Shark's Scope

[nirvana]

And as for the main debate - all this shiz about poker will eat itself, must look after recs and noobs etc. I just find it pretty patronising and disingenuous.

Y'all are tying to get their money one way or another - there aint a nice or right way to do it - unbridled greed and self interest is the essence of poker and might as well call it what it is - ok, that's all for now pooftahs

[nirvana]

provided excellent unbiased help for free.

Dear Soapytitwank,

You claim your advice & help was excellent. Could you rate how excellent it was do you think. I mean, was it most excellent ?

totally dude xxx

Chuh, thought so, party on x

[david3103]

Dtd are perfect actually. Lots of poker background and then really good non poker people such as nicola and Alex making a really good team.

DTD online were better in many ways when they were on Boss.

DTD live are as close to perfect as is possible, although they'd be so much better if they were in Middlesbrough.

[Woodsey]

Dtd are perfect actually. Lots of poker background and then really good non poker people such as nicola and Alex making a really good team.

DTD online were better in many ways when they were on Boss.

God no, Ipoker aren't perfect but I'll take them over boss any day.

[david3103]

Dtd are perfect actually. Lots of poker background and then really good non poker people such as nicola and Alex making a really good team.

DTD online were better in many ways when they were on Boss.

God no, Ipoker aren't perfect but I'll take them over boss any day.

I don't recall there being anywhere near as many problems with tournaments just having to be abandoned on Boss, and that's ignoring the issues where the problems of being frozen out only affects a few players who just have to suck it up and accept the loss of their entry fee and their EV.

[Tal]

Hopefully, that's answered the question.

[Woodsey]

Dtd are perfect actually. Lots of poker background and then really good non poker people such as nicola and Alex making a really good team.

DTD online were better in many ways when they were on Boss.

God no, Ipoker aren't perfect but I'll take them over boss any day.

I don't recall there being anywhere near as many problems with tournaments just having to be abandoned on Boss, and that's ignoring the issues where the problems of being frozen out only affects a few players who just have to suck it up and accept the loss of their entry fee and their EV.

Probably not, but the software was so crap I didn't want to play on it, at least ipoker is ok for that. I haven't had too many issues with them really two or three times maybe, which isn't that bad.

[mulhuzz]

paddy it's not that sky don't understand poker. it's that they don't understand customer service and community. PS was so successful because Korn/Lutz/et al completely got community. Not because they weren't/are poker players. Similar stories at other successful gigs.

[TommyD]

Re:  The Sky debate; the irony in this thread is that:

No player has helped the development of site and the players than Andy
No people have worked harder for the site and their events than Tikay or Tighty.

And they're all on the same page, just reading different languages.

So I'm going to try to translate for both sides:

To Andy.  I obviously know how frustrating it can be.  But sometimes the effectiveness of the truth is all in the presentation.  Especially if you're saying something which the recipient doesn't want to hear (I'm talking about Andy's posts and communications referenced in this thread on the Sky Forum/PMs, not anything in this thread).  People can just latch on to your frustration, your language and use that as an out.  Yes the fifteenth time you get stonewalled is annoying.  You just have to be all nice and patient again for the sixteenth time.  And so on.  You do go too offensive at times and you can't always fall back on to the fact you had valid and constructive comment at the beginning when the end game is just so chaotic.  It ruins the excellent points and thoughts that are under the loud and rude ones.  Would it be a better world if you didn't have to dress things up and be nice constantly?  Or if people snap listened?  Obviously it would.  Not the way the world works though and you have to accept that.

To Tighty.  Yes Andy's language can go coarse and offensive.  I don't particularly enjoy reading some of his more acute tirades.  However he never starts there.  And a lot of time one part of one his posts, some bad language, some offensive term, some minor flippant point, were blown up as the whole issue by the replier and everything else was negates.  I love playing on Sky, I still love the community and think it's a very good site for the niche it is aiming for.  However constant batting bat of valid questions breeds discontent.  Getting well put, intelligent and inoffensive posts deleted because they ask a hard question is annoying.  I'm not saying you or Tikay do any of this, in fact I'm sure neither of you do.  But when a poster, a player, a member plays exactly by the rules and then get's zero respect anyway, that is when frustration that leads to the attitude Andy and others now have is born.  It's particularly head scratching when I, among others, make valid and I hope well thought out points, am told I have never run a poker site so what do I know.  Then I see new 'Quids in' tables.

Re:  The chatbox.  It's no worse than any other site.  However as it's like a 95% UK player pool, people have a lot more ammunition and feel like they can be more offensive.  I mean, after the first few lines how many ways are you actually able to offend a Russian who doesn't speak much English?  In smaller, UK based sites, things get more personal because they can.  I currently have a 1k bounty for someone to stab me in the neck from a charming gentleman from Scotland.  If I downswing hard I might attempt to collect that myself.

tl;dr cliffs.

Vinegar = no flies
Sugar = flies
Getting ignored and evaded makes people angry.

TitBean, you mad bro?

[TightEnd]

To Tighty.  Yes Andy's language can go coarse and offensive.  I don't particularly enjoy reading some of his more acute tirades.  However he never starts there.  And a lot of time one part of one his posts, some bad language, some offensive term, some minor flippant point, were blown up as the whole issue by the replier and everything else was negates.  I love playing on Sky, I still love the community and think it's a very good site for the niche it is aiming for.  However constant batting bat of valid questions breeds discontent.  Getting well put, intelligent and inoffensive posts deleted because they ask a hard question is annoying.  I'm not saying you or Tikay do any of this, in fact I'm sure neither of you do.  But when a poster, a player, a member plays exactly by the rules and then get's zero respect anyway, that is when frustration that leads to the attitude Andy and others now have is born.  It's particularly head scratching when I, among others, make valid and I hope well thought out points, am told I have never run a poker site so what do I know.  Then I see new 'Quids in' tables.

thank you

for reference i have nothing to do with how the sky forum runs, or how Sky poker operates, as you know. I post on there as "SPT" re tour stuff and organise the events

[titaniumbean]

Tommy, this is how I do it

[Junior Senior]

Did someone call the blonde HR department? I am sensing a multi disciplinary outcome

[Woodsey]

Did someone call the blonde HR department? I am sensing a multi disciplinary outcome

No this is a blokey site, only girls work in HR 

[Jono3131]

I don't particularly like Tittwatbean and disagree with 99% of what he says on here. However, I do think he is 100% correct in everything he has said in this thread.

I had an issue with Sky and posted it on this forum.

Last night I was playing 2 sngs and a cash table on sky. I was playing in the cash game and one of the sng's absolutely fine, but when the second one came to open it wouldn't.

I tried closing the table and reopening it, manually finding the tournament lobby (which I could open fine and see myself seated) but it just wouldn't let me open this particular table. All I got was the blue loading spinny screen.

I took a photo of the other sng I was playing fine and the cash game and sent it off to their support. The response I got was that it was because I was not playing in the downloadable client, but the internet site.

I feel like I am entitled to a refund here, it clearly was not a problem my end why it wouldn't load as the other 2 were fine. For Sky to say I should of downloaded the client seems a bit of a joke, if the think this then why offer the internet only service.

Does anyone agree/disagree?

I did not receive a reply from the guy who plugs Sky Poker wherever possible. I got one saying post over on their forum and then a far more detailed one from Tittwatbean. I know for a fact that it was not down to one of the reasons he mentioned and I closed the browser down and re-opened it again and that did not work. Moreover, the sng was £20 buyin. If Sky are not willing to refund me for a sng after me talking to them over the internet while the sng is happening, and me showing screenshots of all the other tables I am playing, then why should I bother? There reply of telling me I should of downloaded the client is a joke, but to be honest, nothing less then I expected after hearing about the service they offer. Rather then sign up to numerous forums, make phone calls, send emails over £20, I will just close my account and never play there again

[rfgqqabc]

I think trying to force sites to improve their rake structure and promotions is much more important than banning sharkscope. As you say the recreational players that have heard of sharkscope don't like it, but I imagine they also don't like bumhunting, or people mass tabling and playing slowly. Rewarding players for playing as many hands as possible as quickly as possible is an extremely flawed system for the long term health of the game. However, this thread isn't about that. Its about banning sharkscope. This would be a poor idea in my opinion. I believe people should be allowed to check their results. I'd also say pokerstars opt-in system is better than other sites that allow peoples results to go up without permission. It has been seen in many aspects of life that forcing something underground rarely fixes the problem in anyway shape or form.
 I think sites promoting a healthy gaming environment is much more important than preventing someone to see their own or other peoples results. In the example you cite, as stated previously, I have absolutely no clue how that can be sharkscopes fault. Blaming a website for how users use the data they present is pretty flawed argument in my opinion. I think overall the chatbox is a positive in online poker but it can be used negatively and sites should guard against this. I don't see what that has got to do with sharkscope. It is extremely annoying as a professional poker player to constantly be derided by people with flawed arguments. We are constantly told what we are doing wrong. How this hurts the game, how that hurts the game whilst sites continue to rake games that are unbeatable, provide in general terrible support. In the last few months I've been told my hud is killing the game, sharkscope is killing the game and god knows what else. I've spent the last week taking nigh on anyone on at the plo8 games. No bumhunting, no swearing in chat, no being a massive douche. Honestly for people to continue grouping every single professional player in one big group is unfair. I'm going to have to start talking about all poker sites as one big horrible group. If I did that you would say I was being unfair, and I would be being unfair.
 Can we stop being told that the game is dying, can we stop being told that recreational players need protection, or this or that. If i was a punter I'd hate to see people talking about me a) Like I was an idiot, and b) like I'm a cow that needs to be plumped up for slaughter. I have absolutely no idea how you can possibly think banning sharkscope is going to fix poker. Perhaps next door should look at policing its chat properly and not putting on rake races every month? But it won't. You will continue to look after your own profits while deriding professional players for trying to look after theirs. That is why people poo poo threads like this. I deleted one of my early responses in this thread because I didn't want to get involved but unfortunately arbboy ended up quoting it but unfortunately I just can't help myself. I typed this up extremely quickly and it still feels like I'm shouting into the wind. Even now giving this a quick read through feels pretty mind numbing as people are rarely open minded.

Banning sharkscope would do nothing to change billy big gobs attitude. This is ultimately the problem. I'd imagine he is also a recreational player and he is probably enjoying giving a bit of abuse having lost. If you banned sharkscope he would still be giving some jip when he took the bad beat. It's like your playing a game of "Improving Online Poker Bingo" where the majority of words and phrases such as "software" "huds" and "professionals" are the buzzwords and things like "rake" "promotions" and "fairly policed games" are not on the board at all. It is very boring.

Sorry I didn't leave this up earlier but I wanted to make sure I didn't offend anyone too badly. I do think your a good guy Tikay, I just strongly disagree on this issue and my debating style has got me in trouble on this forum before so I wanted to check there was no smoking gun (lol glass of watergate)