For the future sustainability of online poker, to keep recreational players in the game longer and, most importantly, to make it a fair and level playing field for everyone, online poker sites should completely get rid of the ability to table select. Each game should be one giant pool, similar to Zoom games. You're not able to see who's in the pool. Say you want to play in a 6max cash game. You register to play at a particular stake, and you get randomly seated on a table with 5 other players. They may be all regs, or you may get a couple of fish on your table. You are allowed to change your table x number of times in y hours (say 3 times in a 6 hour period), but each time you get seated at random, so you may even get seated at the same table again.

This is by far better than the current situation we have, which is frankly one big joke. You have regs all avoiding each other, using dodgy seating scripts, Sharkystrator and other tools to jesus seat recreational players and give them a horribly unfair advantage. This is not good for the games at all. We need to get regs playing other regs, and basically make the game a level playing field for everyone. In no other competitive environment (as far as I'm aware) is there an ability for people to cherry-pick who they play against. Imagine Nadal having the ability to pick players ranked outside the top 100 to win a grand slam. Imagine Manchester United picking 3rd division teams to play against to win the FA Cup. This would be totally ridiculous. Draws are made at random, and so should be the case in poker. Maybe then we would find out who the best regs are, and who are just the scummy bumhunters.

MTTs are a little different. These are scheduled for certain times, with varying prize pools, so people will still have the ability to game select MTTs. But that would be the only situation someone can game select.

What are your thoughts?

Although the specific stipulations for game rules might need to be altered I agree with the theme.

Something needs to change and so far sites are either unwilling or perhaps unable to confront the core issue.

I vote no. Tables selection is a skill.

But I think Bovada is on to something with their anonymous tables.

I totally agree with table selection being a skill but since the sites are allowing or can't stop 3rd party sites to do this skill for a human it's really not a skill anymore. Business wise they should make the switch as a much greater percentage of winning players are using these 3rd party tools.

Meh. Why not play Zoom. I don't think you should compare poker to tennis because you can choose who you play poker against irl.

I don't agree with everything in OP, but I agree in principle to what you propose.

I think this is a bad idea. You do realize recreational players are not helped by removing table selection. It will just mean the pro's that continue to survive will be that much stronger and they will get destroyed that much faster.

More promotions geared toward new players and more ways for new players to get a few hands in with other new players is really the only thing that benefits recreational players. Extreme table selection is annoying and looks bad, but the core issue is that there are just too many pro's and the average skill of those pro's has grown so large that it isn't even fun to play for new players. Throw the software advantage in and it's just taking all the fun out of it.

Wouldn't a solution to prevent 3rd party sites and programs be anonymous tables like bovada?

I used to be against anonymity, but the concept has really grown on me.

Anonymity creates another host of issues. Namely, anonymous play prevents players from self policing the tables.

If I feel I am playing someone with an unfair advantage how can I track or report them?

Poker needs more transparency not less.

i agree merge has it even for sng and found it nice

I assume you haven't played on stars recently?

This is how it is in live casinos (you join a waitlist for 1/2 not the 1/2 table in the corner). Unibet have implemented this online and I totally agree with the approach.

No, unfortunately in the land of the free.

What site is gonna start this? They are pretty much all run by morons except for Stars which it doesn't make sense for.

I think recreational players would certainly be helped. Assuming they are just sitting at a random table now and would obviously be sitting at a random table with anonymous tables nothing from their perspective would change.
Why their results would improve is hud users and seat scripters wouldn't gain an edge on them. And that edge isn't insignificant.

Stars are looking at adding a global waitlist type system fwiw which effectively kills seat selection at a lot of stakes.

No where did I say that tables would be anonymous.

he was responding to me.

So long as rake is decreased a lot, then these changes are fine.

Why any player (like OP) would suggest for these changes to the games whilst keeping the rake the same makes no sense to me at all though. Do you like seeing the poker sites take more money or something? How is that good for the future of the games, making less players profitable?

yeah, would be great, make the winrates smaller and smaller, nice idea.

bovada has it right. all poker sites should go to anonymous tables. much better for the state of poker and requires you to actually pay attention at the table instead of looking at a hud and making decisions based off that. 24 tablers wouldnt like it but o well

So bumhunting fish via the lobby is a skill? lol @ that tim stone is the most skilled in all of online poker I geuss.
I agreee with op( doesn't happen often) but something needs to be done
good to hear stars is considering global type waitlists. w/e it takes to stop the extreme bumhunting imo, these scripts and other software are so destructive to online poker.

If you think that a poker site might implement these kind of changes for purely noble reasons such as stopping bums getting hunted for the good of the games, then you are seriously deluded. They would do it to improve their bottom line, otherwise the site would offer to reduce rake whilst making these changes, to compensate for the effect that it would have on the reg's win rates.

If Stars cared about recreational players keeping hold of their money longer, then they wouldn't have introduced Zoom which makes fish hold onto their money longer in terms of hands, but shorter in terms of absolute time.

I understand that the sites are self serving, greedy, scumbags, but what's good for them sometimes is good for us. In the longrun curbing the hardcore bumhunting, is in the sites, and our best intrest.The weaker regs will suffer the most.

No it is not in the player's best interests. How can the site taking a higher proportion of money than what they currently take be good for the players?

I think I read somewhere that Stars takes 75/76ths of losing player's money, and winning players are able to withdraw 1/76th of losing player's money. Most of this money is collected from regs, in hands where they play against each other. You want this situation to happen even more often.

Do you really think that Stars suddenly taking say 99/100ths of losing player's money is better for the player pool?