If you are not, then why would you even care?

Strong argument there.

Look at the names ITT who have been against it. I doubt you even play reg tables, anyone who currently does and thinks this change is would be in a positive thing step forward...

Because everyone with a bit of the brain has had enough time to admit to himself the new reality which is: fish are dying out rapidly and they need to be protected and respected.

My friends who play poker as a hobby don't wanna spend hours looking for , installing and using script software and they especially don't want to feel abused and followed by a gang of mediocre players each time they sit onto a table. In the space of half an hour they will get to play total of 8 hands against 5 players who each play 10% of hands preflop and average 16 tables. Who'd ever get hooked to poker if it was always like this?!

These Stars changes are the only way to go but the site which first has the guts to prevent multitabling the same type of game will explode with new recreational players. Just that it takes a lot of counter intuitive bravery to get rid of multitable grinders who earn a lot of the rake for sites but are killing the game faster and faster...

You can observe but the observation is delayed, so you can see yourself play after the session.
Problem is, you can't see who is playing before you hit the observe button, and even then you can only see 1 table at a time per limit and the players you see sitting at the table may already be long gone. Also, the hands that you watch are not in order, so you skip tables between hands and there is no flow.

It definitely prevents bum hunting, and yes, railing high stakes will definitely not be as much fun.

I wrote a blog about this issue a week ago, and it seems clear to me that seat selection will disappear across online poker with a few key consequences:

Thanks for posting, Michael.

I'm not very familiar with the technical aspects of SEAT ME... is there a way operators could eventually resolve the issue of the OBSERVE option being less entertaining as a result? Or is this something that must come along with the territory in any SEAT ME or similar feature?

EDIT: FWIW, I think this is a good move by Stars. It most definitely puts more money in Stars' coffers (can't blame them that much since they're the ones investing in marketing to attract new players in the first place), but it also has the effect of discouraging bumhunting and actually shielding recreational players which is in line with their rhetoric.

If a poker site wanted to allow players to observe any table, they certainly could do so.

I think there's value in allowing players to observe tables for a few different reasons:
(a) Prospective players can get an idea of how the games look/play/appear/etc.
(b) The playing community benefit from greater transparency

On the other hand, a poker site might want to prevent observers for different reasons:
(c) chiefly to mitigate the risk of data-mining (there are different ways to mitigate this risk too) but also because;
(d) it would require some time and effort to program and create this feature.

I don't know whether PokerStars will allow much observing of tables - they'll probably come up with a feature similar to their Spin + Go and Zoom observer functions, and allow players to view some hands/tables. That will give them the benfit of (a), mitigate the risk of (c), and they can probably re-use the functionality of what they already having, minimising the cost of (d)

I think it is likely that sites and others will lean towards preventing meaningful, widespread, universal, observation of their hands. I think that's disappointing from the point of view of (b) above, but if poker sites continue to allow customers to record their own hand histories, that probably isn't a big problem in the long-term.

^Why not have a few "feature tables" that can be observed normally - generally the 2-3 tables with the most money sitting on them (incl. major tournament final tables).

Yes, as I suggested above, that seems likely, since they use somewhat analogous solution for Zoom/Spin + Go.

its cute how naive you are thinking multitabling can be stopped or is the cause of the degredation of the games. even if every site caps each account to 4 tables the regs will just play 4-5 sites at a time. myself and many othere i know already do this for mtts not giving and great loyalty or volume to any 1 site and still managing to 10-20 table all day long utilizing 4-6 different sites.

regs may hate seat me but it was an inevitable development. in the tourney world you cant bumhunt seats and was a long time flaw in the cash world. yes sucks that players winrates go down and sites profits up but its a change that was doing to happen no matter what.

Well, the situation you described certainly made it at least slightly more uncomfortable for you to multitable.
Furtherwise MTT's are much easier to multitable than HUSNG's, for example.
There is a lower number of tables than 4: 1 or 2. Why not have a player allowed to sit only on one high MTT, one low MTT, one PLO cash table, one NL cash table, one HUSNG, one 6 player SNG...you get my point. So that way you can play 20 tables simultaneously, but totally different variants.
Time banks can be decreased, that's a very neat weapon too.

As you can see multitabling can be drastically reduced but most of the sites are reluctant to lose this amount of rake gained by multitablers. Interesting how Unibet was pioneering online poker into this direction, but than they stopped and are stagnating for the last year or so.

glad i watched this, spewing nonsense about his love to compete for 30 minutes. also is he on drugs? why is he crying?

gl playing regs only and beating 5bb/100 rake

Yes, utter drivel.

2 guys who haven't played these games for fk knows how long thinking they have any right to give an opinion on the matter.

I love how upset that video made a very small % of people

nobody is upset.

tis was discussed heavily since 2015. i was upset back then. its pretty clear by now that not a single site really gives a **** about bumhunters. so i can assure you that even the biggest bumhunters (like urs truly) are at best amused by you bringing up tis subject literally 3 years late

TimStone will always be a winner
Ever since our nl25 days together
No matter the conditions
No one is upset

uncertain if he will always be a winner but he will always be a proud and unapologetic bumhunter

so when is this gonna be a thing in .eu client ?
cant wait for some bummy quitting tears .



P.s.nice vid joey

.EU games are obviously shared globally, so I would expect to be amongst the last to receive it. Looking at past posts of theirs on 2p2, it seems that PokerStars is likely to use the combined Spain/France situation to test it, and then eventually roll it out globally (assuming it works as they intend).

You might get a small country that is part of the global liquidity pool (Denmark? Estonia?) to get it a few hours (maybe a day or two?) ahead of the .COM and .EU clients.

Well I played like 200K hands on NL50, and imo its just another rake trap.

I think its main problem is its penalization system because you're basically locked for 12hands, which might be 2 orbits (but is mostly 3 or even more) since the game starts 3Max.

Sure it does remove some weak regs, but thats actually bad thing imo.
Since you were able to beat these guys easily, you're making even less money now, because they gave up or improve.

Before it was like 2 sickos, You, 2 WeakREG, 1Random fish
Now its like 4 Sickos, You, 1Random fish (mostly some kind of crazy guy or rock)

I would say only TOP2-3 guys in your stake POOL make profit, everyone is ****ed.

TLDR
CONS:
HORRIBLE RAKEBACK (7coins per EVERY chest + worthless ticket to donkament)
TERRIBLY HIGH RAKE (Would be only good if they focus on longrun profits)
MISSING WEAK REGS (Equals even less value for good regs)

PROS:
EASIER TO GET SEATED (But you better be ****ing TOP2-3 IN WHOLE REG pool on your stake)

so without the ability to game select anymore, does this make zoom have better hourly (bc of volume)?

I would say yes:
- you no need to hassle with opening/closing tables.
- you no need to pay attention to various format dynamics across the tables. (3-4max)
- you no need to pay amaya just to play with top2 regs who are losing too on this EV- table, only to open 7 coin chest from this "amazing" changes of 0.5% rakeback DN bastard was talking about.

So basically this bull**** would kill table starting and getting some fun HU action in? That's the only thing that even makes grinding poker fun. You play in games where most people are playing 10+ tables and the only thing that's fun which is playing HU while table starting and they **** on it? I guess you can always add 6 more talbles.... Online poker is **** LAME!!!

just got this email , maybe stars support acting stupid again because today i played 7 tabling but who knows.

Hello XXX

Thank you for email.

Unfortunately, we cannot increase the number of tables for the reason that we have new rules about the table limits. Since yesterday players are not allowed to play at more than 6 tables.

We are sorry for the inconvenience you experiencing with this matter, but we cannot proceed against our rules.

Thank you for understanding and cooperation!

Regards,

XXX
Stars Support