Next is this thread:
https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/1o50h5o/free_online_poker_practice/

If you have a reddit account this thread needs a comment about gpokr.

Hi Ryan, whilst Reddit is a good idea, I think you'll have more luck over on 2p2:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com

This has been the biggest poker forum on the internet for decades. When advertising, I think you should really focus on the monthly leaderboard aspect. I don't know of any other sites that have as cool a feature as this.

Regarding other ideas to improve the site itself (and which won't take a crazy amount of time/resources from you):

- Higher limit sit n go tables. This will prevent people from leaving after a couple of hands.

- More variance in tourney structure, as I'd say at least half of the players right now only play these. Maybe consider adding antes, bounties, etc.

I think the current structure of starting with 30bbs and 10 minute levels is pretty stale and within 10 minutes you are playing 15bb poker which does not allow for a real skill gap.

- You need to think of a real incentive to get people away from the tournaments and into the cash games. Maybe a daily bonus for the volume of hands played or for the value of pots they have been involved in? Too many players simply hide in the tournaments which mean when the new players you want to attract show up, they will just assume that the site is dead.


Also, would you be interested in explaining how the current bots work? They are really bad and I'm not sure what their purpose is, it just allows bad players to farm them and hide from real players.

Regardless, thanks for all of your added interest recently!

Thanks for the suggestions Dave.

I'll check out that forum.

For the sit and go are you suggesting that the blind increase is longer? Like 20min? Or bigger initial stacks?

I've been thinking about daily bonuses on the tables as a possibility to make them more interesting. There's a table leaderboard for the month but I was thinking maybe this can be daily or weekly and have a tournament like bonus to the top N players on a daily or weekly basis. Thoughts?

The bots are just test bots with some simple heuristics. I use them in my dev environment for testing. I turned them on to encourage people to sit instead of having empty tables. Not sure if it works or not yet.

* increase bb timer for the tournaments (not sitngo)

Definitely need something to get the regular tables going otherwise I agree with Dave that people will think the site is dead. When I started about 15 years ago you sometimes couldn't find a seat. Not sure if the change in the RNG had any impact but a lot of the good poker players have left. I don't think the new RNG simulates real poker odds as well as the original RNG. I think you changed it about 4 years ago to encourage less experienced players but it may have had the opposite effect and turned away good players who play normal poker odds.

Lars is completely right in what he says about the RNG, it is anything but random and is killing gpokr and driving serious players away the only players this RNG benefits is the all inners.
Please bring ack the old RNG or use a more random one.
Thanks.

i agree with lars and mc and fully support them

Thank you for your support guys. I would also say as a poker "purist" that the new RNG reinforces bad poker habits like calling an all in with no hand and being rewarded for the aggressive (but poor) play. As someone who has played live tables, you almost have to adjust your play to keep up with this RNG and it just frustrates you to a point where you want to give up on Gpokr all together. I assume this is why so many have left. I can't endorse Gpokr right now to all my friends who play live poker since it is not truly random. Which is a shame since I LOVE the monthly format and is the best online poker site in my opinion (or was I guess when we had the original RNG).

Thanks for the response Ryan.

To answer your question related to the tournament structure, honestly adding antes is the most important change. No modern site has tournaments without antes these days, as having a structure with just SB/BB promotes tight play and it's frankly boring. if you also factor in the fact you start with 30bbs, it's sadly the optimum strategy to play tight without antes.

The daily/weekly bonus would be great, as long as it only factors in winnings at the cash game tables (it currently operates this way so no change needed on the backend). In fact, you already have somewhat of a daily leaderboard in terms of winnings, there's just no reward for this currently of course.

I would say that I am indifferent towards the bots, it adds more chips into the ecosystem which is a positive thing ultimately.

Regarding everyone above mentioning the "RNG change", please put them out of their misery and confirm this is nonsense. It's unbelievable how delusional they are, take note it's only the losing players who are clinging on to this reason as an excuse to why they could never win (and never will).

Your funny Dave. Can't wait for Ryan to set the record straight.