You see, prize pools can't be created out of thin air (although Andrew considered the possibility of adding promotional money to them), they're formed from buy-ins, and the average prize pool has to be less than 3 BIs in a 3-max game (currently, it's 2.79441 BIs).

So it's hard to balance the paytable - if you insist on making 2x the minimum multiplier, then you have to put up with the 70%+ probability of 2x's that sometimes leads to insanely long streaks of them (10 or more games in a row), and such streaks at Stars spins have been the subject of many complaints on 2+2

Two things were you could easily improve the experience imho:

1.) If a table breaks give us the option to use that window to look for a new table.
This is especially annoying when I am starting to get the 400 pool running, since most regs just join, play 1 or 2 hands and leave once they realize I am not a rec, so I constantly have to close, reopen and resize the window. And since I play on other sites too I sometimes just don't have the time for that.

2.) I don't really know how to describe it, but if you are already looking for a table and you are opening another window for the same pool, then it doesn't do anything. Why can't said window start searching as soon as the first window found a table? Do you understand what I mean?

Otherwise I like the site. Obviously I would love a way to check results (esp curious about my EV) and higher limits, but I realize both of those things come with downsides which are probably bigger than the upsides from the perspective of the site.

Anyone playing HUSnGs or the 5 man SnGs and wanna talk/share thoughts over Skype pm me. Looking for someone that wants to improve and move up. Preferably unibet players as that's were i'll be playing

I have played some hexapros, and here is some feedback:

-Please make it possible to disable the flashing when waiting for games, it is horrible

-I very much like that there are antes, but don't really understand why the first level doesn't have them

-1 minute blind levels for the 1.5x is just too low imo. Sometimes there is only 1 hand played during that level and I don't think that's great.
I think you should consider changing the level change to an x hand/level format
If you stay with time, I think, 1,5x should be 2 minutes, and 10x+ should be 5 minutes.

I second these.

As for why the first level doesn't have antes, I'll give my educated guess (namely, that it's inspired by iPoker's Twister, and igaming executives seem to like to copy proven ideas) in the following wall of text, and Patric is free to skip it entirely or, if he's suddenly curious enough to read it, correct me wherever I'm being delusional
__________________

Unibet's French site still uses the Playtech (iPoker) software, so it was natural for them to use Twister as a prototype for HexaPro because they have ample data from the iPoker.fr Twister that presumably confirms that the game can be beatable even when the blinds grow every 2 minutes on average.

When the iPoker.com network introduced Twister in January 2014, it initially had antes at all levels, equal to 1/10 of the big blind, but within a month or so, the structure was changed as follows: 10/20 without ante - 15/30 ante 5 - 20/40/5 - 30/60/5 - 40/80/8 - 50/100/10 - 60/120/10 - 80/160/15.

In 2014, the Playtech software was taking too long (a second or two) to post the antes, so the purpose of the removal of the first-level antes was probably to speed the game up a bit, though as a side effect, that also made the stacks effectively deeper (M ~ 16.7, i.e. the stacks equal to 500 / 30 ~ 16.7 starting pots, as opposed to M = 500 / 36 ~ 13.9 at 10/20 ante 2).

In 2016, Playtech revamped the poker client, and it started posting antes instantly. Nevertheless, the blind and ante structures remained the same.

On the other hand, due to the acquisition of 32Red, whose poker is still on the MPN, and the ownership of Stan James Online and the iGame group, whose poker arms were on the MPN too until last year, Kindred Group plc (Unibet's parent company) also has access to the data from its customers' experiences with Fish Party, a game that has antes at all levels. So Kindred has insider info on the ecosystems of both Fish Party and .fr Twister , and I guess that the decision to make HexaPro's ante structure more Twister-like is data-driven.

Well, I understand why larger antes seem to perform better - they lead to really loose-aggressive play, so different from ante-less games that Twister regs have been known to have issues transitioning to Stars spins and vice versa.

Now, as to the decision to make the lowest multiplier 1.5x in favour of a high probability of 10x's, I assume it was primarily prompted by the success of 888poker's Blast that has 1.5 BI prizes (for the 2nd place in a 5x and the 3rd place in a 10x) and the overperformance of Stars' Spin & Go Max in the sense that hasn't died despite the winner sometimes getting as few as 1.33-1.5 BIs (I can't call it a real success, as it's still many times less popular than 3-max spins). Both games were initially rolled out at stakes up to $15, with $30 added almost immediately, but then they proceeded reasonably quickly (within 10 and 3 months, respectively) to gain sufficient player bases to allow for the $100 stake.

The point seems to be that, although winning 1.5 BIs feels noticeably worse than winning 2 BIs, the difference isn't that big and is outweighed by the delight of cashing more often (in the Blast and Spin Max cases) or the thrill of playing for 5+ BIs more often.

However, another factor in this decision might have been Kindred's insider data from the iPoker.fr game Wild Twister, where the smallest multiplier is 1x (!), and the variance is enormous due to the high probabilities of medium and large multipliers, and perhaps the majority of those French customers who have played Wild Twister (who were all recreational because no reg would ever grind a game with 5 bb starting stacks and 7% rake) didn't complain too much about the 1x first place prize, but instead, appreciated the frequent high multipliers.

Bug report:

For the last week-ish the "Banzai!" sound effect has been playing regardless of whether it is turned off in the audio settings (one of my screen names is lektoraj, bug observed in the browser version, Win 10, chrome, with the other sounds turned on).

I have two residency. Mostly i live in Austria, but have residency of Taiwan too. Can i register at unibet on taiwan address and play in Austria too, or can only play when being in Taiwan?

We keep our options open to make any changes in that regard in the future, right now we don't have plans for it yet.

Sorry to hear, you had a bad first experience and ran under EV in the multipliers.

The argument that other sites have a minimum 2x multiplier only applies partly, as if you look at the overall percentages, you see that the middle part is more evened out, yes you win 0.5x less on the lower multiplier but you will much more see the medium multipliers come up which wouldn't happen as often if we had a 2x minimum, so it evens out.

The majority of the recreational players don't have the kind of knowledge and mindset of an advanced poker player, they play it for entertainment and for them it's much more motivating if they get more often a 5x, 10x or 25x.

We prefer making 10x more players happy, than making 1 player extremely happy, it is more balanced and not as top heavy.

Whether the whole concept of a jackpot SNG is for you or not, is up to decide for you, everybody has their preferences and we totally respect that.

What I can say is, we are happy with how it ran on day 1 and the feedback we received (read through the community if you are interested) and even some opponents of the format were positively surprised.

I understand that the luck factor plays a role in the short-term opinion, so obviously someone that ran bad at the start will have less of a positive memory than someone that gets on one attempt straight a 10x and wins it.

Hope you have better luck, in case you should try them again

Thanks for the feedback, I have forwarded this. However, I'll be honest with you, these kind of changes would mean quite a bit of development and just have an influence on a smaller amount of players, we will prioritize changes that have a bigger influence on players first, I think you'll understand that.

From a regular (and multitabling) player's perspective, I totally get your points.

Regarding the results, you can request them, that's not a problem, however EV is not possible.

With the inclusion of HexaPro we want to ensure more than ever than no exploiting through 3rd party software is possible. We want fair and even games and not groups of people that just play according to stats and graphs, we need to protect our recreational players.

Thanks for reporting the issue, we have created a ticket to our devs to get this fixed.

@coon74: You seem to have a wide area of knowledge about us, I cannot comment on everything you said but the whole concept is not taken out of thin air

We allow registrations from both Austria and Taiwan, if your IP changes a lot, player safety will most likely be aware of this and ask you to verify your identity and address, if you can do that, you shouldn't have any issues playing from different countries as long none of them are blacklisted.

Ninzent expressed his point as a serious player without time, but to me it's basic common sense that when we are trying to sell something, and the person says they want to buy, we don't ask them a second time if they are sure.

If a particular player, regardless of whether they are winning or losing, says he wants to play e.g. NL100, he should be given an NL100 game to sit in until he says he doesn't want one anymore (or times out). Obviously you can see the stats and maybe this isn't a problem but I'd bet that a certain number of people who get booted back to the lobby when other players leave just end up stopping their session at that point whereas if they were moved to another table (or returned to the queue) they might keep playing.

Re: his point 2) SNGs work this way so probably cash should too.

Advanced players of other poker variants looking to switch over to Hexa may have a risk-averse mindset and fear the 1.5x's, but the regs of Hexa-type SNGs usually don't care, so the 1.5x's don't deter the longterm winners; as an extra data point, I'm not afraid myself in the slightest, though I can't refer to myself as a consistent winner yet, but I have a serious attitude to poker.

SwongSim is a free tool that helps assess the risk-reward ratio on such SNGs. Having put Hexa's payouts there, I've seen that it's only slightly riskier than most its counterparts (under the assumption of not being staked).

Not winning 25x+ multipliers would reduce the ROI by <1% points as opposed to winning them at a normal rate, which is an insignificant deficit that doesn't really affect the decision to play or not to.

My point was that, unlike with SNGs, it's quite easy to earn challenge points with Hexa; in particular, a full-time €25+ Hexa reg would be able to earn 1.5M+ pts in a quarter, which, in the current volume-based (with regard to tourneys) loyalty program, is the point where volume starts getting rewarded massively.

So my fear is that some €25-100 regs may start loading too many tables and slowing the gameplay down, especially as long as the blind increases are governed by time, not the count of played hands.

Sorry for my earlier rant - sometimes I just can't stop writing, and I have a soft spot for conversing with poker executives to learn what's going on in the poker industry and make a more informed choice of the games to play.

You can ignore me until I start playing substantial volume at Unibet, which is hopefully January, when the challenge point counter restarts. I know the games will be better this month than next year, but I still can't take the risk until I have a bigger bankroll.

Best of luck!

(I should have written '<1.5%' instead of the '<1%', but that inaccuracy doesn't change the conclusion - the lack of 25x+ hits doesn't make a winning reg broke.)

On a side note, let me revisit a May 2 post:

While I agree that not allowing 3rd party software makes a lot of sense, the rollout of HexaPro seeking to cross-sell to casino players is a new reason to add built-in poker hotkeys, imo.

At least from what I've observed in $0.25-1 Spin & Gos, while the majority of opponents play slower than me, there's a substantial group of built-in hotkey users as well, who're a real pleasure to play against due to the increase in the number of hands per blind level (sorry for the hypocrisy; they'd be fun in a play money game too, though). For example, in one of my latest tourneys, I was able to play 42 hands with a lot of postflop action in 8 minutes because one of the opponents was a 1-tabling hotkey user too.

I'm all for letting people have fun when it doesn't hurt others, and some of those who're used to autospinning would appreciate fast poker play too, though as I said, it only matters to a minority and isn't urgent.

I don't think the left mouse button counts as a hotkey.

The "show balance" function doesnt work in hexapro. If you choose to not show your balance it does show up in hexapro after you click "yes' to play another one if you have busted one.

How is it humanly possible to consistently make a properly sized postflop bet within a split second of the turn coming to you when you're only using the left button and aren't a bot? That opponent was too loose for a bot, and lightning fast except for taking human-like pauses sometimes; in fact, our HU phase took 29 hands within as few as 4 minutes, and mind that I was sometimes taking a few seconds to think in non-obvious spots.

Maybe you should report that player because I believe scripts are banned?

The game in question had taken place at Stars. I brought it up as an example of a rec using hotkeys masterfully (it's safe to say because there are relatively few regs at $1 spins).

I do see why Andrew was against hotkeys of any kind. That stance was one of the main reasons why I quit Unibet soon after the migration to the standalone platform (the other reason was that Russia started blocking Unibet's domain at that exact time). I don't use a HUD at any site right now, just hotkeys are my pet peeve because my motor skills are a bit impaired.

Random question for computer savvy peeps : so I purchased a new mac in the hope that a better OS would prevent Unibet crashes (alas no, but thx Patric for the dump, will send the data of the crashes over ), but find myself in a worst situation as my laptop has to reboot nowadays, as opposed to just a Unibet software crash My question is : if I create a virtual machine (have never done so before) in order to sandbox Unibet to prevent a whole OS crash, does anyone know if the CPU usage of the VM would be even harder on my OS?

Just putting this out there, as I will give it a shot and take it by trial and error

If I understand correctly; the policy is not to exchange tickets anymore. Is this also true for UOS tickets that are not used (and will be useless after the UOS)? If not, is it possible to extend them to next series? Otherwise these tickets will be useless since the UOS tickets are not usable in normal tournaments anymore

Another one about the tickets. You can win tickets for the main event (UOS79 high) with a value of 100 euro. Is it possible to make those tickets also usable for the only other 100euro UOS event (UOS 37 high)?

Unused UOS tickets will become generic ones post UOS. The E79 tickets can be used for the Supernova post UOS but if you collect 10, for example, they're not going to extend them if you fire one bullet at E79 and then run out of Supernova's to use the rest.

I'd like to comment how it seems that your rewards for December are noticeably worse than usual, although they appear to be generous.
It's actually similar stuff than any other month, but instead of having any number of days to complete a step, now we have 1 day to complete a "mission". And if it's an easy task, we get a UO flip ticket.

And please, reduce the number of freerolls you are giving as a "reward", it's a waste of time for most players, just give us a ticket to play regular games.

+1. These promotions brings basically zero value if you play just cash.

+2.

For MTT players they're basically zero value as well.

I guess HexaPro-players + players who like to play microstakes and change formats might enjoy these.

Thanks!


I would still be nice if the E79 100euro ticket is also usable for E37 high

Pretty sure it's because the GTD is set so high for E79 that they need all the tickets to go into that prize pool to get close to it.

Since there were loads of freerolls running tonight, we had that same old problem of tourney lobbies breaking all over the place.
It's very hard to work out your strategy on the bubble, when the table info doesn't tell you the position you're currently in correctly, and the lobby is showing some people with chips (or even prizes) when they've already busted. Everyone I spoke to had broken tourney lobbies several times tonight. Is this recurrent bug ever gonna get fixed?

example lobby:


[ ] Makes sense