Fish Safety Sites ? Not supported by the market, but there is variety
So, as an operator, could "relative safety" be institutionalized as the OP suggests ?
1. It does not need to be instituionalized, to the extent that poker is self-selective and ranked, roughly, by stakes levels. Fish are safer in the shallow waters of mocro-limits. If there was EVER a fish protective development in the industry, micro-limits was it.
2. Selling an environment as "safer" for fish because it does not support poker aids or limits multi-tabling would be extremely tough ..... Fish are unaware of these and do not see themselves as needing protection.
3. Rather, it may be possible to educate sharks, like here, that a site does provide for better fishing, without dynamite or grenades allowed, provided the shark has skills apart from PokerTracker or other similar tools.
4. This is not the Tragedy of the Commons, the oceans here are privately owned. TruePoker owns a small pond which allows 4 tabling, provides for "fishfinder" lists and notes, offers a generous VIP program for rewarding volume play, but does not support poker tracker or similar programs.
5. We DO allow sharks, and anyone else, to change their player names. (This is suprisingly ineffective to hide from other sharks however. It seems to take about an hour before other sharks catch on.)
6. Fish may swim in relative safety in Truepoker's pond, but we would not adopt a "shark identifier" as the OP suggests. We welcome sharks, but our software simply does not support all the tools they might otherwise use elsewhere. A shark who can feed without the tools should do well with us, what we need is to maintain a supply of fish.
Does the balance work ? We have been running for 6 years, but have not had the player numbers to support an ocean of sharks. We hope to rememdy that this fall by expanding our network's mix of skins players.
For what it is worth, some sites have offered "beginners tables" for new players for alimited time frame.
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