As for me, I have an account at both Betonline and Sportsbetting. I asked Sportsbetting before I made the one there, they said they wouldn't be associated with BoL and thus it would be fine (I also screenshotted that obviously). Knowing the varying level of live chat though I don't know if this really is valid.

Also @ Chris sent you a PM; would appreciate an answer

Received and replied
Chris

Hi guys,

POKER SCHEDULED MAINTENANCE

There is a scheduled maintenance planned for the Poker Chico brands on Wednesday, October 6th from 5:00am ET to 7:00am ET (2 hour downtime). Please note that tournaments that overlap with those hours will be cancelled.

You'll notice that a few tournaments in the regular schedule starting at midnight tonight might be unavailable until services get fully restored at 7:00am ET on Wednesday.

There are quite a few upgrades in the release tomorrow. I will update this thread with links and descriptions of these improvements once the poker platform is up and running again.

Regards,
Chris

Hi guys,

FYI. This maintenance was re-scheduled for next week. Will update this thread once the new date is confirmed. Apologies for the false warning.

Regards,
Chris

Can you already list the upcoming changes?

BOL rep said its banned in NJ, can anyone confirm?

Hey NINzent,

Here's a sneak peak of some of the changes for the upcoming software release:

CASH GAMES

• Anonymous Observation: Players identities on cash tables will only be revealed once a player has seated on a table.
• Group View: One click registration to the 'game type' of your choice and 'waiting lists' to join multiple tables.
• 50BB Buy-in: Beta trail with 50BB buy-in tables.

TOURNAMENTS

• Multi-Entry Seating: Improved the algorithm for seating and reseating in multi-entry tournaments.
• Tickets Registration: Tickets earned for tournaments where you have already registered with cash (prior to the tournament starting) will be substituted for cash buy-ins.
• Final Table Replayer: Improvements to navigation, timeout animation, messages and a table with tournament results.
• Jackpot Tournaments: New beta version of a Jackpot MTT’s, offering more winning chances for more players.
• New Tabs: Main Event and Satellites Menu tabs providing quick access to upcoming Satellites or Main Events of the day.
• Lobby Icons: New banner icons now replace the text name and display the main MTT's of the day.

UX/UI IMPROVEMENTS

• In client notifications: Automatically hidden after 10 seconds.
• Improved fonts for: HDPI and scaled monitors.
• HTML5Mobile: Boost and Cash tables are now easier to distinguish Multiple other appearance improvements also applied.
• Desktop: Windfalls now display the number of player’s currently registered.
• Hotkey: Press Ctrl+N display all player's notes on the table.

I'll confirm all of these with the poker team once they are ready to announce the release date next week.

Cheers,
Chris

lol anonymous tables here we come

Partypoker has implemented an anonymous lobby about 2 years ago and WPN did it a couple of months ago. Please go ahead and ask anyone who has played there, it has been an absolute disaster.
It results in regs constantly joining and leaving because they think a weak player might have joined which results even more people joining and leaving because they think a weak player might have joined, which leads to regs clogging table seats that they are going to leave within an orbit and a lot of people constantly being grimmed.
I would really like you to rethink the decision there, since Chico probably has the healthiest lobby out of big all sites with a decent amount of reg on reg war and recreational players.
Regarding the 50bb tables, I dont understand why you not just allow people to buy in with 50bb at the normal tables if they want to? What is the reasoning behind splitting apart those player pools?

I'm afraid you are going down a dangerous path and I am afraid you could turn yourself into the ghost town that Partypoker made itself
I hope my feedback helps
(Also I would like to point out that I ALWAYS start tables in case you are thinking I am against those changes since I might be table selecting hard and the changes would make it more difficult for me, this is not the case)

Hi Chris!

While I don't think the anonymous lobby system is as bad as other posters in here make it seem it still causes some issues with buttoning etc and I believe a lot of recreational players enjoy looking at the table a bit before seating, at least that is the impression I have gotten from talking to quite a few of them about the WPN changes.

The 50BB-tables are almost completely dead on all other sites and open the games up to higher risks of cheating (easier to solve games at 50bb than 100bb for instance), and in my personal opinion, they are a lot less fun to play. You already have an option to buy in for 40bb and I think that is sufficient for players who would like to play with a smaller stack.

I agree with NINzent that the lobby setup you have right now is the best out of any sites, where new tables will spawn once one is full, and that it has created a very healthy system where it encourages some battling instead of a system like WPN where people just spam-open new tables in hope to get a seat with a recreational.

Don't fix what isn't broken.

// Bryniak

I agree to everything NINzent said, but especially to this. Please don't go that path.

This is awful.

Acr lobby is literally the worst lobby out of every poker site.

The never ending grimming and just a complete mess of the lobby system. Going to be even worse if it's KOTH still. Chico lobbies are legit good. Just some bugs need ironed out but no need to change to this.



I've actually been recommending Chico as one of the best sites to play on. Guess that will change

Was any research done on this?


What is the point of the anon lobby btw? Is it to protect a rec? Because the rec gets hunted just as fast on acr as it did before with the added bonus of table starting regs just getting never ending grimmed. Nice reward.

Omg

Massive + to all above people stated.

Anonymous just doesnt work. No-one including recs like it (microgaming, party many examples history shown).

Could advise anyone to play Chico before. Obviously not after such awful changes.

Sincerely hope you guys reconsider this similarly to how you remade preflop rake thing.
Otherwise it will turn into ACR clownfest from best possible lobby to literately worst.

Then again, not rly gonna bit*** and complain too hard. If site turns into clownfest similar to other `US friendly` options like ACR/pokerbros, at least there are rakeback deals on there. We had pokerstars making one awful change after another, until they found themselves losing top1 traffic by quite a bit, which was unimaginable few years ago before all of that sequence of changes was made. If you make plenty enough bad decisions, people around will adjust, but site will lose volume.

Another + 1 to everything above

Don't change a good thing just to change it!

i was considering to open an account. if this goes through no way i give a try with high rake no RB plus this BS!

Chico should really really consider some of the changes proposed that have received some backlash here. There are some super credible and long term players of the site giving you real insight. WPN's changes that you are mimicking did nothing to improve the games. Their recent change to the MTT lobby is ridiculous removing the current level and adding how much time left.

I don't understand why sites focus on what is not broken and/or ignore player feedback. Just look how well PokerStars did with all their brainfart changes. Poker side of the business dropped 40% in revenue. Networks have some belief they can force changes on players but the amount of options we have is pretty good, just look at the growth of the apps and private clubs like Kings. We have more HS Omaha tables running than WPN does usually. Zero marketing, invite only, etc....

At the very least, invite some of those posting about it to explain their side to mgmt for a real discussion. The volume and revenue some of these players generate would definitely be missed on your end.

As someone who helped shut down scripters on stars and someone who starts 1k tables on chico, I'd like to say that anonymous lobby is definitely wrong choice to make. I can assure you there are quite a few effective ways to fight scripters without turning your lobby into a completely unusable mess like WPN/party.

So please, reconsider and don't make that sacrifice.

As a newer player to the site and someone who plays on WPN + has played on Party before + after they rolled out the semi-anon format, I echo everyone's thoughts on NOT changing the way the lobby is setup. Currently I think the 2/5 5/10 PLO games seem to be some of the the healthiest on the net. I am a big fan of how a new table doesn't spawn until a full game is running. I don't think the semi-anon format actually discourages "predatory behavior" from what I've witnessed. Players will just join the table, play a hand or two, if the table looks good, they will stay... if not they will leave.

I also don't think there is much point to spread the liquidity of the games further for normal tables + 50BB tables... unless you mean raising the min buyin for the games to 50bb. "short" tables on ACR almost never run.

Worst part about this potential anon chage is this:

I dont use seat script (i like starting tables fwiw @SSNL), but i do recall browsing forums stumbling (or someone sent me link) that one of most popular script that people run, right after WPN udpate can actually show people`s names/you can lookup names just observing tables, even tho they are `anon` unseen screen names for regular users (again, shortly after WPN introduced this change).

I dont know how true this is, but if script makers advertise that, its probably true.

So what you will do with a change like that, instead of making it all equal for everyone as its pretty much is now, you will create EXTRA environment for even larger advantage for people who cheat. (cheating)Rich will get richer...

And don`t tell me chico is fighting scripters with insane great rate because thats just not the case from practise. (yes site seems to be botless at the moment which is great btw so kudos on that, was full of bots before afaik, but certainly there are enough scripters daily)

Its convenient for sites like WPN/party to make change like that cose everyone who knows stuff, knows site is full of bots, and instead of fighting bots, they`d rather people not constantly bring this into social media, so they just make games semi anon to kinda solve problem in a sense. Way to go for long term longevity of games.

To mimic such strategy to me, sounds like someone on chico is getting payed monthly salary. They haven`t done anything poker related in a while, but they need to `show off` for quarterly work to upper management. So they come up with clueless ideas like that `studying market around`.

Wouldn`t be shocked if this assumption isn`t that far off.
instead focus on fixing actual bugs etc, not change whats absolutely not broken, and is the absolutely best lobby on the market at the moment (will quickly become top worst).

Then again. You guys will notice this change urself, just not right away :-)

PokerStars and GGpoker dont have anon lobby like that. All observable. Remind me what % of overall poker market share they have? top1-2 right?
You are trying to mimic botfest/regfest party/ipoker and Phil LOL Nagy`s WPN strategies. That certainly sounds like a great approach that screams success all over it.
You also cant really allow urself to do this, because your effective rake all across is significantly higher than any of above mentioned alternatives.

Good luck.

^ lance nailed it

Main thing is: people (recs and regs alike) prefer transparency over everything else, so don't take it away from them with anon lobby.

I wonder if it would make a difference to just keep +200nl tables transparent and lower as anon? Seems that most regs play +200nl and most recs play 100nl and lower? idk, I see both sides to this argument. Another thing that isn't public (at least not for me) is how much profit do the sites actually get from regs vs recs. I'm not talking strictly rake generated either, more like actual deposit/withdrawal relative to rake generated.

I completely agree with everybody's posts above regarding the decision to implement an anonymous lobby in the upcoming software update. Please don't change what isn't broken, especially not for a system that has proven to be completely broken on every other site that has implemented that system.

One of the main reasons I, and many of your players, like playing here is because of how good the software and lobby is on this network compared to other networks that we have the option to play at.

There are some issues that could definitely be improved at the Chico tables, but an anonymous lobby is not the correct solution IMO. I'd be happy to discuss other solutions for whatever it is Chico management are trying to accomplish by implementing a change like this.

If you believe this is the solution to prevent seating scripts then I can assure you that it has not prevented the use of seating scripts at several of the other networks that have implemented anonymous lobbies.

To add to what everybody here has said, here is some of what a dozen of the regs playing the highest stakes at WPN, as well as high stakes at other big sites, have had to say about that system over the last 6 months since it was implemented at the WPN tables.

It definitely was true at one point. If still true then they need to update their rules page.

https://help.betonline.ag/knowledge-...tonline-rules/

Whoever jeuxdebink is... he is very good at HU PLO. Is this person a known player?