The true spirit of socialism, social engineering, fascism, etc., is right here. These proposals are shockingly absurd.

I must say phil, I remember u defending yourself against Antonius saying u were a 'dodging nit' by saying that u could only play a handfull of regs bc the player pool was so small and strong at your stakes. You also said that you were ashamed of the bumhunting/game selecting and that mid stakers should challenge themselves even if the edges were a small hourly rate.

So you would play hansen(when he was dumping huge$ ftp was giving him) Degenyamine
and hop in when Guy was playing bc you could. You have already made it and are well off financially, mid stakers who want to move up select bc the player is pool wider and bc they can and need to. So i felt your point was double standard somewhat....

My lil idea to boost games:
For the mid-high and nosebleed I think stars should, bc the games are so dry, sign more business men/ former athletes and action givers to their roster, give them bonus deals and inject juicyness into thoses games. I also feel that it would give more mainstream visibility if they sign the right names. Like why not sign that bill perkens dude 4 example... Stars should get rid of some of the no-name nit grinders nobody cares about on their team. I remember this one idiot on their team that even made one of those insta hit and run on me (like 19bb's) ... now that is shamefull.

I doubt it will hapen thought because the house wins when there is less edges and the games have more parity. Some site now even have baning type rules against winning players. In the end it is a hard balance to keep the poker economy good for every1... and we have not even gotten into what will hapen when cluless lawmakers get into this with their bills and vetos, taxes n **** ...

for the record the headsup system on former ftp ;( was pretty good and pwns stars' spawing tables current system imo... You could sit at as many tables as u want but only 2 appeared in the lobby and when u would be playing on some the others would pop up in lobby.

I would like to thank all of you for making great posts. Thank you for revealing your deepest thoughts, your brilliant ideas, your fears, your dreams, …

I hope that many good hard working people, losing players, fishes, people addicted to poker, net depositors and so called people willing to lose money continually saw this posts. And realilized what most of you really think of them.

I always knew that things are bad, but this is much worse than i thought. If i speak for myself, i can say that you just saved me a lot of time and also some money. And i thank you for that. Really.

Good luck to you all with finding people willing to give you their money. Sweet dreams.

Thanks for the constructive post. Much more usefull.

First of all, I already mentioned that I believe the games running should not be shown. I think I didn't explicitly state it, but I also meant player names should be hidden. Instead of listing the # of players, you can perhaps list the # of entries(if some1 requests to play 4 tables that's 4 entries), which would further alleviate this problem a bit.
Second, I don't believe there would be as few games running as you say there will be. Look at it this way, currently there's only 1 HU game running for every weak player. There's 1 fish playing 1 shark. Now look at 6max or fullring. For every fish playing in a 6m or FR game there are 5 or sometimes even 8 sharks playing eachother to be able to get a piece of the fish. Doesn't it make sense that in a Round Robin/Rush HU system there'll also be numerous sharks playing eachother, because getting to play the fish aswell makes it worth their while?

I didn't mean you should be able to invite anyone for a match through the software. I just meant you should be able to create private HU tables for the few people like me that actually want to play long(1k+ hands) multitable HU matches vs other regulars. You'd just set up a match on skype or just in the chatbox. On PS you give your opponent the detaills on how to join your homegame and off you go.
Yes you could tell fish to join your homegame, but you can already do that as it is.

If you set the # of hands at 100, you'll still have some dynamic. You also do carry over some history from previous matches, but i agree it takes a little bit to get back into a dynamic after not having played eachother for a while.
To be honest, there aren't particularly many long HU matches going on as it is though, so there's not much of a loss. The only long HU matches where people truly get into a dynamic are the ones between regulars who multitable. These can still happen in the new system.

My true goal is to get more HU games running. If you don't believe that that's fine, I don't think I'll be able to convince you.

There seems to be only one way to get more HU games running. The only games currently running are the ones between a fish and a shark. And an ocassional match between 2 supersharks that will play anyone. So the only extra games we can get to run are games between sharks. As people have mentioned, few sharks will actually battle eachother with no incentive. So to get more games to run we will have to give them an incentive to play eachother. The only way to do this is to make more games run around the fish by forcing sharks to play eachother to be able to get a part of the fish.
As people have pointed out KotH does this, but it doesn't give all sharks an equal share of the fish. I believe Round Robin/Rush HU does.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you believe that in HU poker sharks should be able to play fish only and refuse to play any other shark that they believe is better than them? If that is the case then we can end our discussion right here, because I don't believe that should be the case and we're not going to convince eachother.

If you don't believe that you should be able to avoid anyone that is better than you in HU. I challenge you to either:

1. Explain to me why you believe the current system promotes more action between sharks in a fairer way than Round Robin/Rush HU.
2. Or come up with a new idea that promotes action between sharks in a fairer way than Round Robin/Rush HU.

Unless you can recognize the root of the problem you will only be fixing the superficial aspects that don't matter in the long run. The boom is over and there is not enough money deposited into the sites as it is to support the number of people who make a living playing internet poker. How would anything regarding HU matches, waiting lists, bum hunters, etc solve this problem. The only way you could get around having to many winning players is to boot the good players and only keep a selected few good with the bad players and do this on a regular basis since new good players would surface and some would buy accounts from losing players. The boom is over and you need to face this reality, no promotion in the world will be able to bring in enough fresh money in the current economic situation in the world to solve this issue. As it is the winning players at 2+2 withdraw money from the sites, removing the funds from active games, that hurt the games as such. Why the fish is so good is because when they win they don't withdraw but keep playing and create more rake for the sites.

What PG and other pros are suggesting only has the purpose to make it easier for them to take a few dollars more from the games before it is curtains. If his ideas were implemented the waters would be fished out even quicker and there would be a quicker decline for the poker economy then what is happening now.

Not that this would help much for hu situation but I think it would b neat if u could setup challenges with x amounts of hands played a la isildur challenge.... would at least avoid hit n runs make it more enjoyable

This'd take a lot of in depth research and calculations before you could actually be able to have an idea about it's true effects. The impact is also going to differ immensely depending on which game. The effects on a game like NLHE will be far different than the effects on a game like LHE or LO8.

I think overall your idea will:
-Make almost no difference for massive losers.
-Turn big losers into small losers.
-Turn marginal losers into breakeven players.
-Turn breakeven players into marginal winners.
-Turn marginal winners into marginal winners.
-Turn big winners into slightly above marginal winners.

You have to keep in mind, that x% of winnings get taken away. So you'll mostly just get less losers, not really many more winners. The vast majority of winners will pretty much effectively break even.

Ever seen the documentary "The Trap" by Adam Curtis? No?

It's really good:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDN6tIfWffg

Let me skip to the relevant part:
http://youtu.be/IDN6tIfWffg?t=16m57s

Synopsis:
John Nash's models don't work so nicely in the real world. People often make decisions for purely emotional reasons.

Although you'll find any poker player supporting ways to bring in new people, that's not what this thread is trying to achieve. We're trying to improve online poker. Apparently you think we're just doing that to make more money.

If you have any constructive critism on WHY you think our ideas are no good then let us know.

WHY are they absurd? You're not contributing anything constructive.

We are meeting with Stars tomorrow, so this thread in addition the other dozen or so have been very helpful with getting ideas and general sentiments.

I personally think a global waitlist system with a penalty for quitting the table immediately might be really effective.

I am not yet convinced of a KOTH system, but it certainly has some merit.

I still believe lowering the rake would help every scenario. The best way to get recreational players into games is to have the games actually be running. Sounds obvious, but I think the rake currently is too high to promote regulars to start games with each other.

At the end of the day, the rake is what cuts into winrates, and winrates determine whether people sit in and play.

Your solutions don't address the fact that you are playing against someone who want to have a good time but cater nothing to them, what you instead are proposing is to create some strange system where they are given less enjoyment. If you want someone to hand over money to you there are a dew ways you can go about. You could sell them something, entertain them, hold them at gunpoint or whatever. When it comes to online poker you people don't understand that what a casual player sitting down for a few hours of games don't want 6 slow playing grinders at a FR table. They do not want to find themselves in a game where the only hands played are the hands they are in and they don't want for you to make a living on them if you don't entertain them.

I will tell you what can "save" online poker and you won't like it:

Create 2-max tables, these tables can only be played by players who play no more then 2 tables. This will make the games faster and the casuals won't find a few players at each table timing out every hand or waiting 20 seconds to fold pre-flop. You who are playing 20 tables don't understand how much this frustrates a player that is playing less then 4 tables and people do leave slow tables!

• Create a flat rakeback system or lower the rake for everyone. If anyone who plays find out the amount of money some make on rake back and bonuses they would stop playing the same day since they understand that they are paying for these systems which they will never be able to achieve.
• Don't allow people to jump around on tables and have a two orbit clock for them to be kicked of the tables. There is no validity in having tables where a few players sit out for a few orbits doing nothing but waiting for a bum to show up. Just kick them out once the button has passed them twice and make room for a new player. If everyone is sitting out, everyone gets booted within a few minutes and the table become open for others to play.
• Create 20 hand minimum tables. Pretty simple, if you sit down you instantly pay for 50 hands and if you leave the blinds are lost. Notice that it still would be possible to jump around between tables, only thing is that it would cost you if you decide to not play any hands.

These suggestions would help online poker but screw over the pros since they would find themselves forced to play games which they don't want to play. It would be decremental for the online grinder but would be a blessing for the games.

When it comes to the HU tables I really don't think you will find that much recreational players playing them to begin with. They are more likely to be playing short and full ring tables.

You grinders need to understand that if you want the games to survive you will have to give something up, as long as you are looking at ways to fish out the waters faster you are destroying your own feeding grounds and will eventually end up in the same spot as you are now. There is a limit to how many that can support themselves on online poker and as it is there are to many trying to do this. Once they are washed out we will reach an equilibrium, not everyone reading this will be around when this equilibrium is reached.

If you somehow get PS to lower the rake, you'll be welcomed back as a hero. Makes 0 sense for them to do so though. They're already by far the biggest site, with the best software, great support etc etc and I believe also some of the lowest rake around. I don't see what PS can gain from lowering the rake.

They can make their customers love them and not doubt their intentions, which will crush any upcoming competition and bring in new players via word of mouth.

Lower rake help you who are playing 10k hands a week, how does it help anyone who play 300 hands per week? Do you really believe that the recreational player is lying awake at night due to the 'high' rake?

If you believe that regs would start to play each other more from a lower rake you are delusional. They still won't play unless they have an edge and this edge won't change from a rake cut.

But I really don't think you care the least about this. You want lower rake and higher bonuses for yourself on the expense of the recreational players. Good luck with the sit down you have with PS.

Agreed, except for I do think some of the other ideas make the game more fun.

Not a bad idea, but I see a few issues:
-What'll stop people from playing 2 tables on stars and then a ton of others on other sites?
-I don't think it's that great of an idea to create even more different types of tables than we already have.
-Aren't the fast tables a fine option for people that dislike people taking too long?
-Stars also seems to be experimenting with variable table caps after Nanonoko's world record. Depending on the average time you take for a decision you'll be allowed to play x tables. Can be more than 24, can be less. They seem to be actively monitoring players from what I've heard and this will also further help reduce this issue.


I don't really have anything against that, as long as it's in the form of a fixed VPP multiplier with the option to buy bonusses. I believe recreational players will generally prefer to get some cool item from the store than a bit of money, so they should be given the option. Not just be given a % of their rake back every week.
The problem might be convincing PS to do this, because they will lose a lot of rake from people that play massive volume just to get SNE and milestones. A scaleable rakeback/VIP System just seems more profitable for pokersites, encouraging people to play more. But yeah I have no issue with getting a lower rakeback % if it means all the low volume players get a higher rakeback %.

I think the Break instead of Sit-out idea fixes these issues in a better way, discouraging sitting out even for 2 orbits, just because the weak spot is sitting out.

Not a huge fan of this, because I think recreational players will be a bit hesitant to pay x amount up front to play 50 hands. It seems less inviting than just being able to sit down. Also, if these are supposed to be a new type of table, again you're creating even more different types of tables than we already have. I believe online poker should be relatively simple.
Also, I think Global Waitlists is a better idea to fix the issue of people leaving games in 6m/FR. Where there's an added penalty you can't join new games for x minutes after you leave a table. For HU Round Robin/Rush HU would also include a penalty if you leave a table before the end of the match.

QFT

Rake directly comes out of every player's winrate. Even negative winrates. This correlates to standard deviation and has direct correlation to their average length of time played or amount of entertainment per dollar.

They might not lay awake at night worrying about the rake, but they might be like wow I lost all that money so fast and didn't even have fun. Better not do that again.

Players who see themselves as -.5bb losers who now have 1bb less rake to pay now have motivation to play.

I don't know where you get that impression of me, but it is far from reality.

Nothing, but they won't be able to play 20 tabels on stars. From reading 2+2 I have concluded that most pros make their money from multi tabling for VPP's and not from actual winnings at the tables. If there would be a few 2 max tables there would still be tables open for the multi tablers with the only difference that recreational players would be given the choice on waiting up to a minute pre-flop to have some multi tablers fold their hands. I have no problem with someone who uses the time when they are in a tough spot, but these guys who take +10 seconds per action need to go. Having a few of these at the tables slow them down enough to have players react in the chat box and often leave the table. I don't think recreational players choose to play the fast tables but are forced to do so to speed up the game.

The problem with todays system is that it more or less only benefit a player who pay +20k/month in rake. A casual player will only be able to buy strange gadjets that I doubt they have any real interest in to begin with. If the casuals knew how much some make on bonuses they would find this system so unjust that they probably would find another site where they feel they are treated better.


Break, sitout bank or whatever is ok. The problem is that you can open 6 max tables on just about any level and find a table where everyone is sitting out. If I was a casual player that entered the lobby I would probably not sit down at a table where everyone is sitting out.


I really don't know how a recreational player would react to this, having them force blinded would probably not be a problem since I cannot imagine them sitting down at a table to play 10 hands or so. For low volume players (say under 1000 hands/week) no such pre-advanced fee would be taken and the problem is solved.

While a global waiting list is a good thing, the pros won't be able to handle it. Giving up edges in poker works against anyone who make a living from playing poker. Most regs are mediocre winners when table selecting (mostly avoiding other regs) so I cannot see them surviving if these changes are made. Of course I think it would be good for online poker if ~50% of the people who make a living of it went away, I don't think the 50% who can't cut it look at it the same. The whining in the zoo is also a bit to much for just about anyone to handle where you have professionals complaining about not being good enough at what they do.

What rubbish!

Do you take me for a fool? The loosing player won't pay enough in rake for it to matter. They get it in bad and hand over their money to others much faster then any rake ever will. What you want is more for you and more for you again. This won't do when talking to PS at the sit down. The fact that you even make a post this bad and have been chosen (?) as a representative for the community at the coming sit down should make most people question having you to speak for them.

If you introduce even more players that can make a living on the games you will only make it worse. A portion of the regs need to go for the economy to survive long term, by making a slightly losing player a winner you will be cutting into your own margins and further elevating the problems recreational players have at the tables with the mass multi tablers slowing down the game.

What you want is for PS to cater to your need to make money without any respect to who supply you with these games (Poker Stars) and they who supply the money (the loosing players) do you think this will happen? If so you are insane!

True, but you can't just give the recreational players porsches and 4k bonusses all the time either. I mean they get so little rakeback, because they play so little. And they get little gadgets, because they decide not to save up for better value items and in general prefer items over bonusses. The best you could do is have a scaleable rakeback system the other way. The less you play, the more rakeback you get. But this discourages people from playing high volume even more and is even worse for pokersites.
Low volume recreational players just aren't going to get the same figures high volume grinders do, that's impossible.

I agree with you.

Rec players pay a much higher amount of rake per hand than any other player. You can say it does not matter, but it does. If we don't agree on that, then I don't think you and I will agree on anything, and that's ok!

Trying to ban winners is not a good solution ^^. At what point do you stop? How do you decide who to ban? Do you want everyone to be a long term loser?

I mostly agree, but think it depends on the player. There's definitely some players that have such big negative winrates that it's barely gonna have an impact. Then again there's going to be recreational players on whom it'll have some impact. I do think it'll have the biggest impact on all the people that are hovering around breakeven though. Slight losers, breakeven people and slight winners.

For example:
-Some1 losing 20BB/100 isn't gonna notice paying 1BB/100 less in rake.
-Some1 losing 5BB/100 is gonna have a minor improvement paying 1BB/100 less in rake.
-Some1 losing 1BB/100 is now going to be breaking even.
-Some1 breaking even is now going to win marginally at 1BB/100.
-Some1 marginally winning at 1BB/100 is now going to be winning twice as much.
-Some1 winning big at 5BB/100 is gonna have a minor increase in winrate.

Most recreational players fall in the first 2 categories with maybe a few falling into the 3rd/4th/5th.

Even if you adjust those numbers so that the big losers pay 2 or 3BB/100 less in rake it's not gonna make a huge difference for them.

I'm not saying that everyone who plays 10k hands on PS should get a car but as it is now the VPP store is pretty much books and some random gadjets that doesn't do anything. The bonuses that matter come on the gold level and that is a level few can reach without some exhausting hours at the tables. A fair system would be where everyone get their fair share. How one would go about this is not something I can answer, but as it is now the system could just as well be scrapped for anyone who play for fun, they won't get anything of value from the system anyway.

You do whatever you feel you need to do. I'm only pointing out the strangeness (I'm being kind? with what you are doing. Sit down with PS and try to work something out but don't forget that a greedy man never becomes rich!