Hi all, below is an announcement about recent changes to the game speed. I'll be happy to discuss any of these changes in this thread and pass along any input.
After listening to player feedback, we have enacted changes in the PokerStars software to speed up dealing in certain situations. A few other related changes have been made as well, though in most cases the time a player has to act on their hand has not been affected. Read below for more details.
Non-Satellite Sit & Go Tournaments
Hyper Turbo Sit & Go Tournaments are most affected by the changes. Players in these tournaments will have 12 seconds to act on their hand instead of 16. Several other dealing speed improvements including time taken between
hands and speed of dealing cards once players are all-in have also been made.
All other Sit & Go tournaments have had dealing speed reduced, but not quite as much. Cards dealt after all action is complete due to players being all-in are now dealt twice as fast. The time between all hands being shown or mucked and the next hand being dealt has also been reduced by one second per hand.
Players in regular speed Sit & Go’s will now have 16 seconds to act on their hand, reduced from 18 seconds.
The time taken to start dealing after all players have registered and been seated has been reduced for many popular Sit & Go tournaments. Many Heads-up and Hyper speed tournaments now start after only a 10 second delay. Other popular tournaments start after 20 seconds.
Scheduled Tournaments, Satellites, and Step Tournaments
Dealing speed has been increased in these tournaments similar to the changes made in Sit & Go’s. Cards dealt after all action is complete due to players being all-in are now dealt twice as fast. The time between all hands being shown or mucked and the next hand being dealt has also been reduced by one second per hand.
Players in some tournaments will experience slightly different amounts of time to act on their hand. This is as a result of standardizing this setting across all tournaments.
Hyper-turbo satellites have been sped up drastically. These satellites will run at the same speed as hyper-turbo cash S&Gs.
These changes will not take place for all future tournaments, but will instead filter their way into the tournament schedule over the next few weeks.
Ring Games
As with all tournaments, cards dealt after all action is complete due to players being all-in are now dealt twice as fast. The time between all hands being shown or mucked and the next hand being dealt has also been reduced by one second per hand.
The delay prior to dealing the first hand of a session at a table has been reduced from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.
The changes to ring games will not have a significant impact on the number of hands played per hour at this point in time. PokerStars is considering further changes that may include changes to the amount of time players have to act on their hand.
Comments about playing experience at ring game tables are appreciated. In particular, if there is anything about the ring game experience other than players’ time to act that seems too slow or too fast we’d love to know.
Request for Comments
While PokerStars never stops considering player feedback, in this case we are particularly interested in response to these changes. Additional tweaks are possible if desired by players as a whole. Thanks in advance for any constructive suggestions.
Thanks to all players who have already provided input that helped us make this round of changes. Special thanks to all of those who helped test these settings on PokerStars.test and provided helpful input.
Dylan C