I started in August 2005, in the beginning there were only 10 or 20 players online for most of the time. It was really funny, at my first visit online only 3 other players sat at a table and noone had a clue about poker, preflop raises were usually at least 20 BB with unlimited reload of chips, later the devs installed a tier system based on the bankroll of the players. The PAX system came late in 2006 iir.
Cheers
Jo
Ring-fencing games for new players is a great idea but I would refrain from adding the existing low bankroll players. If this is to be a learning zone I don’t believe that the “all-in til I go bust” game plan is one that our inexperienced players need to be exposed to in, what in essence must be, their sanctuary. Relentless bingo at the tables teaches bingo not poker. For this reason I suggest making this zone available to players newer than 4 months and all games should be low stakes. 1/2 …2/4… 3/6 ring games with 20k freeroll… 100…250 …& 500 buy in tournaments. Make it a safe place to go to if they are getting bashed about too much on the veterans tables.
I would also suggest that the broadcast window is binned at these tables and an all new “Mr Replay Says” window be introduced. Consider it as a teaching element. This window would be game specific and show the basic nuts and bolts stuff like game rules and hand rankings and cover things like poker terms and why 99222 is twos over nines and players must use 2 hole cards in omaha… how to read your lo hand in omaha8… create links to the forum pages so new players can ask questions. Make it a more prominent and interactive tutorial rather that an announcement feature.
I likely bought Poker Academy in 2005 and started PAO in 2006 I think. By then it had become quite popular and to give you an idea of scale, the way they worked Stilly’s weekly MTT was to open registration at 3PM Eastern and fill it up with 150 players in three minutes. I know HugoX won it 3 or 4 times, I won it once or twice and for a few years it always filled very quickly. It was programmed so that on the few days that it didn’t fill up, they would start the game at 3:09PM.
My poker background started when I gave up hustling pool around 1965. I played Tuesdays at the Knights of Columbia and on Wednesdays I ran a home game for a few years. The third marriage stopped my meanderings and started a number of night clubs in the Hamptons. Did that for twenty years and then started a few construction companies (still am owner but put in very little time). It was right around Poker Academy that I started to play online with Poker Stars at first but then settled n at Full Tilt Poker. I now play at Borgata’s online game.
I am a bad poker player and the only reason I have a decent bank is because I manage it well. I also pound hard when I know I am in the grove. I am decent at HU so when I see an HU occupied I will often jump in.
I will look for you some day soon and demonstrate how bad I am.
Peace,
Scratch
Oh, then I misunderstood the direction you were thinking of taking. my bad.
I thought the idea was to have all new players locked into a deep dark, smelly pit, with no daily bonus, until they reached 100k chips.
The idea of “safe spaces,” in general, makes me slightly ill, but in this case it actually sounds like a pretty good idea. As long as it’s voluntary, I don’t see a problem.
Now, about adding Badugi…
To also help out here, while there is ongoing chit chat with Paul and Shakeraise, when I brought up the subject I had not known that they had already started to act on repairing the freeroll system.
My ideas were strictly mine and not Replay Poker, and I was only suggesting things to get the discussion started. The 100K notion was mine based upon a $10 buy in for those season players who may want to by-pass the freeroll part. Maybe it should be $6 for 50K, but I have no idea what management is looking to do.
My apologies to all who were confused about this.
But I do have in mind with freeroll to use it also as an introduction to chip buying, which helps support all the good stuff we receive for free. The reason I volunteer is because I don’t want to buy chips and do hope to continue to do things to help.
Scratch
This would be great as I cant possibly play enough games to compete with the way they are set up now. For example, my average on the SnG (Low) leaderboard is the highest by a decent margin but I only got 60-something games in, not 120. Making it to 44th place overall with only 64 games in was good for me but it just shows that unless you play a huge volume of games, you don’t qualify for anything. Would be nice if the leaderboards were based more on merit and less on volume.
That being said, congrats to Satchypaul and abe23987 for a hard fought battle for top spot and some really impressive averages for the month. Same for all the players I had the privilege to play with in that arena.
Boohoo. People will always play recklessly when there is no consequence to their actual bank accounts. More rules and regulations will not change this fact. If you want people to play real poker, then you should play real poker.
I agree. They don tgive us a chance to see even thefirst 3cards.
they have no strategy.
Maybe their strategy is to prevent you from seeing the first three cards.
exactly…but we don t have have enough chips to take the chance…and theyknow it. Frustration…grrrrrrrr
There is a reason why it is called gambling. Let people go all in one hand after another (some do it in live play too, trust me) sooner or later someone will draw a hand and take them out. The all in one hand after another strategy does not work in the long run. If you are not willing to risk all of the chips you have in front of you on a solid pocket hand against a player who is using the all in hand after hand strategy then maybe tourneys are not for you. In a freeroll the chips cost you nothing. Why be so upset if you loose them? You can learn a lot and practice different strategies for no cost to your bankroll… So play and learn, learn from mistakes, learn from what works, keep playing and learning and you will get better and maybe you will be a chip millionaire too. There are two kinds of poker players #1 those who learn from mistakes, #2 those who don’t.