https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfmX48fR_Ds#t=36
Full Tilt m.d. Dominic Mansour has followed up on his pledge to make his online poker division more recreational player-friendly (see previous reports) with a series of important changes to Full Tilt policy.
The changes involve heads-up cash, nosebleed stakes and Mixed Games, all of which have been removed, and new measures to prevent table selection advantage, which enable players to be quickly seated in the games and at stakes that they nominate.
Full Tilt’s objective has been to emulate the live poker experience, and includes merging tables when a short-handed stage is reached, rather than keeping players waiting for a vacant table.
Explaining the removal of heads up cash games, Mansour said:
“Heads Up games were being adversely impacted by the minority of experienced players who targeted ‘weaker’ opponents rather than take on all challengers, and secondly, new players who tried out the Heads Up games found it intimidating and confusing (asking themselves “why are all these guys not playing each other?”). In short, Heads Up ring games just didn’t form part of a healthy poker ecosystem, which made our decision to remove them easier.”
The removal of nosebleed stakes, Stud, Draw and Mixed Games is designed to present a more equitable playing field for recreational players and obviate table selection tactics.
“We recognize that in the past, a proportion of players have used extensive table selection to their advantage and that those players might not like these changes,” Mansour said. “Their advantage over other players will now be negated and we don’t think that’s a bad thing.”