Slow Players & Tables for Faster players

Suggestions & Feedback
1

Problem:
Firstly I want to say that players deliberately running the timer out to max or close to nearly every turn are the worst & most annoying trolls on replay. There is no way to fix this problem currently except to quit & change tables. At least with verbal trolls we can simply MUTE them rendering them totally powerless. Also bingo players are a minor nuisance in comparison.

I know some players are just slow and much slower on average than everyone else at the table. Some players have some legit excuses like playing multiple tables etc and are not maliciously & deliberately be irritatingly slow. Still we do all need to frustratingly endure the slower players.

Many have suggested making faster tables however the lightning fast tables are way too fast already & the normal tables are too fast IMO. The issue is players wasting or using much more allocated time EVERY single turn they play NOT bc they have a weighty/tough decision OR a big pot. Sometimes we need to use more time than average OR the max time to make a decision - nothing wrong with that WHEN necessary.

Solution:
I have a suggestion for RP about improving the overall experience in relation to slow players on replay. Give all players a speed rating on their profile either available to public to view or privately in player stats. Current tables (old tables) have a speed rating or the current average number of hands played per hour. It shouldn’t be hard to give a player this stat.

Have a limited amount of tables available for players that meet the minimum speed rating for the table. If a players speed rating is below the required table rating they will be unable to join the table.

Examples: MED stake 200/400 6player table H/hr ranges from about 60-80. So maybe a reasonable min limit could be 80.

The limit could be specifically set by RP or it could be set/moderated like bitcoin etc based on an average or medium for specific tables stakes, No# players, game type etc.

Summary:
Regardless of exactly how the MIN player speed is determined & set for each limited table this would be a good and reasonably simple solution for players frustrated playing with slow players & SLOW troll players.

Please comment on thoughts suggestions.

2

“Regular” and Lightening Bolt games on Replay are to fast? Would Just a few extra seconds be Proper?

1 Like
3

That’s all you took out of my post?

Did you actually read ALL that I posted? I’ll get back to that… I think the “regular” games are adequate. Honestly I don’t ever remember not having enough time to act on a regular table. I have many times run short on lightning or turbo tables. Most of the time its bc of lag and the tables playing up. Many times I’ve had NO option to play at all. I couldn’t call/fold/raise on turbo tables bc of lag.

HOWEVER a few times I have folded out after running out the timer bc I was THINKING. Thinking about calling or even raising or even betting as the aggressor etc bc the turbo tables are too fast on the odd occasion I really need time to think.

My point is making the tables faster isn’t the solution. I’ve played on sites that are much faster & more directed at gambling rather than decent poker. It’s fairly easy to tell these sites are more tailored towards promoting gambling with the players. Everyone knows online poker is much faster that LIVE poker. That’s a good & bad think. I like RP bc it’s not too fast like some poker sites & apps that encourage players to gamble all their chips away.

Honestly I feel RP does a decent job to provide a decent poker playing experience.

NO!!! I don’t want a few extra seconds per turn or action. The current time allocation is adequate.

As a side note: in the WSOP players have 30sec to act & 4 extra 30sec time bank chips allocated each day. I think this could be a good idea for tournaments on replay. Also PokerStars has a timebank chip system for both ring & tourney games.

Summary:
I’m happy with the current “standard” tables & timer. I don’t want them faster to combat slow play trolls.

I think there are a few options to make for faster games for those that desire that.

4

What are your thoughts on Bingo play?

6

Replays tables/timers are insanely fast and do not have time banks/extensions. This is fine as we’re playing for free chips. I am consistently more annoyed with the players at the table getting after people in chat for being slow. Zzzzzzzzzz!

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7

Hey there @DogsOfWar, I share your frustration and feel your pain :slight_smile:

I can’t find the reference immediately but I believe that players who deliberately or excessively run down clock can be reported. If the 75% of us who play sensibly consistenly reported those who waste time, the problem would disappear PDQ!

Let’s assume reporting players is not an option for you …

So, let’s give every player a rating “average time to play” (ATTP). That’s easy enough so far, it’s just adding a field to the player database. A flag for public/private is very easy to implement as well.

There’s two criteria for implementation that immediately come to mind:
Security: That is, players can’t do anything to affect their rating except to play faster or slower.
Accuracy: This should be obvious :slight_smile:

Security is easy, the ATTP is stored on RP database as part of the players other data and processing is done server side. I doubt if anyone would bother on a free chips site but client side processing is much easier to crack. Even it’s not strictly required, I think it’s essential that RP maintain the same security standards as a real money site.

Accuracy: this is where I see a problem. Depending on the quality of the internet connection, every player suffers lag problems, some much more than others, some more frequently than others.

To be accurate, every player needs to send timing info to the server for every hand. As I write this, there about 1500 players seated. If every player, on average, is sending timing info every 15 seconds, that’s an additional 90,000 transactions per minute. However, it’s not just a receive, update transaction.

There has to be a reality check. It’s obviously not possible for a player to play in negative time or a time greater than the game clock allows. Does 10 consecutive long delays indicate a client side problem, lag or is the player being slow? We need some sort of criteria here to stop players being disadvantaged.

Speaking of network problems, how do we account for lag? Let’s assume that the server pings every active player every 30 seconds. As each player reports their timing info, we subtract the lag time. Now we need another reality check! Not only that, but we’re constantly updating a player list = more pressure on the server!

There’s probably 10’s if not 100’s of these sorts of things that have to considered and implemented and every single one them must be done server side for security.

Finally, for this post, there’s bandwidth concerns. In discussions with other players, I get the feeling that there’s so few players who pay to play (buy chips or put money in the tip jar) that RP have to decide whether they want to cater to existing/new players or use their precious bandwidth on additional data.

I could probably write hundreds of words on this but I shall spare you!

Please don’t get me wrong - I love your idea and it’s not difficult to implement … if money isn’t a problem! I’ve been considering your post since just after it went live. I can’t see any secure way of putting the processing on to the client side so RP need to upgrade their server and increase bandwidth.

I believe that RP use Google however that does not change my argument. Addtional processing power and additional bandwidth are not free.

I’ve been a wet blanket here and I’d love it if someone can implement this idea without cost other than programming time.

Regards,
TA

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Hey there @dayman

I can’t find the reference immediately but I believe that players who “zzzzzz” other players can be reported.

It annoys me as well but, in all honesty, I’m just too lazy to do anything about it - I prefer to save my time for reporting *phobic comments, inappropriate usernames etc.

Having said that, it’s not impossible that I might have, once or twice, snarked at a player who does do that :slight_smile: I wouldn’t recommend it as that can get the mods on your tail instead of the person who is the real problem!

Regards,
TA

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@zmansuncle This thread isn’t about Bingo players. PLEASE find & discuss this under the appropriate topic. THANKS

PLEASE try and stay on topic. If this topic doesn’t interest you, that’s fine. Please find one that does!

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WOOOW Thanks for your response @theanalyst01:
Firstly I need to say my response is terribly written & LONG. Sorry I really should draft write in a word app first.

I appreciate your expertise on the subject, especially on an IT technical level. Client side means that servers & replay handle & process data & monitoring stats etc for lack of a better word? Yes, that seems to be demanding & costly for RP. I’ll get back to that but first.

I think the time bank chips would be a great idea for MTT players as I already mentioned & @dayman mentioned. I doubt MTT games experience SLOW troll players like ring games. I have experienced a SLOW troll in a low stakes SnG game a few times.

Also regarding reporting as you mentioned I personally will almost never report. I will only do so in extreme circumstances: excessive bad language, racism & discrimination in any form. Previously I had been warned about reporting players that RP deemed not an issue etc. Also I’ve been reported by trolls for fighting back etc. I got reported for complaining about slow players even and mentioning “I’m slowly dying here” etc. I could only guess my comment was interpreted as “dark” or suicidal which seemed like a ridiculous exaggeration from my point of view. In any case I feel as adults we shouldn’t need to dob on players like we are in baby school & generally speaking the report system on RP isn’t very good. I’ve had a few bad experiences with the report system BUT that’s my problem - I’m sure many feel it’s more than adequate.

I’m not very knowledgeable RE technology, IT etc but what about this as a general idea. Based on a similar idea to bitcoin let the individual players record, process & cross verify data & accuracy. RP could create a unique ID for the hand & table (record), send it to all players in hand before or while dealing. DateTimeHand# or just hand#. Each player also adds unique player ID to table completes the field for each & every players turn: how long to act? The result is entered in table ie 3sec or 9sec after the hand is over, SHOWDOWN the completed table is sent to RP to record. RP will record & enter data in its own table & each individual player table. From my limited understanding this should be relatively easy.

If we replay a poker hand the exact details of how long each player takes to act are recorded & reenacted more or less perfectly. So I presume somehow replay records how long it takes players to act.

The players ATTP figured could be calculated & updated to profile every 15mins or 1 hour or requested available every 15mins or 1 hour etc. I’m not a fan of BitCoin BUT I do think it has amazing potential. I’m completely uninterested in using BitCoin but I think it’s incredible interesting and inspiring for changing how things are done.

Based on this general system I would think it wouldn’t add significant strain to RP & servers. At the start of the hand RP gives unique hand ID to each player authorizing table creation. At the end of the hand a completed table is received from each player involved in the hand: dealt 2 hole cards.

Two Transaction or data packages are sent from RP to all active players:

  1. at the start of hand: unique hand# & Table (record). Player will respond YES: acknowledged & received.
  2. at SHOWDOWN RP & possibly all active players will request: send all tables to RP to record & save. END HAND.

Whilst I was writing this & I was considering could there be a simpler way to give players a basic ATTP score. I hope & I’m sure there is. Replay has some extremely basic players stats in comparison to other sites. It does have these stats though and does process and complete them in our profiles.

As I mentioned we can replay a hand# accurately for the time it takes each player to act & RP records stats on our profile. I find it hard to believe it would be hard to give ALL players OR only the players that wanted an ATTP rating/score for NO SLOW POKE tables.

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@DogsOfWar, just a quickie because (a) alcohol (b) time to think … can you work out the relationship between those lol

RP is the “server” and the player is “client”. What I said is that your original proposal puts pretty much all of the processing and bandwidth (data over the internet) demand onto RP (“server side”) because we can’t trust the players (“client side”).

Ok, blockchain technology (bitcoin etc) is probably overkill but you’ve got me thinking that there might be some way for random players to record the times of some other random player. This record could be passed along or maybe shared as players come and go. Call it “bitcoin for dummies” :grin:

I hadn’t considered the replay hands but you’re right, the delays exactly match the real life delays. I don’t know enough to comment on the difficulty of harvesting data from the stored hands. However, unless and until more players contribute to the RP “pot” I’m anxious to make bandwidth and processing demands the players problem.

The biggest problem I can see with client side processing (players computers) is that players would have to download something. I really doubt if HTML5 can efficiently handle the networking demands.

Sorry, I didn’t address your suggestions about “special” tables. That’s a walk in the park. Absolutely no reason it couldn’t be implemented quickly and cheaply.

Sorry mate, let me work on the rest of it :slight_smile:

Regards,
TA

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Next time I’ll try to ask an easier question.

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There’s nothing faster than a bingo table. Everyone just goes all in or folds. When you look at the tables with the highest hands per hour rating, you know before you sit down it is a bingo table. I prefer to actually think about my hand and play poker, so I’ll hang out at the slow tables.

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Just to clear things up: this entire thread was RE “special tables” only for players that qualify ie have proven not to be slow or below the min ATTP. I’m not proposing a system where players are chastised etc or excluded from normal tables for being too slow. I do think we should encourage players to play at a reasonable pace BUT most do anyway. Continue to have all current tables & add some rare/limited - 1 out of 5 (or less) Faster tables for players that want to play with decent non slow poke players. Example add a few tables to low & med stakes for testing: one table for 100/200, 200/400, 500/1000, 1k/2k (9, 6, 4 player tables)

Also this ATTP could be totally limited to those that agree. Maybe a default ATTP could be harvested from past 100 hands etc and updated only on special tables.

Also I forgot to address if your experiencing lag that’s “your” problem don’t make it everyone else’s problem to put up with. I’m not a statistician but i propose a median or some way to take 60%-80% of hands played by players & exclude the 20%-40% fastest & slowest hands played per 100 hands etc. I think even 80% is too generous over 100 hands BUT it’s a guestimate. This will allow for discrepancies in lag or even if player occasionally aren’t paying attention etc.

I’m from Australia and occasionally I experience terrible lag, that strangely only affects a few seemingly random tables. Most notably low stakes 50/100 ring on rare occasions has been worst I’ve noticed. I usually just quit after a few hands bc it’s unplayable for me BUT it’s gotta be irritating to everyone else when it keeps running my timmer out max everytime on what was previously a fast paced game.

Yes bitcoin & blockchain is overkill. It’s just an inspiration. This “ATTP” which you coined & data RE player speed doesn’t need to be encrypted from my noob understanding. It’s not highly sensitive or valuable data. I barely even understand bitcoin & blockchain BUT i would guess this encyption process is much much too slow to process the amount of replay hands required every few minutes or even to process 1 hand in a reasonable amount of time.

From my perspective this system or my idea seems fool proof enough to work. Even a heads up game with only player1, player2 & RP server data & comparing the 3 records should be sufficient enough to be accurate. Maybe I’m naive but i can’t see sufficent reward to hack. Also i bank on the fact, if it happens fast enough its not possible to hack/exploit.

I have considered that the clients would need to DL software to process. One big criticism i have RE the crypto currency is people trying to make money from it running massive server systems etc. BitCoin originally seemed to be money is root of evil & anti greed & decentralisation but in the end possibly a new evil. There seems to be a lot of I do propose small bonuses for players to DL & run software. It only need be very small & very limited.

I am inspired by crypto currency & BitCoin etc, but we need a seamless, unexploitable & minimally rewarding system.

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Check all the stats of tables low stakes. are the slowest owest stake tables are the slowest. The higher the stakes the faster players play. The lower stakes tables also have much much bigger pots. I’m talking about pots relative to the buy in. I noticed pots at the lowest stakes were 300BB-400BB commonly. there is a 1/2 9 player table avg pot 1.9K thats nearly 1000BB per pot!

The highest 5/10 table was 200BB avg per pot. 50/100 was 100BB.

As you move to higher stakes the size of pots is reduced. The speed of play also increases.

This obviously doesnt make sense with your hypothesis nor my original expectation.

I know there is more bingo lower stakes yet strangely enough slower play. Makes no sense but its true.

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Apologies to any annoyed, upset, offended by caps use and apparent shouting. If required i will edit and fix all post if required.

Let me know. thanks

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Please edit your last post. Thank you

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np. fixed all i can. im trying to fix old posts but it wont let me. done my best. thanks for noti of problem.

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Hey @DogsOfWar, I see that the moderator already piped up. It really sounds like you’re a bit angry with me which would make me disappointed.

Maybe you were making some good points, do you think it’s possible to rewrite it?

I’m happy to leave this discussion if it’s not going in the direction that you are happy with.

Regards,
TA

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@theanalyst01
There is no problem. I was using all caps, translation: shouting. I was only using it for emphasise (not anger) on single words but thats inappropriate for these forums. I’m not angry with anyone, least of all you @theanalyst01 .

The Mod/s ignored my misdemeanor i guess bc i wasnt using caps excessively for the most part. Im new on RP forums. Its been brought to my attention not to use caps but bold instead. thats just the way i have always chatted in casual settings.

regarding anything you mentioned or anyone else i appreciate all discussion. at the end of the day im 99% confident RP will never be interested in my ideas nor your ideas RE this discussion. its all just interesting discussion from my point of view. there is no wright or wong answers. mostly what i get out of discussion is ideas & brainstorming.

I got a lot out of everything you mentioned. ill retype it tomorrow less messy & more concise.

As a small side note i think everyone should have a say regardless of whether we like what they say or not. as RP says challenge ideas not ppl. i appreciate your candour but please dont offer to leave the discussion.

again let me be clear im not angry or upset with anyone - quite the contrary.
Thanks for your response.

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@DogsOfWar,
This has been debated before.
No matter what the standard is for a timer 5 sec, 10 sec, 20 sec, 1 min… Even when you add TimeBanks ( also suggested before )… What you’re saying is you want to dictate how other players use or don’t use thier time.

On a ring table I usually only play fast tables for this very reason… max timer there is 1/2 what a reg table is… When players sit @ slower tables rather than starting a fast table… they shouldn’t whine about ppl using the legal allowable timer however they want… thats assuming there’s no lagg or connection issues @ play, or multiple tables.

Because Multiple tables create thier own issue, are you now willing to further restrict players to X# of tables ?? where will your restrictions end ??

What bothers me more is in SnG/MTTs … early on you wanna see as many hands @ low blinds then fewer hands @ higher blinds , not to mention @ bubbletime without hand4hand players will regulate table speed accordingly and to blinds in general. MTTs you really can’t be choosy on fast/slow timers , so having some donk waste blinds every hand early on sux rocks, but I Agree that whatever time you give players… its up to them on how they use it. (5sec, 10sec, 20sec, 60sec)

I like a good flow to betting, but I can’t dictate how you play your alotted time.
–Nor should I be able to–
Sassy