Today I received an interesting email from Pokerstars.

"Hello Scott,

Greeting from PokerStars.

It has come to our attention that during T#843590510,843600381,843611261 that you have been stalling during games - taking up the maximum time permitted for every hand, no matter how obvious the decision.

Stalling is against the spirit of the game and poor etiquette. We want everybody to have a positive experience at PokerStars, and disruptive behavior such as this takes away everybody's fun.

We must ask you to refrain from using the full allotted amount of time in order to make each decision, including trivial folds of unplayable hands. Should there be any repeat infractions, then punitive measures will be introduced, up to and including a loss of playing privileges. We hope this clarifies our position on the matter.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

Regards,

Danielius J
PokerStars Support Team"


Here is the most relevant excerpt

We must ask you to refrain from using the full allotted amount of time in order to make each decision, including trivial folds of unplayable hands. Should there be any repeat infractions, then punitive measures will be introduced, up to and including a loss of playing privileges. We hope this clarifies our position on the matter.

As a mass-tabling SNG player who has raked hundreds of thousands of dollars on PokerStars and achieved SNE in 2013, I find the suggestion that I am stalling when playing a large number of tables to be ridiculous. I have breached no rules in using the allocated time to play my hands and this portion of Stars email to me stating that I will be penalised if I do not play at a pace that Pokerstars deems acceptable is just ridiculous. I mean, I am playing a number of tables I am legally allowed to play on Pokerstars (and required to play in order to reach SNE) and I have the exact same amount of time available to make decisions on each table as everybody else. Furthermore, what exactly is an unplayable hand? I'm allowed to play any hand any way I choose, that's how poker works. Sometimes it might be okay to fold JJ. Other times i'll open 72o. What exactly is an 'unplayable hand'? I'm being threatened with a ban for not playing hands quickly enough when i'm using the allocated time to make decisions as per pokerstars software? Is there any way this is actually Pokerstars policy? If not, why did I receive this email threatening me with punitive action?

Pokerstars is asking me NOT to use the allotted amount of time to make decisions. There is an allocated amount of time to all players which is identical and the time bank is the same for all players. EVERYONE RECEIVES THE SAME AMOUNT OF TIME TO PLAY HANDS. If Stars thinks that is too long, change the timebank available for all players. Threatening your SNE players with a ban for playing within the rules is beyond unacceptable, especially when I have broken no rules and raked hundreds of thousands of dollars on Pokerstars. Let me repeat, I'm being threatened with a penalty/ban for taking the amount of time legally allocated to me by the PokerStars software to play hands. This is because I am mass-tabling and in the process of raking hundreds of thousands of dollars to Stars.

I am seeking an official clarification of Pokerstars policy here. This is a ridiculous and unacceptable way for Pokerstars to be treating their high-volume players WHO HAVE BROKEN NO RULES.

Since playing on stars

Count: 212,980
Active Days: 966
Av Games / Day (when playing): 221
Most Games / Day: 866
Total Stake: $9,950,942
Total Rake: $586,286

'We must ask you to refrain from using the full allotted amount of time in order to make each decision, including trivial folds of unplayable hands. Should there be any repeat infractions, then punitive measures will be introduced, up to and including a loss of playing privileges. We hope this clarifies our position on the matter.'

lol, no way this is the actual stars policy, utterly ridiculous and i'm surprised they'd email that to one of their SNE players

A retraction and apology from stars should be arriving shortly i'd imagine

un real

Wish Bovada would crack down on this lol

What is worse is that i am infact one ofthe much faster acting players who mass table, yet out for 212K games they found 3 tournaments in which i took too long.

Go Stars, ban him for life! Just like I been banned by USA.

stars cracking down on the important issues i see! no time to clean up the poor state of cash games.. some SNE SNG regs dont click buttons fast enough.

How much youve raked has nothing to do w anything. But that email is absurd. If youre gonna give players a time bank then they should get to use it for w/e they want. Esp considering there's no way of telling the difference between stalling, tech issues, running to the bathroom, etc.

Switching to levels based on # of hands played would be an obv fix.

Some one tabling recreational zzzzzzzzzzzzz dude has obviously been complaining.

Why get all fired up about it?

Send them an email back saying "I'm not stalling, I'm just playing lots of tables, thereby generating rake for your site. If you would like me to cut back on the number of tables I play, thereby costing you money, please let me know. Otherwise, please make a note in your system that my use of timebank is NOT intentional stalling. Thank you."

If they THEN decide you can't do what you have been doing, NOW there's an issue.

As for "rights" and such, I'm not sympathetic. Last I checked, you have no constitutional "right" to use all of your timebank for every single hand. It's their site, they can set whatever policies they want. But I do agree that a software solution would make the most sense e.g. your timebank decreases by some percentage the next hand if you use it all on the current hand. Otherwise enforcement would be a nightmare.

don't like this much myself

i'd be more inclined to think somebody complained honestly, rather than them finding 3 tourneys on their own. fwiw, there is almost nothing about playing online that tilts me--besides having to wait for people who max out on time on every ****ing decision. and it's almost always either someone being a dbag on purpose OR someone playing way too many tables(not saying that's you btw) it's incredibly annoying/rude to make everybody wait constantly imo.

The amount of time allotted is intended to be a reasonable upper bound for most decisions. It is not meant to be the amount of time that you can take for every hand. Stars is trying to keep these games attractive to everyone and you're slowing things down too much so you've been issued a warning

Wow, thats crazy and seems really bizzare they would email you that.

Did you respond to the email?

Op,

You are wrong, Stars is right.

- Signed by everyone with any sensible gauge of how their behaviors impact others in a negative way.

It is like they do not understand other people are playing and it is not just their computer. Unfortunately this only reinforces the stereotype of online goobs being socially slow.

Op, the solution is to table fewer games so you cease being rude to other people. That you think stars has to have laws to mitigate bad ettiquitte for every scenario just paints you as being clueless.

this

and this

Stop time banking for every decision, it's brutal to play when a few guys on the table are playing as slow as you.

I love you guys. You want everything. You wants fish, but then you make the fish wait the max on every decision and get upset when the fish complain.

Well, mass multitabling SNE bots do certainly not attract new players to the game and can be regarded as bad for poker, their game has prolly also little to do with actual poker. Having said that, I agree that players should not be penalized for playing within the rules and changing some rules on that would certainly be better to tackle this long standing problem.

Stars have said in the past the would be reducing the max number of tables of slow players until they could keep up. This seems to be what they would do if you don't speed up. (They also said they would increase the max for fast players.)

People who tank every decision every hand ruin the game, recreational players complain about this often. Stars are willing to lose revenue from you to improve the games, that's a good thing if you ask me.

play less tables ******

Nothing worse than timing down on every ****ing action.

cant be anything that serious, if stars really cared they would reduce the time bank or number of tables allowed

If it was a problem they should lower the time bank cap. Absolutely ridiculous from stars.

Yup