Non USA Players - How are the games?

[railed]

if you are highly game selective and have the tools to monitor game quality you can put yourself in better games now with less competition from pros at Party Poker.

The fish are still numerous at Party, iPoker etc. There are fish at US-centric sites like FullTilt, PokerStars and UB but the ratio of fish:tag is much lower than at Party.

I have datamined data from almost every networks pre-UIGEA and post-UIGEA. There are fewer games and less fish but the proportion of fish:tag is still better at Party then other networks specifically certain limits ie $100-$400 NLHE 6MAX at Party still has the best games over FullTilt, Stars or UB.

The higher stake game selection has really been hurt.

The fish at Party are plentiful and still horrible..you just need to have the correct methodology for finding the best games.

If you look at a generic measure of game quality over all sites --I think the best measure is the PokerTracker stat SF% (See Flop%) which you can see in the Summary Tab.

Compare the SF%'s across various networks and you can get a rough feel for game quality. I compared SF%'s pre-UIGEA to post-UIGEA at all the sites where American pros flocked to immediately following D-Day(friday Oct.13) and across the board at each level of NLHE 6MAX I observed SF% fell roughly 5%. That is a huge shift from say 40% to 35%, 35% to 30% or 30% to 25% for various games.

Party's games tightened up as well.

Anyway pros that dont recognize the seismic shift in game quality and do not adapt will must likely go bust.

a few hints:be much more game selective, possibly step down one level, add more variety to the type of games you play ie 4 card games and finally play more hours.

I would say at a minimum in the current environment at least one third of the newer less experienced pros will go busto in the next 6 months.

[RGL]

railed:

Fine post. Very informative. Given your excellent database of sites, what has happened to the aggression factor? My experience in sites still accepting U.S. players that it has gone way up.

BTW, I had expected when asking that the exclusion of better US players might have made the games improve. And some of the posts from non-US players on other threads have seemed to say, in effect, good riddance. Online US poker players have virtually overnight become a another punching bag for national and state politicians. It almost feels like we're a people without a country anymore. International support and solidarity from the player community evidenced in some posts to this thread does wonders for my morale and is a potentially important source of leverage in restoring our freedom to play.