Are Stars and Full Tilt Really This Much Tougher Than Other Sites

I was just reading this site which rates all the sites for how fishy the players are and easy to beat.

It rates Titan Poker as the best site with 9.7 at the highest.
Stars is the worst at 4.3, and Full Tilt has 5.7.

Has anyone played at a lot of different sites who would know if its true that the games games on Stars and Full Tilt are really massively tougher than other sites.

I only play on Stars myself but might try somewhere else if the games are really that much easier elsewhere.

I think that there is a difference in fishiness, but I don't think it's as enormous a gap as that site is suggesting.

I'd rate pokerstars fishier over full tilt.

+1

It must depend on what you play. And $11 sng player can tell you there is a pretty big difference in PS and FT - a lot more solid regs at PS.

Though unfortunately word is getting out and more of them are moving to FT.

They are both ridiculously similar. I'd say that pokerstars is definitely a little fishier, but nothing too crazy. Sucks that I am a US and mac player so I can only play on these two sites easily.

As a verifiable fish I can testify that the sharks at pokerstars have decimated my BR there, and have followed me to Tilt where they are continuing their feeding frenzy......

Other sites might have been fishier before, but IMO its not at all like that any more.

I find UB and Bodog extrememly fishy.

Maybe Ultimate Bet is fishy because the sharks don't trust the site after the cheating scandal.

Money is money, so if these mid level sites are so fishy, why would some of the regs not play there at least some to try and face easier competition? Why would they just want to play the toughest players and not go for some easy money on these other sites? I do believe Stars and Tilt are tougher, but I don't think they are twice as tough as these other ones.

I have played over 200,000 hands on pokerstars and 500,000 on full tilt, and so far all I've noticed is I am the fish on both sites.

Lol, in all seriousness though, I feel the mid range $11-40 dollar sit n go's are harder to beat on stars, and all low and micro cash games (.01/.02- .25/.50cent) are harder to beat on full tilt.

just my three cents.

there is going to be fishiness on all sites. i mean the hands are dealt by software. none of these sites will be better than the other.

since pokerstars has more players doesn't that mean more fishiness?

Why? Doesn't mean there is a higher percentage of bad players.

I think there are too many good players on PokerStars and Full Tilt. I like the smaller sites like bodog, bwin and 888poker.

I haven't seen sharks on Cake network but on PS and FT there are some of them!

i swear fish can swim in any pond ..just depends what swimming hole you happen to be in

Well for starters, US players can't play on some of the sites (ie. Titan/ipoker network).

In micro limits, yes some sites have a larger number of weaker players.

Try Cake...its a network associated with a lot of other smaller poker rooms as well. People keep telling me its softer than Full Tilt; I'm finding the cash games and heads up games to be easier than Full Tilt but there are a lot of chasers in the low limits on Cake. Also I've found it hard to find decent SNGs, it can take a while for any to fill up...cash and heads up fill up quick though.

I would say that PokerStars and FullTilt would have a bigger number of fish to beat just because there is a lot of TOOLS sitting at home drunk watching ESPN and consequently seeing the commercials for these sites.

As for BODOG, there is so many guys who made money sports betting who is just wanting to dabble in poker to see if they are the next big star. They are not, and that is why i think that site is the FISHIEST. Tuna Express.

So Gay, I hate when I hit the enter key and my post diappears, so I will have to write several paragraphs into one line... I keep track of contests where I have won over $10 in MTT's. I see I have 3 cashes at Cake, 2 cashes at Bodog, 7 cashes at Reefer, 2 cashes at UB, and 1 cash at Doyle's. Not a single win over $10 at FullTilt or Pokerstars, and I have to say I play with some frequency at FullTilt. I'd say there are more sharks at FullTilt and Pokerstars than most other poker sites. Probably because they have been around the longest and the others are relatively new, except for Bodog.

i think pokerstars and full tilt has the most players, cause these get promoted on TV, wich also atracts easyer players.

Also +1. The Full Tilt software is nicer, but the players are weaker at Stars (micros, at least).

People at Stars and FullTilt can also use tracking software and a HUD, whereas at a lot of the sites that don't take US players the tracking software doesn't work.

Depends on what you play, I guess. When I moved from Stars to FT it was *much* tougher for the full-ring stakes I played. Tournaments may be different -- I *have* made a lot more money on FT than Stars playing tourneys -- but lately I seem to do better in Stars tourneys than FT.

There are a lot of comments/questions as to why there would be a higher percentage of sharks to fish on FT or Stars as compared to other sites and here are a few suggestions.

One is that those two sites have such high traffic, which is required if you are attempting to play in high volumes (multi-tabling). Another is the incentives for long term play like rake-back systems are good on these sites as well. Someone else mentioned trust which is big for the sharks who are often dependent upon their profit from online play as their main income. If there is a chance that the company could cut and run with their money, then it would be an obviously bad investment. These are the reasons you'll find more sharks on these two sites than others.


Stix

I feel that Full Tilt sports players with a tad higher skill level at the limits I play over Stars. Thought the difference in slight I much prefer to play at Stars for 2 totally different reasons.

First, I love the ability to hide from search on Stars.

Secondly and most importantly, I find the LOGSOO factor at Full Tilt to be approximately 5 fold greater than all the other sites. The reason, I attribute to the fact that their software utilizes a constant shuffle pseudo random algorithm. Simply put, during the course of a hand, the cards are continuously shuffled so if your on the button and deciding to call a raise or not post flop, if you wait 5 seconds to play, or 10 seconds, the card will be a different card.

They have proven mathematically to the media, years back, the system is just as random as the static deck but allows them added security against cheats.

In my opinion, it changes the game somehow.

LOGSOO = Likelihood Of Getting Sucked Out On

I'd say the only way it changes the game is it takes away your ability to mentally "rabbit hunt" when you fold early, which for live play is sorta part of the game. This does bug me sometimes, because it's my nature (and probably human nature) to play "what if?" even though it goes against sound poker theory about being results oriented. But whether a card was randomly shuffled to the top of the deck 10ms ago or 3 minutes ago, it's still a random unknown card and thus doesn't really change the outcome of the game at all. Random is random, and unknown is unknown, so you never knew what the next card would be anyway.

I get a kick out of the players who don't know about the constant shuffle and go on and on in chat about how they "would've won" or "folded the nuts" or whatever. Sometimes I let them in on the truth, depends on my chatty mood. Some are quite surprised to hear it.

Stars is the only room (that I know of) to run a set deck shuffle, most everyone else (Merge I know, not positive about Ultimatebet/Absolute Poker) runs a constant shuffle like FT.

My opinion is the smaller sites are more fishy than bigger sites. Look what happened to pitbull poker...

I find that the action on Titan is far fishier then that on Full Tilt. Obviously if you are playing small stakes then the site will not really dictate the type of player but at regular stakes Titan is a great place to make money.. and take a bad beat

I wouldn't think it's THAT big of a difference in rating. But maybe it is.