The Switch From Pokerstars to Party.... (no hand)

[kurto]

I know this isn't the right forum for this, but since this is where I regularly post, and I know I have some fellow pokerstars players here, I thought I'd indulge.

I switched because I wanted to use Gametime with live updating. What an amazing program.

Most importantly, there is a marked difference in the quality of the players (I play $25NL). It may be too short term to be statistically significant, but in the short weekend, it seems quite different.

DIFFERENCES-
*Much looser. I couldn't believe I was at a table where multiple players were seeing over %70 of all hands. You really don't see that so often at Pokerstars. Furthermore, I had players calling raises with 2-5os. There are fish at PS, but not quite as many.
* They WILL pay you off. If you hit a set, they'll call you with inside straight draws. I bet $50 into an $18 pot and got called by top pair. You just don't get that as much, even at $25NL on PS.
* This may be a product of the blind change, but the standard raise for many seems much higher. So many people open with $2 (8xbb) (as opposed to PS where 3-5bb seems standard). At many tables, this makes it more difficult to play speculative hands since many of them have 1/2 the buy in giving poor pot odds for more speculative hands.
*a lot more bluffing. Really, terribly bad bluffing.
*Less People seem to be able to read hands. On The river, there's a pair on the board, someone raises, someone else reraises... 2 other people call... and none of the callers can see the reraiser has a full house.
* The pots are larger (on average). People have larger pf raises, and there's much more (misplaced) aggression, the pots get larger.
* A lot more all ins. People seem to push a hell of a lot more. On less then premium hands too.
* players seem to have LESS ability to let go of a hand. People can't lay down AK... even with nothing.
THE BAD
*I don't care for the interface as much. You have to type in your bet since I find the slider awkward.
*no player pictures. (the photos make it easier to remember players)
*** No where does it say the current total in the pot. I find this odd. If you want to figure out pot odds, you have to add up everyone's bets yourself.

Last note... Bless you Party/pokertracker. I'm on one table with (autorated players) 2 fishes, 1 calling station and a bunch of tight passives (when they raise... I fold. Its easy). I've been averaging 185bb per 100. ALMOST ALL OF IT FROM THE SAME 3 PEOPLE. After 2 hours, they haven't changed the habits one iota.

See you regulars at the tables!

[Wayfare]

[ QUOTE ]
I know this isn't the right forum for this, but since this is where I regularly post, and I know I have some fellow pokerstars players here, I thought I'd indulge.

I switched because I wanted to use Gametime with live updating. What an amazing program.

Most importantly, there is a marked difference in the quality of the players (I play $25NL). It may be too short term to be statistically significant, but in the short weekend, it seems quite different.

DIFFERENCES-
*Much looser. I couldn't believe I was at a table where multiple players were seeing over %70 of all hands. You really don't see that so often at Pokerstars. Furthermore, I had players calling raises with 2-5os. There are fish at PS, but not quite as many.
* They WILL pay you off. If you hit a set, they'll call you with inside straight draws. I bet $50 into an $18 pot and got called by top pair. You just don't get that as much, even at $25NL on PS.
* This may be a product of the blind change, but the standard raise for many seems much higher. So many people open with $2 (8xbb) (as opposed to PS where 3-5bb seems standard). At many tables, this makes it more difficult to play speculative hands since many of them have 1/2 the buy in giving poor pot odds for more speculative hands.
*a lot more bluffing. Really, terribly bad bluffing.
*Less People seem to be able to read hands. On The river, there's a pair on the board, someone raises, someone else reraises... 2 other people call... and none of the callers can see the reraiser has a full house.
* The pots are larger (on average). People have larger pf raises, and there's much more (misplaced) aggression, the pots get larger.
* A lot more all ins. People seem to push a hell of a lot more. On less then premium hands too.
* players seem to have LESS ability to let go of a hand. People can't lay down AK... even with nothing.
THE BAD
*I don't care for the interface as much. You have to type in your bet since I find the slider awkward.
*no player pictures. (the photos make it easier to remember players)
*** No where does it say the current total in the pot. I find this odd. If you want to figure out pot odds, you have to add up everyone's bets yourself.

Last note... Bless you Party/pokertracker. I'm on one table with (autorated players) 2 fishes, 1 calling station and a bunch of tight passives (when they raise... I fold. Its easy). I've been averaging 185bb per 100. ALMOST ALL OF IT FROM THE SAME 3 PEOPLE. After 2 hours, they haven't changed the habits one iota.

See you regulars at the tables!

[/ QUOTE ]

Why would anyone want to play anywhere but party now?

[iceman5]

I cashed out of PokerStars last week and Ive been playing there for 3 years.

I think Stars and UB are going to be in serious trouble very soon. I still like Prima quite a bit, but Party is a very very large fish tank and the variance is much lower now that the blinds are lower and its not an all in fest.

[kurto]

"Why would anyone want to play anywhere but party now?"

I can't believe I waited so long to switch. Though I'm glad I learned on Pokerstars. Playing on pokerstars taught me to be tighter and more cautious. Though there were 'fish', there were enough good/tricky players to keep you somewhat on your toes.

Switching to Party is almost like a completely different game. A more crazy profitable game.

[kurto]

"and its not an all in fest" I don't think half the players have figured out that the lower blinds mean a change in style. I've seen more 'all ins' this weekend on Party then I would on a week at pokerstars.

[DasLeben]

Party NL is the greatest. I played over at Stars for a little while and just found it aggravating. Nobody would pay me off! I quickly switched back to Party, and I'm never leaving.

[AncientPC]

[ QUOTE ]
Why would anyone want to play anywhere but party now?

[/ QUOTE ]

[xorbie]

I find the potsize thing pretty easy, but I play live (home game) a decent amount.

[RiverTheNuts]

I hate the lame-o's that open raise 8-16 BB ... all you can do is wait for a monster and drill em...

[PinkSteel]

Care to elaborate on Gametime? I just picked up PokerTracker and have figured out a bit of it, and I've tried Gametime but I'm still manually filling in players' names when I sit down at a table. Anyone out there want to give a step-by-step on how to use Gametime effectively?

I'm also trying out PokerEDGE, but I'm getting the impression that PT Gametime will somehow make PokerEDGE irrelevant, if only I can learn how to use it properly.

I've been using these tools for less than a week, and even in idiot-user state the change is like night and day. The fish just stand out now. Amazing.

[kurto]

"Care to elaborate on Gametime?" Actually, you want to use Gametime+. Gametime+ automatically puts the stats for each player underneath their name. And it updates their stats in realtime. Its very easy to set up. (If I did it, anyone can! /images/graemlins/wink.gif) There are instructions for all of it in the Pokertracker and gametime+ boards and FAQs.

[zaxx19]

Is gametime+ a free program I downloaded it but it seems like it keeps reverting to the original table I set it to....i thought maybe i had a shareware version or whatever...

[theblitz]

There is another VERY important plus to using GameTime+

Since Party allows you to "observe" a game you can collect stats on the players before you play.
What I do is open 4 tables (the max it allows me) and go away for 1/2 an hour.

Then I come back and open up Gamtetime+.

In order to display the stats I randomly select one of the players sitting at a table and use him/her as "me".
Then I add that room and all the stats are then on the screen.

I have set it so that any players seeing more than 35% of the flop will be in red.

Doesn't take long to find which room is worth playing in and which to avoid.

[Jester999]

I friggin' hate the interface at Partypoker and love it at Stars, but I'm going to go give it another try. Ugh. But if I make more money, I make more money.

Nice post.

[theblitz]

It is freeware and needs PT to work.

[aces_full]

I'm another PS convert. I never played at Party because I thought the interface was dumb and the 50BB max buy-in was just lame. I started my online career playing .01/.02 NL with a $50 deposit on Stars. When I made a few hundred I moved up to .05/.10 NL and I beat that game for 11PTBB/100. Then I moved up to .10/.25 NL. I stayed at this level for nearly a year and I was able to eek out a meager win rate of 6PTBB/100. Just recently I moved up to PS $50 and $100 NL and got a big dose of humility. I realized that I simply wasn't as good of a player as I thought I was, just that the opposition thus far has been pretty bad. At Stars the $50 and $100 NL game players have an average VP$IP of less than 40%. Simply put, my big hands would not get paid off, but on the other hand, my leaks were now deluges. I would look at my sessions in PS and see a bunch of pots I won where I made maybe $5 or $6 profit, then one or two sore thumbs where I dropped $20 or more making for a losing session. I tried to work on my game, but I quickly grew frustrated with $300-$400 swings and in the end being little better than a break even player with a win rate at PS $50NL of a whopping .94PTBB/100 after 9000 hands.

I wouldn't say the competition at Stars up through NL$100 was great, but most of the players certainly knew where the fold button was. My tight, ABC game just wasn't cutting it. If I bet either everyone folded and I took a tiny pot, or I got called, in which case I was either beat already or close to it and I would lose half my stack. It's as if I was playing with my cards face up.

Then Party changed their blind structure....

I deposited a few bucks and started playing 6-max $25 NL. I have never seen worse players in my life. The number of players with VP$IP>60 and PFR%>20 is just astonishing. They will also pay off your good hands with literally nothing. At Stars I would look at a table with a couple of big stacks and move on thinking "don't want to play those sharks" At Party if I see a guy with $100 sitting at $25NL, now I think "all day sucker".

After 3000 hands at $25NL 6-max I'm making 23PTBB/100. Before I played at Party I used to read post here from guys who would post Party winrates of 10-20 (or more)PTBB/100. I would look at my Stars 6PTBB/100 and think to myself "These 2+2ers are either the next Gus Hanses or they are total liars." Now I have seen the light.

The bad players are just the tip of the iceberg. The ability to track opponents in real time is priceless. Another big thing that sold me on Party is their liberal bonus policy. I took full advantage of my initial deposit+ referral bonus and the March redeposit and have cleared nearly $400 in bonus money already in a very short amount of time. At Stars you need to earn 5FPP's for every bonus dollar. At NL50 it takes forever to clear, and at NL25 and below, why even bother with bonus money since pots will rarely get to $20. I'm sold on Party.

[RoyalLance]

[ QUOTE ]
I've seen more 'all ins' this weekend on Party then I would on a week at pokerstars.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think I have started my real money play at the wrong site. It's all Phil and Annie's fault!