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Player Segregation - what's your view?
For those unfamiliar on recent developments, several poker websites have implemented (some publically, some deceptively) a player filtering system based on their long term win-rate, so that losing players and winning players will no longer be able to play against each other.
I'd be interested to hear peoples opinions on this
Comments
"It's so stupid it's funny" would be my summary.
I understand wanting to attract customers who will play poker regularly long term and not be driven away by better players from a business perspective, but it seems like a terrible decision in regards to the treatment of the players with higher win rates and will surely drive them players away from the sites implementing such a system. Which then leads to the point of whether it has any benefit for the business as its basically a no win situation, some players will now play more regularly with the change and others will leave for different sites, so not really any actual change to the income of the business? am i missing something..
Just c+p this explanation from a representative of one of the sites, as someone noted on the original post surely that is what the lower stakes are for e.g. learning the game getting better and building a roll?
Firstly sites should be declaring what they are doing in this regard, end of in my opinion. I don't like forced segregation at all but I think 'Beginner' tables would be good for site liquidity and the poker economy in general (there are obvious draw backs and parts which may be exploited, will go through them after the positives).
If a site has beginner tables (with stake limits up to, I'm plucking a number out of the air here tbh, $0.50/$1 on cash, $20 on tournies) it would encourage newbie recreational players to get their feet wet slowly it they choose to sit at them. It would work on length of time after registering an account and would last for somewhere between 2-3 months IMO. Benefits to this are:
- Less likely to be crushed immediately so more likely to 'get the bug' and not be discouraged with poker straight away. This will encourage new players to deposit more in the future if they enjoy the game.
- More likely to get immediate success, as above but for some people this will give the sometimes false reality that they are winning players and will keep depositing in the future under that assumption. Early success can really deceive some people to believe they are better than they are or that poker is easier than it is to beat, people get stubborn, people keep depositing.
Enjoyment of the game and self confidence/ego are two good factors for getting more money put into the poker economy.
Drawbacks, well much like men who can't beat $50 MTTs will enter a $1k women's event because of the value, some of the more devious members of the poker community will try to get into these games. On new sites/skins where they don't have an account, there's not too much you can do. But they only legally get one shot at this. Now of course some will try to multi account. Limiting stakes as I said above and sites putting some proper effort into stopping Multi-Accounting (a much bigger problem than just in this case IMO) would be the only way to combat this.
I really do not like the idea of segregation for an indefinite time period purely on win rate, might come back to why when I have a think about how to phrase it. Oh and just to make it clear, a beginner can choose either beginner or standard tables, so if a guy wants to punt on £25/£50 they can.
We don't think that will be a problem, though. After all, it's not as though there are other poker sites for them to go and play on that don't have our ingenious systems for segregating players."
That's a direct quote from one of the sites in question...
...Okay, I might have done some interpreting.
Ok I may be being a bit unfair, I do think stake limits as I have said above would really help to limit this as well. I did say $0.50/$1 before but maybe they need to be $0.10/$0.20 with a multi table limit of say 2 or 3?
But when you ban one lot of winners lesser skilled players will become winners, do you then move them to the winners section
We love poker because you can win.
The whole poker ecology problem has been caused by sites trying to attract multitabling poker players as they pay more rake. But they have not attracted enough gamblers to feed them.
Remember if you want to make money at anything in life you have to find people who are spending money.