Is there any way to set up a headsup cash match between friends in 8 game play $? (no headsup tables available) Is the "home games" feature available to Americans and would that allow us to do it?

Hi Alex,

I agree with your comment that it was a valid and good question. I'm sure there are a handful of players at Pokerstars that are wondering why they are now raking the play money tables. I decided to add my two cents in a respectful manner. Apparently my post didn't live up to the moderator's expectations of a quality post.

What the moderator doesn't realize is that many real money players start out playing for play chips. Today's play money player often becomes tomorrow's real money player. Back when this forum began (as well as internet poker in and around the year 2000), many real money players questioned the legitimacy of online poker sites and they use sites such as these to post questions to the poker community in order to get them answered. Most of us did our best to answer questions in a respectful manner (The question was important enough to the original poster to cause him to post the question as well as 7 pages worth of replies). Unfortunately, there was always a person or two that would chastise the post (What a dumb question; This isn't important; etc.) or somewhere along the thread post a smart ass comment. Fortunately, most of us would just ignore the person and he usually went away.

Mike,

What shocked me was that as a moderator, I would expect you to compose yourself in a respectful manner. Posting, not one, but two smart ass comments demonstrates your lack of professionalism. Granted, I haven't posted here in almost a decade and I certainly didn't expect, nor need any welcome in my return. However, I certainly did not deserve the welcome back that was given by you.

MG

Classy

Mike is a good guy and doesn't mean you any disrespect. He just has a sense of humor about things. Everyone here who's been here a while knows that. He helps a lot of people with issues and is a good guy to have here. I think you just need to see where he's coming from and not take things so personally.

All these words just to troll little me? Again? That's two of your only four posts in nine years aimed at me; in a thread about play money - which, btw, shows great disrespect to the OP, being totally off the topic of his thread, and your second attempt to derail his thread.

I looked back to the post that shocked you, and that you felt you certainly did not deserve, which set you off on your ridiculous rant.

To remind you, it was, "Good to see your second post in 9 years is about the important topic of play money poker."

Seriously, my friend, if you react like this over that commonly used throwaway comment in similar circumstances, you really should leave this and any internet forum; as you said you were going to do last time, but now seem to have changed your mind. ("If this is the type of welcome one receives after being gone for close to 10 years, then I prefer to no longer participate and certainly if this is the type of behavior that a moderator exhibits (who should lead by example), then I prefer to join discussions at other websites.")

Incidentally, for the few naive readers like scottjf8 who don't understand why I made the initial comment, it is well known that hackers target old accounts that haven't been used for a long time so that they can use what appears to be their lengthy time in the forums to scam the noobs and naive in the p2p transfers thread. By making my post, if mathguy happens to be such a hacker, and his next post turns up in the transfers thread, potential traders who search for his name in posts, as they should do, will see my post and will be able to steer clear of him. The fact that he is reacting as he is to such a harmless and factual comment certainly makes me very glad I did point it out.

With apologies to OP for forced sidetrack.

try emailing

support@pokerstars.com(they could "possibly" set up the HU 8Game cash feature in your home games club)

ideas@pokerstars.com(suggest it to them, they do listen "most of the time")

Yes the home games feature is available to US players, for now the only option for HU 8Game in a home games club is to schedule a tournament/sit n go
and select "2 players", "shoot out format"

or for now you could just duke it out on the regular 8game 6max table HU...

Thanks, feel - my friend and I tried this last night and it worked perfectly

While I do use home games at times for prop betting, I fully understand why PokerStars has taken this action for reasons Mike Haven gave.

inb4 mathguy is mbpoker's gimmick account

Where are the highest limit poker cash play money games at Stars?
Where are their real money rake free 2-4c and 1/2c heads up games, that they used to have?
So, you think they will let you play for free your home games?
They sure can afford to make them rake free, it not costing anything to mention to them, but do you think they will?

Well, technically play money home games are still "free". But if anyone is using Stars for an easier bookkeeping system has to now factor in rake to its homegame manually. Considering play money games are meant to be for play money, I think this is a fair inconvenience to those who use play money home games for other purposes.

Does this mean I have to report my play money winnings? lol this thread is pretty funny.

LMAO

So what bankroll do you need to play these games?

Mike,

Uh, thanks for the apology about derailing, but I found your posts far less obnoxious/irrelevant than the ******s who feel they need to show up in thread and remind everyone that play money =/= real money, as if that somehow answers the question or contributes anything meaningful to the discussion.

All it really says is, "I need to make fun of play money players to feel better about myself", which is at once painfully evident and kind of sad.

maybe part of the reason is to complicate things for people which use the playmoney tables to play realmoneypoker to not pay rake. me and my friends did it often and exchanged real money in private.

Obviously it's to get players used to being raked and obviously support can't say this, so they came up with the bull**** "to make games more exciting" line.

Yes it's terrible, dishonest, etc...w/e, it's the way businesses work.

Now email Stars and ask them why they don't send a bill at the end of each month to players with how much they've raked written in black and white, so that amateur players realize how insane the rake is instead of having no idea how much they're paying.

I don't know about all of that. It's just the importance of play rake is really not all that significant.

It's not very important - to you. You have to keep things in perspective. The vast majority of people would find somebody taking internet poker seriously as equally ridiculous as some real money players may find people who take play money seriously. While play money may not directly impact real money players it definitely indirectly impacts us. Online poker is shrinking faster than ever and so I think it's reasonable to treat everybody who is in anyway interested in it with complete respect and decency, as if that shouldn't be standard anyhow.

It's a reasonable question in any case. Stars didn't just make this decision for giggles; they certainly know getting raked isn't "exciting" and it equally certainly wasn't the DoJ wasting resources and deciding to try to bring the hammer down on Stars' play money games. If you have any interest at all in the online poker economy, and what the sites are doing behind the scenes, it's interesting to try to interpret their actions. My interpretation of this would lead to this, in at least one way, being good news. Stars has likely realized people are indeed leaving the real money games because the amount they earn (or the rate they lose) is much worse than in other games due to high rake - in this case the other games being the play money games. Stars' solution is to therefore make the play money games require just as big of an edge as the low stakes real-money games by charging an incredibly high rake. The point being if you can beat the overraked play money games, you should be able to see at least remotely comparable results in the overraked low stakes real money games. Whereas right now the real money games introduce a 10-20bb/100 handicap compared to rake-free games. The solution I feel is terrible, but the acknowledgement of the problem is potentially huge since they, to date, seem to have believed that as long as they could bring in enough degens and addicts that it didn't really matter what they charged in rake.

I am keeping things in perspective. All of your verbose, grandiose posts on why it is a matter worth examining very closely is not keeping things in perspective.

No you're not keeping things in perspective at all. By 'perspective' you mean you're only considering things that directly impact your small little insular perspective of how things 'ought' to be. Real money poker 'ought' to be important. Play money poker 'ought' to be an entirely different and irrelevant matter. That's simply not the case.

And I didn't say it was a matter worth examining closely. I said it was a matter worth examining closely, and I quote - If you have any interest at all in the online poker economy, and what the sites are doing behind the scenes... That's an important qualifier since the vast majority of players, and I assume including you based on your comments, don't. Hence the huge number of: "LOL OMG PLYA MONEY! ITS LIKeE POKER BUT WITHOUT MNOEY! ROFL" type comments in this thread.

if its not significant, then why is stars doing it? OP has a legitimate question

It's obvious that they started raking home games so you can't just play play money with someone and 'settle up' offline afterwards. The real problem is that the rake is 100 chips per pot. You buy into a heads up 200/400 FLHE for 8k each, and after a half hour, one player busts, and the other has 4k..

The bold is actually a given, but if it matters, I played professionally on Stars for several years until US players were removed from the site - rake, of course, is very important to me. Having said that, anything more than, "They are conditioning players to become acclimated to rake by raking play tables" is fairly ambitious.

I know you'll give a 2000 word post on how raking play money will trickle upward, and, as a result, 3 generations from now tables will be 90% rake and 10% player money, but let's keep that post in perspective.

Obviously you're right that this is "..conditioning players to become acclimated to rake.." but that's little more than a description of what's happening. The interesting question isn't what are they doing but why are they doing it and why now.