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Ridiculous Stalling in UOS


Endboss

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Came across this in one of the unibet open Omaha tourneys. It completely ruined the game as it ran at half the speed or less of regular tables due to clock abuse.

2 players at the table where both letting the clock run down to 1 second before checking every hand from early in the tournament.

I don't know if they where bots or some form of collusion software to slow down  tables but it seemed to perfectly timed to do this every single hand without ever sitting out.

I can't help but think this sort of play, automated or not should be stopped. It gives everyone a disadvantage when the table moves half the speed or less due to clock abuse.

I'v attached a few screenshots here:

https://imgur.com/a/OC3uQwq

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@cgpoker There are a couple of A-hols that do that in SNGs and MTTs. They always use the time bank on every decision to tilt people. Would love it if Unibet gave them some kind of warning and after they continue, cuz they will cut their time bank by 5 sec until they will have none.
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@FreedoM

 

Yeah I have seen people doing it before but these guys timings seemed to consistent plus the fact there postflop play was odd.

 

They should at least rebalance the tables to move them around or put them all on one table.

 

I did get revenge by knocking him out 2 places before the bubble.

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I am quite sure these are clock abuser a-holes and not bots. People who are ready to ruin the experience for everyone even for the smallest EV+.

While there is nothing you can do to change their behavior, there are two things about this that bother me quite a bit.

1) The UOS point system incentivizes this behavior
2) Contrary to what it is supposed to be for, the timebank is reset for every hand, making the abuse possible to a much larger extent.

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@Elukka12 is right in this case. It's not a question of a bot, but purely a player trying to get the most value. Two things:

1. I've requested a report on this sort of behavior, and we might send out warnings depending on what this report shows

2. Timebank improvements is on our backlog, but we haven't been able to prioritize it yet because of the bugs. I strongly agree that improvements in this area are critical and I can assure you we'll dedicate resources to it as soon as it's possible.

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Stalling is a valid strategy, (particularly valid in satellites) but in almost all other MTTs where a player cannot play many holdings profitably. The following is from Unibet ambassador Dara O'Kearney's excellent satellite book. (Recommended by Unibet - see this thread)

Stalling is a strategy people employ in tournaments to avoid playing hands, you’ll have seen it happen in regular tournaments when there is a big pay jump and it is even more useful in satellites. At the end of a satellite our ranges are often so tight that we cannot play many hands profitably. So the less hands we are dealt, the less blinds and antes we have to pay, and the less chance we have of being all in, so stalling makes sense. More experienced savvy players will stall a lot in a satellite. I once heard in a live satellite William Kassouf played seven hands when the other tables played four orbits, which was a massive advantage to everyone at his table, even though they were complaining about it at the time. This is before play goes hand-for-hand, where there is generally no benefit to stalling, with one big exception. Let’s say it is the bubble and you have 1.5 big blinds on the Button, so you will be forced all in the next time you are the Big Blind, but it is a way off. Over on the other table somebody is in mid position with 2.5 big blinds, so at the moment they will survive paying the blinds. If you stall on your table and assuming the operator doesn’t stop the clock (which they usually don’t) you can force the blinds to increase before it gets to that player in mid position. A lot of the time the player will be very aware of this and it will force them to push all-in sooner.   I start to stall any time I find myself in a situation where I have to fold most of my hands. When I recognise I cannot play many hands profitably therefore I want to play less hands in general. Typically it is stack size related, when you have 20 big blinds or less, or basically when you have a seat locked up and getting involved in hands would be a mistake.

O'Kearney, Dara. Poker Satellite Strategy: How to qualify for the main events of high stakes live and online poker tournaments (pp. 101-102). Kindle Edition.

You should all buy the book. @Dara needs the €€€

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vixere * 18.7k hands
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@Elukka12 wrote:

I am quite sure these are clock abuser a-holes and not bots. People who are ready to ruin the experience for everyone even for the smallest EV+.

While there is nothing you can do to change their behavior, there are two things about this that bother me quite a bit.

1) The UOS point system incentivizes this behavior

2) Contrary to what it is supposed to be for, the timebank is reset for every hand, making the abuse possible to a much larger extent.


Your point 2 is well made. The timebank resetting after everyhand is mental.

With regard to the rest of your argument - the EV gained can be huge, and when that's true I'll stall to the max. The people that annoy me are the ones on my table who insta-fold and therefore donate massive EV to the other tables/players who are stalling "correctly". I use no kind of software to stall.

If the play of other players that is within the rules annoys you I would suggest, respectfully, that it is your problem, not theirs.

Just my 2cents, peace. :peace:

Vix

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vixere * 18.7k hands
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@vixere Totally understand it as a strategy for says, dyms and close to the bubble.

But early on, every hand when everyone had big stacks kills the fun. Clocks should be progressively shortened for stallers until it's 5sec per decision.

 

 

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@cgpoker wrote:

@vixere Totally understand it as a strategy for says, dyms and close to the bubble.

But early on, every hand when everyone had big stacks kills the fun. Clocks should be progressively shortened for stallers until it's 5sec per decision


This is really a Unibet software problem. Imagine having a bank account that refilled itself everytime you emptied it! 🤣

There wouldn't be any need to shorten decision times for particular players, if the timebank was a sensible, decreasing, 90secs or 60secs. Then everyone could have 10secs decision time and use all their timebank "ONCE" after that the max they would have is 10secs or whatever the decision time is. I'm not holding my breath for the developers to do it - I quite often have to play without a table graphic as it is.

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vixere * 18.7k hands
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@vixere, don't think anyone is questioning the fact that it's a valid strategy to occasionally make full use of the timebank.

However, the timebank is - as you and cgpoker mention and I covered in my previous post as well - not working as it should today. Until we have resources to improve the timebank, we might warn the players making excessive use of stalling, as it does indeed ruin the game for everyone else. Again, I understand there's reason to do so, but there's also good reason for us to want to make the game enjoyable to everyone.

From the poker T&C: "Unibet will at all times consider the best interests of the game and fairness as the top priority in the decision-making process."

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:waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall::waterfall:

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vixere * 18.7k hands
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@vixere wrote:

Stalling is a valid strategy, (particularly valid in satellites) but in almost all other MTTs where a player cannot play many holdings profitably. The following is from Unibet ambassador Dara O'Kearney's excellent satellite book. (Recommended by Unibet - see this thread)

Stalling is a valid strategy. What is not a valid strategy is stalling when over 50 places away from the bubble, and what is even less of a valid strategy is to start stalling just because someone else is doing it. Playing for over an hour when two players are taking the maximum time on every hand is not fun.:Teardrop: Rightly or wrongly as a tactic if I'm not going to play the hand I will fold straightaway, and only take some time if I'm going to play the hand. The previous actions before my turn may make me change my mind, I don't click the auto fold button, but normally if I'm going to fold, I fold.

You should all buy the book. @Dara needs the €€€

I do wish people would stop advertising this book, when you think you've found the motherlode you don't want the whole world knowing about it, :Secret: and @Dara has made enough money from satellites anyway. :Wonder:

 

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"It turns out that 75% of all poker players think they play better than the other 75%."     image.png.99a4e82708d54abfc527324e8836768e.png

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Discussion of stalling by Unibet ambassadors, Dara and David on Unibet's sponsored award winning podcast.

"Which do you prefer more - the non-admonishment of strangers or money?" Dara O'Kearney, 2019

+1

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Maybe you could stop worrying about new table backgrounds and new card designs and push fixing the timebank up the bug-fix queue instead of thinking about punishing players who pay up to play, 100% within the rules.

 

 

 

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vixere * 18.7k hands
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@GR1ZZL3R wrote:


I do wish people would stop advertising this book, when you think you've found the motherlode you don't want the whole world knowing about it, 🤫 and @Dara has made enough money from satellites anyway. :wonder:

 


@GR1ZZL3R 

It's good to help the community 😃

It's good to help @Dara he's a gent. 😃

I think you give people too much credit - buying the book is like joining a gym, doesn't do any good in itself - you have to put the work in. And most people never do. But because they've skimmed the book they think they know what they're doing - it will probably make satellites easier, it's not going to make them harder IMHO 

Plus I can't play any sats on here for ages because I only have 2 x €250 tickets left and I can't split them and I only have 38cents left in my account. I'm busto!! :waterfall:

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vixere * 18.7k hands
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@cgpoker wrote:

@vixere Totally understand it as a strategy for says, dyms and close to the bubble.

But early on, every hand when everyone had big stacks kills the fun. Clocks should be progressively shortened for stallers until it's 5sec per decision.


 

I agree that sometimes stalling is ok. E.g. look at the Double Trouble tournament. After the first break the game really slows up and especially playing against just 5 opponents at your table, it makes sense to drag it out once you're "about" to reach the money.

However what's not OK is when guys like @Merenitsu, who by the way has no clue about when and why to stall 🤣 , start to drag it out once they are 15 spots away from a 50 cent min-cash in a community freeroll, slowing up these games 30 minutes ahead of time.

Same situation for SNGs: If you use the clock from time to time to avoid a blind raise or to make another one post a bigger blind, that's OK. But there used to be this one dude playing with the Brazil avatar playing the 10s, who ran down the clock each and every time during heads-ups.

So yeah, adjusting the clock for these abusers is something Unibet should have done a long time ago... 

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@Stubbe-Unibet excuse my ignorance but I don't understand why it would be difficult to change?

In heads up SNGs you don't get a new timebank every hand, so why can MTTs not just be replicated? Surely the 'code' or whatever is needed would already have been written for the other game types?

I've said it multiple times before but I'll briefly say it again - Timebanks should be there for difficult decisions, something you're going to use rarely.  There should be no issue people using it every hand providing once they've used the allotted time it doesn't reset for a whole level or two.  I've argued before that in HUSNGs the time to act per decision should be reduced and the timebank should be increased from 10 seconds to 20-30.  It's stupid to allow 20 seconds for every single decision on every street because the majority will need <2 seconds but then when I'm faced with a genuinely tough river decision, I have an extra 10 seconds?  It's almost not helpful in any way.

If anything, MTTs should be even simpler in terms of decisions, as most hands are just pre-flop folds.  

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@vixere wrote:

Maybe you could stop worrying about new table backgrounds and new card designs and push fixing the timebank up the bug-fix queue instead of thinking about punishing players who pay up to play, 100% within the rules.


Will quote a reply from last week - you can replace bounty bug with the things you mention :)

Would you ask a carpenter to do brain surgery on you? The table designs are solely a task for the graphical designers, and the bounty bug is mostly with server devs and has nothing to do with the design team.

Instead of trying to make wisecracks, let's keep this thread on topic Smile

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@Brocky wrote:

@Stubbe-Unibet excuse my ignorance but I don't understand why it would be difficult to change?

In heads up SNGs you don't get a new timebank every hand, so why can MTTs not just be replicated? Surely the 'code' or whatever is needed would already have been written for the other game types?

I've said it multiple times before but I'll briefly say it again - Timebanks should be there for difficult decisions, something you're going to use rarely.  There should be no issue people using it every hand providing once they've used the allotted time it doesn't reset for a whole level or two.  I've argued before that in HUSNGs the time to act per decision should be reduced and the timebank should be increased from 10 seconds to 20-30.  It's stupid to allow 20 seconds for every single decision on every street because the majority will need <2 seconds but then when I'm faced with a genuinely tough river decision, I have an extra 10 seconds?  It's almost not helpful in any way.

If anything, MTTs should be even simpler in terms of decisions, as most hands are just pre-flop folds.  


@Brocky, in HU SNG you do have a 10 second timebank in every hand? I agree that changes to HU SNG are needed as well. It is a rather large project, and I'd like to get all game types (HexaPro, SNG, cash and MTT) looked at. There're quite a few changes I'd like to make, for example:

  • Add extra time on disconnect but with a limit (if you're playing with a horrible connection and get disconnected every hand, there should be a limit to how much extra time you can get in x number of hands)
  • Don't reset the timebank on every hand
  • An advanced way of calculating time to act depending on street, bb in pot, players in pot and buy in/stake level

We'd also look into changes like the one you suggest for HU SNG's. 

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I have not a problem with stalling as long as it's a purpose behind it.  Waiting for ITM or Sats to finish etc.  

But some people are doing it when it's hand for hand play, which is very odd, just pure stupidity I guess, 

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