RIP Highstakesdb.

the problem is, this would be a huge turn off for many recs, who often prefer hitnrunning and table hopping. If they know they will get penalty for qutting after winning a stack fast, they will choose not to play at al.

In typical Stars fashion they only have the balls to go halfway and not all in. This will solve 50% of the goal... allowing screen name changes would fix the other 50%. But they don't have the balls to commit because they can't predict the outcome with certainty.

Stars' demise isn't due to this though. The issue is their business model historically has been based on a huge amount of rake generated by a tiny fraction of players. Then they decided they don't like these players. Yet they haven't done much in attracting fresh players that supposedly don't like playing against these regs.

Stars is trying to look at both sides of the coin simultaneously and take the benefits of both sides while hoping players will take the rest.

Haha some of you just don't want to accept reality. They ARE hoping it will have a drastic effect for breakeven and marginal winning regs. They have spawned in such numbers, equipped with all these extra aids like HUDs, Sharkies, Piosolvers etc. etc. destroying the ecosistem. In order for recreationals to be able to "breathe" , last longer and have fun overall number of regs, max number of tables and the list of allowed poker tools needs to be cut down radically.
This fallacy that fish will lose faster keeps repeating itself in topics like this one. Imagine a player pool consisting of 2 top regs, 15 bad/breakeven regs and 20 fish. Now if for whatever reason all 15 bad/breakeven regs leave the site do you really think 2 top regs will manage to take more money from 20 fish then 2 top regs+15 bad/breakeven regs? Can they sit 0/24 24/7 and "eat"? Have you ever seen a phenomena on big sites like stars where a lobby for a popular game is empty (for example 30$ or 60$ HUNL SNG in the middle of night CET) and fish take the first seat on the table? This happens not so rarely, trust me.
Then, some fish will turn into winners but these winners will be vastly different. A player from Denmark for example will start to marginally beat 15$ SNGs but since it's peanuts money for him he will put that money into further games, sports betting or casino, in comparison to a Belarus hobo nit who can be in the top 20% of earners in his 3rd world dictatorship country just with the rakeback being breakeven at 15$ HU SNGs, taking all that money out of the economy.

Anyway, looking forward to an Unibet like lobby on every big site in the near future, and guys like you can write "advanced konowledge of Holdem Manager 4" in your Europass CV under Skill column.

The only real solution to less regs and more casuals is the US (and other closed off markets to a lesser extent) opening back up.

Things were great before all the US casuals disappeared. All the better US regs (and some that just were content to relocate) just kept playing on international sites, threw off the balance.

Everything else talked about, software, winrates, seating scripts, it means almost nothing compared to the US casual playerbase disappearing.

^

Agreed, that is the biggest issue. When all of the best US regs play on international pools (one way or another) and none of the fish, bad things happen.

Can anyone explain to me what this means for lower-volume (limit/mixed) games, where at times there isn't a single table running yet? How does the first one get started?

Im convinced that highly segregated "1st world" only site w fairly low table caps would do tremendously. Teh only reason bovada is wat it is is bc of a highly ringfenced market w reasonable reg-rec ratios in those countries

Yeah, they need to have some common sense on this one. Disincentives for recs to join a table doesn't help anyone.

Yeah segregating player pools by costs of living would solve everything
It would also make it possible for people in the west to start out as a semipro and beat NL25-50, now it's completely impossible, since as soon as you reach NL50 you're already playing against a bunch of Belarussians who are playing for a living and you obv will have a hard time competing.
And if russians want to play hightsakes? Perfect, just got to relocate to the UK.
I don't really get it why sites put up with it, I get it that there are a few fishes from Russia, but they can never make up for the amount of damage the horrible reg:fish ratio and the bots are doing.

Build the wall!

get on stars and 888, plenty of russian fish..

problem is sites like party, ipoker,microgaming/wpn allowing and facilitating bots.

+1

I've told multiple people this exact thing recently. This would be a site with long term good games. The player pool would actually have casuals with disposable income to gamble and wouldnt consist of countries that only offer regs with no huge deposits coming in. Only so many people in these countries have interest in playing card games for cash full time as jobs actually pay real money.

Even if you opened up the USA to the ROW it would only make games good for a short period time it would eventually turn into what it is now.

Making lobbies zoom only would be better than SeatMe, assuming it doesnt kill the miniscule action HS NL has.

It would remove scripting too, atleast the non scripters get equal chance to get in game.

And Live railing is absolutely must, I know atleast I started poker cuz of railing and im sure theres tons of others, its what keeps the game alive.

and those pesky asians should be segregated too, they are too good at calculations, right?
right?

Now rooms like partypoker, RIO will need to have high stakes cash games with an option to share the hands online and the option to rail the rables = major success.

First come first serve.

lol supposedly classic

I've been playing some live PokerStars blackjack recently and been surprised at the action that is being wagered on there. It's also interesting that in the live blackjack on PokerStars they don't seem to allow you to take up multiple seats. The dealers, some very attractive I might add, and even the players are often very social with one another.

I do agree with some of the recent posts in that if some of the segregated markets came back the games poker games would get better but I also feel there is definitely a reasonable segment of recreational players that are fed up with the way online poker is played and are moving their gambling action to these other games. Seeing that some of them are willing to wager sometimes up to $100+ per hand in a game of blackjack I wouldn't necessarily say they couldn't afford to feed the midstakes to highstakes regs in poker. They probably just prefer the better gambling experience they are getting in the live casino on Stars to that of the one they were getting from online poker now.

Read the whole thread...it's quite an education. I'm not as "pro" as some of you guys, but I've played as micro rec up to 50nl on Stars for a long time. You've already gotta be fkn good (it's all relative, right!) to beat 50nl 6 max reg speed during peak reg hours (basically 9 to 5 GMT) and frankly it ain't much fun anyway, whether you bum hunt of not. I don't want to play my hobby (which I take uber seriously) against a bunch of Eastern European maths/software geeks and nerds, with a suitcase full of tools, who are clearly grinding a living out of it.

So if this changes fks up the playing pool, even a little bit, I guess that is ok by me. That said, I'm not dumb enough to think it'll make life any easier...as TS said, just way too many fkn grinding regs.

TBH though I pretty much came to the conclusion (this morning, before I read the thread, actually) that Zoom might just be a whole load more fun, just to get rid of this whole table chasing head fk.

Unlike a few on here, i'm a tad more open minded, so I'll I guess I'll just grind a bit of zoom and then see how it pans out when the changes kick in.

Europe only site include portugal/spain/france/italy build the wall where the EU stops.

They kind of deserve it after making everyone's results public. It's karma if you ask me

Amaya and this is meanwhile also pokerstars hates poker as a game of skill and concomitant they hate poker players.
Everyone who loves poker loves it because he thinks it is a skill game. Whoever hates games of skill hates whoever loves it too.

it's just funny to read "rec's" posts, where they blame regs for making poker tough and at the same time they want changes that would make pools softer so that they can make money easily without putting effort in learning to play. and they call it making poker fun again. such a hypocrisy and sanctimony of dnegs level.

Learning how to play is not the same as learning how to use a script.