what a donk move by stars. complete disgrace. people should be able to play HU if they choose. im not a die hard fan of HU but once in a while its nice to have the option.

does this also affect HU sng's?

WCG just posted the only one.

This is why they did it. Why completely eliminate HU when you can leave an option that is unbeatable. It's more slimy then eliminating HU completely, is it not?

Is this for real? Removing heads up ring games? OMG who is making the decisions at PokerStars now. Is Baazov spinning the arrow?

do you still remember how to hu though?

Well, I for one welcome the return of our ultra-boss overlords.

Thanks Amaya. Thanks Dave. Let's get things properly merito-capitalist up in here.

It's hard for me to imagine that Stars doesn't realize that recreational players will lose faster. How can they not when they will be playing the top5-10 players in the world, who will move all the way down to 1/2 whenever there is a rec there and they don't have anything going on higher?

So part of me is concerned that this is a short interim step before removing HU entirely, just so they can say they have tried different systems before giving up on the format.

Assuming there is no special cap for this system there's nothing stopping the top1 player from claiming the whole lobby for himself and if he is contested at more tables than he can handle - prioritize the higher stakes, quit the lower ones. And when the action breaks there, move down till he gets action again. Repeat this every single day.

This is what happened at sites that introduced a capped number of HU tables per stake without a cap on the number of tables a player can take. The top player took every single table from the highest stakes down to the ones where it wasn't worth his time if he was contested by another good reg.

So it's really interesting what kind of system Stars has in store for these Zoom pools. Even assuming some sort of caps I'm afraid that someone who wants to play 2.5/5 will be forced to play a top5-10 reg in the world.

The current system seemed absolutely fine, because it incentivized action between regs who were similar in skill, but not close to the worlds best. They fought for tables that were not taken by the best. I don't see any regs outside of the top 20 playing if the absolute majority of their volume will have to be against top10 regs.

Also Pokerstars seems to be continuining its tradition of informing of radical changes just moments before they happen. If someone is unhappy with this change to the point where he will quit the format he specialized in it would be cool if he at least had a couple of months notice to consider what he is going to do and/or practice other formats.

Any of the heads up regulars wanna comment on how often they think the 50/100 games will run and the stakes below for no limit and for plo?

I'm all for attempts to end the bumhunting of heads up. Hopefully this follows across all networks and the bum hunters go back to McDonald's.

Zoom heads up seems like a decent solution. It forces out horrible bumhunting regs, gives a tough decision to average regs. If can sit 4 entries though, it's gonna sit out all but the best regs. Which I'm fine with.

I don't think it will run often at all (nl200) unless they give some incentive for regs to keep the game going when their is no fish. Which they definitely shoudl, but won't, so yeah.

Also I imagine a lot of recreational players simply prefer to play regular tables and don't like the Zoom HU tables at all. I guess this is what Pokerstars is aiming for with these changes - that some recs will stop playing HU tables entirely, either because they don't like the Zoom format or because they're forced to play against the same people over and over again.

If the current state is indeed as you describe it, with each blind-level having approx:
i) 25 active HU games running, and
ii) 3 Zoom tables with a ~25 person pool

Well...that sounds pretty anemic, no? Like, from Stars' perspective, they just have to hope that enough of the action from those 25 active tables finds its way over to the new zoom-only format, right?
I absolutely understand why HU regs are upset that they'll no longer get the chance to play an extended session vs. a fish, and from a fairness / poker-philosophy perspective that seems "inequitable", but from a strictly bottom-line-for-Pokerstars perspective, it seems like a relatively low-risk proposition. It's not like there's a thriving HU ecology that they're jeopardizing...
^^^The above is written from the perspective of a relative HU-noob, so happy to be told that I'm missing something.

It's like they are trolling the whole community and trying to make their latest announcement worse than the last just when everyone thinks that's impossible.

Nh Baazov you ****. Your/Amaya's logic defies belief

The state of online poker has been thrown into chaos since Amaya's takeover. They're making radical changes every month, changing the rules, eliminating formats, making the environment almost impossible to navigate and completely precluding any kind of planning or meaningful projections.

Regardless of what you think about any individual change or their merito-capitalist pedigree the pattern they've established is one that where emulated by economies at large leads inextricably down the dung paved, malarial road to Kibera.

again its funny to see how ******ed people are on this forum that they think this change will help recs

Almost as funny as the entitled poker players in this thread.

Good changes, stops bum-hunting.

This is bs man! i just read through this whole thread HU Button Raising http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/19...aising-163758/ and was thinking so much EV vs these donk regs to be made who are still folding from the btn, now pokerstars go ahead and get rid of all normal tables wtf? so what now? do i still raise on the btn 100%?

ok buddy can u explain how this change helps anyone but stars?

all fish will now play hu zoom vs much better players on average than before and will lose alot faster.

regs will win less because they will play more hands vs other regs

all of u people who hate bumhunters are idiots who cant beat hu so u cry here because u have to play 6max and hope to have 1bb winrate if ur supergood.

A fish is going to lose at 300 bb/100 verse a great reg and 250bb/100 verse a bumhunter. They aren't going to lose much faster.

In zoom it's going to allow the fish to survive long ennough for stars to rake 4 other regs battling each other for their shot at the fish. This is why they change.

They don't care about loss rates of fish. They care about rake. More rake for stars is the plan here. At this point it's safre to assume that if stars make a change, it's for more rake.

Also if heads up gams die, the fish will play some other game where stars gets more rake per 'fish hands' played. So they win eithe rway.

First off, I dont see how this will help recreational players at all. To begin with the games will evolve and get tougher a lot quicker when regs are playing each other a lot more than usual. At the same time most regs will have to improve their game to be able to compete with the top guys while trying to get some value out of the rec player(s) in the pool, which will create an even bigger skill level gap between the regs and the recs. I think it's way less of a "predatory" environment for the recs as it is right now, where they at least can choose a player they think is weaker or someone who gives them fun action. Instead they now will be forced into a pool with the top players and everyone will try to exploit them as much as possible every hand since you know a bunch of good guys are waiting to send the rec broke you kind of have to squeeze out as much value as possible as fast as possible, no time for fooling around really.

With that said, I think it's also a very disrespectful decision by stars letting the players know a very significant change like this with such short notice.

When I'm feeling particularly tinfoil-hatty, I think about how interesting it is that Stars is trying out all kinds of unpopular changes drawing complaints that they're killing the game and destroying the brand at the very same time that Baazov puts in a $21 / share offer (considered by many to be a bigtime lowball) to take the company private. It's one thing to buy low. It's another to intentionally depress the SP so that you can buy low.

4 days notice?? I think this was the initial plan for SNE announcements.


"This change is part of our commitment to reducing predatory behaviour and improving the recreational player experience."


What? How?

so glad i dont play on pokerstars. ill never deposit a dollar on that **** site. seems like theres alot of room for other poker sites to step up.

Yep

I guess now durrrr has a reason why he can't finish his challenge.

I don't get where people need more than 3 days of notice though. What difference does it make if it's 3 or 30?