Dear Pleno.......Best Regards, Richard

[DaveShoelace]

It's collusion IMO.

It denies recreational players the chance to play each other.

Stars should stop this practice ASAP. In fact I can't believe they allowed it in the first place.

Think you might be right there Mr Camel. I must say though, there is part of me that likes the idea that in order to establish yourself at a level, you have to beat the tough regs over a large sample, but yeah, way too much control over the lobby.

I doubt the 'recs' know about this at all. Most of the people on this forum, myself included, didn't know about it, and while most of us ain't pros, we are poker enthusiasts and not 'recs' in the new player sense.

Might be worth an article, your stuff is widly read online. 

I find this whole think to in bad taste, I no longer play on Stars at all as I felt I was just giving money away no matter what game I was playing. 

I'm looking into it, this is the most interesting thing I've heard of in years with poker. I still haven't entirely made my mind up, but I'm certainly leaning towards this being bad for the game. I do like and have a romanticsed image of all the regs having to prove themselves to play a certain level, but I don't like the image this will have to rec players, and mostly the idea of one man having such control over a poker economy sits very badly with me (Though I will certainly be putting him in my Bluff Power 20 ballot).

I'll warn, however, that I anticipate I'll run into some resistance. The fact that this has been kept so quiet and is vastly underreported in the poker media suggests to me that great lengths have been gone to keep this quiet (In fact I'd wager Teeks & Tighty get some PMs advising them to take this thread down). I'm not basing this on any inside knowledge, I'm just being proactively paranoid.

[DaveShoelace]

http://www.flushdraw.net/news/pokerstars-heads-sit-go-lobbies-held-hostage-one-man/

Nothing we haven't heard in this thread in this article, but interesting how much it seems that this one guy has such a stranglehold on the HUSNG community. Normally not the paranoid type, but given his attitude to his customers, makes me wonder if he doesn't take bungs from his customers to jump ahead in the queue.

What a strange situation. If some punter fancies a spin-up in a 1k HUSNG he will snap get matched up with Daniel Colman. It's a bit like if I started a sunday league time and instantly got a match booked with Real Madrid.

Going to forward this thread and that article to Pokerstars.

Almost unbelieveable they are allowing this to happen.

Blind registration the only solution.

I know he is not your fave person, but IMO the best way to get people to take notice of this is to tweet it en masse to the people's champion Daniel Negreanu. He had a lot of anti-pro things to say about Spin & Go, be interesting to see if he took a stand against this.

[The Camel]

It's collusion IMO.

It denies recreational players the chance to play each other.

Stars should stop this practice ASAP. In fact I can't believe they allowed it in the first place.

Think you might be right there Mr Camel. I must say though, there is part of me that likes the idea that in order to establish yourself at a level, you have to beat the tough regs over a large sample, but yeah, way too much control over the lobby.

I doubt the 'recs' know about this at all. Most of the people on this forum, myself included, didn't know about it, and while most of us ain't pros, we are poker enthusiasts and not 'recs' in the new player sense.

Might be worth an article, your stuff is widly read online. 

I find this whole think to in bad taste, I no longer play on Stars at all as I felt I was just giving money away no matter what game I was playing. 

I'm looking into it, this is the most interesting thing I've heard of in years with poker. I still haven't entirely made my mind up, but I'm certainly leaning towards this being bad for the game. I do like and have a romanticsed image of all the regs having to prove themselves to play a certain level, but I don't like the image this will have to rec players, and mostly the idea of one man having such control over a poker economy sits very badly with me (Though I will certainly be putting him in my Bluff Power 20 ballot).

I'll warn, however, that I anticipate I'll run into some resistance. The fact that this has been kept so quiet and is vastly underreported in the poker media suggests to me that great lengths have been gone to keep this quiet (In fact I'd wager Teeks & Tighty get some PMs advising them to take this thread down). I'm not basing this on any inside knowledge, I'm just being proactively paranoid.

Who would make these PMs?

[DaveShoelace]

It's collusion IMO.

It denies recreational players the chance to play each other.

Stars should stop this practice ASAP. In fact I can't believe they allowed it in the first place.

Think you might be right there Mr Camel. I must say though, there is part of me that likes the idea that in order to establish yourself at a level, you have to beat the tough regs over a large sample, but yeah, way too much control over the lobby.

I doubt the 'recs' know about this at all. Most of the people on this forum, myself included, didn't know about it, and while most of us ain't pros, we are poker enthusiasts and not 'recs' in the new player sense.

Might be worth an article, your stuff is widly read online. 

I find this whole think to in bad taste, I no longer play on Stars at all as I felt I was just giving money away no matter what game I was playing. 

I'm looking into it, this is the most interesting thing I've heard of in years with poker. I still haven't entirely made my mind up, but I'm certainly leaning towards this being bad for the game. I do like and have a romanticsed image of all the regs having to prove themselves to play a certain level, but I don't like the image this will have to rec players, and mostly the idea of one man having such control over a poker economy sits very badly with me (Though I will certainly be putting him in my Bluff Power 20 ballot).

I'll warn, however, that I anticipate I'll run into some resistance. The fact that this has been kept so quiet and is vastly underreported in the poker media suggests to me that great lengths have been gone to keep this quiet (In fact I'd wager Teeks & Tighty get some PMs advising them to take this thread down). I'm not basing this on any inside knowledge, I'm just being proactively paranoid.

Who would make these PMs?

No idea, don't take my paranoia too literally, it's just unusual to me that I have never seen this reported, which suggests to me either some irate HU regs or the owner of the software might have been quite persuasive at keeping it quiet.

[Kmac84]

Question for Tikay, would you be prepared to take this down given what Barry says? 

[tikay]

Question for Tikay, would you be prepared to take this down given what Barry says? 

No.

No reason to.

[Hippy80]

Following my article, certain elements in the poker world were less than happy to read it. Few are vocal about changing the status quo because they have the very real fear of losing their livelihood if they do.

[tikay]

Following my article, certain elements in the poker world were less than happy to read it. Few are vocal about changing the status quo because they have the very real fear of losing their livelihood if they do.

Your excellent piece was heavily and belatedly edited.

Did someone from, say, Croatia, suggest you may wish to edit out any errors?.

[Hippy80]

Following my article, certain elements in the poker world were less than happy to read it. Few are vocal about changing the status quo because they have the very real fear of losing their livelihood if they do.

Your excellent piece was heavily and belatedly edited.

Did someone from, say, Croatia, suggest you may wish to edit out any errors?.

While that is certainly a possible result, I'm going to keep my mouth shut in public on that particular topic.

[Rexas]

You're all welcome to come and play zoom with me :p

[DMorgan]

I don't really understand why people think this is such a massive secret. Its all over the heads up SNG forum on 2p2 and Pokerstars have been reading every page of every thread about it. Here are the responses from Pokerstars reps on the issue:

'From PokerStars point of view, we don't see this is a problem as long as players are not blocked from playing a tournament when they want to. If players are forced to move down in stakes because they are not able to hold their own against the other regulars, that is not something we are going to concern ourselves with.' - 1st March 2014

'As long as everyone plays according to our TOS, we are not going to interfere in how players choose who to play or not to play. There doesn't seem to be anyone who is prevented from registering in a HU SNG tournament, but rather that it is difficult to get a seat against weaker players.

Disregarding that, I have a hard time seeing how we can or should effectively do something that will change the situation without implementing a matchmaking system where you have no control over who your next opponent will be. We did look at such a proposal about a year ago, but that was met with general disapproval in this forum. I'd like to hear it if the opinion has changed on such an alternative way of organizing the HU SNG lobbies.' - 8th May 2014

[TightEnd]

Disregarding that, I have a hard time seeing how we can or should effectively do something that will change the situation without implementing a matchmaking system where you have no control over who your next opponent will be. We did look at such a proposal about a year ago, but that was met with general disapproval in this forum. I'd like to hear it if the opinion has changed on such an alternative way of organizing the HU SNG lobbies.' - 8th May 2014

Matchmaking sounds like an excellent system, rec friendly too

Asking 2p2 guys to agree that the change might be useful would be like asking a turkey to jump into the basting tray at christmas

Surely PS would canvass more widely than this?

[Kmac84]

I don't really understand why people think this is such a massive secret. Its all over the heads up SNG forum on 2p2 and Pokerstars have been reading every page of every thread about it. Here are the responses from Pokerstars reps on the issue:

'From PokerStars point of view, we don't see this is a problem as long as players are not blocked from playing a tournament when they want to. If players are forced to move down in stakes because they are not able to hold their own against the other regulars, that is not something we are going to concern ourselves with.' - 1st March 2014

'As long as everyone plays according to our TOS, we are not going to interfere in how players choose who to play or not to play. There doesn't seem to be anyone who is prevented from registering in a HU SNG tournament, but rather that it is difficult to get a seat against weaker players.

Disregarding that, I have a hard time seeing how we can or should effectively do something that will change the situation without implementing a matchmaking system where you have no control over who your next opponent will be. We did look at such a proposal about a year ago, but that was met with general disapproval in this forum. I'd like to hear it if the opinion has changed on such an alternative way of organizing the HU SNG lobbies.' - 8th May 2014

I really don't understand why you don't understand why others have a problem with this.  

Basically there is software that lets the better players pick on the weaker players therefore decreasing the chances of them coming up against another rec who they have a fighting chance against.  

[Hippy80]

Based on what I was told by several HU regs, a blind matchmaking system would force a lot of regs to step down in buy in levels. There appear to be several skill levels at each buy in level, and not every reg can beat every level. They use sharky to avoid the regs they know can't beat them, while concentrating on the players they can beat. It's effectively organised bumhunting, but it's how HU poker seems to work.
The edges are so small in HU SnGs that player grab what they can to make a profit. It was the same pre Sharky, but the program has just automated the process, and removed the option for players without the software to game select in any meaningful way. They only way that no-one is going to be inconvenienced (in my opinion) is for Stars to implement the Sharky functionality into the client, allowing all players to work from the same point. Stars would also make the process a lot more transparent, which compared to the current situation can only be a good thing.

[Honeybadger]

I really don't understand why you don't understand why others have a problem with this.  

Basically there is software that lets the better players pick on the weaker players therefore decreasing the chances of them coming up against another rec who they have a fighting chance against.  

I'm sure that Dan agrees with you completely about the software and would be delighted if it did not exist, or if Stars decided to prevent its use by banning it and/or changing their coding so that things like seating scripts can't work. In fact, he says so himself:

The vast majority of HUSNG regs would very happily see the software banned, myself included because its impossible to get a lobby without it and it costs $400/yr.

However seeing as the software does exist, and since Stars are not interested in doing anything about it, it appears this cartel system (which I had never heard about either) is simply a way for the better regs to force the worse regs to play them rather than simply bum-hunting the recreational players.

It sucks that a recreational player will basically never get to sit with another recreational player. But that is caused by the existence of the seating scripts, not the cartel systems. I agree though that the whole cartel thing does sound horrible and very off-putting. I would certainly not ever jump into a HU SNG to have a bit of fun (I'd obviously be a losing player at HU SNGs) now that I know that this stuff is going on.

The solution would be for Stars (in fact all poker sites) to ban these seating scripts. And they should ban HUDs whilst they are at it - I imagine a lot of pros would be delighted if they did. I certainly would.

Don't blame the pros for the existence of things like seating scripts, HUDs etc. They didn't invent these programs, and many of them would prefer they did not exist. But since they do exist, and others are using them, then what choice do players have but to also use them?

Ban seating scripts, ban HUDs, ban any other program like this IMO.