My guess is that you shouldn't necessarily be ultratight preflop, but your goal should be to have more multi-way pots. Suited connectors that are big enough to flop top pair on one board and a draw on the other probably go up in value. The ability to demibluff becomes more important.

This game would probably appeal to players who like running it twice because they can get a lot of big all-in pots without being stacked as often. This might be a game that is better off played pot-limit rather than no-limit for hold em for the same reason that omaha is better pot-limit rather than no-limit.

This is actually the most common type of spots where the NL80 nits make money A premium unpaired hand hits top pair or better on both flops 5-10% of the time, but that's enough.

Are games dead already? I had 8 tables of 25nl 2 board going last night and tonight I got one up and waitlisted for awhile for a 2nd before giving up

What is the definition of a rec? Is it losing players or anyone who is not a full-time pro. I've seen people who make around 30K a year in mtts describe themselves as recs. I believe the poker world needs a new word to make a distinction between losing fish players and those who are good but not full-time. "Recs" is too wide.

this would actually work if it was for PLO and would play really well with less split pots!! come on pokerstars please give this a trail with Omaha

So they introduce a game where players sit around and chop pots and pay rake. Nice play skanks.

Yeah I've played the triple board PLO game. (6 card PLO.) It's a sick game.

Have also played Omaha double board (limit), but that's not such a good game imo.

I did try playing this briefly. Why have they done annoying things like not allowing you to being able to change the table theme/layout, so you're forced to use that one, as well as not allowing timebanks? And also only allowing exactly an 80bb buy-in?
Seem like some dick moves imo.

This is just one of the worst analogies ever.

And your whole post is filled with disgusting condescension. You also very obviously ignore and avoid valid points that people make, in favour of only focusing on your other nonsense.
It's obvious that people's issue with the game implementation is the rake and somewhat unbeatable nature of the game, not the game itself. So it would be a pretty reasonable move for Stars to try out the game but with having a lower rake on it. Even if it's only a lower rake when the pots are split. (Not that I expect that to happen.) Otherwise the game will start to die, as Treadlightly has already said that it is.
So maybe you could try addressing that properly rather than purposefully/willfully ignoring it.
When people generally want to play in a game that they might actually be able to win in. Which (despite your best efforts) people do still care about.
As well as people obviously being understandably upset with the direction that Stars is going as a whole, which this game fits in with and reiterates. With Stars focusing on their short-term bottom line more, increasing the rake everywhere and caring about the players less.

The hour of your post was offpeak already, so I wouldn't have even minded 2-tabling had the games been soft... but they weren't really; they were in fact running around me at 100NL, with 2-3 same regs at each of the 2-3 tables. I guess, the player pool collapsed to 1 table after I quit. Given the penalties for table rejection and the high rake, some of the regs are understandably reluctant to start tables, that's why you got waitlisted. Perhaps some of the non-regs got waitlisted too, then they got tired of waiting and went to other poker formats instead.

We even know someone who's officially retired from poker but keeps shipping live SHR MTTs I meant losing players only. Living in Eastern Europe, it's easy for me to forget that there are people who earn $2.5K a month with poker but earn even more at their regular job and, what is more, actually love it.

According to a reply that Chris Straghalis (Associate Director of Poker Product) has written on Stars' Discord:

Stars is committed to making regs' lives harder, you see.

As for the 80 bb BI, I guess that it was fixed in order to prevent regs from detecting recs immediately when the latter would sit in if they were allowed to put in a random BI amount. As you might have noticed, Split HE tables are invisible to the player search feature (their visibility would improve the table selection capability too much to Stars' taste). Auto-top-up is still allowed, but the detection of a reg on its basis requires seeing them lose some of their initial stack. (The reason why Unibet intentionally doesn't offer auto-top-up is exactly that it would allow to detect a reg easily.)

Yes goy, play whatever we come up with. Don't care about the rake, just have fun and try to win. It's all about the excitement anyway, goyim.

In my opinion this version of Split is just a first release and has quite some issues and my assumption is it will get upgraded/better rapidly. I just reported some findings to technical team via support. Not sure if it will be viable, but need some updates before I will seriously sit down for it.
And yes, a gesture with a cut on the rake would be nice to entice players.

The game has basically no chance with this level of rake.
I mean wtf Stars is thinking and it isn't even about the regs-recreational players rift.

With this level of rake and with how often the spot end up being splited the game just doesn't give the winning experience to anyone.
Like who is dumb enough to play a game that you can't win not even in the short terms with how often the pot will end up being splited.

You just see your money being slowly being chiped away by Stars. I mean their own greed just got to the point where they introduce some ****ed up dumb ideas.

I'm making a very simple point: that evaluating the long term sustainability of game requires looking at the rake, and also a consideration of the game itself.

There are some good things about this game (it is fresh; it is new; it offers a bit of a change from what people normally play; it is very accessible; every poker player knows what the rules are instantly) and there are some bad things about the game too.

I suspect there's a bigger long-term problem with the game than discussions about rake: that is, in my experience of playing this game a heap, have a bunch of situations where two players end up all-in, and a lot of the time, the pot gets split... but some of the time, one player scoops the pot. I believe that this causes there to be significant more variance in this game than ordinary hold'em, which causes players to go bust faster.

Some people do want to be able to win money. But most people who play poker online have no interest in playing to win money. This is clearly demonstrated by the fact that the second most profitable online poker room in the world is Zynga, which is significantly bigger and more profitable than Party, 888, and others.

I accept that you - and me - prefer to play poker where we can win. But that's not true of most people.

If you're interested in learning more about this issue, here's an outstanding blog post by one of the most thoughtful and considerate directors at PokerStars on this very issue, primarily in the context of social gaming: https://lloydmelnick.com/2018/01/23/...social-casino/

That's rather irrelevant though. If someone chooses to play on a site where money is at stake then they do have an interest in playing to win money.

I guess it depends what you mean by "playing to win money".

I accept that many PokerStars real money players want to have a chance at winning money - but I think many play for a combination of a variety of different reasons. I believe that "winning money in the long term" is a dominant factor for only a very small minority of players.

Speaking of three-board Omaha: my home game plays and loves Chowaha O8. (But it does some take some discussion at the end to clarify who the winners are!)

High variance happens in the unraked home games, but at Stars, the rake makes regs play tighter and implicitly softplay each other (control the pot size unless they're way ahead of the opponent's range or think they have a lot of fold equity) and stack off less often vs fish too, only when the edge is big enough to beat the rake.

With the tight-passive playing style similar to the one in live NLHE (which is also an adjustment to the high rake and the looseness of fish), the variance of Split HE is a bit higher than the one of normal online NLHE, but substantially lower than the one of online PLO.

High rake (if it's charged on a per-pot basis) creates friction in the game and tightens it down like air resistance prevents sport cars from being as fast as planes.

At this point it would probably be much simpler if PS just raked 20% of whatever roll we had on the site at the end of the month, or when you attempt to cash out.

I'd guess that split pots are less common than in something like stud or omaha 8, so why complain about the rake in this when those have been around forever?

It plays differently... bigger pots, which even putting aside the split pot scenario is going to lead to higher rake.


What do you want to do about it though? Should we just ban all big bet games and go back to limit hold em?

I’ve been advocating for replacing rake with taxing payouts for a while but unfortunately, so far nobody was able to come up with an abuse-proof approach and I am not sure if there could even be a practical one.

How would someone abuse that just out of interest?

Stars love the rake trap games though, I used to play HU cap 20bb games and at 25c/50c you would often have someone down a buy in of $10 and the other player breaking even after not many hands. Much better for them.

One way of abuse would be to find a player who's going to deposit, and instead of a withdrawal, transfer money to their Stars account (if that transaction remains untaxed; otherwise, dump chips), in exchange for a money transfer in the opposite direction outside Stars or even physical reception of money if the players live in the same city.

Just in case I didn't emphasise it enough: I only argue against charging rake on the last street (the one where the hand ended) in split pots in cash games, from a hedonistic perspective (winning more than the initial stack size feels much better than winning a bit less than the initial stack), but I'd fancy playing Split HE MTTs because the rake is paid once there, at the start, not on every pot, and the frequent splits would reduce the bubble factor, loosening the play up on the bubble.

As a matter of fact, I'd prefer 2-board Spin & Go Max to the existing plain NLHE version, as the former would allow more players on average to reach the auto-all-in phase. it seems that, to some of the recs, survival until that phase is an achievement on its own, and allowing it to happen more often would increase their pleasure.

So if I am reading this correctly, MOST players really do not give a damn about making any money. They have NO interest in it.

The term " playing to win money " is also a little bit hard to understand. They just may want a CHANCE to win but if they do not, it is ok with the majority due to the lack of INTEREST on their part.

This is all proven to the fact that Zynga is the second largest online room.

Interesting concept. I wonder why these people do not just play on the play money tables on PS then? I guess the fact that they do not, just proves the point that the majority do not care at all????

Wow. 2018 is a funny place when it comes to the PS player pools and/or the information that is being delivered to us.

Lets say the tax is 30% and you want to cash out $200. Now instead of getting $140 and paying $60 in rake, you find a net depositor and tell him to send you $170 on PayPal. After that, you lose $200 to him at HU.

Now both players saved $30 compared to one cashing out and the other one depositing.

Exactly. When people play for real money, they do so in an attempt to win big, or at least walk away with noticeably more money than they've put in, not to break even half the time.