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PokerStars - why?
Tikay10
Member, Administrator, Moderator Posts: 172,171
in Poker Chat
Yesterday we looked at why we play on Sky Poker, & it was a very illuminating thread in many ways.
Now I'd like to turn that on it's head, & ask the question;
Why do you play on 'Stars?
And if you don't, why don't you play on 'Stars?
For starters, I think we can leave the software out of this - we all know 'Stars software is the nuts, with all it's shiny bells & whistles.
So, that apart, why DO you play on Pokerstars?
Or, why DON'T you play on Pokerstars?
I'm equally interested in both questions, but just answer as appropriate to you.
And if you think 'Stars suck - & yes, many do - that's fine to say, but as with yesterday, let's just keep away from gratuitous rudeness or sarcasm.
If we don't get many replies, I'll stick up a few pointers to oil the wheels, but I don't really want to put words in mouths.
Over to you. We got 20 or more responses on the Sky Poker version, it'd be good to get as many for this one.
Thank you.
Comments
Stars is good for the poker purists
I remember starting a deep stack at 8o'clock on a Saturday morning it didn't finish till 8o'clock that night which is ok at weekends but it was abit daunting.
So unless I play the 180 sngs it really wasn't for me also I had abit of Haysie trouble trying to withdraw sixty quid which put me off
Good thread thank you
For me, when playing online poker, knowing that the games are fair and my money is protected are the two fundamentals. Without these two elements I would not play at all. Then third is the prohibition on third party software, lack of bots, stables and collusion. I am strongly against third party software and therefore moved away from Pokerstars to Sky. If in the future every site allowed third party software, I think I would stop playing poker.
Pokerstars has the advantage of an excellent range of games and I do miss playing mixed games. Part of the pleasure of first learning about poker was learning about the different games.
Quality of the software is a very low priority for me. Although I am aware that people have some negative views of sky's software, for me it is perfectly adequate.
Promotions and rewards are neither a negative or positive for me. Since sky moved from monthly to weekly rewards I am probably worse off as used to get around 300 points per week and I rarely play the freerolls. However, I can see others enjoy the freerolls so I can see the benefit to many that the change made. However, I should mention that whilst rewards and promotions are of limited interest to me, an increase in rake would be considered a negative.
The sense of community is good too aided by a smaller playing pool and perhaps a narrower geographical scope. Without being able to articulate exactly why, there is not the same community ethos when playing on Pokerstars. On Sky, players generally seem friendly, particularly in plo8 than on Pokerstars.
9max pretty hard to stomach and actually quite boring after being used to exclusively 6max on Sky
Also... more rake is not better
I will however make the time for things like half price milly, although this usually involves me taking Monday off work (just in case)
They have practically unbeatable zoom and they have a bazillion cash games running. Once you've got the swing of things I'm sure it's fine but I have never had the courage to try and grind cash on Stars. The biggest problem for me is you probably need to have multiple pieces of software to even have a remote chance and to improve on that you need to study how to use the software to have a remotely better chance.
So, tournaments take too long, and cash is more some sort of statistics game than any sort of poker. It's just not gravy.
The big downside to Stars are the ability of the player pool, the various enhancements via poker aids, the size of the rake, and the scaling down of the Rewards programme.
I enjoy playing on Stars from time to time, but I play more on almost every other site.
I don't play poker to make any profit from it I play for the enjoyment of it in the evening when the kids are asleep so all of the above really do not appeal to me anymore. Would rather player for smaller prize pool but have more fun doing so.
They make it way too easy for regulars to occupy tonnes of tables and the number of bad players per head is very low.
I think Zoom, or any form of fast fold poker is terrible for game quality and in many ways, not 'real' poker.
Games run incredibly slowly because of how many players are playing 10+ tables at a time and it is for me, incredibly tedious waiting for scores of mostly eastern European regs to cycle through their tables and then either mostly fold or 3 bet.
Also, I don't want to be playing against players who are using all kinds of software to pretty much automate nearly all of their decisions. I don't have a huge issue with tracking software etc. I'd rather it didn't exist but I don't mind that it does. However, I do have an issue with other software that updates in real time during hands providing information to players that they wouldn't normally have available to them just using their natural reads and instincts.
I don't want to play in games where those with the best software have the biggest advantage.
Also, there are tonnes of stables with tonnes of horses on Stars. I want to be playing against people who are putting their own money on the line and backing their own skills, not a bunch of people playing with other people's money using other people's strategies.
Stars IMO have to take a lot of responsibility for the the state of online poker right now. Back in the boom years, they just gave the regs everything they wanted. Faster deals at the tables, the ability to mass table, then zoom. They didn't do enough to discourage the development of third party software and they made it incredibly easy for players that wanted to automate huge parts of their games to do so which in turn made and still makes poker very dull there.
If they got rid of zoom and introduced a tables cap (which I would like to see Sky do as well) then I could see myself giving it a try but neither of those things are likely to happen, so I cannot see myself putting any kind of serious volume there any time soon.
The chance to win thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars if you can run super well in a $5/$10/$20 etc comp obv massively appeals, but the reality is you're gonna be up against thousands of other players all with the same dream. That's a lot of flips you need to win, and it will undoubtedly go well into the early hours if you do go very deep.
It's also kinda demoralising if, for example, you get to the last 100 of a $22 mtt, its gone on for about 16 days, and then you get KO'ed in 98th for maybe double your stake and you have to go to work on 3 hours sleep yet only 10 Freddo bars richer.
Think as an occasional dabble its ok, but not something I'd want to play week in week out. Fair play to those that grind MTTs over there.
These days it is the last site I would choose to play on since I disagree with a lot of the decisions Amaya made. Party poker have done a great job at stepping up and providing a viable alternative for large field good structured tournaments without screwing you over on the rakeback.
1. The chance to win huge.
2. The availability of MTT's with good guarantees.
Never signed up to stars or played there
Stars is open to anyone in the land while sky is UK players only
Friend of mine plays on stars & I dunno thousands in a field for a tourney seems abit to much for me
Mtt field sizes and no Double or Nothing games being the main reasons
Rakeback on there is a joke too, why they thought opening chests would be a good idea i dont know
Software is mass used there and player fields are huge as covered, its not a big issue but if i wanted to add in a bigger game on a sunday to mix things up id defo choose partypoker
+ PLO8 and NLO8 'more reasonable' field sizes, and lots of 'gamblers' in these games
+ antes encouraging action
+ pro streamers showcasing tournaments real time, feels like you can get involved
- NLH MTT large field sizes, can take 8 hours to min cash so can't play these too often
- use of tracking software
- too much pushing casino style games in poker lobby