Joke players

And now to resay what I typed last night but which disappeared into the void when I hit "submit" without filling in the captcha...

I started playing pokerth a bit more than 5 years ago, when I had to spend a long period immobile after a severe injury. Spending many hours a day playing poker was a lot of fun and for sure helped with my recovery. Back then, there was just one rather prolific troll, who was clearly mentally unwell and did his best to ruin games by going all in every single turn without fail. He did that under quite a lot of easy to recognise sock puppet accounts and it was a little bit irritating, but it was only one person, so fairly easy to avoid.

Now, for whatever reason, there are dozens of people afflicted by this mental illness. Pretty much every single game I play is now ruined by them. Several morons will be betting stupidly every single turn, and one of them will usually have ridiculous luck, somehow eliminating players with high pairs when they go all in with 27 off suit and things like that. Perhaps it's just that there are so many of these ill people that it make probabilistic sense, or perhaps there is a fundamental flaw in the game engine.

Either way, the game is becoming pointless now. It's gone massively downhill in entertainment value since I started playing, fundamentally because there's no mechanism to stop idiots ruining all the games.

I appreciate the efforts of the developers in putting together this really fantastic poker server, and I hope they will take the action necessary to stop their excellent creation being ruined by mentally ill idiots.

I'll make you a suggestion visit BBC and show us your can
http://bbc.pokerth.net/index.php
I hope you do not get me wrong
I would be happy to play with you

Hi rebecca,

I do agree with you that is tedious play against that kind of trolls and bingo players, but I don't think that block them is the right solution. From my point of view, everybody has the right to play, no matter how. Anyway, they can also create a new account, so blocking them won't solve a lot, and gives us a lot of useless work maintaining a black-list. Besides, there is a lot of people with low average, if we block them all, we'd lose a lot of people and we can't afford that. I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but I hope you understand.

However, I'd like to offer a workaround, that Ghost__ already noted: private cups/tournaments. Do you know BBC and WeC? Those are alternative championships made by players in which is difficult to encounter those kind of players, specially in WeC, because it has admittance requirements and a player with 2/3/4 as average cannot join. BBC is also an excellent alternative. Despite the fact that BBC has no previous requirements, players with a very bad average, don't usually get invited: http://bbc.pokerth.net/exp4/description.php

Regarding WeC, here you can find information: http://pokerth.net/community/wec/12126-we-cup-seasons-2014-2016#19266 (as far as I know, veterans rule is now deactivated, but I'll come back soon). You cannot be a WeC member yet, but you are very close. You only need to reach 300 ranking games keeping 1-4 positions over 60%: you are 62.83% currently, which is more than enough.

Believe me! I understand how you feel, because some time ago I felt the same. That's why I put a lot of effort to become a WeC player. However, in time I got used to play with those players

Kind regards,
tahr

I play the monthly cups and occasionally BBC. Made it to one of the final tables every time I was in a monthly cup, hope I can win overall sometime. But plenty times I just feel like playing a single table and it would be nice if that option hadn't been ruined.

A couple of points about my suggestion. Firstly it would be no work to maintain anything and no-one would be blocked from playing. Merely, if *I* have added someone to *my* blacklist, then if I create a game, they cannot join it. And if they are on the table in an open game, they are indicated so that I can choose not to join. No other effect. If you like playing with these people, then don't blacklist them and carry on. Join their games if they create them. If you don't, then do blacklist them and you can much more easily avoid them. From my point of view this would entirely solve the problem.

Secondly, you say "if we block them all, we'd lose a lot of people and we can't afford that." Well to say again, I'm not asking you to block anyone. Just to create the possibility for good players not to have all their games ruined by idiots. And yes, you can afford to lose idiots who ruin games. If you encourage their stupidity, then good players simply don't bother playing any more. This is in fact exactly what has happened: compared to 5 years ago there are way more idiots, usually three or four completely ridiculous players on every table, and most games are stupid and pointless until the idiots finally go out.

How many people do you think play a few games, find that three or four morons playing stupidly ruin each one of them, and never play again? And you think you can't afford to lose the morons? I could not disagree more.

Hi rebecca,

if you endure another 30 ranking games and still are above 60% with positions 1to4, it'd be a pleasure to welcome you to WeC.

Though playing alliners is easy money quite often, I like your suggestions.

Imho - admins don't kill me please - the marking should be be possible somewhat like the 'hide-avatars-of-blocked-players' feature that already is implemented. This is client behaviour only and your BL is stored locally. I'm in doubt preventing BLed from joining server created games, becomes more than a feature request. But the programming guys are quite good. Let's take potluck with them.

Regards

Emmeler

Hi,

ranking games should be overhauled completely, probably server side created games combined with a lottery could be a solution, you click on “join ranking game” and you’ll put in to a random ranking game with constant table settings through all ranking games. Only downside is that you probably can’t play ranking games regularly with your friends.

I’m not a fan of blacklists put in to an algorithm because it can horribly backfire due to the small PTH community. Just imagine all your “enemies” spread over all tables available, means you can’t join any ranking game.

Also patience is golden, especially against allinner/ bingo players.