Ignition Casino and its twin online poker room, Bodog, recently made a major change to their cash game lobbies, moving from the traditional table listing to what the poker rooms call the Quick Seat lobby.
This lobby variation is nothing new; it has been around in the online poker world for years. What makes this interesting is that it is now the only way to find a cash game seat at Ignition Casino. The way we have been used to for as long as internet poker has existed is now gone. No more perusing the list of open tables, no more seeing what the average pot size and percent of players to the flop are, no more ability to open a table to see who is playing.
Now on Ignition, players will just choose their stakes, the maximum table size, the game (Texas Hold’em, Omaha, or Omaha Hi/Lo), and game variation (No-Limit, Pot-Limit, or Fixed-Limit). When all that is settled, the poker client will find the proper table and seat the player.
It looks like the idea behind the change is to protect recreational players from being targeted by sharks throughout the lobby. With no ability to find their prey, sharks can’t really hunt anyone down anymore. When they can’t do that, the recreational players will likely not lose their money as quickly, not only keeping money in the poker economy but also increasing the chances that they reload after going busto. Plenty of people have fun while losing money and the longer it takes to go broke, the more probably it is that the players still enjoy themselves.
Oddly, Ignition already had anonymous tables, so it was already next to impossible for any recreational players to be preyed upon. Perhaps the Quick Seat lobby is just a way to cover hat one percent of the time sharks were still able to target weaker players.
Reviews of the new system have been mixed in the poker community. While many applaud Ignition for taking another step to making online poker just about poker and taking away much of the edge third-party software tools provide, others feel the Quick Seat lobby just makes playing more difficult.
The way it makes it more difficult is that most people have certain preferences when it comes to the games they play. Some like starting new tables. Others only want to play at full tables. The Quick Seat lobby doesn’t allow players to choose. Thus, if someone who hates starting a table or playing ultra-short-handed ends up at an empty table, they will either leave and try again, sit out until more players arrive, or play begrudgingly. None of these options is ideal.
At the same time, some players have reported having great success with Quick Seat, especially multi-tablers. Quick Seat guarantees players will get into a game, as opposed to a traditional lobby that often has just a couple tables of a certain type with long waitlists.
