Now that Stars told PTR to stop tracking, the games have been somewhat improved (?) at higher stakes (I don't know how they've been at lower stakes, feel free to chip in), however as the player pool at the higher stakes is fairly small, most are familiar with who are regulars and who are fish, which still limits the action considerably and makes bumhunting much, much easier for those who do.

Therefore, I and a few others think Stars should allow a one-time name change for all players on the site. I don't know what Stars thinks about allowing such a change, but from my point of view it would increase action drastically for at least a few months on all limits and in all games, meaning more rake and more maneys for them; I don't really see the downside to it.

Also, I was thinking about whether they should also allow hiding your location; why is the location of the player at all important and necessary to show to opponent players? One could argue it makes it easier to spot multi-accounters etc, so this is obviously something one should consider.

What do you guys think? Is it about time Stars reset all names to increase action and take one step further towards preventing extreme bumhunting?

From a railbirders standpoint, I wouldnt like not knowing who my favorite players now play as.

I dont see how 1 name change is going to affect anything, its pretty easy to tell if someone is a fish or not within a few hundred hands of playing with them. And it sounds like the only people who would care to use the name change would be bumhunters themselves.

Location is great for determining collusion. If you see two Chinese players at stud, you know they are colluding....unfortunately Stars does not care.

How do I not +1 this.

And I'm against online name changes in general. And the poll options are really poorly worded assuming you're looking for an honest debate and there is no bastard option.

I actually think if you were going to do it a better option would be a once a year or two name change, E.x. for the week of Jan. 1st each or each other year one can change their sn. A one time thing will get sniffed out real quick by the regs. And the reason I would have for allowing people to see location is to prevent fraud. If I saw a sng with nothing but Russians or Chinese I would never reg.

And wtf happened to costanza?

yes name change and no location, i don't expect many low stakes players to bother with a change, but i think it'd be great to see a bunch of games running at 5/10+ HU again

Because it is not about the regulars understanding who is the fish or reg... It is about spots seeing their stats posted online down 600k.... Its about regs being able to insta sit tables using software because of PTR giving them 100's of millions of hands to do it with.. Its about insta searching every single table running on the site at once and being able to identify every single win rate at once...

PTR was not banned because people were taking timet o open up games, find spots they liked, and play. PTR was banned because it did that on steroids.

A lot of things that drive High stakes poker action is perception, in this case the perception would change both for regs and spots..

This won't happen, although yes it would improve the games.

So in another six months you'll be in the exact same spot. What long-term problem does this solve?

Or is it just a big waste of time?

ptr is no longer tracking soooo

Naming your points 1 to 3 there, #1 is resolved long term, being that both public profile sites (PTR and poker-edge) are offline.

However, data-miners are still data mining. So #2 and #3 will not be fixed long term with the suggestion of 1-table name change. It would just be a temporary fix.

My guess is the guys who have the million-hand databases never used PTR anyway, their prices were way above the market value.

1)Yes resolved in a year+
2) LOL that the underground database market was ever even 10% of PTR's clients.. This was happening before PTR.. The reason it was never an issue is because it was never on a grand scale..
3) The increase in price just solidifies 2... 100NL bum hunters right now go buy Hem2 with table ninja.. Buy 10 million hands and done..


NO ONE can tell me in 2005 the few and far between multi-million hand databases were prevelent like PTR.. Even the datamining operations that were in place are usually OCR based and not API hooked in.. Functionally capturing WAY less data... At this time there is no legitimate API hooked in datamining operations people could turn to. Period.

The argument this will keep happening historically just has zero merit.

100% i think this would be beneficial for all players except for bumhunters. would force those players to either join in tougher games and figure out who the fish are, or simply wait it out. Additionally theres no guarantee all fish would even be aware or would exercise this ability

+10000

I think it should be a yearly thing... With just 1 change it would only really solve short term because of data mining/huge HUD db's

mods, this thread does not need to be xposted and can remain in the NL forum.

name change with location hiding >>>>> no name change >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> name change without location hiding

The edge people from countries with many regs gain against people from other less regfilled countries without location hiding would be astronomical. Think of it as 5 equally skilled players who you have alot of history with, 1 of them playing you hu knowing it's you and you not knowing which one it is. There's no way he's not a huge favourite for the couple hundred hands until you figure out which one he is.

Yes 100%

name change plz

+1 to name change

As others have said, it won't take long for people to realize who's tough. If PTR still allowed you to see a player's stats from before the cease & desist notice, it would make sense. But as it stands, nobody can see anyone's stats, and you'll be in the same position a few months if you switch screen names.

I suppose we'll kind of remember who had super crusher PTR graphs, but I don't think there will be a huge difference in what we think of these players now and what we'll think of the obvious regs with new screen names 6 months from now.

If you're arguing for a name change now, that same argument could be made for having yearly (or more frequent) name changes, like Party did back in the day. Not saying this is a good or bad thing.

The poll is rigged. Still voted no.

the fact, that ptr etc are all blocked i think a 1 time stars change would be profitable because most of the bumhunters still have the losses of the weak players from ptr in mind. so if you could change names for once its a complete new situation.

I think that making HS Zoom only with the implementation of a railing option is a much better idea that if you're truly in favor of making the games healthier, you should fully support.

Same for HU, although obviously not getting moved every hand, as history/momentum/tendencies are so crucial, but maybe every 50 hands (completely arbitrary number, obviously this would have to be thought out thoroughly) and if you refuse an opponent in the pool, you are unable to join for a certain period of time, something along those lines.

Actually I think that making all stakes Zoom only would be great, personally. I used to be against it because I saw it as the opposite end of the spectrum from HU in terms of what poker is all about (again, history/tendencies/momentum etc...) and something that favors mindless robotic button mashing, but that's actually not true.
Unless you have the memory capacity of a gold fish, you do develop history and specific dynamics with all of your opponents within a certain pool and after only 15k hands of Zoom, I have 8 lines of very specific notes on average for every reg in my games.

Plus at HS, the pools are so small that it wouldn't even be an issue in that way, it would just make the games a lot more fair with regards to everyone involved and would make for interesting dynamics when you suddenly have position on the guy who's been 3betting you relentlessly IP for the last 3 orbits.

So yeah...Zoom solves all bumhunting issues and prevents a lot of the angleshooting scumbagery that goes on in cash games nowadays.
On top of that it's insanely practical to start and quit sessions, you can play the equivalent of 15 tables on only 4 tables (visually it's an amazing change) and a ton of other advantages.

And min-buy in is 50bb, which although I wish it were 100bb, is still a million times better than 20bb, you can't really play a disruptive shortstack strategy with 50bb minimum stacks. (Stars, PLEASE keep it AT LEAST that high)

1 name change every 6 months or 1 year would be amazing.

If bumhunting is the problem, a one time name change is a band-aid on a bullet wound. Give it a month, and you'll be back to the same old ****.

Furthermore, a name change would be on the minds of every mid-high stakes grinder out there as a way to gain an edge, but those you're hoping to help with it (big losers) are the ones least likely to notice or care.

So, no. I don't think Stars should offer a one time name change. It's an ineffective solution in a perfect world, and in the real world, it wouldn't even be that.

If Stars really wants to address the issue, they should work toward a long term solution.

I'm not exactly sure what you are saying here. Your points #2 and #3 were about people with big databases to help with table selection (the people with "100 million hand databases" you said). PTR only started selling bulk hand histories relatively recently (last 18 months-2 years perhaps?).

It's not an argument that "this will keep happening historically." You said 2 good reasons for a name change is "Its about regs being able to insta sit tables using software because of PTR giving them 100's of millions of hands to do it with.. Its about insta searching every single table running on the site at once and being able to identify every single win rate at once." People who were doing this before are still doing it now. If they were buying hands from PTR, they are now buying them (cheaper and with better coverage) elsewhere. This really can't be disputed.

Buying bulk hand histories has been around for a long time. I won't mention names as i assume 2p2 doesn't allow it any more but there are a couple of big-name brands that i assume most poker players know about, that have way better coverage than PTR ever did on stars and other sites, that have much cheaper prices and I assume most people who have the big databases probably didn't use PTR but other services. There are big name rakeback providers that offer free hand subscription services if you sign up through them.

You know its only relatively recently that data mining was "bad" to talk about here? There used to be threads in software for million-hand database swaps, how to do your own mining of hands, discussing which data mining service was best etc.

Look i'm not trying to come and ruin your thread and start some NVG war. I just wanted to add a bit of perspective. I think it's an excellent step that PTR and P-E are gone at stars and for me it solves the biggest issue - the public visibility of players profiles.

But your other reasons for why we should allow screen name changes aren't correct.