PokerStars Changes
Wednesday, May 5th, 2010The biggest poker room in the world, PokerStars.com, just announced some major changes to their cash game formats. Starting earlier this month they changed the amount of money (based on big blinds) a player can buy-in for in the NL and Pot-Limit cash games. In the past, there were two table types, 20-100bb and 50-100bb tables. For example, at $50NL a player could buy-in for $10-$50 or $25-$50 depending on the table structure. Most though this format worked just fine, players looking to avoid short stacks were able to do so by only playing on the 50bb minimum tables. Poker Stars, the world’s most popular online site, recently decided there was enough criticism to warrant a change. Gone are the two previous buy-in tables; they have been replaced by 3 different buy-in amounts at each level, 20-50bb, 40-100bb, and 100-250bb with a 20% ante.
This concept is intriguing because it clearly divides the player pool into thirds. It will be interesting to see where most of the fish show up by my guess is at the 20-50 and 40-100 tables. Most of the looser players do not buy-in full which might leave the “deep” tables with just regs taking each…