how is 0% not simple and easy to grasp?

Been playing on Stars for several years now and lately been playing more on these games that cheltNAM is talking about it. I need to make clear about a few things:

1) The games are tougher than they've ever been
2) There are no fish around, not atleast on my playing hours which are 9-15 CET
3) The regs I play against know how to play GTO and most of the time are really good at finding exploitive solutions for specific spots.

This is what is actually happening at Stars and would strongly recommend everyone who thinks poker as a source of income to move to PartyPoker as soon the changes are implemented.

I hate to play devil's advocate on behalf of a force as destructive as Amaya, but I think they may have a point here. You have to think like a sucker. You play for a while and they hand you a scratch off ticket. That's all you need to know.

You're thinking like a programmer. What's easier to understand, Windows 3.0 or Metro? Maybe it's better to ask, "what's easier to use if you're a 60 year old retired bus driver who just picked up his first smartphone?"

What's hate for in general? We might posit perceived threats, jealously and envy for starters. And the latter two are really just subcategories of the first.

Agree on that. The idea for the new reward-system is not that bad, just the execution is a deseaster due to Amaya being greedy beyond all limits.

Are there any numbers what RECs/net-depositors get? Would really be good to see the complete picture of what is going to be implemented.

Definitely true, in that the standard of both regs and fish has been continually on the increase.

This is just not true. I play 100nl fr/6m/hu, exclusively on Stars, and at the same times as you. I play mainly regular tables (by starting them, not scripting/waitlisting), and use Zoom to fill in until I have a session of at least 6-8 regular tables going. I never find it hard to start and maintain a session, with fish on all tables. As a minor example, the 100nl Zoom pool is currently at 154 entries, and there are about 50 1-tablers.


Betting really small on the flop, then overbetting when you have the nuts does not equal GTO. It's pretty ridiculous to suggest that anybody is actually playing GTO, at least below the highest stakes.

This is based solely on second hand information, but from what I hear, the games on Party are actually tougher atm than on Stars because the fish:reg ratio is lower. This is only due to get worse as players move from Stars to Party, at least until Party start to make their push towards attracting more recreational players. This means that it's not just as simple as "Party offer higher rakeback, so there's more money to be made there". I could be wrong with this though, and would be happy to hear reports of how the games actually are on Party vs Stars from people who play both.

The thing is, you are not a good reg. I have a few k hands on you and none of my friend can find any way that you can be a winner pre-rakeback. The hours you play, are fish filled. Most zoom tables have 3 fish.
Took about 3k hands of us playing together for me to tag you as a regular because people told me you had been around for a long time and they thought you were good, you do completely ******ed stuff and you attack people simply out of emotion.

I have your line "3bet AK vs utg, cbets low flop and checkshove turn low card" marked as repeated many times.

This is why stars zoom games are so good, most of the regs are regfishes/chinese regfish and there's tons of true whales too. Rakeback grinders are gone and really good regs move up to z500 and leaves us plebs alone to make easy money.

Everytime a reg says, lets move to party. I know he's a losing reg and will lose even more once he plays the bot/reg filled games that rake a few bb/100 more than stars.

#praiseamaya thanks to them, for a few $ less per 100 hand in cashback, i don't have a bunch of ****ty regs denying me from playing pots with hundreds of whales and regfishes.

Good post Ron. Playing daytime cet zoom seems like pretty bad game selection so I won't protest too wildly against Pakastins statement of the pools being a bit dry, but the statement that the regs know "gto" is absurd.

Possibly an unpopular opinion but while this statement is true, I'd argue the skill level in the <ssnl games relative to the available learning material for a given time period has stayed approximately the same for a very, very long time.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1926

^ Ha that is interesting. Did not know that at first that 212$ hypers were rake free.

Lollllll

A lot of regs aren't playing actual GTO, but at 10-15bb/100 in rake, they might as well be. Frequencies are maybe 90% of the defensive value you get from GTO, actual range composition might be 10%. When betting or taking other aggressive action, ranges matter more because it's important not to value cut yourself or miss value, particularly when IP. These can be costly errors.

But I can say from personal experience, if you're playing regs in high rake games, against whom you don't see any obvious edge, you're in pretty bad shape.

What he said isn't technically true, no one plays GTO. But it's true enough to serve as a reminder - any reg playing anything even close to GTO in a high rake game is going to make your job extremely difficult.


Using overbets might not equal GTO, but it does equal extracting 5+bb per hundred against your opponent's strategy, if you're using any kind of reasonable range.

Overbetting in the 2x pot range is an available option that makes sense with high frequency. Options have value, therefore overbetting has value. That's a valid syllogism that seems to have escaped an astounding number of poker players. Not using overbets is actually pretty far inferior to using them.

u cannot afford gto play in a heavily raked game. your best hope is to exploit as much as you can otherwise u d be break-even at best

That's exactly right, and underappreciated. A few years back there were a lot of good players who thought they could just abandon exploitative play because GTO would perform so strongly on its own. The truth is that GTO is extremely weak versus very bad opponents, relative to exploitative play.

I didn't fully explain my thought above about frequencies being 90% of the defensive value of GTO. What might be called the defensive aspects of GTO, things like making us indifferent to bluffing, unable to vbet our marginal hands or being forced to bluffcatch at close to the correct frequencies, those things are what make people extremely difficult to beat. And those aspects of GTO are almost completely reliant on frequencies, ranges just don't matter that much. The difference between bluffcatching with a "well designed" range, taking blockers into account etc will be maybe 1% higher EV that just calling a linear range that creates the right frequency, while, by comparison, not generating the right frequencies can be a catastrophic error.

But while constructing great ranges is quite hard, generating good frequencies is something that many regs, even at the lowest stakes, are able to do surprisingly well. That's because it's something that experienced, good players gain a feel for over years of playing. If a player's within +/-5% of the equilibrium bluffcatching frequency in a given spot, and you don't know which side of it he's on until you play him for 20,000 hands, you really can't exploit him there.

In a rake-free HU game, the better GTO approximation will still beat out the worse GTO approximation by 2,3 even 5bb/100. But when the rake is 15bb/100, these differences are simply being taxed away. Each GTO player is a big loser after rake.

So when that poster says lots of regs are playing GTO, he's techically wrong, but in most ways that matter, he's essentially right.

The regs are still bad myself included. We would play higher otherwise. The problem is with current rake levels even on nl100 every 100 hands there is 50bb/100 taken from the pot. So this has to be a really massive fish for the regs to even play on the table. It is already happening I mean table breaking despite having like 20/10 fold to cbet 60% fish because he/she just simply doesn't lose fast enough for anyone but like top 3 regs to overcome the rake....

You can't have both Spin and Go and cash games with current level of rake and rewards. GL with cash games existing with no rakeback. Look at what happened on 888 poker they used to have solid 2.5k-3k average players. But they introduced their own spins and the biggest whales/droolers went to play there. Suddenly the cash traffic just keeps getting worse and worse because no one is going to play games with very high rake no rakeback and very few big winners.

Look at what happened already with PLO on Stars after they get rid of SNE now it will be just a nail in the coffin for PLO games there.

I mean if you play 6max on most sites yuo all pay like 40-60bb on nl100 in rake per table. So you need a really huge fish or 2 to even consider playing on such a table.


I know what I am going to say is controversial but I think that the problem aren't solvers/GTO plays etc. The problem is that the fish got progressively better or started to play games more exciting for them (Spins).

There just isn't enough -40bb/100+ fish for the games to be healthy now. Thats why sites with high rakeback and/or low rake are growing (microgaming/party/winning network to name a few)

you realize that party's rake is equal to 8-10bb/100 depending on your style? you pay 4 to 6 more bb/100 there, the little rakeback you get extra doesnt compensate for the much higher rake against much better players(bots and regs that can beat elite bots)

Well I believe even from Stars simulation rake on Party was 107% of the rake on Pokerstars. If you are smart enough with affiliate rake race etc. you are getting 40-60% rake back Party so you end up paying like max 60% of the effective rake on Stars.
If you ask me for today as of now you are right that this is a lot closer but with soon no rakeback and no table selection (they still test their solution on Pokerstars.es seems like a disaster for me but they might still push it just to show middle finger to regs again) Party is still a better choice.


And yeah the bots/hud cheaters no table selection and so on makes it not as good but at the same I want to play there at least some % of my action just to suport the first site that at least reversed their anty reg stance to some degree

they have not.
They are pro bot and anti regs. Bots do not need a HUD, they are the HUD.
They made their whole site just for the bots, the easier higher rakeback is to get even more bots as we all know bots love good rakeback deals.

The chest will still give a decent % of rb and right now because of choices stars has made, there is more fish at 200nl and under than 5 years ago. Stars is doing decent things for us pleb low limit cash game regs imo.

Almost no bots, unlimited access to tons of whales, good software, games that run 24/7 and the possibility to make a lot of money without studying 20hrs a week.

They made a public release saying regs can see up to 85% reduction in rb, highest rb is 28% hence it stands to reason that the highest rb% you're getting with the chest is 15% of that amount, so less than 5% rb through there new program.

Zoom pool way way down this weekend and thats with promos on.

Promo? Don't see anything here apart from CardMatch.

Barcelona challenges

If it's upto 85% reduction then the lowest rb youre getting is 15% of the old amount.

4,2%.

This is true - but if the following hold:

a) the max percentage reduction applies to the people who were previously getting the highest rakeback.
b) the reductions applied to other people are not so much lower that they actually overtake the people mentioned in a) and have higher rb.

then 4.2% is also the maximum.

a) seems likely given Pokerstars' public pronouncements.
b) might be the case for winning players but might be different for people who are net depositors.