gave stars a brief shot when ftp down.

Lee, I also find your restaurant analogy a bit off as well. Different places promote specials or other items all the time. It's a great idea.

I just mcdonals commercial for their new shamrock shake. They don't say, "we have many different items and you are sure to find the one you prefer" and then leave it at that. They promote new items to generate more interest and keep people coming back.

I think the idea of promoting different games could very much add life to some other aspects. I don't even know how to play badugi and don't care. And I assume I would be overmatched if I tried with a bunch of players who have an idea. If there was some special for extra points or a reload that could only be cleared at those games, "because we want to promote Badugi Mania" or some other incentive I would absolutely give it a try and probably have some fun on a new game.

It could be as simply as pushing SNG or even $10 Omaha SNG or something.

Frankly, I think its an obvious slam dunk that players would enjoy and I'm kind of surprised your site and/or others don't do more little things like that.

Same goes for other promos like Aces Cracked or the old party promos like bonuses for 3 of a kind 8's or something.

The milestone promos are pretty stale but between that and the Santa random giveaway on the tables it seems like that's all stars does in that direction. Feels like they aren't that interested in doing much new that I have to think some players would enjoy.

I tend to agree with Bob here. I think it's important not to push players one way or the other long term, but targeted "specials" on certain items are not going to do that imo and may help retain customers that find a Stars product that they really like and wouldn't have found otherwise, converting them into long term depositors.

Badugi Mania type promos would be great for this. Another option might be to have an automated system to analyze games played and offer suggestions similar to the Facebook friend suggestion.

"We've noticed you enjoy our $1.50 9-seat NLHE SNGs. You may also be interested in these micro MTTs, 18-seat SNGs and NLHE 9-seat cash games."

"We've noticed you enjoy our $0.05/$0.10 9-seat NLHE cash games, you may also be interested in 6-seat NLHE cash games, PLO, and 9-seat SNGs."

Links on each game type suggested leading to a <2 minute browser based video replay explaining the rules and game structure.

I also agree with Bob that it's better to promote your product rather than to promote an arbitrary event with a lottery.

Hi folks –

As promised, I'm back with/for more.

For those keeping score at home, we've got

• Zoom NLH at $.02, $.05, $.10, $.25, $.50, and $1 BBs
• Zoom PLO at $.02, $.10, $.25, $.50, and $1 BBs

I think we can say that we're past the crawling stage with Zoom now; you folks have done a great job of stress testing the software. But as we go up in stakes, we also have to consider liquidity, both in the Zoom and "traditional" environments. We'll open up higher stakes Zoom pools when we think they'll be healthy without harming the trad games.

Regarding LHE for Zoom, it's there (in theory, we could offer Zoom for any of our games), but again, we will offer it if we think it will be healthy as Zoom, but without meaningfully harming the traditional LHE games.

We'd all love to have the run-it-twice. However, we don't think it would have the effect on players coming in (or staying) that other big features have, so it's never made it to the top of the development list. But yes, all the poker players inside PokerStars think it would be cool and we know that many of you would like to have it. We will keep it on the list and you keep reminding us how much you want it . I will tell you this: no run-it-twice feature developed and overseen by the current management would ever charge extra rake.

From Sect7G:

Yes, and no. We are still a community-minded business. Seriously: name another company which brings customers to its headquarters (at company expense) to meet with the guy who runs the company and discuss issues of importance to the customer community. How many other companies send senior managers into their industry's forums to answer questions? That said, yes, we (both the company and the industry) went through a period of "meteoric growth". When that happens, a company must become more corporate or it dies. [1] The question is whether the company's culture continues to focus on the customer and the community as key components of its corporate success. I believe we do.

Player meetings would be useful if they did nothing but gave some of you a chance to personally get to know some of us and have a beer together. I find that goes a long way toward making the conversation more civil, more constructive, and less incendiary. Sadly, the Internet isn't known for its civil and measured discourse, and that does little to move along the actual discussion. Also, something else might happen: we might not budge and you guys might not budge. But at least we'd understand each other's positions a bit better and down the road, that might help us find more common ground.

But all that said, we have taken very specific actions directly resulting from the last two meetings. While I certainly can't make any promises that X or Y will come out of the next set of meetings, I would say that the arrows point in that direction.

Let's keep things in perspective; I didn't ask for overwhelming applause. [2] I am saying that PokerStars managed an enormous crisis as smoothly as one could possibly hope. We refunded over $100 million to American players in about three weeks. For instance, we could have gotten away with a much slower pace of refunds and nobody would have thought less of us. But we didn't because we are committed to our players and our community (and our reputation, to be sure). It's one thing for a company to do the right thing on a daily basis ("feed your kids"), but the test comes when something goes Very Wrong. I claim that PokerStars performed superbly when that Very Wrong thing happened (particularly in contrast to our competition). You can choose to applaud or not as you wish.

I don't think they're the number one threat, but they are definitely a concern. We're proud of our status as most aggressive anti-bot site in the business and intend to continue that. As regards the "Captchas" ("Please type in this series of squiggly letters"), they are just the tip of the iceberg of bot-detection. We have all kinds of techniques. One set of tools is designed to defeat bots (make it difficult/impossible for them to work). The other set of tools detects bots (whereupon we bust their masters). But for pretty obvious reasons, we don't discuss the details of how those tools work.

Yes, obviously my prior post wasn't clear. When I was talking about the "good old days", I meant during my first tour at PokerStars (2003-2007/08 depending on how you do the math). I meant that in 2005, the conversations I heard were not about rake. I'm sure that Isai and (a few) others were paying close attention to the rake, but it wasn't a constant topic (either internally or externally). In the intervening time (2008-2011) a lot of people were hired to do things such as analyze rake. That's part of the "corporate growth" process I discussed earlier.

This (and Bob's post that prompted it) are good points. I spoke to our chief promotions guy about this and guess what - he agrees with you. He is already working on some promotions that are designed to expand players' horizons. For instance, we ran a PLO week on .FR (more of that, says I). Our promotions guy tells me that he's working on a system that will allow us nudge people from point A to point B in the client (e.g. "People who are playing No-Limit Hold'em also enjoy playing <link>PLO</link>." We're not there yet, but a senior guy in the promotions department is on the same page as JH1 and MicroBob. Keep those cards and letters coming - it helps him sell his case.

As with most things in life, this isn't a black and white issue. For instance, I don't think that coming up with different graphics which are used by the PokerStars software constitutes "modifying" the software. That said, I'm sure we could find plenty of attorneys who would argue either (or both) sides of that point. But in our estimation, people coming up with cool new graphics for the software enhances its value, makes the game more fun for some, and doesn't hurt anybody. So we don't worry about it.

Similarly, you're arguing that an automated timebank clicker constitutes a bot. In fact, I suspect you could find one or two people in the PokerStars office who agree with you. But the weighted majority of people who make those decisions here have decided that such a timebank clicker isn't a bot. It's basically impossible to write a rule, law, or regulation that is zero percent open to interpretation. So we have to interpret our rules (and sometimes rewrite them) in the best interest of the company, the players, and the game.

-----------------------------------------------

I'll take questions and try to answer them in semi-real time for the next day or three. And then another two-week hiatus. Thanks to everybody for your participation and ideas.

Best regards,
Lee Jones

[1] Business school casebooks are filled with the bones of companies that didn't adquately manage their growth from "wildly successful start-up" to "solid corporate entity."

[2] And this is where I'm talking about civil discourse. Are you seriously comparing us to a guy on Jerry Springer who wants credit for feeding his kids?

Valve Software
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/foru...y-I-love-Valve

Lee..thanks for taking the time to answer questions. Are there any plans to help the Limit games on stars survive and thrive. Either in the form of rake reductions, increased VPPs or any other promotions or is the plan to let the games run its natural course?

The games have had a reduction in the last month or so in the number of tables running. Some help is needed in getting games started (hint added benefit for playing sh). The rake increase 5 handed really is hurting the health of the games as ppl do not want to game start and tables are breaking much easier if someone sits out.
thanks

Thank you Lee for answering a lot of the questions which concern us.
One thing a lot of Zoom regulars don't understand is, why you want to protect the traditional 9max games? (I'm talking about the 9max games because the 6max games never really ran on Rush Poker in the higher stakes and I can't see it beeing a lot different on PokerStars.)
I can see you're gonna hurt some NL200 9max, but you will defently not be able to kill the action, so many tables running. And even if you would kill the action in the traditional games, that just means everyone enjoys Zoom and prefers to play the Zoom games instead of the traditional ones. Why would you want to force a game to run even if people would actually rather play Zoom?
On the traditional NL400 9max tables, I would say there won't be a lot of action anymore because there isn't a lot going on at the time anyway (two up to sometimes nine games during peak time). What's your argument to prefer those average 40 people in comparison to the hundreds of people which would like to play NL400 Zoom?

Also a lot of Zoom regs would be very very glad to hear a time estimation for bigger stakes to be release. Are we speaking days/weeks/months? I think there are a lot of higher stakes regulars (including myself) preparing on NL100 Zoom to be ready when higher stakes are released. And we're wasting our time and money if that does not happen in the near future.

I and a lot of other Zoom addicts would be very glad to get some more specific answers =)
Thanks!

Hi Lee, thanks for your answers. Two questions

1) Any timeline, even a very rough one or something that just outlines the relevant factors, on when mobile with zoom might be released to the rest of the world?

2) The pokerstars vip store is currently very anemic for canadian non-tourney players. Futureshop dollars and Amazon dollar gift cards are both now gone, there is nothing in electronics. Outside of the little things like clothing or tourney tickets the only option is the very expensively priced (compared to the gift cards of the past) is the cash dollars. For example 16+k points for $250 in gift cards vs 25k points for $300 in cash. Do you expect any major retail Canadian gift cards to return?

THIS.

lee, as a player i have to agree to these rules before i can play on your site. it does not mention anywhere that the rules have grey areas, nor that they will be interpreted by the majority of people working at stars. it simply says:

5.6. AUTOMATIC PLAYERS (BOTS). The use of artificial intelligence including, without limitation, "robots" is strictly forbidden in connection with the Service. All actions taken in relation to the Service by a User must be executed personally by players through the user interface accessible by use of the Software.

This is plainly not the case.

It is not "plainly impossible" to write a rule that allows zero interpretation. i believe the above rule absolutely nails it in the case of artificial intelligence. programme sees player running out of time, clicks timebank. player times out clicks resit in. this is 100% artificial intelligence, and, as per your rules, should be banned.

Hi Lee

Will we be seeing some benefits/promos to the LHE community in the near future because the games are getting lesser by the week and the increases in rake at some micro and low limit levels in February are just killing the games?.

It's a sad state of affairs when you bring out zoom poker and you have thousands of players playing across many limits at no limit and then with the one micro limit game for limit holdem there are times of the day with no players and a general average of about 45.