Get rid of heads up before you do this and give incentives to start new ring games imo. Heads up creates huge lobbies of dudes sitting by themselves and kills ring mig-high stakes ring game action. Also players playing to many tables where they lag the tables they are on is a huge ****ing problem. Countless times I've seen a recreactional player write "zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzz" in the chat cuz of some idiot on every hand has to time down cuz they are on to many tables.

Were talking about waitlists not raising rake right? It's not like there won't still be fish with global waitlists, they just can't be harcore bumhunted ,and scripts would be eliminated, which is good for both the site and the players.Weak regs and 16/12 nit table selectors would be the ones who get the **** end of the stick.

That's a terrible idea.

I used to share this view, getting rid of table selection is good for many things:
-recreational players get their fair shot at playing vs other recreational players once in a while
-arm race to the bottom in table selecting tools is stopped so you can focus on actually playing/thinking about the game
-the best players earn the most money (which wasn't the case anywhere in poker history)

The problem with this idyllic solution is that rake is way too high. It's just impossible to win at 1$/2$ or even 2.5$/5$ vs slightly inferior players. The rake takes ~110bb/thousand hands at 2.5$/$5 and significantly more than that at lower stakes. If the sites get rid of table selection without lowering the rake a lot games will be dead in no-time.

This is obviously true but so easily missed. The way to combat high rake is to play less and bumhunt. This strategy leaves more money to players and less to the sites. Something like capping table limit at 4 or 6 would be great for the players and terrible for sites. Unfortunately it's impossible to organize all the players in the world and agree that no-one is going to play more than 4 tables because then incentive to open 20 will be just too high. A social dilemma poker sites exploit to the maximum.

Why do you think recs are bum-hunted by all regs? Because at most stakes the rake isn't beatable without heavily losing players present to cover the cost.

By eliminating table selection regs are forced to play more hands consisting entirely of regs, meaning that the regs lose cash and the site pockets more. This isn't a raising of the rake, this is a decreasing of win rates, which has the same effect as raising rake, namely less money in the pockets of regs.

So why OP and yourself are arguing that this is a good thing for the poker community is beyond me.

Poker sites don't care too much about this. They care more about high volume being played and low edges between players than they do about recreational players having their games slightly held up by a reg timing out.

Allowing 24 tables helps facilitate high volume and low edges.

Makes sense, you have me rethinking my stance.I just despise the bottom feeding, hardcore bumhunting, won't play 1 hand while the fish sits out to pee regs and want them to elimated from playing, and a global waitlist goes a long way towards making that a possibility.

Yeah, and having global waitlists is all nice and dandy, so long as rake is lowered massively. This condition is unlikely to happen though since it will lead to a decrease in revenue for the site and more money going to more players.

There is a reason why currently only about 5% of players win money. It is the greed from poker sites for why this is so, and has nothing to do with immoral bum-hunters ruining the games and scaring the fish away etc.

Rake was never an issue when there were big skill edges between players 10 years ago, but the price of rake has not adjusted properly with the times. Skill edges have massively decreased over the last few years, and rake has only seen a very small decrease in this period.

regs wanted to play 24 tables and use all kind of software. rake is actually less at most stakes than 10 years ago. the issue isn't rake. sites are greedy pigs and so are the players. what a shocker let all the regs play tons of tables and use all kinds of software and the games go to ****. only total idiots wouldnt have seen that coming.

all this **** is terrible for the long term health of the games but it's not gonna change.

Read the last paragraph of my post that you quoted. I mention that rake has slightly decreased over time, but not by enough compared to how edges have decreased, so your point about rake being less than 10 years ago is moot.

As for regs asking for more tables, yes, they wanted that back in the days when edges were so big that the best regs could make an even higher hourly by increasing volume. The sites granted this wish because it was good for them too.

Hahaha, go **** yourselves.

This is an extremely complex issue. I can only offer my experience as a cash game fish, and not try to steer the argument too far one way or the other.

I was pretty good at Sng game selection on Stars. I played without a HUD (Mac, dammit), but I took copious notes on my opponents. As soon as I saw the game filling up with regs, I ninja unregistered. Whenever I had a game with at least two weaker opponents, I sat and stayed. I believe my ROI over two years, playing three tables at a clip a few nights a week, was about 11%. ($20-$50 BI, playing ultra-aggro against fish, and nitty against regs).

As soon as my bankroll permitted, I always donked it off in cash games, and then rebuilt. Rinse, repeat. I had no idea whom I played against in cash games (No HUD). Yet I had a good time making enough money in sngs to (badly) play .10/.25 and .25/.50.

I was the ideal provider for the poker economy. The sng fish have no idea what game selection is. They are the ultra-recs.

A cash game fish like me only wants to freeroll a good time. The money is utterly irrelevant, as I made a buyin to the cash games in about 10 minutes of my regular job.

I do suggest that for someone like me, game selection was essential for my ability to feed the cash games, and have my paltry few grand filter its way up the poker economy. Maybe my parents shouldn't have had me lobotomized, but those are my sentiments.

I'de say extreme bum hunters are worse for the site than anybody else, people like to complain about ntis being bad for the games but umm i'm sure the site doesn't want to get rid of the 24tabling break even players who have limited table selection in their game and play in alot of -ev line ups to begin with, they are good for the website imo.

And this proposed system wouldn't get rid of 24 tabling break even nits.

it's not moot at all. you wanna say the rake is the main culprit when it's everything but the rake that has games in the ****ter.

sites were greedy pigs and so were the players.don't expect the sites not to act in their own self interests- same as the players.

Lol Doofus. A decade of ever-increasing hordes of fishermen, each deploying 24 independent, semi-automatic, aquatic robots equipped with high-tech fishfinders, depth charges and fishnets, and profits are down.

The problem must be the fishing license fees, lol.

wait so some people play for entertainment ? you're gonna amaze some people on here.

Wasn't my point, i'm just rambling at this point upset i'm not able to play on stars due to isp problems ehh, sry haha.

clever post

take a look at what hu cash has become

Because the regs want to make the most money possible.

Bovada has higher rake than stars yet people are still beating 100NL and up. Before saying "well the player pool is softer" remember that the player pool is softer because of Bovada's recreational player model.

If we could just have Bovada with functional software we'd really have something.

Looking at the Stars lobby for 200HUNL+ right now. At least 90% of tables have one person sitting and waiting for a rec to come. LOL is all I can say.

Love this idea. The 3x table move in 6 hours sounds great!

Why should any player be playing against a tougher set of opponents than another? Let alone the new and recreational players that bring the money to the tables!

Atm regs bumhunt because:

a) They are given it as an option
b) The rake is too high to battle regs

Address these 2 problems and the sites and players will benefit from the far healthier ecosystem.

In addition: Is it feasable to have software that only runs exclusively to other sites on a players computer? Thus capping the tables at 4-6 would be effective.

Unibet have got so many things right with their software:
- Random seat allocation
- Fun avatars
- Changable avatars/screennames
- HUDs are quite useless
- table cap 6, and also sits out all ur tables if u time out in a hand (annoying for drones)
- Better rewards for lower tier players

The only thing cocking it up is that their rake will still crush/deter players from this non-table-selecting format.

WAKE UP SITES!!! PLAYERS WANT TO HAVE FUN AND HEATERS!!!

only 90%? the regs must be feeling feisty today.

Back when my dad played rec on ftp he would go through lobbies for fun to see who is playing what. He called all those tables the eels sitting in caves waiting to bite a fish.