I know it's only a board games site, but poker is one of the few "casino" games, which are considered sport and not called hazard. The last arena formats have been exactly what tournament poker is not and should't be.
The current format promotes "any two" pushing and drawing till the end, which is playing with hope/gambling not strategy. Good players can easily be bitten by gamblers/newbies and at every game you can see terrible plays, which is not happening in board games, as it'll be easily considered suicidal, non sportsmanship. Speed of the gameplay promotes bingo game.
Poker is about probability, seat position and taking measured risk/reward. Even during BGA arena I was able to label people behaviour and play style, which helped me make easier decisions. Still I lost too many times with hands that should not see even the flop. It's rare to see so expensive "let me see another card" in real life and that's why the arena format must change.
What should change:
1) Starting stack at 100 bb (i.e. for 1/2 starting blinds, it should be 200)
2) Blinds growing not sooner than every 10 hands
3) Min. 5 players (6 would be great, but not sure if BGA generates enough traffic)
What will be the result:
- the ranking promotes better players, and what's more important, poker on BGA will stop being a bingo game due to low skills and game speed.
If not the only way to play poker on BGA would be inviting good players for private tables at proper game setups.
The current format promotes "any two" pushing and drawing till the end, which is playing with hope/gambling not strategy. Good players can easily be bitten by gamblers/newbies and at every game you can see terrible plays, which is not happening in board games, as it'll be easily considered suicidal, non sportsmanship. Speed of the gameplay promotes bingo game.
Poker is about probability, seat position and taking measured risk/reward. Even during BGA arena I was able to label people behaviour and play style, which helped me make easier decisions. Still I lost too many times with hands that should not see even the flop. It's rare to see so expensive "let me see another card" in real life and that's why the arena format must change.
What should change:
1) Starting stack at 100 bb (i.e. for 1/2 starting blinds, it should be 200)
2) Blinds growing not sooner than every 10 hands
3) Min. 5 players (6 would be great, but not sure if BGA generates enough traffic)
What will be the result:
- the ranking promotes better players, and what's more important, poker on BGA will stop being a bingo game due to low skills and game speed.
If not the only way to play poker on BGA would be inviting good players for private tables at proper game setups.
