Gives Feedback on Multi Lobbies, Higher Buyins and More
February 17th, 2012 - PokerStars has been giving input on potential changes to the popular heads up sng games offered on their site. The most likely change appears to be an "add another table" feature, which PokerStars representative Steve Walmsley commented, "This is a clear improvement with little to no downside, therefore we will strongly consider adding this in the future."
Other potential changes include a deal or chop button, allowing two players to agree to split the prize pool during any time of the match, a semi-popular feature that Full Tilt previously had in their heads up sng games. Concerns still remain about two players utilizing the chop button to increase their VPP count.
Two other changes being weighed in on are adding or reducing time to the rematch button and also the issue of opening up extra lobbies at particular buyin levels. Both of these issues seemed to be debated on both sides within the community, and PokerStars said as much in their response. They did, however, indicate that if extra lobbies were to be added, it would likely start with lower buyins and the biggest factor considered would be games launching too quickly at popular buyin levels.
The last change commented on is the potential adding in of higher stakes heads up sng buyins. Walmsley spoke about this one at length, saying "There are certain risks and costs associated with offering Sit & Gos that are relative to the buy-in rather than a fixed overhead, such as refunds due to technical issues for example. The percentage rake on $5000 HU Sit & Gos is already very low. When you deduct the costs associated with those risks, the normal overhead and the VIP rewards for players, who at these stakes may often be Supernova+, there is very little left over. We are not eager to create additional offerings at this level of rake and players would no doubt expect rake to be even lower at higher buy-ins."
Steve, did, however add, "At some point in the future we may introduce a method of unregistering players from all unstarted Sit & Gos when they lose network connection with our servers. If this happens, we will evaluate the impact on the costs of offering higher buy-in Sit & Gos." Regular users will remember that the disconnection issue was a major talking point within the community when German player Plauzee, along with Alloman, blinded down and kept money from high stakes regular and new German PokerStars Team Pro Bjoerni89, resulting in a long and contentious 2p2 forum thread and the eventual partial repayment by Plauzee and subsequent reimbursement from PokerStars.
Users can participate in the community feedback thread for heads up sngs on twoplustwo. PokerStars reps have stated that they will be reading and commenting on feedback in that thread. One change that has not yet been commented on, but is expected to be commented on due to the widespread support it has garnered, is additional promotions and/or leaderboards being ran in the heads up sit and go section of PokerStars.
Concerning the "add another table" feature: It would be great if you could not just add another table, but invite the opponent you are playing with to play a HU SNG at another table against you, so that he just needs to accept the invitation - similar to the rematch function. It would be great if you could open some tables against the same opponent that way at the same time.
isnt that the point?
The main argument against the "invite any player" function is that people feel it could lead to fish getting dozens of invites in short periods of time to play heads up, a bit predatory and a turn off even. I think that point is worth considering, though I believe Stars thinks about this impact very carefully when considering any sort of new change like this.I like the "add another table" idea for sure, and I think if players really want, an invite another player option could also be added, perhaps only if a player opts in to receiving challenges from other players, and perhaps with a limit of 5 challenges per hour or 24 hours or something better thought out than that.
I also thought about your arguments. I am mainly interested to invite the opponent that I am playing with at that certain time to play me at a 2nd table. I often wanted to 2-table the same opponent and when I sat down another play joined me before my opponent got the chance. That is always annoying. I think many players would like to play the same opponent at 2 or more tables but don`t get the chance because other players sit down first...