Not really. He's just saving the announcement for a future post. I would be very surprised if their model isn't going to be much better for the players than Stars'.

You'd have to unpack that for me (although I am not perfectly unfamiliar with the poster (mod right?) you refer to. Are they pro and rec (ie and by what definition).

Do you mean that that person believes that lowering the edge at the expense of overall profitability is good? Or that they think you can lower the edge to increase profitability?

Yes he said that, but we all know that all of the players on this forum that have been hoping for a site that can save the players form the situation where the biggest operator can reneg with impunity on programs that players already put a whole year in qualifying for etc.

To not talk about rake is just being opaque. Poker stars doesn't necessarily have the highest rake % either, they are able to stay "competitive" as they changed other aspects of the game that negatively effected the profitability while claiming the lowest rake.

I am already surprised, I don't really expect favorable rake rakeback programs. We are already used to the pitch of "rakeback only incentives pro players to grind".

It is the argument you can fix the games and serve the recreational players taking probability from the winning players. But the end result is only that the site rakes more. And when you increase the raked money the recreational players have the feeling of suffering more bad beats.

I have a lot of respect for PG, and have enjoyed reading his responses on the RIO discussion page. I'm a bit confused by this defence of the dynamic avatars though:



How is encouraging players to tighten up pre-flop good for the game?

Maybe because their deposit will last longer as they reduce their most costly mistakes. As a side effect the room will get a higher proportion of the deposits as rake, while the winners will get less. But it's good for the games, isn't it?

Is this avatar HUD thingy just a very simple form of this poker training tool?

http://www.pokerleakbuster.com/


.

@tedh can't tell if trolling

@ptlou its an interesting concept from an operator view, you could teach the recs to player better.

I'm admittedly bad at sorting through details but I'm not seeing the logical consistency here. If it is opt-out in order to deanonomize why is there a concern of deanonomized players sharing data of other deanonomized players, its kind of a choice right? There is nothing really being protected from the players view is there?

It's easy to admit it's nice to see Phil taking the question head on, he's prob exhausted. He'll have to give out these kinds of tasks soon I imagine or risks burning out.

I think the ideas are great in that they are somewhat novel and unique, I just hoped phil would take a different direction and I still believe most players did too (but it depends how the other decisions moving forward face).

I just don't understand what would be wrong with serving professional players. Create the dream. There is some tacit assumption in this community that the games would be unsustainable but what does that mean? If pros were playing pros on RIO then the site (profits) would thrive-so serve them.

We need to keep the dream for the aspiring player alive, that is poker. It is SPECIAL casino game. This will draw the recreational players that want to play with their idols (like phil galfond!).

Poker Stars campaign slogan at first was "we are taking money from the pros to give to the recs so that the games are better for the pros" But did anyone really believe this made the game better for either player type? Later the slogan was changed to "winning players are bad for the game and therefore higher rake is good for the game"

It just seems like weird logic that we will fix the game not by serving all the big names and all the best players and giving them a home, but by admitting that they must reduce the available edges in order to solve problems. And the real worry is that Phil doesn't understand that you can't solve these problems. He's admitting to lowering the profitability in order to combat unsolvable problems, but this is always an option to solve these problems- make the games -ev for everyone and the bots will leave, the colluders will leave etc. You will just have honest people losing money. I think most of us don't understand this.

You can fix seat scripts by having zoom only, but then you reduce the edge which is being complained about being lost from the seatscripters.

Can it ever be that you serve the pros and all the pros say "man RIO sucks there are no fish here because they treat the pros so well"? I think we have been sold a lie over the years and this mentality just stays tacitly held in the community's approach.

Interpreting hud data is a skill... and so is karate but neither have anything to do with the skill of poker. Great live players have huge edges in cash games and MTTs. So getting rid of huds is like baseball players losing steroids.

And for every hud needer there's a new skilled poker player to grab your edge. The only gripe you have is it isn't you.

anyone advocating that banning HUDs will help recreational players is ******ed. They will lose anyway. Why so much concern about recreational players? They lose again and again, and come. Why? Because they love to play poker. They know they are playing vs pros, and still come and play. Id love to play raw poker with no HUDs, but that can't be enforced and will create niches where certain players have software.

The only way ban huds will be effective (its not even banning as they will be useful anyways) is Anonimity.
While it might help them survive a bit longer (an orbit or two more!?), it will open the door for other much serious problems like:

- collusion
- in game play help
- bot rings

HS games will rarely, if ever, run on such conditions because they know what type of stuff is out there.

Poker is a game. As such there will be winners and losers. Whats the ****ing deal with protecting recreational players? they can't be protected unless they put in the work and get better.

I feel bad that Phil was caught with this ecossystem bull**** that was first introduced by Stars. Regs now are getting better, even the ones that were dumb years ago had catch on at some stuff.
Recognize this, games are tougher because the regulars are better!

Phil lost a good opportunity to:

Keep the poker dream alive for anyone that aspire to be a professional and be recognized by it. Who will this new players look to? Who will they rail?

We have come to a point that even players that run poker related sites care more about an utopia (helping recs to win... like that will ever be possible) than actual trying to make other people (the regulars and recs) achieving or dreaming to achieve the success they got in their era.
I was hoping Phil would try to emulate Stars pre-amaya success, but instead he went for the unibet type of site that will never go mainstream.

A poker site needs someone that:
---> Respects regulars and the amount of dedication/study they put in first
---> Appeal and mantain that the poker dream is still alive and anyone can achieve it
---> Recognize that the skill gap of regs/recs is too big, and theres no way any rec will win on the long term. If he does, he is labeled as a regular


---> Identify all the recreational players on the site and offer them more rakeback/monthly SN changes/ Dep bonus etcetc. This is how you help the RECs having a more pleasant experience, not by removing game types, hiding screenames..


ps: typing on cellphone so couldnt bother to review grammer/organize post

I bet Phil wishes he'd thought of that

Your Posts so far are very reasonable, HUDs are pretty much useless vs Fish since Sample Size is for 99% of FIshes too low to produce any meaningful Stats.

Mircogaming Network even claimed to have Data proving FIsh lose HARDER/FASTER on anon Tables.


Im sure PG is fully aware but is one step ahead. Mainly HUDless/Anon environment forces Regs to play GTOish, Edges decrease massively since the better Regs are no longer able to exploit weaker Regs like they used to do.


More Rake is better

I don't think they claimed this at all. Only that on the anonymous tables the average pot sizes were larger leading to more action in those games. Did this lead to larger winners and losers? Ya, but the study didn't imply that the losers were recreational players and the winners were all regs. Only that there was increased action in those games. Something that I don't think anyone would argue is a bad thing for a poker game.

Also, this site had the option of the two in the client. A better example to gather data would be to look at pokersites such as Unibet or Bovada and compare the playing experience there.

The main issue is that anonymous games lead to an environment where recreational players are not as easily targeted while sacrificing the effective use of a HuD as well as making it more difficult for the players to police their own games.

There is no reason why a site, especially one founded by poker players that have significant experience in the games over the years and with analyzing poker data cannot set up a reasonable detection and security team when it comes to these issues.

lol no one's going to come to your anon HUDless tables, you've failed before you've started

I think you're greatly overestimating the fish.

When I first started playing live at the lowest levels (around $40) I always had a poker book with me and read it while I waited for the tournament to start. I did not yet know about not tapping the fish tank.

After two tournaments five players had asked to look at my book. In every case, the first time someone saw a page with math they quickly gave the book back to me.

I handed them something that could make them better and they wanted no part of it because math is scary.

Most ridiculous statement ever made. You wonder why gamblers get hooked on gambling? It's because of the promise of a big win & small wins along the way, if a recreational player loses all the time they won't have fun & their tendency to redeposit will be lower. Very few, if any, recreational gamblers whether it be poker or a casino game enjoys losing every single time.

Wow, I don't believe that at all. When I play micro tournaments on Juicy Stakes Poker, it doesn't take long to figure out who can play and who can't. A quick look at the HUD usually tells me all I need to know. 25 hands is probably enough if someone is playing at 60/12.

One of the first things that Katie Dozier looks at when a new player comes to the table is VPIP/PFR. If the results are are more than five numbers apart, for example, 20/14, she assumes it's a bad player until she finds out otherwise, no large sample size required.

Has RIO announced what variants they will be offering?

For ex. some sites have stud variants, badeucy/badacey, and dealers choice.

Does anyone know if it's strictly Holdem and Omaha variants, or if they are going all out? thx

Reg entitlement is still alive and well I see. LOL

I'll let you into a little secret guys. Poker sites don't owe you anything.

There is no one here acting entitled or claiming entitlement. Who are you speaking to and who specifically are you laughing at?

Hey Clif

VPIP/PFR allow a very vague categorization very quickly, that is true, but you wont find many more fast converging stats and they are not all that helpful to create high EV Postflop(and pre but to lesser degree; For shortstack play in MTTs i can see HUDs being useful a bit quicker but were talking Cash Games here, Sir) adjustments.

I would even argue, i can tell for the most part from one closely observed multistreet hand, whit what kind of Player im dealing with. If you force me to cut down tables because i have to do basic observing myself, instead of letting my HUD do it, i will destroy RECs even harder and i will be able to indentify their thought process much quicker as i could ever be able to with my HUD alone.

Funnyly enough im a amateur HUD Creator and my winrate increased a lot since i pretty much stopped using HUD vs RECs unless Sample is really realiable. To be reliable Samples need to be MUCH bigger as u might think, if u never did dug down the rabbit hole.

Your are wrong.

https://www.cardschat.com/news/bad-p...lose-more-8888

''This will probably shock those operators who bet the farm on Anonymous Tables, thinking that they would protect new and weak players,” he says. “Our evidence says that they don’t. In fact, weak players lose more and have an even shorter lifetime than they would if they played regular tables. This is the other key reason that anonymous players play fewer hands, they have already gone broke.”

I did read the original back in the day on the microgaming Blog, im sure you can find it somewhere


You realize People are using HUDs on Bovada/Ignition and Unibet and Party Poker while we are speaking?
No HUDless Site will ever exist unless Sites do multiple Updates per Day and even if this is the case they have to offer only meaningless stakes. If there is big money to be made, pirats will upgrade their illegal HUDs multiple times a day if they have to :S

Of course I realize people use HuDs in those games. Their effectiveness drastically reduced because of the sample sizes they are dealing with at the tables.

My arguments weren't hud/no hud they were about advantages and disadvantages between anonymous tables Vs standard tables. I mentioned ipoker wasn't the best reference to draw data from on anonymous gaming because their players were segregated between their preference within the client.

I'm not even really getting into the HuD argument as it's been beaten to death over the years.

HUDS are as effective on pirate anon sites as they are on Pokerstars, since most Fish lose their money and take a long break afterwards or switch Game Type.


We werent talking IPoker but Microgaming and people were not segregated on Microgaming nor Ipoker, Segregation was on Party Poker.

I dont wanna be insulting but maybe you should get some of your facts right before you join this discussion.

Based on the majority of tones itt, it seems like people just want PokerStars but with less rake. I doubt that's what Phil ever had in mind.

PG disagrees.

Maybe because rec's lose their money not as fast, and will actually have more % winning sessions and hence enjoy their playing experience more and are more likely to come back.