SNGs at Full Tilt and Stars (post Black Friday)

Hey guys, I am a US player, so no more playing on Stars or FTP anytime soon. I was just wondering what the SNG scene was like at these sites now. I know FTP took the biggest % hit and I opened up Stars the other day and saw that there were 200k players, which is similiar to pre-Black Friday numbers.

I spoke with a few 9man players on FTP and they said the site has become reg filled, meaning I guess the fish fled the scene. I know Stars was always filled with more regs than FTP, but from your own point of view, how is the gameplay now at both of these sites? Have you seen a big change in terms of regs at the tables?

Ive seen some pretty drastic changes at Full Tilt. A lot of the tournaments actually go to late reg now, even some of the free rolls (daily dollar, furguson)

The game play is pretty much the same, still donks going all in every time haha

Stars has remained pretty much unaffected with nearly 200k people on at peak times still.

Personally, my games have gotten slightly better (6max $6.50 and $13's). I play mainly with Russians, romanians, germans, spainiards and italians. The US players that used to play my games we're usually regulars.

Also, stars are bringing in a new rake system, I believe they are lowering rake across most of the SNG games they offer.

WiZZiM said:

Stars has remained pretty much unaffected with nearly 200k people on at peak times still.

Personally, my games have gotten slightly better (6max $6.50 and $13's). I play mainly with Russians, romanians, germans, spainiards and italians. The US players that used to play my games we're usually regulars.

Also, stars are bringing in a new rake system, I believe they are lowering rake across most of the SNG games they offer.

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Wow, pretty interesting about the lower rake. I did not know that. I am quite jealous that I cannot play there right now. Are they keeping their VIP points system the same? Will be interesting to see how that is affected.

My experience has been traffic was down on Full Tilt for a few days after the shutdown and games were taking longer to fill. Now it seems to have come back to about normal, though their throwing bonus cash at all and sundry might have something to do with that and we'll see if it lasts.

Like WiZ, thanks to timezones I was playing a lot against Europeans before the US shutdown and I haven't noticed the composition of the games I'm playing ($6 / $11 single table turbos) change all that much. Any reports that they've become reg-infested and impossible to beat certainly don't match my experience over the past week or so.

losched16 said:

Wow, pretty interesting about the lower rake. I did not know that. I am quite jealous that I cannot play there right now. Are they keeping their VIP points system the same? Will be interesting to see how that is affected.

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I'm pretty sure VIP stays the same. Not certain of the changes yet, but it looks like the $15+1 will be gone. I suspect the micros to stay the same but i think they will lower the higher staked games. Also taking the 15+1 in favour of a $10 and $20 game.

Last week i think Fulltilt reach 40,000 players, today was 91,000 in my time, so like Oz comment the added bonus most have something to do. First days after the black friday i do notice more regulars in my games (around 6-7 by table), today was like before, bunch of bad players mixed with 2 or 3 regulars. So i guess things getting to normal for the rest of the world.

I'd imagine full tilt taking a bigger hit as I think the majority of users were from the U.S.

As for pokerstars, I've not really noticed much a difference to be quite honest with you apart from maybe the first day of black friday. Maybe worried people etc didn't go on and there was overlays. The normal tournaments I'd usually play, fill with roughly the same amount of people and it's exactly the same times as normal.

The SnG's do fill up slightly slower, but not that much.

The games, well I think they might be also a bit easier..I'm unsure, or I'm getting better. Been posting positive results for over a month but keep getting better and better days, now this might like I say because of the lack of the presence from teh U.S grinders or because I'm getting better, I'm sure the slightly better results of late have been because some U.S players have been absent though.

ramdeebam said:

I'd imagine full tilt taking a bigger hit as I think the majority of users were from the U.S.

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It wasn't the majority, but it was a lot - I think around 40% of their traffic being from the US was the figure I've seen, as opposed to about 25% for Stars? Stars definitely had more traffic overall though so it stands to reason that the cut would be less noticeable there.

I played yesterday night. It seem that late Saturday nights bring out the manics.
I think I will have to stay awake next Saturday as well.

only_bridge said:

I played yesterday night. It seem that late Saturday nights bring out the manics.
I think I will have to stay awake next Saturday as well.

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Do you mean that it was profitable?

For what I saw on FT is that the play is a lot more loose aggressive.