Overview
This post will communicate the current PokerStars position on the topics discussed at the meetings. Some or all of the attending players will disagree with some of the views presented here. I am not claiming to represent the views of the players who attended or anyone else.
I have similarly asked players to communicate their own views, not what they think our views are.
Special thanks to the players who took their time to participate. We will benefit greatly from the experience and hope they feel the same.
Purpose of the meetings
During this session we went around the table to give each person a chance to speak. Each person introduced themselves and shared a few bits about his history with poker.
The top goal for PokerStars was for players to get what they want out of the meetings. We also wanted to get input from players on a wide variety of topics in order to help improve our plans going forward. We also wanted to continue to grow the list of respected community leaders who have visited us and gained a better perspective of how we operate, including learning:
-Why we might not always do exactly what the majority on the forums want
-That we do read the forums and understand and consider the feedback given
-Why it might take longer than players would like to make changes
-That we do care about players and run our room with a customer focus
-How much effort and consideration is put into each change, including on the smallest details
-That poker room operations are actually quite a small part of the quite substantial effort required to build and maintain the world's largest poker room
Sit & Go
There are some software improvements that are often requested by regulars that haven't made it to the top of the overall development priority list yet, but we do hope to complete them eventually. These include an "I'm Ready" button for tournament start and breaks and the ability run synchronized breaks every 2 hours which we would trial for 18s and 27s.
Where has our development time gone instead? We've completed development on a new promotion for Sit & Go tournaments that we expect will be very appealing to recreational players. This promotion is very visually integrated into the client. We showed the promotion to the player representatives. Everyone will be seeing it next month as a part of the 100bn hands celebration.
We've also completed other development earlier this year that allows us to include tournaments in our happy hours during our promotions for specific game types, for example Omaha week.
The lobby for each individual tournament has been redesigned for PokerStars 7. We're really excited about this change; we've put a lot of time and effort into getting the details right for this improvement.
Finally, Easy Seat for Sit & Go has been on our test site for several months but isn't yet releaseable due to bugs. This feature will automatically register players for tournaments, similar to how Easy Seat for Ring Games automatically seats players at tables. We hope to see this feature complete soon.
Sit & Go players have been asking to be able to buy Sit & Go tickets in the VIP store with their FPPs.
Right now we have different situations for each of Ring, Sit & Go, Scheduled tournaments, and satellites. We don't have any available mechanism to sell ring game buy-ins for FPPs. We have the ability to offer cash Sit & Go tickets in the store for FPPs but we don't. We offer tickets in the store for scheduled tournaments, but only for our premier tournaments with largest prize pools. Satellites are the easiest way to use FPPs directly for play, as there's quite a wide selection.
Overall, the standard is to not allow FPPs to be redeemed directly for buy-ins. The exceptions for satellites and tickets to major tournaments are there to help build large prize pools for our tournaments. This reason doesn't exist for Sit & Go tournaments.
All players do have the option to redeem their FPPs for cash bonuses and then spend the money on buy-ins to the games of their choosing. The cash bonuses follow the VIP Club philosophy of providing better value for redemption for higher statuses.
One option going forward might be to develop the ability to allow FPPs to be used more widely to buy-in to tournaments as an alternative to cash without even needing to buy a ticket. We would want to be able to charge different FPP amounts for each status for the same tournament. We will consider this for future development though we haven't yet firmly concluded that this is something we would want to implement. A bit more thought is needed.
In the last player meetings we did agree to add more exit points to the step system and eliminate the step downs. We did so, and may in the future add more ways to use tickets won through the steps system. Steps tickets purchased in the VIP store may start to only work on the actual steps themsleves, though any tickets won in tournaments entered with VIP store tickets would be free to be used in other tournaments.
We did not discuss this in the meetings, but STT and MTT regulars are urging us on another forum to add antes earlier in our Sit & Go tournaments, perhaps even from the start. The next step is to survey recreational players to gauge their reaction. If it is positive, we will start looking at specific options.
HUSNG
The experience of the recreational HUSNG player is nearly perfect. They come to the lobby and have a choice of a couple of opponents. They register and instantly have a game. After the game they are almost always offered a rematch. They can choose to accept, or alternatively can decline and go play one of the other people sitting in the lobby waiting to play them.
The only problem is that above the lowest stakes, recreational players don't tend to end up playing other recreational players. Regulars, often professionals, tend to always be seated in the registering tournaments. It would be good for recreational players to play each other sometimes to have a better chance of winning in those matches.
One way to facilitate this would be to implement a random matchmaking system at stakes for which we have sufficient liquidity. We could wait for 4 players to register, then pair opponents randomly. Before considering this seriously we need to determine if recreational players would be turned off by not being able to select their opponent.
We discussed HUSNG issues more deeply than this, but as none of the attending players played HUSNG regularly, it didn't see appropriate to draw conclusions. Chadders0 was originally elected to represent the HUSNG community but had to cancel due to being involved in a car accident. He has accepted our invitation to come to the Isle of Man once he is well enough to travel. He'll be visiting us on July 2nd and 3rd. I'll post an update on HUSNG issues affecting regulars after speaking with him.
PLO Rake
While players use bb/100 to measure impact of rake on their winnings, bb/100 is not the correct way to compare rake between games. I've discussed this previously at length, so I will not belabor the point. If links to this topic have not made it here, let me know and I will find the posts and quote them here.
Our Supernovas do at least as well after rewards at PLO as they do at other games. Plenty of players are winning, and Supernova+ VIPs on average are doing just fine However, due to rake adding up to more bb/100, rewards are a bigger component of winning PLO players' earnings in bb/100. This means that players with low VIP statuses are having a harder time in PLO because VIP status has a bigger impact on results.
We'd like to do something to help players with lower VIP statuses have a better shot at winning in PLO games. We aren't confident that a simple rake reduction would have the desired mid-term or long-term result. We have a different solution in mind, but it would be a bigger change for players. We want to invite several PLO representatives for a shorter PLO focused session of meetings to discuss further. If these additional PLO players agree, we can work together to come up with the specifics of how to move forward. We hope to have the PLO players join us in late June for this discussion.
This situation also exists at other games such as FLHE and hyper-turbo SNG. If we come up with a good agreed course of action for PLO, similar changes for those other game types could follow.
Player Communications
We do not want to completely change our player meetings format to have only dedicated meetings for each game type. However, we will try inviting players for a few such additional meetings this year to see how they go.
We're going to add presence on some forums where English is not the primary language. We will try both posting in English and letting players translate and also helping bilingual staff from other deparments post in the native language. We'll find out if it's worth adding the extra layer between players and poker room management to get the words in the right language. Here, for now, you have me posting in English. We will trial the other method on a Portugese language forum elsewhere.
We'll also work to better communicate to players about software updates. This is something we're trying to do in part through our Supernova monthly newsletters. We will do more and see if we can improve the rate of supernovas who are receiving those monthly newsletters.
We did at one point have a special forum set up for communication with a panel of players who had signed NDAs. If players want us to reactivate this forum, we are happy to do so.
Our preference would be for the participants on the forum to be those who have been elected and attended player meetings in the past. We have been very pleased with the quality of discussion with player representatives thusfar and would be happy to continue it between meetings.
If there is a strong community desire for additional participants on the forum, we can discuss and consider this. One possible reason to want additional participants is to ensure maximum coverage of all of the different game types. My initial thought about this is that this may not be necessary, but if it is, the extra participants could perhaps be chosen by the other representatives.
We would also want to keep the size of the group to a manageable level so that conversation can be sufficiently focused.
Ratholing
The reasons we have committed to addressing ratholing are already posted in great detail in public. While I posted the reasons on a different forum, I can see that links have been posted here. Our focus is now on determining what exactly to do, then executing.
We want to find a preventative solution rather than a punative solution. Punishing players creates a negative experience for customers who may not know the rules. It also takes substantial resources. Cases of rules violations are rarely so clear as to be handled quickly. Players violating rules may not feel that they are doing so even if data shows that they are. Players may also feel that other specific players are violating rules based on a small number of incidents when the data shows no such long-term trend, resulting in player frustration that rules are seemingly not being enforced.
We are OK with some limited amount of ratholing type behavior and specifically want to protect it. Sometimes players find themselves in uncomfortable positions where a tough aggressive player has position with deep effective stacks. This happens both for 100bb and 40bb players. Additionally, players with small account balances may win a pot and want to split their funds up across multiple tables.
We also want to protect the ability of players to play sessions across many tables, buying in for the minimum on each. As long as they are not ratholing, this is not a problem.
This leaves us with the challenge of defining very precisely the behavior we want to end in such a way that the behavior we want to allow is not included. We need to create both a verbal definition that is easily understood by poker players and a corresponding technical definition that can be coded into our software.
We would want to do so in a sufficiently simple way, as with all of our improvements. Simplicity benefits not only development time and communication, but also simpler solutions tend to be more robust in the long run. Complexity opens up additional possibility that unanticipated behavior patterns might help players get around the spirit of the intended change.
We have not succeeded in finding such a definition that both met our normal standards of simplicity and would properly isolate the problematic behavior. At some point earlier this year, we resigned ourselves to considering more complex solutions.
Thanks to a post by 2+2er 'mme', we worked out a very precise definition. We provided an 18-page document to all player representatives that outlined the solution. This business requirements document (BRD) is what we provide to the development team when we request a new feature. We had been through many rounds of review and edit on the BRD already.
The basic premise of the solution is that we track players' stack sizes when they leave tables and then enforce appropriate minimum buy-ins when they re-join other tables. Joining a table creates a 'stack identity' for that table type. For example, if I were to sit at a 40-100bb table with 40bb, then leave the table with 67bb, I would now have 40-100bb stack #1 set at 67bb.
Each player would have a maximum number of stacks at each table type, with table type defined by buy-in range. The maximum number of stacks would be equal to a player's table cap (for regular tables) and table cap divided by 3 (Zoom). This way a player could start a full maximum tables session with minimum buy-ins, but if they left any table with more than minimum buy-in, they would then need to re-use the same stack identity when buying into another table of the same type.
For example, if I buy in to 24 40-100bb tables with 40bb each, double up on one to 80bb and leave, I would then have to buy in for at least 80bb if I then tried to join another 40-100bb table. Let's say I do this. Then if I lose 20bb and leave with 60bb, the next table I would join I could buy in for 60bb. This all assumes that I have stayed on the other 23 tables the whole time; if I had left those tables, I would be given the option to buy in for the smallest number of bb available on one of my stack identities.
Zoom would be considered a separate table type as it is 50-100bb, but PLO and NLHE 40-100bb tables would use the same stack identities.
We have accounted for angleshooting as best as we can predict. For example, if you buy into a table with significantly lower stakes than the one at which you created your stack identity, you are still bound by the minimum number of big blinds at buy-in but you cannot reduce, only increase, the size of the stack identity when leaving the tables. This prevents players from doubling up at high stakes and then reducing their minimum buy-in back to 40bb by losing money at much lower stakes.
The identities expire after a set period of time that is configurable. Configuring this period of time is challenging. The longer it is the more effective we are at preventing undesired behavior, but the more likely we are to be prohibiting behavior that we want to allow.
Our current thought is that the identities would need to set to expire after 18 to 20 hours. In this way a player could buy in at 24 tables for 40bb, play a full session and build big stacks on them, and then return the next day to do the same. 18 to 20 hours seems more reasonable than 24 as players can't be expected to start their session at the same exact time each day.
The downside of this configuration is that it does allow more ratholing than we might like from those who choose to take full advantage within the system. A player with a 24 table cap who likes to play only 6 tables at a time and is willing to play both Zoom and regular tables could get quite a few ratholes in per day before hitting their identity cap for both table types.
There are different opinions as to whether a 6 tabler ratholing 3 times is doing anything functionally different than a 24-tabler who joins all tables simultaneously and then leaves each table after doubling up. The net impact on the rest of the playing pool is the same, but the timing of each action seems more like ratholing. In any case, this behavior would be allowed under the system.
There is also a concern with players who have increased table caps being able to execute ratholes quite effectively. We can't a smaller number of stack identities than the player's number of max tables. If a player had 16 identities and a table cap of 24, what would their buy-in options be when sitting down at the 17th table?
Players have suggested that proactively lowering table caps for players who are not making use of their maximum number of tables concurrently would be one option. Some would suggest we should do this not just for players with caps above 24, but also for those with caps of 24 who are only playing 12. I am skeptical that this could be implemented without creating more problems than it solves. Players change behavior from time to time; a player who has been 8 tabling for years without causing any trouble may not be pleased to find that they are not able to try to jump up to 16 tables if the decide they'd like to. We have a lot of customers; reviewing such cases manually is not a desirable solution.
We don't think that multi-accounting to get around the restrictions is likely to be a big problem as VIP rewards are an important income source for mass multitabling ratholers.
It's hard to describe an 18 page solution in a forum post, but the above should give you a good idea of how it works and its identified weak spots.
We are currently doing significant technical investigation to identify what % of ratholing occurrences this would prevent if implemented today, based on a loose definition of ratholing. As long as the % is meaningful and no better solution presents itself, we will move forward.
We had hoped to implement this solution in the first half of the year as I have stated multiple times and we have been planning to do so, but it is clear at this point that we are not going to hit the deadline. We are doing everything we can to get the solution ready to go over the summer. It's extremely disappointing to me that we are missing our goal here, as I know it is disappointing to many of you.
),