this is the worst post i've seen in a while, especially the bolded.
some supernova elite teathered to his laptop for days on end mass multitabling isn't exactly making games fun. this does the exact opposite of making the dream alive.oh wow if i play 24 tables at once, use a ton of software, play 8-10 hours a day almost every single day of the year maybe i can make a decent living from poker off of rakeback-wow what fun!


poker isn't seen as cool anymore because a ton of players who tried it realized they suck at it, and more importantly it's way way way less fun than it was during the boom especially online nl which is torture for anyone looking to gamble and have fun in 2019.

There's more competition now than ever, that's the whole point It's too difficult to make money for most people, hence they quit. The motivation to play comes from making lots of easy money and that disappeared years ago. Nowadays, the games are filled with nits as far as the eye can see, dotted with the occasional fish who gets destroyed very quickly and never returns.

Not sure why everyone says the games are so nitty now. 10 years ago a lot of people thought optimal vpip/pfr was along the lines of 14/11 or thereabouts. Nowadays everyone's raising, floating, 3/4 betting and doing it relentlessly. People play 28/22 or similar. You are lucky if you find a nit.... Nits are great....

The problem is the fish are better because of solid information available for beginners.

bc they are nitty. winning players maybe played tighter 10 years ago than they do today but there were a lot less of them. 28 percent of hands? there were 9 handed games back then with 6 people playing 60-70 percent of their hands or more.
i can remember playing live 2/5 nl where people would open to 40-50 and get 5 callers.
now it's gonna be someone opens 15, someone 3 bets to 45 they go heads up, someone downbets the flop yawn watching paint dry is more fun.


average pot sizes and players to the flop are way lower than 10 years ago. an average pot in online 5/10 nl in 2019 is lower than the average pot in a lot of 1/2 nl games back then.
people used to open way bigger preflop and flops often went 5-7 ways
stacks go in way less often than they used to for these reasons.
if someone wants to actually gamble they would have had fun ten years ago and be bored out of their minds today.they're way better off playing online blackjack than online nl. they're going to lose either way but at least with bj they'll get some action for their money.

saying vpip and pfr of winning players in 2019 doesn't begin to tell the story.i'd agree winning players are less nitty but overall games are way more nitty and way less fun. it isn't even close.

I like open-limping sometimes with some hands a typical TAG would raise with to induce multi-way pots and make it hard for someone to iso-raise.

By definition a nit is someone who plays almost no hands and only gets it in when they are almost slam dunk ahead, no?

There are very few nits nowadays by definition but at the same time far far less whales.

EDIT: I'm talking about online only.

It's almost as if back in the day you had actual loose fish and the optimal way to beat them was to wait for good hands and valuetown the hell out of them

It’s so obviously this, pros are the cancer that kills poker enjoyment. But the truth is not popular on a message board full of wannabe pros

Get a table full of recs and one pro, watch them all have fun. As soon as the ratio moves the other way the worse it gets for all

it has nothing to do with being pro or recs, most of the people I know who makes it really fun to be at the table are pros with incredibly fun personalities, recs are usually quiet unless they are drunk because they dont know people at the table

I have put 50 hours so far to how to play the cutoff in PLO according to GTO when there is no rake and the opponents are GTO (open-fold qj97z, open raise qt96z, AKQJds 3-bet vs. LJ open-raise and fold to 4-bet back (HU) but call the 4-bet with AKQ4ds (5-bet all-in) and fold AQJ5ds).

Preflop GTO and (300) flops to play according to GTO when all are exactly 100 bb deep. 50+ ($) per month. Will see the LJ for fun another month.

YouTube has some GTO stuff also to start with, and JNandez's Mastermind has stuff for $100 or so per month. Starting with the Hwang (and Mastering) books optional (mandatory). The videos (300-3k), HHs. Should keep one busy the next couple of years if cutting most corners.

Addictive, the learning maybe, but playing, it depends on the person; Hearthstone is generally more addictive.

Antes. Been saying this for years.

The card room round these parts o'er here seems to have a 1-2 game where the button has a 5 dollar ante.

Was there very very briefly, but I think they run this type of button ante on a few tables to spice it up. PLO as well I think. Can't recall 1-2 PLO I think it was like 5-5 or 5-5 with a ten ante.

NOT SURE THO.

Point is, there were quite a few tables that had non standard formats to have bigger pots.

Play full ring PLO home game with non pro players. Guaranteed average vpip 70%+

Sensing a pattern here.

Is there a practical reason why antes aren't more common in cash games? I'm a tourney donk who doesn't play much cash (and when I do/did, it tends to be LHE, HORSE, triple draw, O8 and other limit games). So I don't have a good sense as to how common antes are in cash games. I've yet to see it in my local card rooms, though.

In the morning game, all the old timers who want to play 15 handed will freak out.

Not a bad idea.

Yes if you want to win less pots preflop and pay more rake postflop, antes would be a good idea... This may work for highstakes and deep games; now if you really are trying to kill the small profitability of what's left of smallstakes games make it antes with 100bb buyin. Nice idea.

Translation: Introducing antes would kill the profitability for me, therefore I don't want antes.

Yes I'm a small stakes poker player and not a employer or stockholder of Amaya, or a random that doesn't understand how rake, caps and structure of cashgames work.

A pot size open raise means fewer flops and possibly the rake cap reached sooner. The stacks need to be bigger.

Well make it 250-300bb deep buyins. Only the fish that lose at single digits now would lose at double digits+, then there would be the middle stack strategy all over again and some would take advantage spoiling the games.

I've got a revolutionary solution for the question in this thread: just reduce the rake and give more rewards to the players, so a bigger percentage wins more often, and winrates are larger so less downswings and more winning sessions - the players would have more fun playing! Imagine that. I'm kind of a genius with this idea and want some royalties from the rooms that implement this solution.

"Reduce the rake and spend more on incentives paid to players", gotcha.....

I think this misses the point, recreational players are pretty insensitive to the rake within reason. They do not have "fun" by paying less rake or earning $1/hour rakeback. Hourly rakeback/loyalty incentive programs also do little for rec players, versus regs.

Ironically, recs do have more fun chasing jackpots and high hands, drinking, talking, etc. if they get to play longer and get more action on their buy-in. If they are -EV from poker hands, that needs to be evened out a bit, hence high hand/frequent jackpot rewards/giveaways make them happy ,,,, not $1 less rake or hourly rakeback.

To be honest every $ that moves from skill (playing poker) to luck (chance rewards) is a move in their favor. Skilled players need to learn to overcome that transfer cost of their doing business at the poker table.

Look around a casino, if games (poker or otherwise) are unbeatable, but still fun, Recs WILL play them. Regs' competition is everything else a rec can do in a casino or online for "fun".

If regs want to beat poker, i.e. make $, they need to cover all the costs extracted from the $$ they deposit or earn during play. Historically, qnline about 35- 40% of deposits went into the rake hole, from which all expenses, rakeback, incentives erc, were paid. 60 - 65% went to winning players. Adding a separate cost/drop for jackpot funding comes out of the 60 - 65% going to winning players from winning pots/tournaments.

Tinkering with rake will not make games "more fun", lower rake is better but does not solve the rec problem.

Giving recs what they want will help games overall. Recs want fun and action, in that order . Go ahead and be a nit in your play, but help make the table "fun" , engage/interact positively with other players while you fold hand after hand. Better yet, if the net return from betting, calling or folding are about even, then bet or call instead of folding if a rec is in action Recs like action. Most recs won't even notice the rate at which you fold preflop.

Blah blah blah if you don’t have fun playing poker don’t play

It's been stated already but ante games seem way more fun. On Live at the Bike, the 5+5+5 ante game seems amazing. It is way better than the 5/10 or similar games (except maybe up to the Friday games which tend to have players I find more interesting to watch).

UTG straddle is ok, but it doesn't seem to make more action at the games I've played in, people seem to tighten up.

I've never played with a "rock" on the button or whatever it is called, but I like the idea.

I like the idea of the 7/2 game (where everyone pays you when you win with 7/2).

Moving to time-based rake would also be good. I think every time you have to pay rake the whole table doing a shot would be a great way to get people loose without being trashed (assuming it is every 30-60 minutes).

Exactly my thoughts at the quoted post above.

For example, in California, the rake is fixed. Whether the pot is $50 or $5,000, the rake is $5. So you really want to play bigger pots to make the rake "smaller" (i.e. its percentage of the pot).

So wouldn't antes a) make the pots larger overall, and b) incentivize players to take down the pot pre, meaning no rake?

On the flip side, I wonder if this answers my question: antes would scare off recs, who would feel like they're losing faster. We have long established that rec players don't care or even think about rake. The effects are harder to notice because it comes out of your won pot.

But recs would notice pretty quickly that they're losing a small amount on every deal, and would not notice the long-run effects.