I mean, I am a bumhunter too, yet I am looking forward to this. Kind of tired of fighting over best tables day in day out. It's just something that should not be part of the game to the extent it is these days. Just wait and see what happens.

I believe so. Because there will be always someone wanting to play that will be put at tables with free sits.

I guess 'we' were asking for it. I play micro/small stakes and I rarely have to bumhunt although I table select a bit. But what I see at mi/high stakes for 3/4 years now is just disgusting. That's why games are all ****ed up. Everyone treating fish like they are a teller machine. Despite of what the song says fish do have feelings you know... they are our 'clients' and we treat them like garbage.
It's time we pay the price. Bumhunters will have to work on McDonalds, the ones that are good will continue to make money and lets only hope that fish feel happy and keep coming.

it's not even official yet, it could even be some hybrid: tablestarter+waitlists at full tables. i believe this idea was thrown around at some point.

sorry, im obv pretty slow, but it sounds like this table starter stuff is sort of like zoom, except you dont switch tables? Doesnt sound like too bad of an idea to me tbh. My main criticism is if it doesn't allow people to start games HU if they want to

edit: obv meaning they get paired HU with random opponent, not get to sit at empty tables and wait for a fish

I can only hope that you're right, but it doesn't hurt our cause to voice our opposition to the idea of implementing "Tablestarter" only.

I really don't see anything bad in selecting tables (playing the games you think you beat and avoiding bad ones) until it gets really extreme, for example, instantly sitting out when fish busts. I don't get why Stars wants to punish people for not playing games with an aggro regular on your left.

x-posting this from the SSPLO Stars thread:

a tongue on the cheek post: one thing that always make wonder is that when Stars say "that's what the recreational players want", how exactly do they know about it? do they send surveys or are they just assuming based on what they see and a few emails they get?
all i ever got from pokerstars are surveys about the support functions since i always overwhelmingly thank them for fast, professional and awesome support...i guess the support people want to make sure they get good feedback haha

Stars should only have the enjoyment of recreational players, the longevity of the game, and their profits in mind when making these decisions.

I cant express how fired up I would have been to play with these rules. Sign up for a limit and get seated in any and all games at that limit? Yes, please, thats all I ever do any ways. Table selecting and bumhunting are pretty analagous. People who thrive on these aspects of poker are the people who would be hurt most by a change like this. I respect it.

Regarding time bank, seems like a huge fuss over a small issue. Everybodys playing with the same time restraints so who really cares.

Like how your throwing stones about timebank Karls. How many rec's do you think got annoyed by you specific? Did you ever get tables capped (and how much/often)?

And dont neglect what the current players in HSPLO that still Pokerstars says about the timebank. They should know best of all.

Stars themselves takes these discussions with us and bring them here so its obvs they listen to the community like they did when they changed it from 30bb --> 40bb min buyinn.

i agree , viffer used to always say the regs demands are killing the games, all be it , in broken english , he was speaking wise words.

the only thing im unhappy about is the rake at 5/10 below , that will inevitably kill the games, we should focus 100% on that, every other change imo, is good longterm.

i think the highest of stakes is an exception , people love to rail these games, no one wants to see people timing out etc .

Well, I played within the rules and did what I thought was best for me. If the timers changed, I would have adapted accordingly. I never got tables capped but stars reps called me a couple times saying they have had complaints about my slow play.

I do agree with you and others that different rules need to be applied at 5-10 or 10-20+. People dont mass table as often once you get to these stakes so the serial timebanking preflop that you see from your SNE grinders is not an issue here. This is serious money and the decisions become more thought provoking as the stakes rise and the competition increases.

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My understanding is the new feature will be standard, but you will still be able to see a dropdown of all the tables running and pick if you want.

I think its very good to cancel the poss of tableselection.
The time for every decision should be cut to 3secs, if no act in time its automatically a minraise/bet, so more hands in an hour can be played.
Also there should be no poss to leave a table before losing min 5bi's or if the account is empty, what comes earlier, that prevents ratholing.
Oh yes, and of course evry1 has to buyin for 100bb's and autotopup is mandatory.
And i really think after so many years of onlinepoker with just 5% 3$ max rake the time is come increase it a bit, i mean the $ is not worth what he was some years ago and the costs growing daily.
And ofc that's all just for the rec's, to make them feel more comfortable!

While I agree that Stars should mainly cater to the needs of recreationals, completely eliminating table selection would cut into the winrates too heavily. That would be a death-blow to the small stakes games due to rake.

Eliminating ratholing and selective sitting out are the fish-friendly improvements this community should rally behind.

Sit out one = sit out all tables would be great. Any reason not to implement that? Then people got to leave tables with fish sitting out on, or play on with the regs and enviroment seems less predatory. And Stars gets some more rake when fish sits out.

It may not be super user friendly.. Couple examples:

- Rec player plays 3 tables but is unlucky at 1 of those 3 , so he wants to sit out there. Focus on the other 2 tables and if things get better he'll sit back in. This would be a no-go with the new rule.

- Regular has 10 tables running, gets seated at a couple others and doesn't like to 10+table, so he gives himself some room by sitting out at a couple of tables and choosing which ones to close in the mean time (I do this a lot).

- Timing out at 1 table = sitting out at all tables? Also seems kinda extreme.

Just pointing out some leaks. I am not sure what a good solution would be, going to think about it. I'm a big proponent of letting games run even a couple of orbits once the fish left (but this is impossible to do since you'll just end up paying too many big blinds trying). I just hate it when we make it so obvious that they are the mark, I'd really go along way to prevent that.

It's one thing rec's lose money on a consistent basis. They can justify this by running bad, playing tired, tilting etc. But once they see the same people over and over again preying on them, and immediately sitting out if they take a break then that's definitely gonna make them think they are easy targets, not enjoying playing as much and eventually stop depositing, which is bad for everybody.

Extreme bumhunters are also extremely shortsighted and selfish. I'd really like every bumhunter to really think about this concept and make sure they understand it, as to keep the games as juicy as possible, for as long as possible.

PS. I'm fine with bumhunters btw, just don't make it obvious to the fish you are one.

I don't agree with this. My brain freezes when I have more than 6 tables, so when new tables pop up (carrying the number of tables over 6) while I have some tough decisions, I like to sit out at the new ones for a couple minutes until I've regained composure.

I'd like to add that I never sit out when fish sit out or bust, I think it's awful etiquette and one of the main reasons they feel hunted. If that behaviour could be dealt with somehow, that would be a great improvement imo.

Edit: I wrote this without reading Bullitos' post, he covered it very well. Completely agree.

[QUOTE=CZI;36747046]I don't agree with this. My brain freezes when I have more than 6 tables, so when new tables pop up (carrying the number of tables over 6) while I have some tough decisions, I like to sit out at the new ones for a couple minutes until I've regained composure.

QUOTE]


i say this in the nicest way possible , but not implementing something thats beneficial for the games , because on the rare occasions when you have more than 6 tables an face a tough decision is not something stars cares about .

as pokerplayers we gotta stop looking at whats better for our own bottomline , because its hurting the game we all love ( or hate)

karls , posted earlier in the thread, about playing 24 tables , getting calls from stars telling him to speed, up , hes making it unjoyable for recs, because all he was interested in, was his own bottomline (in his own words) when realistically , playing 4-6 less tables , acting quicker , and not driving recs away from his tables would have arguably been more profitable.


as humans, we all hate to lose, if you went into a bar and challenged someone worse than you to a game of pool, beat him , grabbed you cue , and left , he would be pissed and probably not wanna play you again , the only bottomline your hurting would be yours.

its the same for poker, we have to realise how much freedom/money with have with little hard work , but its not gonna last forever if we drive away the people who are just looking to have fun !

Our new table speeds for High Stakes (5/10+) are much closer to our former Regular speed tables than they are to our former Fast tables. In fact, the quoted sentence almost exactly describes the table speed changes for High Stakes tables.

During previous rounds of feedback and when reviewing current preferences of fast vs normal for current play, we did note that high stakes players of both NLHE and PLO should receive additional time to act compared to other games. This is the case with the new system.


Although our intent in the warning timer is as an alert to let you know you are about to run out of time on a table, we are considering an option that would allow players to customize when they would receive their warning alert. This would not change the total amount of time any player would have to act but would allow you to receive the warning alert earlier if desired. This is not a feature that would be available immediately or within a month, but it will be considered for future development.


This is exactly the intended purpose of the time bank. If the time bank is insufficient, that’s another conversation, but we don’t intend to allow more time for uncommon decisions by increasing the allowed time for every decision a player faces.

As I have seen the question asked several times recently, the time bank replenishes by 10 seconds every 50 hands played.


This is, more or less, exactly what we have been doing for approximately 9 months. Every month we evaluate the playing speed of every Ring Game player on the site and then lower the Table Cap of players who play much more slowly than average and raise the Table Cap of players who play much more quickly than average.



In an average month, more than two-thirds of our Ring Game players *never* play more than 1 table at a time. This seems like a fairly strong statement by a large group of players as to how they enjoy playing poker and what makes them feel comfortable.

These changes were made to accommodate real, observed play on our site. We see that the vast majority of players will rarely use their maximum allotted time. However, many players do complain about opponents using what seems to them to be excessive time to do things such as fold preflop in an unopened pot. Most players, even mass-multitablers, should see little to no difference in their daily play. However, those that will be affected are the players who we are targeting with these changes.

YaAaRnY: I do agree with your general train of thought, but I am strongly opposed to a "sit out one = sit out all" rule. It's not the right patch for the problem. Bullitos gave more good reasons than I did.

Having a ~minute-long sit out capability at a new table would be an easy way to allow an exception to the "sit out 1 = sit out all" -rule.

fwiw, I think a fish is WAY more likely to leave a table where he feels unlucky rather than just sit out.

It's not a flawless solution, but it stops the bumhunting practices that are most damaging to the image of the game. Time out abuse has to be prevented somehow (time out=sit out all tables is obviously unworkable), but Bullitos's other examples are fringe cases and it is well worth the inconvenience to stop the sit out madness.