Why don't you start a poker site of your own?

I agree with this. Also, WoW and other massive games have security as well.

It's the rake model and utter fleecing of the game that is wrong and every time I ask the PPA or anyone why poker is not/can not just be in the same class as all the games on worldwinner.com or Fantasy betting it goes completely silent.

Poker has been separated because Gov's and providers realize how backwards the rake model is and how much money can be made off the game.

Quote:
Originally Posted by POW
Could pokerstars really push and cater for heads up challenges to get more reg on reg action going? Could also be seen as selling off 'bulk' hands for fraction of the price.

Regs won't play eachother cos they get raked 9bb/100, but I suspect pokerstars are actually missing out on a long tail market that could net them more money catering reg challenges at a massively reduced price, ranging from say 500hands to 20k hands and offering an escrow service.

ie 500 hands costs 10bb
1k hands costs 18bb
2k hands costs 30bb

This would be extra profit for stars and stimulate the HU games, Thoughts?

The robin hood rake tax would work if the regularity and amount of fishes deposits was directly correlated with their perceived lose rate over atleast a few months, however I dont think this is the case. If a fish loses $800 instead of losing $1k over a few months this will barelly affect his depositing habits. However if winners are forking over $100's or $1000's more a month this will be noticed and have an affect on where they play. Detering regs isn't the answer and keep in mind this is a free market where players can always leave if they don't like a sites rules and rake.

I think rec players deposit rate is related to how frequently they win/lose, not how much they win/lose, and how much fun they have at the table.

Games are profitable mainly by bumhunting; other than that there are maybe 0.1% of players who make any kind of a profit in any other way.

What comes to HU Rush, it won't be worth it at low and medium limits or even at lower high limits as one would be playing at least 80% of the time against regs (80% of the action figures to come from them).

I think holdem overall (limit and nl) starts to be pretty dead these days, at least limit holdem that has only a couple significant winners at 10-20 and higher out of thousands of more or less regs, and big bet poker games are nitty and people play more or less well already at 1c/2c or something like that, compared to a couple of years ago.

PLO figures to be the form of the future but it's pretty nitty too these days and keeps spreading to lower and lower limits during the next couple of years, but at least there is some action though the money is got mainly by bluffing as the nits do not call twice but fold though considering the small cost of starting hands and the rake, it's not great and is boring poker.

Nits, then bots, additionally to high rakes, it doesn't look like poker is going to be any good for long even at PLO, that is starting to be the only form I am playing anymore, and even that is only because I can play anywhere and get rakeback and it's not year 2014 yet when it too might be dead.

I've just finished writing three articles about Galfond's original blog and the subsequent discussions, so obviously I've been immersed in this subject. A couple of original ideas came to me as a consequence. Not sure how good they are but I thought I'd throw them into the mix:

Discretionary screen-name changes.
The main argument against allowing name changes is the difficulty in players' policing games. The argument about stats and notes being lost is not as strong because most players, if they're good enough to still be playing after several months will also be good enough to develop their games, so old stats and notes don't have much value anyway.

To allow changes but also retain some control, maybe poker rooms could accept requests from players to change screen-names and decide whether to allow them on an individual basis? This may not be as much work as it seems, as all requests from losing players could be auto-accepted, as they are unlikely to be cheating (or they're doing it wrong.) This wouldn't be advertised as 'losing players can change,' of course - just that it's discretionary. Winning player's would be subject to review by the poker room, including a security review. I feel that the value to a losing player of being able to start afresh should not be underestimated, and hopefully we all now understand the value of retaining that losing player in the poker ecosystem. Allowing him to change his name and have another go would be a great incentive for him.

No real solution for the heads-up problem has been found. As discussed, KotH is likely to just push the problem around. Round Robin has real problems finding an acceptable way to penalize people for not playing an arranged match as well as the loss of 1v1 HU dynamics. Removing the HU lobby seems a little extreme. Here's another solution:

Global waiting list with veto.
Players join a global waiting list, but have the option of refusing a match before it starts and optionally also adding the opponent to a 'won't play' list so the software will not match you again in the future. The 'won't play' list can also be viewed and amended manually by the player at any time. This system retains choice of whom not to play whilst removing the intimidating sight of all those open tables. In order to play, players wouldn't have to overcome the intimidating actions of either sitting with a predator, or opening a new table and having a predator snap sit with them. I'm sure more games would run.

Reports coming back from the Player Reps sound positive. Apparently, analysis of the rake reductions shows that the changes will result in a healthier overall poker economy. Hopefully Phil's meeting will be equally successful.

I don't know if he'll have time to do it, but it would be interesting if Phil could blog one more time before he meets with Stars, outlining his take-aways from this discussion and summarizing what he plans to discuss with them, which would in turn give the community one last chance to make additional suggestions or provide general feedback.

If stars were to make the rake on their heads up tables lower than any other site and made a big announcement about it, I think the HU action on the site would drastically increase.

If they made it 40 cents max rake per hand I think they'd end up making more money in the long run due to tons more games running.

Eliminate bumhunting and there will still be profitable games (in fact, they might be MORE profitable for those who actually survive). The thing a lot of people seem to forget in these hypothetical situations is that poker is a very fluid/equilibrium based economy.

If you eliminate bumhunting, a new equilibrium will be established rapidly. This is a TRUE/REAL economy. Some people will stay at their current level, some will be forced to move down, and others will be forced to quit poker. The fish money will be the same as now, but it will go to the people who are actually skilled enough to actually beat that given level rather than the guy who has the bankroll to play any good game up to $400NL (just an example) while he grinds $50NL for the majority of his hands.

Note: I was a hardcore professional bumhunter at mid stakes, so I have a lot of experience/first-hand knowledge when it comes to this discussion. I got into poker in 2006, so I amassed enough of a roll to play higher stakes. My true 6max skill level was probably $200NL and that's where majority of my hands occurred, but I made a significant amount of my lifetime profit from playing $400-$1000NL only when giant whales were at the table.

I was able to beat Rush which eliminates bumhunting, so I was a winning player at $200NL, but is it right/fair that I essentially was allowed to "steal" from the REAL $400/600/1000NL economy with very little risk? I don't think so, BUT it's allowed by the sites, so I might as well profit as much as possible.

Cliffs:A bumhunter is suggesting bumhunting be eliminated. I think the most likely scenario to happen in the future if the sites do actually eliminate bumhunting is to go to a Rush Poker only system. There will be some attrition for players who aren't good enough.

^

Notice that, once again, this guy didn't explain how eliminating bum hunting is actually *good* for the games. He used vague terms that suggest what we have now is not a "true" or "real" economy which is completely absurd of course.

I was responding to a post that implied poker will be unprofitable if you eliminate bh'ing...it's certainly not true

bodog went completly anonymous and ppl have really not responded well. I do think stars thinks there is value in name players such as isildur1 who have big following.

One thing i find kindoff stupid is why dont they cap the number of ppl who can be on a waiting list. It just sends a message of 'ur such huge fish' when 25 ppl are waiting on a player's table and the list vanishes once he busts...

I mean how many ppl can wait on one game ... or at least limit the number they show in lobby

I like this...they would never prevent people from joining the waitlist as I'm sure there are SNE who join EVERY waitlist and the lists can get really backed up (even without a fish at the table), but limiting the # shown in the lobby would be nice

Maybe a system where after x number of hands or after getting to x number of play money points a player gets $20 into their account. I know quite a few players with play money accounts who are scared to deposit. Maybe then grade players next to their names so people have an idea who they are up against:

Bronze - bottom 50%
Silver - next 30%
Gold - next 15 %
Platinum - top 5%

Could then give people the option to play against people at their own level or at open tables or run promotions based on improvements in position etc

Stop datamining and clamp down properly on collusion etc.

Randomly assign players to tables and seats. If you want to play 1/2 nlhe 6m then you just click that button and it pops you on a table

The other player has to accept a find a friend invite...so it is find a friend and not find a fish

I think most of the stuff thats been mentioned have been peripheral really though. The big problem is that the gap between a new player or some one who has played a few times and players who have been online for years has never been bigger. Im not sure what level some one who has never played before could start at now without getting beaten up. Maybe free training sites if you loose x ammount

+1 i think a lot of people do not understand this here

There's many problems with this analogy though. In the 5/10 poker economy you outline, the fish supply is being choked off by constraints on the availability of games fish can afford to play. It assumes there is sufficient demand and supply not being utilized due to a lack of options through the site. It's also in a vacuum and not including the key problems involved here.

In the current state of the games, the supply of fish is being outstripped by the supply of regs, while the demand (interest) in poker is not keeping pace to support growth. For your analogy to follow, it would mean we must believe the reason for this trend is due to some qualitative feature of the site that's choking off the fish supply, given that there are no barriers in stakes or game types. Sure, this is hypothetically possible that if we tinker with a few changes we can restart the cycle.

I find the other arguments, however, having to do with the impact of legislation, the progressive stages of an ecosystem/market, and the top down parasitic structure of the poker economy, to be far more realistic. That's not say to say I have anything morally against poker (I don't at all), but the reality is that it's a negative sum game that requires many to lose, in order for a few to win. So when taking this in account, it becomes apparent that as the # of individuals deciding to make money at the game increases, as rake increases, and the amount of money players are making increases, the amount of NEW money entering the system to support this has to increase exponentially.

I hate to draw the comparison, since it's clearly quite different in nature, but it's structured in similar fashion to a pyramid scheme. As the % of people making money grows, and the amounts they are making increases, it exerts pressure on the sustainability of the system, requiring the food at the bottom of the pyramid used for feeding to grow massively. We have reached the point where not enough money is flowing into poker to feed the growing number of pros, at the growing stakes available online.

To believe the current dilapidated state of the games is due to the poker sites having not implemented the right features is wishful thinking. I mean, your hypothetical is comparing a site with 5/10nl as it's lowest game, to poker sites that came up with rush poker, offer every form of poker you can imagine, and spend millions as it is trying to improve the poker playing experience for their customers. It's not that they're failing, it's that the forces they are fighting are much bigger than a few settings in a poker lobby.

After your logic how can there even be a growing number of pros?

As I've mentioned previously in thread, I'm including the bumhunter group (or anyone refusing to play -EV games) in this "pros" category. Disregard the terminology of "pros" if it seems inconsistent. But basically, the number of "pros" (or people deciding they only take +EV games) can still grow even as the number of new fish is slowing. It just means smaller earnings shared among many.

Hm yes that makes sense. But isnt it also that once we reach this point, when not enough money is coming in, that the "pros" get less and less and the system balances itself out and only the strongest survive? Of course this process takes some time maybe months or years even.

The point of the analogy was to show that changes should be made despite everyone being aware that poker is dying. I acknowledge that this is the case, and a new influx of fish is clearly needed in order to make the poker economy "healthy" again, however that might be defined.

Stars and other sites have certain lobby structures currently, and we are suggesting changes. These changes will hopefully help generate more action, and make the games fairer, based on how most people would define "fair".

he is really clever

I mentioned it in one of the other threads - they need to introduce beginners' tables. Restricted to accounts newer than one month or something like that. Then market them directly at the play money demographic.

I would pay $100+ for a book written by Phil

Been thinking about this and I remembered one of the suggestions I had for PS in my thread in the HU forum.

The suggestion was to allow players to "broadcast" their willingness and intent to play someone on multiple tables. This would help get more action going between regulars. A lot of people actually don't mind playing regs but getting matches going can be a time-consuming and annoying process. There's a couple of reasons why it is so:

- There's about 80-100 people sitting at HU tables at most stakes. If there's 200 players at the 2 limits I want to play regs at, that means I might have to click around the lobby up to 200 times before I might find action.

- If I decide to sit with someone and ask for action this is more time wasting as not everyone replies right away. In fact, a big percent of players who refuse action just sit there and never say a word. I don't know why people do that but they do.

- If someone decides to play there's a chance he just runs off after 2-5 hands.

These are all annoyances that are completely unnecessary. I do realize you can color code players, but that doesn't eliminate them. Here's a couple of easy to implement solutions:

1. Ability to remove from the lobby players that won't play you or you don't want to play. This would help eliminate the time needed to find action.

2. We can now broadcast our intention to playing someone on "X amount of tables" for "X amount of time". This will be a global Chat that can be disabled by people who are not interested in the feature. If someone sees this invitation and accepts it, then he can select "Play!" and X amount of tables open up, tiled up for him, with his opponent sitting on them as well. The match starts right away.

I see no reasons why this would not benefit the games. It's not a "solution" to the overall problem but it would help.

Well, I already acknowledged that there's nothing wrong with trying to salvage whatever is left, but felt that many people didn't fully appreciate or understand what was going on beneath the surface. I never suggested people should do nothing, but also thought some of the suggestions people were recommending would do more harm than good. Such as KOTH.

One of the better suggestions I've seen.