The much awaited buy-in obligations system to control ratholing on PokerStars was launched across all Texas Hold’em Games and stakes yesterday by the online poker giant. The anti-ratholing system which was tested on some stakes tables last week had been rolled back after technical issues. Soon thereafter
, they rectified the issue and re-launched the test on a few stakes. Yesterday, the full roll out has now been added to all micro and small-stakes NL games, from NL2 (1c/2c) up to NL200 ($1/$2). in addition to this, it is also live on PLO ring game tables at 25c/50c, 50c/$1 and $1/$2.
It is learnt that PokerStars plans to soon roll the buy-in obligations system across large stacks games including pot-limit hold’em—in ring games and Zoom, with the exception of heads-up and cap games. It may be recalled that we had reported last week about the launch and revert back of this buy-in obligations system. The buy-in obligations system tracks a player’s stack sizes as they join and leave tables. After a player leaves and buys in short eight times, he or she is forced to return with at least the amount with which they left the previous table. This system has been well accepted by regular full stack players who like to play deep.
The system is aimed to curbing/preventing ratholing. Ratholing means when a player leaves a table with a bigger stack than he entered with. This sort of poker game where some players play ‘short stacked’ poker jumping across tables and leaving with bigger stacks in disturbing to most professional players. This buy-in obligations system has been on the cards for an year now. If completely successful and accepted, it will go about making poker game much more professional and enjoyable.