I would be nice to see who the spectators are.
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why?will it improve your game?
Only the Shadow knows, bwa-ha-ha-ha.
I agree. It would be nice. Not sure if it’s practical, though. And, I doubt it serves any serious purpose unless the spectator chat is annoying, but mostly they just watch quietly. I guess I’d be in favor of it, but don’t see it as a high priority wish.
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I usually can figure out who is watching…I know who my stalkers are…lol
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Why not? Will it hurt your game?
i too would like to look at the spectators
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I don’t worry about who is watching,i worry about who is sitting at the table…lol
I sometimes watch tables before I sit,just to get a feel of how the play is going…good way to scope out the competition!
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This is a common request, and reasonably so! We plan to look into implementing this once we’ve moved away from Flash.
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@fizzymint you piqued my interest. Did I read that you’re moving away from Flash? Does this mean, (please, please, please) that I will be able to play Replay on my IPad Mini??? Oh, let it be so!
Also, just an aside to the folks talking about spectators, I would VERY MUCH like to know who is watching and I would also like the ability to mute their chat. On occasion spectators can be a fairly large pain. Thank you for your consideration!
I’m not sure about playing on your iPad Mini but RP is moving to HTML5…should be substantially faster as I understand.
But likely not from spectators standing at a respectful distance. What’s wrong with quietly and anonymously hanging back and evaluating the players at a table if there’s no commentary? If you are playing concentrate on your opponents. If you’re easily distracted by someone standing behind you, try to focus more.
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i’m not completely sure, but i read once it means you can play from your smartphone, so i imagine ipad should work as well. but i’m not 100% sure.
however there’s one big problem, even though it’s replay’s major priority. it’s already announced a very long time ago (more then a year IIRC) and still there is no idea when it will actually happen.
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Yes! Ditching Flash has a few major perks. We can much more easily make changes to the client, it should run smoother for a lot of players without all those pesky updates keeping you off the table, and you’ll be able to play on mobile devices.
This is an understandable position – I don’t think everyone will agree that we should allow viewable spectators. It’s something we’ve chatted about a bit, and we do think it’s fair that people know who’s watching them.
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I vote to SHOW spectators and i cant wait for Replay to switch over to HTML5 as there would be less headaches playing.
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Anonymous spectators are only tiny, almost invisible numbers on the bottom right corner. How can they possibly affect our game? Is the idea that “somebody” is watching you disagreeable? But we are being observed already, and much more attentively, by our opponents at the table.
I think to reveal the names of the spectators bears several problems.
We might want to observe silently a game for different reasons, for example, to see how friends are going on, without putting them under pressure with our presence, to see what sort of people attend tournaments we never play, or to learn new formats, and many more. All perfectly understandable.
It would be embarrassing for most spectators to show they are watching other players. They wouldn’t want to be seen as “spies”, or worse, as “stalkers”. They would probably give up, and this is a great pity, in my opinion.
Some people told me, they have often watched me play, and I mostly answered, I’m glad I didn’t know it, or I’d have felt compelled to play well, instead of donking around as I sometimes do. 
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Actually not that simple. If the spectators wish to remain anonymous (for the reasons I mentioned in my previous post), they wouldn’t with your proposal.
And why should they not? They are not doing anything forbidden or mysterious! Just watching!
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Almost all cardrooms especially during tournament play, commonly allow “railbirds” to watch. It’s worth pointing out they’re called that because they must be “beyond the rail” and do noting that might influence the game or its play. (A “sweater” is a tolerated guest, often inside the rail, who literally sweats for his/her player, and is easily recognized by being seated near or behind their chosen player but not at the table.)
I see “spectators” as no more or less than railbirds. It would be nice to “look up and see who is watching” just as we can in live play, so long as they cannot influence the play or outcome of the game. Perhaps the easiest solution is to allow railbirds without the ability to chat during the game.
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I completely agree that spectators, railbirds, shouldn’t be able to chat with the players. That they can is just weird, I’ve never personally seen it abused with outright kibitzing but I have been startled when I see a chat line from someone who’s not sitting at the table.
Maybe if a railbird is friends with one of the players at the table, the player could see their name listed just as they’d recognize their face in the crowd?
As someone who both enjoys watching and having friends come in to watch and chat with me, I would hate for chat to be banned from spectators. So long as the chat does not impact the play (ie no coaching while a hand is in progress), I can’t see the harm. This is a social poker site and IMO its always nice to have people to talk to if you want. No one has to read the chat or respond to it if they don’t want to.
As to whether spectators should be identified, I’m agnostic on the issue but leaning towards no. If a spectator makes a comment, then they are of course revealed but what’s the point of listing people who are simply watching? What about if a moderator has been called to look into bad behavior? The offending parties would likely stop what they were doing if they saw a mod appear as a spectator and resume once the mod left. I think this would make their jobs harder.
Since anyone can look at the last 200 hands of anyone else on the site anonymously, making live spectators visible wouldn’t stop someone from observing your play and staying hidden anyway so what would be the point? Just my personal opinions of course but I don’t get why having spectators would bother anyone to the point where it affects their play or their enjoyment of the site.
Added: I’ve had players ask me to look at their play and see if I notice anything “wrong”. It helps to remain hidden so they don’t know I’m there because if they did, they might alter their play and we’d lose the opportunity to analyze because of that. I know there are other informal coaches out there who probably do the same thing with players they are trying to help. It works in reverse too, where I want people to peek in at my play and tell me if they notice anything. I never know if/when they are around so I just play my game and therefore get the benefit of their candid observations.
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I thought we were all already anonymous. Silly me.
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