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Sorting out sitting out......
I'm in a rambly mood this morning, so bear with me here whilst I gently meander to my point.
I know I bang on a lot about PLO8 DYM's, which not many of you play, but there is an interesting convention there, which I thought I'd like to share with you, because, you know, it seems to be to be a nice thing. I like nice. I once got trolled for months by a chap because he said "tikay likes nicey-wicey". Lol, sorry 'bout that mate, but that's how it is.
Anyway, when a PLO8 DYM starts, & one of the players is "sat out", the other players, believe it or not, then go find the "AWAY" player on the other tables & remind them another table has opened & he or she is sat out.
Incredible, really, don't you think? But it happens every night.
The PLO8 crew are a right weird bunch in some ways. they have helped grow the traffic to enormous, previously unheard of, levels, without any help from Sky Poker, any Promos, anything, we just made it happen ourselves. Fantastic!
It maybe that players at ALL formats do that thing whereby they seek out AWAY players, I don't know. Do they?
Don't get me wrong. If a player has been away for the first 5 or 6 Levels, & we can't find him, I'm going to be attacking his dead blind, unless someone else does it first. I have no qualms about that, but because we have tried to alert him or her when it started, really tried, it seems OK to me. Yes, no?
There's also the occasional player who visits the dark side of sitting out.
I was 5 or 6 tabling the other night, & the BB was missing for the first 5 Levels, when it was passed to me in the SB, so I raised it up to steal his dead blind. Seemed pointless to check it down & let him win uncontested when he is clearly not there. But he suddenly appeared, re-potted me, I happened (by chance) to have a very playable hand, so we got it in, & he had the Aces. Fair play mate, I got my fingers caught in the jar.
I never sussed anything amiss, until he done it twice more, lol. Guess I'm too trusting. The guy was "working" the sit out facility, bless him.
Did it tilt me or bother me? Heavens, no. I'd nicked his Blinds 2 or 3 times, & then got caught, so that's fair enough. Cake & eat it.
It did set me thinking, though, about "AWAY" players & "sit-outs".
The PLO8 crew are generally nice, amenable folk, (minimum age 85) & we don't see much of the dark side, but what happens in other formats, MTT's, Cash Games, HU etc?
Do people mess around & misuse the sit-out facility much? If so, is that "fair game", or "a bit naughty"?
Are there rules which forbade such practice? (Etiquette apart, we all know the etiquette is bad, but we don't all agree that etiquette has a place in poker). If so, what are they? Honestly, I don't actually know if there are specific rules to cover this, or even if there should be.
What, if anything, should we do to ensure the sit-out facility works as it is designed to, to ensure we can sit out when we need to, but without ill-intent?
Should we be entitled to sit out whenever & for how long we want? If we do, should we suffer some "punishment" by a mandatory minimum sit-out period? How would that sit with "innocent" sit-outs?
In some formats, cash or HU for example, should we even be ALLOWED to sit out, ever?
Just curious really, as it's been nagging away at the back of my mind for a while now.
Thoughts, anyone?
Comments
First SIX levels.
I like letting other folk do all the hard work.
I just LOVE those folks who berate me for not playing many hands, whilst they sit there limping into every pot, lol.
More seriously, I tend to play 3 or 4 hour sessions of DYM's, 5 or 6 at a time, so I dont get the sync breaks that MTT-ers get.
I live alone, & like to go downstairs & make a cup of tea & maybe a pork pie out of the fridge halfway through my session, so yeah, I find the ability to press that "SIT OUT" button quite handy. I'd rather do that than just leave the tables open & so everyone gets delayed because I'm mid-ablution or whatever.
It's quite a complex area, when you think about it. Not my pork pie, I mean "sit outs".
What do other sites do, or is it not deemed to be a problem generally?
A site, of course, cannot penalise someone with genuine connection issues, irrespective of what "end" causes them.
If that was the approach, my guess is that hands would be insta-folded if you are away, which I'd assume is an easy (easier) software change - ie you then don't even have the split second needed to sit back in and click a min-raise.
Which in turn would possibly be seen as a negative for those who genuinely are away (because they're multi-tabling / answering the phone / sneaking a quick ciggie/drink/toilet break etc)... although not at odds with live play?
If they are "Away" and once the action has started then maybe they shouldn't be able join in that hand??
Bit of a minefield really.
So what exactly does the enboldened part mean? I don't really understand any of that sentence, sorry.
As Rory Breaker might say, now, you may enlighten me.....
However, how long do you give (to rec's or reg's) is a tricky decision. Kudos for you resetting stacs against a rec but regardless of the possibility of being free-rolled, is that not costing you money? Seeing as though in lots of HUSNG's the advantage can often come from early stages when the blinds are still small - instead of winning 5% (after rake) each SNG vs that REC you might be breakeven.
If I can (perm any four from nine) work, be on the telephone, have a bath, glug wine from the bottle, shovel twiglets into my pie hole, watch a movie, do my nails, listen to music or chat, then its a simple fact that men ain't trying hard enough.
So there!
In tournaments it could work if you're on a table of aggressive players all wanting to steal your blind
tikay, the politics of hyper husng's on the big site is incredible. i'll try to outline it briefly, but it is a big beast:
so here goes, ahem...
regs dont like playing other regs and sitting first in a lobby is a great way to avoid regs as they wont sit you. so virtually all regs on stars use a program called sharkystrator. this is a very cool program that auto-registers you in the next available lobby and is difficult to 'out-click manually'. sharky places everyone in a queue for the next lobby so the regs all sit in a line waiting for the next lobby to come-about all safe from each other.
the recs dont have this software and so rarely get an empty lobby and so always play regs. the problem is that this is a bumhunters paradise. bad regs waited in line at high limits and the queues got huge upto 60 in a line and depending on rec traffic this led to big gaps between games at mid-high limits.
one solution is for strong regs to clear the lobbies by sitting these weak regs and force them to move down. unfortunately this meant that small groups of regs where clearing the lobbies for large groups to freeroll off smaller wait times and higher rec/reg ratios.
so the regs formed cartels or divisions. basically all those in the group set sharky to auto sit anoyone not tagged as a member. anyone not in therefore cannot play recreational players at that level and will be forced to move down. only members of the division gets to play recs. this works and there are former $100 regs now forced into playing 7-15's as they cannot beat anyone semi-decent.
this is obviously bad for people trying to move up and some groups [100s down to $30] have clear entry requirements. if you achieve a certain ev ROI over a few thousand games against the division you are in and they vote a weak member out. this means to move up you have to play thousands of games against the better players and prove yourself.
there are some crazy politics above 100's: the $200 division is no longer accepting new memebers and at the very top you have people like dan coleman [one drop winner] who will only share if you take close to 200k off him. it aint happening, and his bankroll will out last yours. [colman: "I have good news and bad news. The good: Before becoming a 1k reg, you will have won 200k off me. The bad: Most likely not going to happen."]
heres an interview with a well respected british hyper player on his failed shot at establishing himself as a $1k reg [in which he lost $140k to colman alone].
http://www.husng.com/content/interview-richard-chadders0-chadwick-i-stopped-my-1k-shots
one thing to take out of that is that he had to set aside a years living expenses and be willing to lose a 150k+ to take a 'shot' and get established.
----
you can imagine the politics and ego that goes with all this.
one phenomena the sharky queue caused was that of 'sit-declining'. if there is a reg you dislike in an open lobby you can sit him then decline a rematch meaning he goes to the back of the queue and waits another 30mins for another game. you can destroy someones hourly doing thyat and this is frowned upon and 'sit decliners' are auto barred from entering divisions. also if you value your chance of moving up annoying leaders or established members of divisions is really bad, so blinding them down and not sending back etc is a no-no.
sitting regs can cause some horrendous ego problems. i use sharky and only avoid players i have marked as being worth avoiding [if an unmarked player is in a lobby and no-one ahead of you wants to play him but you do then you jump to the front and end up sitting the player]. one player i have been sitting has blocked scope stats and i genuinely thought he was a rec, here's the chat off our last game. there is some i didnt save where he accuses me of being an $5 av buyin player taking the p--s sitting $15 regs.
CezarPoker21 said, "fu borstal"
CezarPoker21 said, "gonna sit u everyday u little ****"
tommyborstal said, "whats up mate?"
CezarPoker21 said, "i said FU CK YOU"
CezarPoker21 said, "thats whats up"
CezarPoker21 said, "and that im gonna sit u every fukin day"
tommyborstal said, "oh ok good luck brother"
CezarPoker21 said, "im not ur brother biitch"
CezarPoker21 said, "fu k off"
tommyborstal said, "sorry if i upset you,dont like to make people upset"
tommyborstal said, "good luck"
CezarPoker21 said, "why?"
CezarPoker21 said, "and why the hell do u sit regs"
CezarPoker21 said, "when theres so many fish"
crazy politics and ego on display.
. Am so glad I will never ever reach that level and play with that type of person, thank you for this post teddy, and thanks Tikay for the refreshing way the "game" in my humble opinion is supposed to be played..with good grace and courtesy,true in all aspects of life I suppose. good luck at the tables.
Teddy, firstly, I really appreciate all this background info, thank you.
I also read every word of that link yoiu posted.....
http://www.husng.com/content/interview-richard-chadders0-chadwick-i-stopped-my-1k-shots
Crikey. Honestly, I dont know what to say, I'm utterly astounded at the whole thing.
Not sure anything I have ever seen or read in poker has quite shocked me to that extent, & I suddenly feel terribly old & out of the loop.
When 'Stars first started, I played SNG's there, starting at $10, then $20, then $50 which was the biggest they ran at the time. Then they started running $100, $200 & $500, & I played them all for a while, & won a tidy sum, $27,000, which was my first big "poker 'roll". Which I then promptly lost, as the games started to get tougher.
I sort of lost touch with all that stuff in around 2005, when I first began to work with recreational players in APAT & elsewhere, then, in 2006, I came to Sky Poker, & again, everything I do there is sort of based on recreationals, who, to me, are the backbone & foundation of poker.
I sort of shudder at all that "reg wars" stuff on 'Stars, & the Chaddick story. I've met Chadwick several times, he seems a decent bloke, & for the record, I have no gripe with him at all. It just blows me away, all the staking, & politics of who can play who.
I'm going to borrow some of the stuff you have written, & post it elsewhere if you don't mind (I'll credit you), as I'm just blown away by it.
Sorry to derail things a bit, but I have another question for Teddy, seeing as he seems to have his finger on the pulse of these matters.
You will have heard that Gus Hansen & Viktor Blom have both just parted company with Full Tilt.
I saw something by my good friend Barry Carter on Poker Strategy in which he stated that Hansen has lost $17,000,000 (SEVENTEEN MILLY) on Full Tilt since they re-opened in 2012.
I thought "that must be wrong, its just not possible", so I queried it with people in the know, & in fact it is true, it can be proven by readily available site stats, which I have now seen. In fact his total losses seem to be north of $25 million.
What?
How on earth did Full Tilt ever think that was good "Message" for their site, to employ a pro who is $25 milly in the poker hole? What Message does that send?
Looking back now, I can't help but think that the whole Full Tilt debacle was not confined to Ferguson, Lederer & Bitar. How could it be possible that the likes of Hansen & Ivey, who, between them were being paid more than a milly per MONTH, were not aware of what was going off?
And Gus is a "hero" to so many young players. Really?
Sheesh. I'm glad I'm just small-ball player these days, I simply don't recognize a world where all that stuff is going off.
Soon, more & more poker sites will move more towards looking after Recreational players, instead of paying folks to lose untold millions. It beggars belief.
Best regards,
Out of touch old fogey.
I can but wonder what sort of person he is in real life.
Regs do kill the games during rake races.
Rec's in the chatbox typing ZZZZzzzzzz then leaving far too often.
Thanks to Teddy for those posts, really interesting lunchtime reading, I never realised that the upper echelons of the game had become so shady. Would seem only a matter of time before things implode if there isn't a major change to what's going on up there?
And the noted on recs 'zzzzz' comments - didn't we have a thread on here (started by an infrequent poster) a couple of months ago asking whether Sky could reduce the decision clock on hands to speed things up... which would address this issue, but which got roundly slated as an idea by the majority of posters to the thread!