Sitout players

OK, I would like to thank my fellow members for one of the worst experiences yet. I refer to the Noble Poker Freeroll tonight. There were so many sitouts that I ended up playing heads up a full 15 minutes before the break! And when I got knocked out, I was replaced with a sitout, so the poor player left was on his own, mindlessly betting to pick up the blinds!

So thank you, you thoughtless bar stewards, Thanky you very bl***y much.

Just what is the so**ing point? Do you want to play poker or are you just mindless game wreckers?

For heavens sake Fonz, use your influence to get the rules changed. Sitouts should have a maximum time per tourney, say 10 minutes, after that they should be eliminated. And this should be a rule at all poker rooms.

Anyone want to start petitions or action groups or whatever, count me in.

In the meantime, would you miserable worms who sit out big time do genuine players a favour and p**s off. Just don't enter in the first place. Everyone hates and despises you, how does that make you feel, or don't you have feelings?

And you bring disgrace to this forum by being associated with it. Why are you members here anyway? Because you like playing, excuse me?, playing? freerolls. So you're all liars as well then?

Fonz, I know you are supposed to moderate these forums, but these people need to understand how strongly genuine players feel about this (yes I have asked others and it is unanimous), so for once please leave an angry posting in place huh? You will be doing us all a favour.

Now here's a strange thing. By contrast with the above, our tourney at PokerHost was much better as the sitouts were eliminated straight away. But did anybody look at the figures?

Approximately 50% of the entries were immediately scratched. Pardon? 50%? What on earth is going on? Tell me 1% were unavoidably delayed, and another 1% simply forgot and another 1% had a late need to do something more important and I would think that even that seemed an unluckily high percentage for one tournament. But 50%? I mean it isn't as though it is unknown what the PokerHost policy is, maybe a few didn't know, but 50%? It just doesn't make any sense why the majority of these people entered in the first place. What was the point?

If that is what happened at Noble, around 50% sitting out (not easy to check there), then it is no wonder some of us got stuck in player free zones. But that still leaves me baffled. Why enter if you have no intention of playing?

But there is a smile in everything..... If I were the paranoid conspiracy theory sort of nutcase I might suspect it was something to do with impressing the hosts as to how many entries we could generate. Surely not? Tell me I've seen too many episodes of the X-files!!!! (Not that that would work at PokerHost, their stats only show the actual players in the total number of entries field! So it's a crazy idea (isn't it? (they really are all after me you know!))) (or to quote that old Carry On film, "Infamy, Infamy, they've all got it in for me")

poker sites have their own sit out rules - you have to realise that whilst i can get tournaments arranged, i aint gonna be able to change the policies of multi million pound companies

i hate sit outs as well but poker companies use the same sit out rules for freerolls as they do pay tournaments (well most do anyways)

im in a difficult situation dog -the only way to control this type of thing is to pass the password to regular members. However, passwords for freerolls spread like wildfire - and when that happens members here will moan at me about the fact so many non-regular members are taking part.

im not ignorent to the way it happens - people come here to get a password and play and thats fine. A great majority sign up for the game right away in the off chance they can make it - this is a problem that happens at a lot of freerolls

However, for me to control tournaments i need members to post to be able to tell the good guys from the bad etc - the fact that we currently have twice as many members as posts shows that the great majority of people are only here to get the password for certain games.

If the sit outs get out of hand i will need to implement a minimum number of posts to see the password. However, my experience at THF has shown that people will abuse this system greatly, they will spread the password around and they will waste a lot of my time monitoring the whole thing

People forget i play poker a lot and dealing with childish people passing the passwords around etc turns into a very timeconsuming problem (we're talking hours per day!)

If every member played by the rules and posted and didnt pass the password around and only signed up to tournaments they could actually make then then there would be no problem - however, realistically, that aint gonna happen so we need to look into an alternative system some time in the future. Either that or people need to be able to deal with the number of sit outs.


In my opinion the best way to solve this is to have registration open an hour before the tournament starts. I took the time to get this arranged for a few tournaments - and this resulted in dozens of posts saying "why isnt the tournament listed" etc. A lot of people who have signed up dont even take the time to read the original post which details the tournament in question

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I don't like sitouts either. If someone is MIA. through no fault of their own, that's fine but I've been in tourneys where I was the only player at the table and the rest wer sitouts. Believe me! I've even tried to do something about it. All of us at this one site were talking about it and we all decided to call support and to email them, for a change. It was like talking to the four walls in your room. They never did anything. They don't really care. It's not important enough. They have people coming in by the droves and they're making money hand over fist. The only way you could get them to change things is by solidarity and today, that is a forgotten or ancient concept. GOOD LUCK

i agree with solidarity with this kind of thing

now one way to look at it is that with a private freeroll, i should be able to determine the sit out policy. However, they need to be consistent so all freerolls have to have the same rules as your still playing at that specific pokersite

If they changed their policy for us then they would have to change it for all their freerolls and thats definately a big change - this kind of thing is definately looked at in details before a company is launched

for now i think to reduce the number of sit outs we need to look at what freeroll forums can do at our end

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I think that you should release the password a few hours before the freerolls that way people are less likely to sign up then forget about it. That seems to work well in other freeroll forums I know of.

ive got a busy schedule - i can rarely commit to be at the computer on a given day or time

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Just been on the latest effort at Noble. Saw 2 tables, 3 active out of 10 both times!! I hate to be disloyal, cos I regard Noble as my main site, but now we are getting a spread of sites who will take us, we should drop those sites which have no way of pruning out the sitouts. Poker Hosts do, Jet Set has a one complete level of betting rule (for free rolls, not sure about real money). Don't know about Full Tilt as I'm only just about to have my first try there. Those of you with other organisations should make the same suggestions there. Then places like Noble would have to start asking questions as to where all their private tourneys are disappearing to.

It might also help if there was some sort of professional organisation for the card rooms to belong to which could insist on minimum standards or no certificate of approval. There is (was?) one for on-line casinos, so does anyone know what happens for the card rooms? As some rooms are offshoots of casinos, perhaps an approach to their organisation could be helpful. Wouldn't take more than a polite letter. Anyone know how to contact them?

Cheers all

So Full Tilt was the same, 3 out of 9. Sigh.