It depends a lot on how long of a session a rec player is playing.

In some formats, winning 30% of sessions is a very realistic figure for the average non winner.

I'm not sure it is relevant though. MTTs are some of the most popular games for casual players, but the top heavy payouts guarantee a lower chance of having a winning session.

Those 30% are wrong for Holdem. Even a fish will not play every hand. Depending on his VPIP it will take 500-2500 hands. And as we all know, it takes some time for 2500 hands in a live setup.

Standard deviation of 100BB/100 hands does not assume every hand is played, it's for an average player.

If they play more hands than the average their standard deviation will be higher, so you may well be right that they win more than 30% of the time.

There are another factor though - both for roulette and poker. If the player comes with 100 euros and plays 10 euro per spin roulette or NL100 (yes we have that live in Slovakia), then in both cases they might have an EV of minus 50 euros per 100 and an SD of 100 euros per hundred, but in both cases there is a higher chance of going bust and stopping before they complete the 100, losing the chance to catch up. The real gambler type just keeps going until he's bust, increasing stakes if he gets ahead, so I'm sceptical whether 30% of roulette sessions really end with the player walking away a winner.

Apart from the wide variety of stakes offered, the other advantage roulette has is the chance to be in action all the time, whereas FR NLHE if played reasonably correctly involves playing not more than about of fifth of all hands, so there is too much waiting around for others to finish hands. Solutions to this are to
a) play much shorter handed than now - maybe 4 handed even.
b) play fixed limit before the flop and no limit after, which would make it correct to see more flops.
c) accept that there is a certain type of player who is better served by casino games and is more or less unreachable for poker.

by the way, i would like to add something that i think hasnt been pointed out in the thread. sorry if it is trivial.

so stars will get rid of current scripts. it will always be possible to build another script, no matter what system they make. but the cost of it might be prohibitively expensive. if it is then scripts are over for stars and regs will, on average, make more money (though the top regs will make even more and the other ones less). if it isnt (and i would bet it wont be cause someone always ends up finding a way around systems, sometimes by luck) then the cost of the new script will either be higher or lower than that of current scripts, but likely higher.

as productions costs rise, offer will decrease and we will go back in time 5 years as in when those script developers were charging ridiculous amounts like 50% of profits for a script. if making a new script is very hard and one guy or few people manage it, they will take more money out of the poker economy than current script developers are taking due to decreased competition.

I think these changes are definitely good.

It will result in people getting more hands in for sure.

At peak hours there are always ten people on the waiting list to sit at $2/4 and higher, which is sad really.

I'd imagine these changes will cause more people to play zoom now and High Stakes will move over to other sites like Run It Once in the future.

trivial

Well, the scripts of various kinds work by automatically pressing buttons in the stars client - in the case of seating scripts they press the buttons that tell the server to seat a player at a particular table. If you take away the button there is nothing for them to interact with unless they hack the server.

Its easy to underestimate the ability of scripts. Imagine the environment of 5/10+ where no one plays without a fishy player joining. Then you have a script that only joins when action is running, meaning there is a fish in the pool. This is exactly how FTP ran with this same system.

But it will not be the same system. You don't think they are able to learn from that experience? For one they have stated that you will not be able to live rail tables so there will be no way for the script to see if action is running or not. They can also just close out tables if everyone sits out and force everyone back into the queue to be seated at a new table. Penalize people with time outs for repeated table changes and you will be forced to play at the table your seated at or not play at all. Point is there are many things and combination of things they can tryout until they get the results they want.

Can you always create a new script? Sure you can, but the question will be what can that script actually do? If the script can not choose tables, can not choose seats, and can only see who is at the table once you are seated, what exactly is left that it can do? Insta sit out if it does not like the other players at the table?

This.

Can a script get me dealt pocket aces more often? The answer is no because there is nothing in the server that will respond to client-side request for more pocket aces. Should be the same with seats next to fish.

About insta-sitting out. If people do that then perhaps the next step will be to hide avatars and screennames until the big blind is posted.

As for the effect on rec player's loss rates if the bad regs leave. I tend to think they will benefit from having more fish at their own tables, but to me that isn't the main point. They are going to lose the money they deposit in the long run anyway - for that money they deserve the chance to lose it in a straight-up, fair game, and third party software like scripts doesn't fit that picture.

Maybe MTTs are doing better than cash because it's more attractive to be a "outsider" or "underdog" in a quasi-sporting competition than it is to be the "fish" or "sucker" in a gamble.

This all depends on whether the client will give a running # of tables and players. If it doesn't, then you have a monster griming and no games running problem below a certain limit, and if you do then you have a "scripting/bumhunting" problem.

I emailed them about this and received the following reply:

"Please also be conscious of the fact that non-dealing tables will not restart dealing. If all players are sat out the table will close and players will have to re-join via the pool entry."

What if only one player is sitting in. That's also a non-dealing table, right?

don't be suprised, these support puppets are mentally handicapped, don't ask them anything which surpasses common sense, sure they can confirm you can play in shorthanded games if all of the pool agrees to not join new tables... so literally possible, but technically not.

Right, but it is a little bit reassuring for those of us who play niche games, as it could have been the case that it was going to work like tablestarter and headsup/shorthanded not possible at all.

lol. Every time I try to quit nvg this type of comment pulls me back in

What analogy would you use to explain how they work then?

This.

Far far far too late.

They also raised the rake and killed the games further.

They waited until all the fish were gone before they try to stop scripters/bumbhunters.

gg

I assume he means people joining 50 tables then leaving 40. But if so, he's forgetting the time penalties.

I also assume that PS will hide the lobby view entirely, just showing the available stakes.

Not an assumption they stated this is how it will be.

es cash games seem to be struggling. doesn't really mean anything at all since stars may tend to kill the whole cash format like they did with HU.

Click through, you can see pokerscout is only reporting NLH Zoom for .ES (though it seems this has been the case for a while, the 6 month graph is fairly flat, increasing if anything).

ok, my bad

PokerScout is just cash game data, not MTTs or SNGs, correct? Kind of missing a significant picture if you want to draw conclusions on the industry outside of cash game trends.

iamblackornot is right in that traffic has plummeted - i can see that the single day figure for cash game traffic yesterday is half what it was the day prior. However, this is very likely a temporary tracking issue on PokerScout for Spain following the change so i wouldn't start drawing any conclusions regarding impact.