Changing the Rules

As the foremost critic of Internet poker on the planet I get a lot of attention. And the result is often like this shooting themselves in the foot. For twenty plus years the new player buy in has been 2000 chips. And now magically it's 999. You got that right 999. Not 1000.

You see, this number is perfect for running 500 chip buy in games where AI can mindlessly raise and someone with real talent won't accidentally stumble upon the table. Newbies stumble. They only have 499 chips left. Grrrr. Can't play another of those.

And it's not like the log in screen posts some friendly message about a upgrade.

Dabbling in PokerStars 50/50 games

Here's the way the game works. Once the table has half of the people who registered left it's over. You can conceivably finish in the money and lose chips, because the payout is the amount of the buy in without the ridiculous administrative fee tacked on plus $1 for every 100 chips you have.

It's basically pretty stupid. And just the latest bizarre addition to the weird games that get offered that no serious poker player would ever submit themselves to. The payoff is so low that it's amazing how these tables fill up so quickly. Kinda like a 5000 player tourney with a 100k buy in that you have to play for five hours to win $1,000 play money chips.

When I played on Full Tilt one of my favorite and bizarre games was one where you got points for knocking out opponents and lasting longer than others. Several times I placed in the money folding every single hand. There is some similarity here. I've registered for about ten of these and I've placed in the money on every single one. It's a simple matter of outlasting the AI beating each other to death.

Poker Sharknado

There's a movie that we love here at The Big Laydown. Sharknado. Why do we love it? Mindless escapism. Sharks getting sucked up into a tornado and getting tossed into people. The sharks magically just happen to have their mouths open when they land on a human. Don't think about science. That will just ruin the joyride. The phrase "a fish out of water" doesn't apply.

So I get a new dog and take a little bit of a vacation from PokerFrauds and what do I get? The 200k minimum buy in tables. Obviously filled with poker sharks not content to play for paltry stakes with blinds of 100/200. These sharks play with 2500/5000 blinds.

Considering that multiple tables are filled with these "people" it just shows that PokerFrauds doesn't care about the math.

Math and science are our friends. Me and my crack team of mathematicians (me and the dog) are puzzling on how a free money table can be filled with players that must have megamillions of chips. Oh, they must be megalodons like in that other classic shark movie Jurassic Shark. Thawed out from an ancient glacier and creating havoc in a fresh water lake. Well that science doesn't work. Maybe if it was set in the future you could explain it away with a mutation that sharks could breathe outside of a warm oceany venue.

Maybe if these tables were empty it could explain the math. It's just another poorly thought out idea that has AI playing against AI.

And Let's Not Forget Omaha Hi-lo

There is way too many chips here to even begin to think that this table is for real.

More Bad Software Bullshit

PokerStars has a search feature which really doesn't help them in regards to making it look like real people are playing. I went back to looking into my players not shown table from the last post. You can see the player list if you click on registering yourself.

I started to find players and most of them are blocked. Which means the default attitude is extreme modesty and you don't want other people to know what cool tables you are playing at. I finally latched on to one that wasn't blocked from being found. rwbw.

First of all, the thought that anyone would register for a game that is destined to start in maybe two hours from now isn't normal human behavior. And this is the only table that rwbw is registered.

The real gem here is that the find a player option shows the status of the table. And it shows this table that is registering on the lobby screen as running on the search screen. How do you explain that?

Why?

From what I've read Pokerstars is this ultracool site where there is this ultracool software that cooly makes the games more cool because it makes a cool framework for coolness. But the uncool facts continue to prove out the actual uncoolishness.

Inconsistency in the lobby and registration screens. Like maybe you have something to hide?

Since my dog decided to cool out and sleep I thought I might actually waste some time on a huge multiplayer game. My excitement for this was cooled when the registration screen didn't display normally. Instead of the usual cool list of what cool dudes and dudettes are waiting to play I get that 71 of 180 players are waiting and that the cool sit and go will begin when 180 cool players are sitting at the tables.

From a software standpoint this is pretty fucking stupid. If it was a private game that the names are hidden it would be easier to just not make it available. If it's just one of those randomly generated tables there's no good reason to not show the player list. And it's not like Pokerstars has gone on record and said that play money tables where Chris Moneymaker (or insert your favorite poker pro here) is sitting at won't show the player list before registration is complete.

I am amazed and confused at how Internet poker in general and PokerStars in particular can be so impossibly bad and I'm the only one that notices anymore. Ostriches with your head in the sand denying the evidence. Ostriches are not cool. They live in warm climates.

Jerry and his award wining cohorts

I'm supposed to believe I'm playing against real humans. And what I get is someone who bought into a table and their first conscious thought is something like, "Wow I'm really stoned, wish I hadn't logged into that table. Let me sleep it off and I'll get back to this."

The Guiness Book of world Records has recorded PokerStars activity in regards to "players" like Jerry.

Most AI in a single online tournament. PokerStars.
Most AI in the lobby screen. Pokerstars.
Most AI on the waiting lists. PokerStars.
Most AI sitting out. PokerStars.
Most AI in debt to the AI Mafia. PokerStars.
Most AI breaking the rules. PojkerStars.
Most clueless humans that play for real money without a care for math and random cards. PokerStars.