We'll only know how it affects the games after a few weeks of people playing. You think it's a bad idea, fair enough, but none of us really know what the effect on the games will be at this point. I'm hopeful that it will actually have a positive impact.

Firstly, players will be constantly being promoted from the weaker players group to the stronger. Sometimes, this will just happen because of variance. A hopeless fish just kept getting lucky against the other bad players. Even those who are actually a little better and who get out of kindergarten, by outplaying the opposition, won't be ready for the regs yet. They will lose, to begin with and probably for quite some time.

Secondly, if the games dry up, regs will react. Some will quit. Others will try and up their game with new strategies, specifically aimed at beating other regs. The game will change with it no longer being the case that 5 players are pretty much trying to avoid each other and just looking to play pots with the mark. That's a good thing.

The idea that poker can be in good shape if more than 90%+ of players lose all their money very quickly after each deposit and that amongst the winning 10% (probably less) a very significant part of this group make enough money to not have to even get a job, is ridiculous. It's good for those few players and nobody else. We've had this situation for years and the games just keep getting worse.

I've got a question for the regs. You know what fellow regs do and what their overall strategy is, because it's the same as yours, right now. Other regs are even more predictable than the fish, so why do you feel that it is beyond you to come up with a way of totally exploiting them and making them take decisions that you know they will be uncomfortable in doing so?

All of the players who have gone on to do big things in the game reached a point where they went beyond just bumhunting and looked at the bumhunters themselves as being the prey. There are a hell of a lot more bumhunters than bums out there. Most aren't exceptionally bright. They've just read some books and are doing what they were told. Many won't have had an original thought in their lives, because that's just how most people are, even those who are well-educated.

If you really have reached the conclusion that you are incapable of beating the games, unless you have access to players who barely know the rules, then at least man up and admit that your poker career has, essentially, been a failure and you should have tried your hand at something else.

A very good player will beat the worst players much more quickly than and average or slightly bad player. e.g. If they beat a player at 15/bb 100 and a bad player beats them at 1/bb 100 the good player will win all the money 15 times faster. While one player might have an edge it might not be enough to win the money before the rake.

I did not read this whole thread through, but I strongly suspect party might show different anonymous heads up tables for diff players etc. They could even take the view a client was loosing too quickly at PLO so not show them PLO games. OR hide the 5/10 NL so that they play blackjack. Perhaps a player goes off for 5k on roulette if they loose 500 to a good player heads up.

They have seriously damaged their brand in my eyes. I had made a small deposit to test the site and was going to make a bigger one soon.

lol at trools saying that for u to win and have a good WR (positive) dont need the $$$ from "who barely know the rules"

u ppl will win a lot of money playing ag. regs and paying a ridiculous amount of rake to the site LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

most of ppl here cant evr beat propely micros with fishes, lol lets imagine just with regs?

Study
study

lol

Playing at a table with four other regs and one fish doesn't make you a bumhunter, and any successful "bumhunter" has done a hell of a lot more than just "read some books."

i think the only acceptable thing to do as a party poker reg now is moving all your money and action elsewhere, to show everyone that the community won't accept such shaddy behaviour. don't give money to rigged rooms, it hurts all of us.

This is the perfect design for a rake trap. Players just keep swapping stacks with other players of equal skill whilst the site just rakes the tables dry.

Disagree. Maybe people who view poker as income see it that way, and that IMO is a sad thing, but there has to be a lot more in it for the casual players. For the vast, vast majority of players, getting a return from poker that's in any way commensurate with the time spent is impossible. That vast, vast majority may either be incredibly stupid or deluded (as I'm sure many sociopathic grinders like to think), or they must be getting something else out of the game.

Hi all!

I'm a new and inexperienced player of slot machines, bingo and roulett. I constantly loose money at those games. As you can guess I'm not very happy.

So can you please make an extensive research and test your games, lets say, on one way that those games give more prizes to me?

It will be more fun and entertainig games and I will continue playing for a long time.

Uh?

not unless they have tunnel vision. If a site like pokerstars who's primary income is through poker, made winning players closre to break even they will very quickly loose a high % of their revenue. Greed is one of the most common reasons why so many companies go out of business. It's happened many times before and it will happen again. I think it's time for companies to learn from history and not get so greedy to screw themselves over.

Betting sites running the risk of doing this still have their casino side of things to fall back on but if we don't do enough to force a collaps of their poker aspect unless of course they revert back to how things wee and look for a better solution then the Green light will be lit for sites like pokerstars to follow.

And let's not kid ourselves and believe only Party is doing this....

Revolution network has already publicly announced they are preparing to do this

Here is some free advice for BwinParty:

If you don't want your poker operation to fade into oblivion, you have to do something better than PokerStars. Right now you do everything worse than Stars.

Your promotions are worse.
Your software is worse.
Your marketing is worse.
Your vip program is worse.

And now this stupid scheme which will reduce your volume until you scrap it.

You have to find at least ONE thing to do better than Stars.

Why not just charge half the rake and tourney fees that Stars does across the board? If you do that and cut out this other crap, you will start to regain market share.

Or you can continue to swallow up smaller companies and then shrink afterwards until the day that Stars/Tilt has 90% marketshare.

Actually, I meant 12-15 ptBB. Those always confused me. So I was actually winning at the rate of 25 bb/100 at the lowest stakes. That translates to fish losing more than $50/hr at .25/.50 stakes.

imo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFO1O020uyw#t=0m14s

I'm imagining this guy at his own HUHU table.

Would the best mathematical strategy dominate poker without HUDs?

The model of an online Poker room, is the need over any period, for a particular amount of money to be wagered at a particular amount of rake. That rake will first cover expenses, including money to invest in growth, and provide a profit to shareholders.
Future growth has to be measurable for investors to remain invested in the company.

In this branch of the entertainment industry, a large expense is advertising for new customers, due to the inherent turnover of new players who's loss of deposit outweighs any enjoyment of playing causing many to be one time depositors and a nett loss to the company.

If a poker room needs e.g. $500k of bets to be placed every hour so they can rake i.e. 5% $25k per hour to continue in business and they budget $50k per day to introduce new players to make up for those players who have lost and left not to return and also the minimal users who don't provide profit.

That $50k can either be increased until it turns company profit into loss or changes can be made to reduce the need to find as many new customers at a constantly increasing cost.

Party have been working on stabilising liquidity of the pool for some time now, reducing the upper limit games where short session games can produce large winners who remove money from the pool, then deterring Palladium Elite players who withdraw money, by reducing their benefits ( at Party's expense of losing rakeback pros ) and maybe other tweaks that don't headline.

Party have always demonstrated an image very different to, for example, that of Stars, Stars tend to splash on big name players, promote a more glamorous image including the lottery like hope of that massive score, whereas Party are more likely to have poker playing Alsatians and sing oooooh Partypoker at you, and so appeal to a different demographic due to projecting an image of maybe more fun for the smaller depositor. This is not new.

If Party are indeed suffering from a contraction of the industry and for every 10 new players that are entering through the front door 15 are leaving broke through the back door, what is being discussed here may well be the best for the long term survival of online poker.

So the model depends on keeping e.g. $500k worth of bets being placed a day - but winning players withdraw cash and reduce the liquidity in the room.
In an ideal world for poker rooms all players swap money throughout their session and top up their account in accordance to how much rake they have paid.

If Party have found that players are being busted quicker than they can recruit at a reasonable cost as recruiting is constrained by a budget for advertising. and so they are unable to keep that 500k fluid they have to take a look at the players that are removing money from the room and attempt to reduce that amount or slow the speed at which those players withdraw.

Perhaps the only alternative is to raise rake which is not in the best interests of anyone long term.

So how do Party stop the sharks ravaging the fish so quickly? Separation is surely worth looking at as the next step.
From what I read, Party are not putting up a total wall but more of a permeable barrier which can be crossed over from one side but not from the other.
If the flyweight wants to take on the heavyweight they still can but the heavyweight cannot as easily jump into the ring with skill disadvantaged opponents.
I believe that it is a leveler rather than a complete segregation.

If Party's aim is to be a profitable entertainment company and the spectrum of their clients reaches from miserable losers, to recreational players, to profitable professionals their decision to trial the separation of some classes of players, will grow the middle ground at the expense of either end of the spectrum and advantage the majority.

What else can be done?

After all, until a non profit company opens an online poker site, EVERY decision, whether right or wrong, that is made by ALL poker rooms, including Stars, will be to maximise profits first and foremost.

Re the description of the game being rigged ! What? Party appear to be trialing different ways of adjusting a model which when finalised will be possibly the main strength of their future advertising. What would be gained by them giving hourly updates of any changes to whatever algorithm/calculation they are fine tuning. It might not even work sufficiently well to utilise fully.

Dominik Kofert's Blog shows that separation of players into skill levels creates more rake for the room if they don't lose the sharks, but where Party might have kicked themselves is discriminating against high rollers too much before taking a look at separation.


Although, reading a lot of the posts above, it appears that one aim might have been achieved, that is to piss off a number of the players who make large withdrawals, then again how many of these posts are a level in an attempt to promote an exodus from Party while they stay behind and reap the reward of a smaller shark pool.

No troll but a bit of devil's advocacy in my read of the situation.


Disclosure - I don't play ring games on Party, I play low stake MTT and withdraw approximately $30k per year from the pool.
I have fallen out many times with the script reading/standard emailing employees of Party and I have many complaints about the problems that pop up often. I am not a fan of most of what they do.

It's real disettling that this seems to be popping up in the online poker world. Id say this is literally one step away from 'rigging' the rng to protect the fish.

If pokerstars jumps into this trend, I think it will be literally game over for online poker. It's shocking how little understanding for the game the people who run these sites actually have.

I really hope that to be highly unlikely, afterall they have a lot of pro's who are very vocal and well respected who will hopefully steer PS in a direction that is best for the poker community without drastically affecting lives of people that rely on poker as their main income.

After all, until a non profit company opens an online poker site, EVERY decision, whether right or wrong, that is made by ALL poker rooms, including Stars, will be to maximise profits first and foremost.(qoute)

It's shocking how little understanding for the game the people who run these sites actually have.(qoute)

perhapse they dont think on the GAME,they think just about their PROFIT...they never thinked about the game,all the time they try to maximaze profit.when there was bunch of people with money playing before BF,they didnt say a word,all was fine...now they will decide who wins and who lose...

From what I have seen this is just not true. they are hiding the bad players from the bumhunters. If you sit they can see your table.

The pool is not segregated (apart from the very time limited newbie option for players that they have had since at least 2004).

You have special software to find them as quick as possible then you swarm. Stop bumhunting, play poker and they will join you.

so basically, the best chance on having a fish join you is to start your own tables, easy

Edit: I forgot to mention one thing, every time i've started a table it usually gets filled up with all regs because some of them are thinking the same, that a fish will join but doesn't work out like that as often as you might like

yes to all of this, especially to creating a cap on the number of tables that individauls may play. This is the biggest turn off to rec/casual players.

no they WILL NOT as 80-90% of them use quick seat which seats them ONLY on those HIDDEN tables...

so u can start hundreds of tables, play normal game, have nothing to do with bumhunting and still U will only see only those recreational players that manually chose your specific table

NO, unless they choose your table manually they get auto-seated on those hidden tables all the times...

As I tested it on my fishy account that was working for 24h before they put me in reg bucket.