How do online poker games shuffle players in tournaments?

[bdedley]

Is there a rhyme and reason to how you are moved from one table to another? I was playing in a tournament the other day with 8000 players. I made it to final 500 and had about 10,000 chips left and blinds were 6,000 and 3,000. I just finished the hand in the big blind, then they move me to another table and I get put in first position to act. I fold them I am pretty much put all in the next hand having to go into the big blind almost two hands in a row. By them doing this to me ultimately ended my tournament. If I was put in a better spot , say like closer to the button, like I think I should have been, I have a few more hands to wait and try and push with a better hand then the K2 I had to go with.

 

[3gdata]

I need to know this too. Is there any systematic way to shuffle players or they just use RNG for doing this? Please lemme know if you ever find the answer.

 

[Andrew Popov]

The conspiracy theory says that this is a legal way to humiliate a player in a tournament. You can also notice how some players with a very small stack are taken from the table just before their turn comes to play auto-allin...

 

[CforChampion]

This happens to me when I am in that position also, I have no idea why they do this either lol

 

[8bod8]

I must be lucky, well at least few times.
With less than 2 BB stack UTG, I was moved to the button on another table.
In another mtt on the bubble I was moved 4 hands in a row, not allowed to play, which resulted in itm.
The logic for moving people must be realtively simple:
- if a table can be closed, a table is selected to be closed
- the players are dropped into available seats, very likely, the same seat is not available for everybody
- maybe even more players drop out from the BB position than average
A solution with other drawbacks is to move people to the seat they are supposed to go and allow them to wait until available.
Maybe something for the poker player union to discuss with the rooms.:fight:

 

[OzExorcist]

Short answer: it's random.

There's also no reason you "should" be put further away from the big blind if you've just paid the big blind.... because it's random.


Another way to look at this is what happens in a live tournament: there, typically when a table breaks some cards with new seat assignments are placed face down on the table, and everyone gets their new seat chosen at random. Under that system, you could also end up paying the big blind two hands in a row.


It's just the luck of the draw, and in the long run it'll even out. Sometimes you'll have to pay BB twice in a row, sometimes you'll get to dodge it for almost two orbits, sometimes you'll be moved to a good table, sometimes a bad one.

 

[Haemophile]

although i have to ask why you would let your stack get that low as soon as i get to 15 BB I start looking for shoving oppotunities with a tight range that loosens up the lower my blinds go if i get down to 7BB then i am shoving any cohesive cards( any suited cards, off suited connectors and raggy aces)

 

[andreii955]

Always, so to know, moves from one table to another are done only in the big blind. Do not count chips.

 

[Herkstwin]

All online poker rooms explain their rules, including their processes for rebalancing and breaking tables.Here is the rule from PokerStars.

• As players are eliminated from the tournament, the software will “break” tables to fill available empty seats or balance tables to ensure all tables have an equal (or as close to equal as possible) number of active players. The re-seating of players at broken tables is performed randomly and, although rare, may result in a player having to post multiple big blinds in a row. Players moved individually to balance tables will, when possible, be moved to similar positions relative to the blinds. When enough players have been eliminated, all players are brought together at the ‘final table’.