ShareDoug Polk has responded to a slew of angry posts on Reddit accusing him of not doing enough to push partypoker to fix a seating bug discovered on its Fast Forward cash games.
Polk agreed to help the community by approaching partypoker figurehead Rob Yong to see what is happening, and following a brief conversation Polk was satisfied that a proper investigation was being undertaken. It appears that this has triggered more than a few observers.
Not Enough Late Position Hands
The issue came to light in September when a poster named Justin Liu posted on Reddit that he wasn’t getting his fair share of buttons and cutoffs.For the uninitiated, average win rates vary depending on which seat you play the hand, with the button and cutoff being the most profitable situations. Obviously, for a high volume player it is going to make a considerable difference over a period of months.
Liu claims that he dealt with a partypoker rep back in April and was compensated for the error, in effect admitting there was an issue with the seating algorithm.
When Doug Polk saw the thread he promised to get in contact with Rob Yong and push the issue, with Yong being said to be very helpful and accommodating towards finding a solution as fast as possible.
Unfortunately for Polk, by passing on the message of how helpful Yong was, he himself was then targeted for abuse in the original Reddit thread.
“I decided to contact Rob in an attempt to try and fix the problem. He immediately jumped on the issue and tried to fix it. At this point the issue is on Rob/Party to fix their problems. Now in this reddit thread, im somehow the bad guy? I am not involved in Party Poker in anyway.”
This is extremely tilting, and why it makes good people not want to get involved at all to fix other peoples problems. I got this problem fast tracked towards a solution and now there are these types of comments pic.twitter.com/t54o9f82jr
— Doug Polk (@DougPolkVids) November 2, 2021
Unfair
It’s unfair to slate Doug Polk over his helping out when there was no upside for him. He didn’t have to help. His opinion was that Rob Yong jumped straight onto the case which is surely a positive, and yet offering that point rather than shouting “scammer” from the rooftops seems to upset quite a few people.It’s also worth revisiting Polk’s language in the above video where he describes what is happening by calling it a “systematic removal of regs getting buttons and cutoffs versus recreational players”.
This almost makes it sound deliberate which doesn’t appear to be his stance at all.
The 2+2 thread dedicated to this issue actually came to the conclusion that it was down to how the new tables fill up.
“I think I remember the conclusion on 2+2 was that a new table is created and then players fill the seats in a constant order. So the last person to join the table is given the co or whatever. Playing more tables will make you more likely to be waiting for other players. Players playing one table will be more likely to sit last.”
This makes sense. Also, this whole story has been projected as regs being stiffed at the expense of recreational players. This is no evidence that this is so.
Within a few weeks of the original Reddit thread being posted, partypoker posted its own response on its public Discord channel.
"We have optimised the seating logic of our Fast Forward games to improve player experience. We continually review this and all other aspects of our games and we remain fully committed to upholding the integrity of our games.
Our Fast Forward games continue to meet the highest standards set out within the licences in all of the relevant jurisdictions in which we operate and there are no grounds for the issuance of refund in this instance"
As for the continued castigation of Doug Polk, people should be careful about pushing away somebody with a high profile in the poker world that is prepared to stand up for what is right.
