General DiscussionWhat is shadowpool

it is where all the naughty boys get sent.

whenever u are on al osing streak u get into shadow pool until u win 1 game.

same for reports. if u keep being sent to lp u are perma shadow pool. 4Head

It's a magic place where players reside that are only queued with retards and that totally are not at fault for their losses.

there is a theory that players which are often rated at 1 star by their teammates after the matches, get into so-known shadowpool and play with each other. if you are rated at 1 star most of the times, there is some reasoning behind this - you might suck in communication, be rude, spam stuff, feed couriers too often, abandon too often, etc. When there are 10 players of this kind in the same match, the toxicity is extremely high and the game is not rly enjoyable, I suppose.

However, if shadowpool actually exists and you are in there, then you deserve it, and it is nice that you are isolated from "normal" pkayers, and finally play with ppl of your kind. there is no sense in complaining about shadowpool, cz there are two variants:
a) it doesnt exist
b) you are toxic shit and play with other toxic shits which is obviously fine for the rest of dota community

never heard about that

all i know is that i started an alternate when i was banned from matchmaking (alerts don't always pop up valve!) and the matches in there are full of really toxic players compared to the normal games i have. pretty sure something exists.

when you stand over a pool on a sunny day and due to the lighting of the sun a shadow gets projected onto the surface of the said pool, thus making it a "shadow-pool".
hope i helped.

When you take a shower and a wild Shadow Demon appears, thus making it a shadow pool.

shadow pool and hidden pool are NOT THE SAME THING stop commenting if you have NO IDEA ABOUT WHAT UR TAKLING ABOUT THX

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/762573107

THIS is shadowpool. not hidden pool. there is NO PROOF hidden pool exists (though it might exist) now please stop spreading misinformaiton

@sano
one of these two is actually certainly real and involves games with bots, you can get there by abusing/win trading etc.

the other is what i talked about and what OP asked about, I guess - the question takes its origin in this thread: http://www.dotabuff.com/topics/2015-10-19-how-do-you-know-if-youre-in-a-shadowpool. Its OP might have misused these conceptions, and then the butterfly effect worked.

i dont care about this crap and dont remember which is called "hidden", and which one is "shadow".

@TripleSteal-: the star system is retarded, as the report system. The 1 star is totally arbitrary and has no meaning. Like, a people can give me a 1 star because we lost and he's mad, or because he died blaming me, i built an item that he dislikes, etc.
is there a rating system in reborn too? it never showed up to me

@reese
and if the sample is 100 games large? 500 games large? the errors lose their significance as we use more data.

^
i don't think it's % based, it's more like "you get 1 star after a match? you will get matched with toxic players for the next 3 matches" since many people reported streaks
but we don't really know

What are you talking about sano, everyone knows that both shadow pool and hidden pool do not exist.

The covert pool, on the other hand, is a different case. You get there by writing kappa or 4head into the chat or by losing 2 games in a row.
I even have proof that the covert pool exists: http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/80085

Jeez, the misinformation these days...

ppl say it exists, but honestly i dont believe in swimming pools

shadowpool doesnt exist 4Head

one of my accs is there since early 2014 u fucking prick

don't waste time on sheeple hero triplesteal, u irritate him enough he's gonna get db staff to ban you for life, but then of course why would I be involved other than just telling you the truth. i see myself out

^u w0t mVIII? r u drunk or high or mb both?

It exists. I'm playing on my friend's 2k MMR account right now. Games are really hard, I win them, but I can see that 3-4k player's woudn't win them. I also boosted my other friend from 2.4k to 3.5k in 1 week & games were 10 times easier, even though they had higher MMR involved & I was low 4k back there (now high 4k). My friend flames constantly, in literally every match so it's not a surprise he is in hidden pool.

^say that to triplesteal a million times, a stacker, an ignorant white washer, volvo activist, and general good midwesternfuckyouverymuch

and zenoth too, and kitrak, since the bigger the ego the bigger the mouth and therefore they appear to be the only guys that remember and despise me the most and trash my every thread with condesending thread jacks about my winrate and mmr as if they have to annouce discovery of south america every time they see it

ALL WHILE KNOWING THAT I CHOOSE TO FIGHT ICEFROG INSTEAD OF BOW DOWN TO HIM AND HIS VOLVO GABEN LORDS LAUGHING AT PEOPLE IN SHADOW POOL aka autistic cnts with zero social ecomonical value towards funding their posh lazyfairy devs on their way to the grand and mysterious blockbuster half life fuckyouverymuch

chill, bae

i honestly never cared about being the majority or the minority, leave that to the gay people and the feminists, fuck them too, they make a living walking fucking parody out of everyone who's actually genuinely different and much more unheard. it is you fucks every time I voice my opinion you who rule me out ridicule me label me up treat me as a joke alienate me and belittle me, i never asked for any of this and you think i have problems? YOU HAVE FUCKING PROBLEMS

i dont think u r mentally ill or smthng (and dont care about it), but ur comments are mostly boring and long, so i skip them most of the times

oh and why are all the "kids from china server" normal queue with less than 50% winrate? cus billingual people tend more to be alienated than not, especially if they fucking play dota

nah dude its cuz u have serious issues

@SXchinesewtvthefuckthatissupposedtosay bruh....normal skill and below 50%. Dota is clearly not for you. I believe a game called Little League of "Legends" is more of your drift. Taking into consideration your also ahem below 50% winrate for other game modes except for th broken ability draft. Its not your bilinguality or wtv excuse u come up with. I'm fuckin vietnamese playing in US east and get matched with russians, spanish speakers, flaming white boys and very surprisingly toxic white girls. Granted i'm only high skill but at least i dont pathetically get buttraped by normal skill kids to reduce my winrate to below 50%

Alienated? pls grow up and accept reality. Although racism is still a strong aspect of a lot of people's lives, our world has become a much more diverse and accepting place so dont give me that bullshit alienated cuz i'm asian shit.

I never said that climbing from 2-3k is impossible lol. Don't make it sound like this. 5k player can win 90% of games in 2-3k MMR, no matter if it's hidden pool or not. Hidden pool is real, but it's not like u can't climb, if ur good u will.

none of you are even on the chinese server just stop talking as if you know anything about this server and it's mmr ranges

at all

Sandboxie users get shadowban pool. Essentially people who run multiple DOTA instances on one machine for shady purposes.

what if i run it on a virtual machine? 4Head

Shadowpool or whatever you wanna call DOES exist, i even read somewhere in the official Valve statement (although not directly stated) that they put people who are often rated 1 start or reported a lot in the same team while on the other side they are normal rated people only. Since i was flaming and raging over 3k retards a lot back in the days (although i was raping and carrying most of the games by myself) cause they didnt listen to anything nicely, i got my old profile into that pool.

And believe me, it's not pretty there. You can actually go insane when there are 4 retarded people with pretty much 0 impact or will to win in 20 matches in a row and total oposite on the other team. Then i changed my attitude by a lot, started playing on new profile in the start of 2014 and actually improved a lot as a player - not so mechanically or knowledge wise, more willing to cooperate and win even if people are playing like shits.

I have my days still when i flame, but not hard flaming, just spamming people and ask them to come, listen and win the game. If you want to get out of that crap place, CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE PEOPLE AND DONT BE ASSHOLES.

can you get out of the shadow pool?

Those 1-5 stars are gone for good, so i dont know really. If you flame too much you get muted and then the games suddenly become shit somehow (not just only cause you cant write or talk). I believe you get sent to shadowpool, cause it's a real difference - try to pay attention if you get muted how your teammates are suddenly shit. After you get unmuted games become normal again - teammates actually communicate and try to cooperate - that was at least my experience on new profile. Same goes for games a bit after a lot of reports, but no low priority yet.

So, if you see the sudden ACTUAL change in quality of the games (weekends are different story), then you might be in that pool. Try to have good mentality, be kind and dont flame - thats the recipe to get out.

Aaaaaaah

Okay so if u get reported and 1 star rate they send you to hell

But can we abuse it? Like send someone there intentionally?

I wanna send someone there

I don't think they do ratings anymore. So I assume the ways into this pool are:

- making smurfs
- abandoning matches
- getting muted
- getting reported often

I call bullshit on the shadow pool, hidden pool and covert pool. Its obviously the dark pool.

http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/1882246482 (I was Storm)

Example of hidden pool game. It wasn't ez for me to win, even though I'm over 2k MMR higher than that account. I played there 12 games, won 9, lost 3 (1 I threw on purpose, coz I couldn't stand the team). Maybe 1 or 2 games felt like players are equally skilled, other my team was 2-3 times worse than enemies. All games were pretty hard, even though I have 4.7k solo & it was a 2.2k MMR game. They were much harder than games I played in 3-3.5k MMR.

is concentration camp ethical? ask yourself that question

Well after like 150 wins so approx 300 games, did i drop into this so-called shadowpool? Like everything was fine when suddenly around 20 games in a row i had like soooo toxic teams and lost every single game. (on a smurf account)
Exactly same thing happened to my friend who was also on a smurf account and also when he had around 150 wins. Coincidence? I DONT THINK SO

I was in some kind of pool once
http://www.dotabuff.com/matches/418347273
I would probably call it the "Tango Pool." It takes two to tango.

you all bitches know nothing about the horror.