Get rid of smallstakes and highstakes too.

Everybody has to play 5/10 to make that limit softer.

m2

It was already said in this thread, but 1/2 (and maybe higher) penny should be rake-less or at least severely under-raked. Imo it would promote rec and new players into staying active longer, and thus putting more money on.

I remember seeing nothing lower than 25NL when I first started playing online (PokerRoom). While I enjoyed having smaller options, I was surprised to see 2 NL and 5 NL on Stars and Tilt, mostly because it would seem to eat into the overall rake that those sites could make. But maybe they found it to be the opposite: the microstakes created a new price point for thousands of players who wouldn't otherwise play.

As is, I don't play very much live right now in part because I simply don't feel rolled enough for even the smallest games (I'm a BRM nit but I also like to play deep-stacked). To play even 1-3 or 2-4 NL the way I'd like, I would need thousands set aside just for poker, and that's simply not something I can easily do.

Back in the boom period, Party's smallest stake was $25nl...coincidence? It was also a 50bb game so maybe that should come back to.

True a dollar is not worth the same 10 years ago but not as many people have dollar now. It took my around 6 months to win a bankroll from 0 on sites. Without them I no play.

you levelling op? LOL@ someone whining for 5nl and 10nl to be softer

I've been saying this for ages.
Online poker needs to be more like live poker. Smallest game should be NL200. Ban multi-tabling to get rid of nut-peddling nits.

The more boring the game is the more profitable it is.

This has nothing to do with inflation and everything to do with forcing weaker players to move up in stakes. Just be honest about it.

I play micro stakes and hate cash games. I usually just play SNG's and tournaments. Cash, even at the micro stakes, is filled with multi-tabling super tight players with VPIPs of 12 or less, waiting for AQ or better. It is no fun to play full ring when everyone is waiting for the nuts.

If you want to shake up micro cash games, introduce mandatory micro antes. Keep .02/.01, but add a .003 ante to the game. Force people to see more flops. Micro stakes cash games are dead and boring.

Or they would just play freerolls and playmoney.

They also have $0.50 turbo 9 handed. There are also MTTSNGs below that including a 90 man with 15 minute levels.

Unibet Andrew's view on this is interesting. He says that if a site doesn't advertise in a market then they don't get recreationals from there, only regs who know about it from forums etc. All I can say is that here in Slovakia there are tons of people losing 3 figure sums monthly playing terrribad live 4 nights a week. Last night I won a 3-table low buy-in MTT and when HU the other guys's opening standards with the button were about the same as he had been playing from the CO full ring, so I was just getting walk after walk, villain was playing his 105th tournament at that place and is probably above average standard for the player pool.

Anyway, last week I was playing on Stars and my wife was watching her Slovak trash on TV and she said "Hej, tam máš svojho Negreanu!" so I came over to look and Stars are now advertising on primetime TV here (it was the advert for Zoom), something I have never seen before. So maybe this will change and there will be more recs playing online instead of just live. Micro MTTSNGs get way softer with starting times after midnight CET, 6pm ET because the Russians go to bed and are replaced by Brazilian recs who have just put their kids to bed - until recently those two countries would be seen as being similar economically, but Brazil has things like the BSOP, Ronaldo and that brings in the weaker players too.

A more solid idea would be to get rid of the cashgame lobbies, and make the quick seat feature preferentially sit people who speak the same language together if there is a choice of seats. Once you get a full table of people speaking the same language you say "It is now permitted to chat in language X at this table". That way, the e.g. Polish, Portuguese or whatever speaking grinders have a much more direct interest in making "their" fish welcome in the games rather than the tragedy of the commons like now. That would be a big change from the present situation of banning chat for anyone who doesn't speak English.

I completley agree. Most of the players that sit at the nano stakes don't sit there because it is so exciting to play for $2. They sit there because those are the softest games and they probably can't beat tougher games.

Removing the nano limits would make the other limits softer.
More people would also cash out their winnings. The pokersites need to understand that this is a good thing. The winners would brag about their winnings, bringing in more players. And the losers would just remember their cash outs and forget about being serrial depositors.

The sites can keep the tournaments nano stakes though, because of the large fields a win their still feels like a win. Not that I would know

Whenever there's short-term profit to be made by setting a price that's lower than the industry standard, companies are bound to step in and offer it, because consumers obviously like cheap prices. The problem for any industry where this occurs is that the long-term margins will be cut for everyone, so you have to sell in bulk (hi multitablers!). e.g. Once record companies started enabling 99 cent mp3 downloads, no one wanted to pay $15 for whole albums. Amazon sells e-books for $2.49 with a 'buy one, get one free' coupon, but 2+2 can't sell printed books for $30.
A "problem" the sites perhaps didn't foresee is that by offering lower buy-ins and encouraging multi-tabling, regs would get trapped in the micros. With very little upward mobility, the 'food chain' will eventually break down, but sites like Stars can still make money through the sheer volume of micro-payments.
The sites can't put the genie back in the bottle. They can't arbitrarily raise the minimum buy-in to $10 or $50, in order to get more money moving around, in the same way a record company can't arbitrarily raise the price of mp3s to $5, because the customers will go elsewhere.

Online poker has become a low price entertainment medium. It's on the internet. It has to be cheap. It's not going to become more like live poker. For better or for worse, it's a completely different beast.

I don't think that is true. The games at micro stakes are softer at other sites. But most still play at stars. So stars offer some extra value compared to other sites. This value would still be there if they decided to remove the nano stakes.

I don't think all the Germans that I se at nano stakes suddenly would play at another site if there were no nano stakes no more.

This is a silly analogy because 2nl and 25nl are not the same product like a book or CD. The potential rate of return is significantly higher at 25nl and hence it 'costs' more money to sit down. The real price of playing poker is the rake but that is a different matter altogether.

There is plenty of possibility for upward mobility. The problem is you get some guy who used to win 1bb/100 at 200nl in 2008 playing like a robot sitting at 25nl. They will play tight, use constant opening and 3bet ranges regardless of villains, give up far too many pots and miss bluff spots because they have AA on one of their 20 tables which 'deserves more concentration' and wonder why they are breakeven over 100000 hands.

I still think it would be ridiculous for the sites to do anything which would further reduce the player pool with the current state of the industry.

So don't let the new players(fish) improve before risking a bigger percentage of their BR.

Get the new fish at the deeper end of the pool with the more experienced players (sharks).

OP showing signs of psychopathic tendencies.

You would actually just lose recreationals, the guys who go to play 2nl prob aren't playing 200nl+.

The sites objective is to make the players $100 deposit disappear in rake rather than disappear via winning player cash outs. There's going to be way fewer $2NL players that ever withdraw compared to $25NL players. The money at $2NL just circulates down the rake-hole.

Totally agree with this. Some people will never move up no matter what, but some of them get hooked, learn how to win, then move up. It's a breeding ground.

You guys are nuts. You know how many poor people gamble on tiny stakes recreational gambling? Dudes making $10 or less and hour gamble on tons of **** like sports, lottos, keno, poker, pit games, slots and just go and spew a few dollars here and there like its nothing on a regular basis.


If it was $25+ each time they did it they would most likely just quit as they don't have money. There are whole lot more poor people doing this then middle class and upper class just by numbers of them and their general aptitude towards poor habits/life choices. You would most likely be losing a ton of fish/money in the poker economy just by thinking of the stats alone and not even knowing that exact numbers. I'm talking about the US too, I couldnt imagine someone in a worse off country.

Much agreed.

I only just came back to playing PLO2 and I think it´s just amazing how horrible some of the tables are. I´ve sat at (and quit instantly) tables with literally 5 TAGs (VPIP ranging from 18 to 28 %, VPIP/PFR ratio < 1,5 etc etc.). I went ahead and looked up two players and both of them were sitting at 10+ tables.

This is obviously so wrong on so many levels.

I started out playing online like 9 years ago and I´ve never ever seen a table at PLO25+ that was more nitty than said table at PLO2. Just ridiculous.

In my opinion, Pokerstars should seriously consider some sort of cap on hands you can play at nano stakes (exceptions for guys who are net depositors obviously). Something like 100.000 hands at PLO2 maximum and move up or GTFO.

Nano stakes are the games that many newcomers play when starting so there has to be massive upside in making those games as good as possible (and they have to be in order for the fish to have any chance at winning).

I vote for dropping everything below 25nl. I remember back in the day when 25 and 50nl were the lowest stakes.

regarding the bold, doubtful.

From what I've seen it's right on point. Most of the heads I know like this have other habits and kids that money has to go to first. Gambling is one of those back burner type of things whereas kids, life expenses, cigs, alcohol, drugs all come first.

If some place with okay rake etc. would start to offer nlh25, plo25 and 1 2 limit poker as their lowest limits, u would like it very much. I think the 1st reason why sites started to offer nanos, was to increase the player numbers for no other reason but the player numbers.

Its nice that Bovada starts at 5NL and is super soft. I couldn,t imagine grinding $2 games. I suppose I really only play online for experience and easier analysis to boost my live game. Online is like my hyperbolic time chamber from DBZ.