wait wut? if you win 8bb you sit out???

What is wrong with this? If you want to play 100bb poker as much as possible, frequent ratholing makes sense. Why wait to get to say 150bb, when even 130bb's or 140bb's create a 'weird' stack depth? If it only takes a few mouse clicks to rathole any wins, then you should do so.

Frequent ratholing shouldn't change anything related to seats though, as you are just entering the pool as a new entry each time and so even if ratholing is part of the 'software issue', it is still completely unacceptable that that is the case.

i do believe its against the rules, in normal cash games at least, and you are prohibited to rathole there. therefore i doubt its legal at zoom..
it might be somehow causing the problem

You have always been 'allowed' to rathole at Zoom, it is part of the concept even if it is not explicitly stated, and regardless everyone ratholes anyway so it is not correct for it to be the reason for any problem here.

How can I say everyone ratholes? Well if you play for 4 hours and have 500bb's on one table and 375bb's on another, then you go and take a well deserved break, close down the client and then come back some time later, you now have two 100bb stacks in the same Zoom pool and so you have ratholed.

So even 'non-ratholers' rathole, as each entry to the Zoom pool is unique and distinct, and it is impossible to define what is a 'true' rathole and what isn't. Hence therefore it is not acceptable for this to be anything to do with the reason why regs are being screwed with the seating, (even if in reality this perhaps is a slight cause, although we don't know for sure as pretty much everyone ratholes at differing bb levels and to differing extents so we won't really know one way or the other). What we can say though, is that if Zoom functioned how it should and each player entry is a completely new and unique entry, it should not mess up seating for that particular entry or any other entries linked to the same account.

I still suspect that fish are not starting orbits in the BB though, which means an unfair game is being dealt.

Also, I assume that at live poker, if you sit down at a $1/$2 table, play for an hour, run your $200 up to $300. Then you leave and cash out your chips, physically walk out of the casino, have a bite to eat and then come back in an hour later, buy a fresh rack of $200 in chips and go to sit down at the same table, you can sit back in with just $200 in front of you right? If you can't do this, who is monitoring you as it seems like an insane thing for someone to be spending resource to check for such a thing?

The process of ratholing is really just the immediate removing of money off the table while you are still sitting at that same table with the same opponents and being dealt into the same game, essentially reducing your stack size in between individual hands, and obviously that process is forbidden at casinos and also regular tables online. Fast Fold Poker does not really work like this and once you choose to 'sit out' an entry and quit the pool, then 5 seconds later you return to the pool, you essentially come back as a 'new' entry and so you haven't really ratholed anything as your previous entry doesn't exist anymore and has not returned.

I don't understand why players want to rathole. Are they just trying to reduce variance??

In any case, if the rule is that new entries take BB then what should be expected is that the players who stay seated for shorter periods than average will have more than average % BB. Those who stay seated longer than average will have below average % BB.

If the seating algorithm tends to move players from BB to SB etc then those positions should be similarly affected to a progressively lesser extent.

However, I don't understand how this effect would happen where the player sits out next BB. Perhaps that mechanism is not working correctly and is somehow sitting players out too early (e.g. when they are at risk of BB rather than actually placed in BB)?

In theory, if players always sit out next BB and the software sits them out only when actually due to be placed there, then those players should receive less % than average BB because they would be the beneficiaries from other players who sit out without waiting for BB.

Evidence? I would be very surprised because that would be an unfair game and would cause big regulatory issues.

Yes, reducing variance and playing at a stack depth that you are comfortable at.

I assume that all ratholers still only 'sit out next BB', and so should be unaffected by anything.

If you have played BB and SB and CO, and have turned your 100bb's into 120bb's, it doesn't make sense to quit immediately and not play your EP, MP and BTN seats that are still 'owed' to you, even if you have to play those seats at a slightly higher stack depth than is ideal.

So as long as ratholing regs choose to 'sit out next BB', which they likely all do if they understand anything about poker, this ratholing thing should be a complete non-issue.

b/c 2nd and 3rd table session positions are not random, but heavily weighted towards sb and btn

every time you sit out (for w/e reason) more often than player pool average you lose some ev

An interesting statistic would be to measure average # hands you receive in each position after clicking to sit out next BB (A).

This should be compared with (B) the # hands before BB during normal play when 'sit out' hasn't been clicked and (C) the theoretical expected value, i.e. (6H):

EP 0
MP 1
CO 2
BTN 3
SB 4
BB 5

Interestingly (B) will not actually equal (C) because the software doesn't always rotate you in this exact order, esp when the pool is small and there is presumably some trade off between wait time and completely fair positioning. So, for example, when in EP you will sometimes not get a BB hand next so, while (C) for EP is 0, (B) for EP would be > 0.

Comparing (A), (B) and (C) might give a clue to the cause of the issue.

ppl ratholing at 108bb, you are the kind of person that kills poker

sit out next blind works find. its how positions after distributed after sitting down:
1st always BB
2nd SB > Btn >> other positions (sometimes there arent sb or btn available)
3nd Btn (if 2nd == sb) or SB > btn >>

basically 1st BB 2nd sb 3rd Btn is prefered and only after then its evenly ramdomized, therefore bb sb btn are overrepresented

I don't really get why there should be any weighting of seats at any point.

For it to work better, it should just be that all positions are random at any point, whether you are a new entry to the pool or not. So sometimes when you join the pool you should not always be in the BB, but this will be countered by you sometimes starting and getting the BB two hands in a row etc.

If it is a pure random start, you couldn't really exploit it by taking some free IP seats and quickly leaving the pool because sometimes when you get the BB, you will stay to get your IP seats and you will be rewarded with another BB straight after due to random chance etc.

I guess it could still be possible to game the system in a slight way, but then Stars could always monitor whether people are playing many short sessions of Zoom where they play lots of 2 and 3 hand mini-sessions dipping in and out of the pool whenever they don't start in the BB, and banning those players after warnings etc.

Frequent ratholers that would want to rathole at 110bb's+, would be playing lots of mini-sessions, but those mini-sessions would frequently be 20+ hands and only very occasionally 2 or 3 hands, of which some of those 2 or 3 handed mini-sessions would correspond with starting in the BB still, so you wouldn't be gaming the system playing like that as a frequent ratholer.

So yeah, it seems like you can't have a pure random and equal distribution, whilst also locking in that new entrants to a pool must always start in the BB, (although of course maybe fish don't always have to ). It feels like it must all have to be completely random to work properly.

Yeah, and this over-representation of those seats probably came about because of the programmer's idea that ''after paying your blinds, as long as you get your BTN, you are good and have been made whole as the BTN is your most profitable position'', when in actuality if you posted your blinds at a six handed table, then you are only really made whole if you play all four of the other seats in equal measure, not just the BTN.

Isn't this just the s/w rotating you around the table positions in the natural order? Is it actually randomised after that or does it continue to rotate (as closely as it can)?

If it were randomised each hand what would be the incentive to drop out after not getting BB??

The algorithm has been the same since 2011/2012. I'm sure all sites have their proprietary
way of doing things, and it's not as simple as you think.

A few other things you guys don't consider:

1) Average wait length for next hand.
2) How often game breaks with few players.
3) True randomness means dealt BB twice in a row 1/6 of the time (a big no no for recs).

All of the above 3 should be minimized. The problem gets more complicated at low liquidity.

If you think the solution is so simple, write the algorithm for the improvement, prove it's an improvement, and go ahead and sell it to a poker site.

Well yeah, exactly. I don't personally think there is an incentive to do that, but I was wondering if someone might say ''Hey, they force you to start as BB so that way no one can exploit the system''.

It probably is unexploitable to have it truly all random, so I don't understand why they don't just do it that way, except of course by doing it the current way, it does have a nice effect of shifting EV from one player type to the next to maximise rake efficiency... so yeah.

It won't be an improvement for poker sites though, they conveniently make more rake with it being this current way, but the principle is that it is shady and not fair, so they are making unfair additional rake that they are not entitled to by artificially increasing the number of transactions between the winning and losing accounts before the losing accounts bust.

The point is that whatever randomise methods they choose to employ, should achieve balanced seating distributions for all players, or otherwise they are not doing it right and the game is not equal and fair between participants.

You can come up with issues that we are not considering, but if the end output does not lead to equal seating, it is not fit for purpose.

good point

This I disagree with. If there is something that makes you more money, but other regs more money than you, is it worse because it's unfair? Just as a hypothetical.

In your opinion is GG's algorithm the best? It doesn't have the functionality of "sit out next BB", and won't run unless there are at least 6 idle players. This their solution which makes the algorithm much simpler. It's fair (have to assume so) by your definition, though fish are punished less for randomly leaving the pool.

Source and working out needed

108bb? Jesus wept.

Bot prob only works at 100bb

Something is unfair if it gives other players an advantage due to the format of the game. I don't want to have any inherent advantage over others but at the same time I don't want any of those players having an inherent advantage over me either.

No one would play in a game where the orbit rotates as normal, but every three orbits when you are in the BB, the table plays two consecutive hands without rotating so you play 4 BB's every 3 orbits, and other players get 4 BTN's CO's etc. That is effectively what is happening here but in a sneakier and more disguised way.

I can't comment on GG but it needs to lead to equal seating distributions over the long run all the same. If it doesn't do that then it is also bad.

Wut?

You really need me to explain to you why having more BB's and less EP's, while some of your opponents have the exact reverse situation, is bad for you? Please.

ps website:
so it is actually possible to not get bb the 1st hand lol
"randomly"