blonde poker forum

Now charging vig on currency exchanges/deposits/withdrawals etc. Huge sigh at where PokerStars is heading :(

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/pokerstars-currency-exchange-rates-1484001/

Can someone put this in simple words for a simple person please? :D

Not best at all.

Ugh I hate they are doing this on deposits as well effectively stinging the losing players, which cannot be good for the poker economy. If it was just on withdrawals I get it, but obviously wouldn't be happy.

killing the goose that lays the golden egg.  Just sounds like betfair premium charge all over again.  Amazing how these senior ceo exec types on £500k+ a year are so short sighted and so clueless.  Yet they keep killing these huge businesses which have monopoly positions for their own short term gain.  How can you earn so much and be so clueless?

100% agree.

They know they are the biggest so instead of trying to make it even bigger they think they can use their power to bleed every last penny out the system.

The only way they will stop is if the players pull in same direction and stop playing there stop signing up etc.

Obv so many won't as the big pp and flashing lights allude us all and brain fry our minds. It's a real shame and I certainly won't be doing it anymore. Enough is enough. Time to stand up and fight for the future of poker.

If I'm reading it right, there's nothing to worry about.

Deposit in sterling and then convert to dollars within pokerstars client to play.

And then when you withdraw, just do the opposite and withdraw in sterling.

When I just converted $10 to sterling, they gave me the exact xe rate.

Having said that, all the individual changes Amaya have made so far have been a little bit of bad news for players

Added together, it's a lot of bad news.

This post probably explains the move:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=45023628&postcount=84

Just don't feel comfortable anymore Keith. I mean before these doughnuts took over it was all very much in favour of the players and improving the site to make it better for the players whether that meant better graphics table layouts or just better tournaments.

Now it seems like none of that is important anymore and it's as if they are saying "we have X amount of thousands playing every day, so now we are going to test the waters and see how much we can push out the economy". Seems very arrogant by them tbh and I don't think there is much love for making poker better with this company more so just to make as many bucks as possible before Internet poker fizzels out completely.

They are going about the right way of making it fizzle out that's for sure.

It's a hassle moving sites, I've always felt like it was my home but now I can't see that being the case anymore.

It's like if I go into a bookies and say take the price and it's 5/1 and within a second of her finding the race it's changed to 4/1 and they give me 4/1 because they can't do their job properly I'm not going back to them. Just on principle alone.

I understand what you're saying and agree with a lot of it.

But even with all the stuff Amaya have done to make it worse, Stars is still 1000 times better than the next best.

Sorry for dim input.
Is this being just implemented on stars?

Surely make all deposits and withdrawals on full tilt and transfer between the wallets?

I haven't given this too much thought, but at first glance, I don't see a big problem for UK players?  Sure, if you live in Poland (or any country for that matter that doesn't have CAD$/US$/GBP/EUR) then it's going to be an issue for those players.. and maybe there is a knock-on effect when that slice gets removed from the ecosystem.  But historically, providing fx is not free so Stars have been wearing the financial cost of such deposits/withdrawals.

Back in UK-land, it looks like it can be avoided by poker players learning to be more careful when moving money across currency boundaries.  AFAICS, you deposit in GBP, your Stars cashier gets credited 100% of that GBP.  You can then subsequently move that to USD to play games, profit, move back to GBP within the Stars client and withdraw, with no "line loss" whatsoever?

The only Uk players to suffer would be the ones who clumsily go to their USD cashier page and withdraw money to their GBP bank directly.  In which case, they deserve what they get.

If I have misunderstood it, grateful if someone can put me right, ty!

A guy on Twitter said there is a cap on the amount you can transfer from $$$ to £££.

I have never hit it, so no idea if it is true.

If this is true, going to take ages to withdraw vig free if anyone wins the Sunday Million.

I think it's something like $3k in a day and maybe $10k in a month.  It might vary from player to player and you might be able to get them to increase limits for you should your account be appropriate.  I imagine the limits were put in place to stop it being possible for anyone to fx trade for meaningful amounts cost-free  (remember the Scandi tickle on Ladbrokes??)

I recall Camel blogging about that!

I remember telling you about the loophole ages before it came to light.

No-one's memory can be THAT good....

I can't remember what I had for tea last night, & I plum forgot Jeff Duval's name on Wednesday, but I remember every Blog Camel ever wrote. Same with The Poker Bastard, too.

Poor old Keith.  Barely a mention of his blog nowadays that doesn't include "poker bastard" in an adjacent sentence.

I have no idea why people think I was the PB.

Back in the day he was writing I had no hesistation slagging people off under my own name, so why would I hide under a pseudonym to slag off others?

If it was today, maybe I would be a little more discreet. But it's not and for the final time I was not and never have been the Poker Bastard.

People depositing and withdrawing using Skrill have been doing this for ages anyway

Sucks for players in non USD/EUR/GPB/CAD countries though, their piece of the pie just got a little bit smaller. Who knows whats coming next :D


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It is disappointing though that they want to talk about all of the advantages that spin n go's etc are bringing in terms of getting new depositing players on one hand, but now they want to charge on fee on deposits from countries that don't use the above currencies

Suggestions on 2p2 that this may be a money grab from russian players making their final withdrawl before stars cuts them loose to satisfy US and European regulators. Plausible of course but would create a lot of bad blood in terms of any future return? Probably not enough to make Amaya think twice about it though

I used to feel a brand loyalty to Stars, but now it has pretty much gone.

Think about this. Bringing the currency conversion charges in just one week before hundreds/thousands or UK players are forced to withdraw their entire balances from Stars.fr.

The only way to withdraw from .fr is by direct bank transfer. As far as I am aware, although I will double check this next week. Even if you have a euro account with a UK bank, you have no choice but to convert the money to your domestic currency when you withdraw. So therefore, as you can only have a .fr account in euros, fitting in with these new currency charges, you have no choice but to take a 2-2.5% hit on the currency exchange, and I don't see any way around it. So in one swoop Stars have taken 2-2.5% of all balances of UK based Stars.fr players.

I'd like to believe that it is a coincidence that this has come in one week before Uk players are banned from Stars.fr, but I really don't. I'd also like to believe that they might do some kind of exemption or work around for the British .fr player, but I don't think they will. Reminds me strongly of the scummy way that Party brought in 3% charges for most withdrawal methods.

So many moves by Stars lately to squeeze extra money from players or cut costs.
- Heavy promotion of casino games on Full Tilt
- Heavy promotion/introduction or rake heavy tournaments like re-entry, progressive super KO, deep hyper turbos, deadline satellites
- Removal of WCOOP main event ticket reward for Supernova elites
- Cutting rewards programme of UK players


In the past Stars did a really good job of making players forget/ignore that they are making shedloads of money from us. But right now I'm feeling they are squeezing every last drop from me so I am acutely aware.

It is a pity that every other site constantly shoots itself in the foot and is pretty useless. The only one who in my mind provided consistently good software/service was Winamax, but I can't play there any more,.

This is very well put.

Amayas purchase of Stars reminds me a bit of the Glazers purchase of Man United.  Basically they have loaded themselves with debt to pay for the purchase and now they are going to pass that on to the punter to pay for them in every conceivable way.

I'm not a financial expert, but I think the leveraged buy out method they used was similar, so I thought of this too when it happened. Of course my first response was "wait.... OnGame bought Pokerstars...???????????"

Seconded. I get the feeling it will be a really interesting twelve months for them, especially when they launch casino.

That's a big enough reason to drop them out if any. All well and good for the professional type player who knows all the angles of how to do this stuff but what about the thousand upon thousands of average joes rocking up on a Friday night depositing 200 quid after the pub?

They get hit 2.5% on every deposit which goes to stars pockets which in turn takes it out the economy. So for all the pros saying it's no problem I think it's completely the opposite as those players are their bread and butter, so the moment average joe loses money before he even played 1 hand then the pros/regs lose longterm.

And to say it doesn't effect the UK so it's ok is quite a bold statement. Do you think the same about the war ? That attitude will never unite anyone imho and although this is completely different it is something everyone on this forum and our Community is passionate about so I think it's good if the majority were voting with their feet not just their voice.

Great post

The sad thing is that most people really can't vote with their feet as there really isn't many viable other places to play at least for MTTs. I've dropped some stars tournies to be replaced by ipoker, but for example
the 888 client has been unusable this week due to crashes,
microgaming has very few tournaments of any size and also a shady past, ditto for ongame.
Party has awful software, also hidden fees, although the rake is often less.
ipoker has pretty bad glitchy software
Full Tilt is very reg heavy and also owned by Stars anyway
I like Winamax but this is our last week there
I like sky too but they don't let me play there when I am not in the UK, plus their tournies are generally not that big fields and also always 6 max and a lot of heavily raked bounty tournaments.
There are other tiny sites such as Unibet, but I don't really see any traffic at all.
PKR is pretty tough to multitable

That is literally all the choice now. Pokerstars have destroyed the market and most independent sites have joined ipoker.

Surely even the 'average Joe' knows you lose money by exchanging currencies. If they don't, maybe they should learn? Knowing everyday things like that have nothing to do with poker ability imo

If this is what's to come you have to ask yourself what's next. None of the last couple of months have given me any confidence that pokerstars are trying to look out for their players.

Spin and go's supernova's/elites l, these charges and casino games in the future.

Amaya have taken over and unfortunately have a totally different approach to how they want to make their money. They are ruthless and in business the very richest are the most ruthless.

It's all about their profit margin and they will do anything they have to do to make it as big as possible and sod anyone who has a problem with it cos there is just another 300 thousand other players that will play on stars.

The rational group cared about their players and they had a very good way of balancing out everything to keep the players and themselves happy. They also had the best reputation and that is why they were so successful.

Gordon Ramsay is probably the biggest chef in the UK in terms of audience wise and I don't see him charging the earth for a tuna tartare or a beef dish. His restaurants use the freshest of ingredients the best quality but he's not ripping off his customers to an extent where they are having to pay for the privilege of sitting in his restaurant because he is such a big name.

That is my example, I may not be making my point clearly but I think it's about time we all stopped with the whole 'dog eat dog' attitude and pull together if it's something that you feel passionate about.

This bit is very true and most surprisingly to a lot of people they will be the ones to destroy poker long term.

I was buying €2000 the other day towards my MCOP buyin.

I know buying from the bank is the worst possible choice, but as I had a little spare time I popped into Barclays and asked how much it would cost.

I was quoted £1730. Mid point that day was £1590.

I ended up paying £1620 in one of those Bureau De Change booths near Paddington station.

2% seems about fair for this service.

10% is legalised theft. But unfortunately most Average Joe's seem prepared to pay it.

It's just proving that old adage.

Monopolies are bad for consumers.

Where will online poker be in 2020?  Just stars operating as the only firm of any major size and the rest just slowly folding around them?

And now is the best time for the other sites to close the gap on stars. I don't believe they just starter putting on all these high guarantee mtts in the beginning, they worked hard to build their player base together with their reputation.

Other sites need to be doing the same. I've played ipoker recently and it's got a lot better. Not as many glitches with software and slowly building there guarantees. The multi entry is a very good thing imo. Sky is great for the fact it does not allow u to have any hem or other tools to help u make decisions and this would be the first place I would go for cash games sit n gos and maybe 5 mtts throughout the week. I would be happy to pay a little higher rake but know it was all fair game tbh. Only thing I would say is the time bank needs to come into play as I wouldn't feel comfortable having someone go all in for a thousand pounds and me have 30 seconds to make a decision...

I feel micro gaming could come back as they had good tournies when at Ladbrokes so again if Unibet/Stan James puts in some hard work they can only get better.

Apparently 888 is real soft for all variants of poker and yes they had some issues this week but I wouldn't be too worried, I'm sure it was just a few technical glitches which can easily happen.

If some of these networks got the right people in the know and did their market research then I believe you would see a much bigger change in who's at the top.

All these sites and networks had their dream chance when Full Tilt went down and none of them took it. I don't see any of them stepping up the game now when they couldn't then. If you are hamstrung with dodgy software then there is only so far you can go. Sad fact is that Stars also has the best of software (although I like winamax better).

Like it or lump it but changes like this that really challenge pro players livlihoods are really the only way it was ever gonna go, and I believe it had to go like this, the weaker or less determined pro players have to drop off the radar, only way.

We all had it far too good for far too long I don't really think you can blame amaya.

This charge tho effects deposits more than withdrawals (depending on your currency i geuss), therefore recs get stung initially and then the regs secondly as less rec money is in play. Its just a simple money grab from the whole demographic of players.

true true, but still the net result is going to be pro's lose out/quit in the end, there will always be people losing money at poker it's just about where the money goes.

A common misconception I believe though;

Poker ecology NEEDS professional players, groups of ametuers playing each other sounds like a nice idea in theory but wouldn't work...

The big 55 with no pro's would prolly lose 1/3 -1/2 of it's field on a weekday and therefore be massively reduced top prize and less appealing to play, if you're an ametaur player who fancies gambling at a bit of 100/200 PLO are you going to find 5 other recs who wanna play with you, prolly not - you need pro's.

I'm not saying that stars or sites have a duty of care towards to pro players I'm just saying that they are not the enemy. It's a natural cycle the easier poker is then the more people who will be attracted to it as a full time occupation, thus making it harder, in turn meaning eventually less pro's, making it easier and therefore attracting more people to poker full time. Anything the sites do or don't do is merely speeding up or slowing down an inevitable cycle. Doesn't really matter too much where they take the money from, every $ more stars earns will ultimately come at the expense of the pro community.

It needs recreationals, too, Dave........that's where it all starts.

Online sparsely  for a few days, but I don't think we need to get too bent out of shape on this!

Tbh, "average Joe" is actually  sharper on fx than the typical poker player.  Long before this change, I've spoken to a lot of poker players who don't have the first clue what they are doing when it comes to fx.  They will study for hours to find 0.0001% on their game and then blindly give 5% to Thomas Cook.  I would expect a poker player to be careful (but they aren't) I'd expect a poker player to be a rate tart, and even then, ask the fx bureau for an improved rate (but they don't)  At the other end, I've seen poker players expect me to drive 4 hours and wait for an undetermined length of time in a car park somewhere to save them what would amount to about $20 in fx rates just because they read on a forum that trading at spot was the way to do it. While not every member of the public "gets it" too, this isn't specialised poker knowledge ~ this is general knowledge and poker players generally are worse at it than average, not better.

Next up, I don't see where you lose 2.5% on a deposit.  You will if you deposit in another currency to what Stars offer in their cashier, but if you are depositing in GBP, you won't lose anything.  Yes, some players will lose money.  Yes, that is stars choosing to pass on banking costs to the users.  Yes, that's what monopolies can do, where there isn't a regulatory body with teeth that can push back effectively anytime stars overdoes it.  Yes, I think the war was a bad thing.  No, I'm not going to stop playing on Stars, at least not until someone offers me a credible alternative.

Average joe comments are spot on.  Suppose this is why so many 'pros' go skint because they don't take care of the business side of the job.

Ofc, and it has both, pros and recs right now! It's all good yeah?! The pool of recs will either fill up or dry out, and that's fine, it's the pro pool that has t oadapt, and that's a fine system too IMO.

Just my 0.2 cents

But I don't think all the changes at Stars are down to Amaya most of the things they have implemented will have been in the pipeline for a long time already. Cutting off affiliates, introducing spin and go's, now the currency charge.

Stars has always planned things out long in advance and most of these (specifically spin and go's) would have been a long time in development. The site has been moving away from the stars of old steadily since BF and this accelerated when they bought FTP and essentially killed off  the site (which I think everyone thought had a chance of becoming firm #2 again)

Amaya might have moved up the timescales on some of these things certainly but, Stars was alredy going down this route

I don't think the "old Stars" would have brought in the currency charges

Also think they would have given the reason for cutting off the grey area countries (if they cut them off at all)

You might be right about the other things. Perhaps the Scheinberg's were delaying bringing in them in to maintain their popularity.

Wonder how long the deal precludes them from opening a new poker site.

Because if they opened one tomorrow it would be a serious rival for Stars.

You really think this is likely?  I can see this when you sell your company for £50m or something but when you sell it for billions surely you spend a bit of time with your family, random hookers and your coke dealer?

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28/internet-poker/announcement-pokerstars-changes-rake-spin-go-prizes-battle-planets-1485512/

End of battle of the planets, rake increases etc.

Probably a good strategy by Stars to get all their bad news out in quick succession.

was always going to happen and I doubt a handful of people withdrawing their custom will touch them.

The hyper turbo rake increases are pretty hilarious. Attacking the people who start games, especially at the small stakes seems pretty flawed and counterproductive. How long until the new 230$ Sunday million coming up with its new ko format is revealed? I really hope they have thought about this, it doesn't seem like the greatest decision ever.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Amaya-Gaming-Group-Reviews-E473086.htm some interestng comments here.

Seems to have been well-received on 2+2, then?

Yes, they seem to be going nuts over there.

I'm not particularly up to date on current events, but I guess the other sites are rubbing their hands at a potential player exodus from Stars?

IMO there will lots of complaints and very little in the way of an exodus. Reminds me of all the people I see moaning about and claiming they will leave Facebook.......on Facebook.

However it would be great, no offence to stars, if another room became a major competitor.

Personally, I don't mind causing offence to Stars anymore.

In part they can do this because the players have no where else of the same quality to go to right?

Competitors are cheaper, as of now i think...but no sign anyone can match the software platform, service, player base

Also the average player will be oblivious of these changes because altho price of games have increased they show as the same price in the lobby for the majority (unless I'm mistaken)

Exactly this having virtually dismantled FTP as far as I'm concerned.

Just a carbon copy of when betfair introduced the premium charge to big winning customers.  Everyone cried, moaned for 2 days then got on with giving betfair all the business day in day out as per usual as there was nowhere else they could make a living.   Everyone said 'let's move to betdaq' but nobody did because there was no liquidity there to bet against.

This is so true for over 98% of their customers which is why they do the rake like this so they can increase the price of the product without the vast majority of their customers even realising.

This

888 had massive server issues the last 2 sundays and party had a very suspicious cancellation when it looked like pokerfest might overlay. iPoker bot ring in plo being talked about too :( Nobody is coming to take stars on.

its pretty cute that all these 2+2 boys think anyone is going to boycott pokerstars.

Amaya CEO takes over, looks at his customers, looks at his prices realises 60% of them don't give a crap what they pay and out of the 40% who do care 38.5% of them will grumble and just pay anyway.

So he put the prices up! And he'll put them up again I would happily wager.

Not that they will worry to much, but I think Stars has lost me as a customer.

I have about 150k fpps to use up, which I will spend on the odd tournament when I am bored, but the way I feel now, I don't think I'll be depositing again.

Why would they not put prices up?

They have the best product, by a mile, the best liquidity, the biggest prize pools, & the most players.

Any great business in that spot, with what amounts to a near monopoly, is going to squeeze their customers.

Boycott 'Stars? No chance. The 2+2 Crew said they'd boycott The Venetian this summer, but it was rammed to the rafters all Series. 

It's not like 'Stars will be the only ones to raise prices, all UK facing sites will ne re-aligning their charges, &/or adjusting their rake model, in the next few months. All of them.

I do think the "fun-player friendly" sites might weight the increases more towards the high limit players, & so cut some slack to the recreationals. But I'd be amazed if all sites don't follow suit in some shape or form, they'll just cut their cloth in different ways. It just happens that 'Stars announced first.

I suppose they are bound to get the most heat, as they are, far & away, the biggest.

I had to pause to take breath after I read this Post on 2+2, where, it seems, the guy think 'Stsars owe him the right to make a living. This Post made me gasp, on so many levels. Every paragraph contains a gem.


I am in the process of writing a long email to pokerstars with maths showing that it will now be mathmaticly impossible for anyone but SNEs to make a profit after rake back for the games im targeting at any stakes above $5 and that most of the SNES will now be turned into losing to the rake even after rake back for these games.

and that I am now gone from pokerstars. I am serious with this statement and currently preparing a spreadsheet and email to send to pokerstars regarding this and am happy to provide this information once i have completed preparing it to anyone that wants to challenge me on that point.

the behavior of poker stars now goes beyond all rational sense. when peoples behavior seems so irrational there is only two realistic logical conclusions that can be drawn.

1. they are totally incompetent. this is true the minority of the time note that.
2. there agenda is different to what you postulate and actually makes sense from there stand point.

thus i no longer believe that the pokerstars actually are trying to make profit but rather there new owners are trying to kill online poker this may sound absurd but seriously do not be surprised if Sheldon Alderson is involved somewhere.

If you don't maintain at least silver star status you cannot use FPP's at their store.

Their price increases will probably result in them making a profit record and generate a 7 figure bonus for the CEO.

Pokerstars have always been shareholder driven to maximise profits, they just did a better PR job before the takeover.

If I had just spent nearly $5,000,000,000 - you can be sure that I am going to maximise on the size of my business to reap every commercial benefit that I possibly can from being the monopoly/market leader - whatever you want to call it.

I don't even think these are bad changes - they're obviously negative for people that are used to profiting from Stars, but I would imagine that the intention is to change the ebb and flow of $. Less of it getting moved between non depositing pro players, which doesn't generate income for Stars.

Stars is different from the "fun player friendly sites" as it is easier to make money on the smaller sites but the volume isn't there.  Stars winning players on the whole rely on volume and rewards for profit and can't really stand much in the way of increases.

btw have you any idea how stars is still catering to illegal markets?  Surely other UK licensed companies will start complaining to the UKGC or is grassing not the done thing in gaming circles :D

Yes, I understand that 'Stars has a very different demographic to most Sites, & in truth, I don't much understand it I suppose. But we cannot be surprised that Amaya are trying to get more revenue, why else would they buy a mature company?

As to how they are still operating in certain markets (Russia?), from my understanding of the new UK legislation, I have no idea how they have managed that.

No grassing? Ha! Every poker site & bookie that advertises gets scores of complaints to ASA & the like - 99% of them from competitor sites.  Whether that extends to the GC etc, I have no idea. 'Stars are so different to every other poker site that it's hard to see how regular sites would benefit that much from harming 'Stars. Like it or not, 'Stars are good for poker - very good. We might not all like every last detail, (third party software in my case, but we all have different little gripes, & that's standard) but hell, they are extremely good overall.

It'll all settle down to normality within a few weeks, & life will go on exactly as before.

Thanks for that, I didn't realise.

I'm gold at the moment, so I guess I'll have to have one last Sunday schedule before the end of November..

Can someone who understands this stuff better than me just clarify a few points for me please?

As primarily a cash player, I can't see any rake changes that are going to affect me. The only changes relating to cash games seem to be coming in at $25/$50. In fact, the only part of this update that I can see affecting me is the need to manually top up every time I drop below my initial buy in, which I'm sure a piece of software will be able to do for me in the near future.

As for the stuff about charges for withdrawing etc, is it not as simple as converting all funds to the currency you want to withdraw in before you do so to avoid these new charges?

LOL

There has been a lot of debate on this on the interwebs and, imo, a lot of people are sort of missing the point.

As a business decision this is absurdly easy to agree with. In the context of the wider online poker sector it's not even bad. And as you say I doubt in the short-term it will hurt them one bit.

But to potentially lose a large chunk of the goodwill and organic player advocacy you've spent 10+ years building up? That's surely a bit of a disaster.

Unless of course the move is designed to alienate that player demographic and alter the overall ecology of the site. In which case WP NH.

Raking the rebuys and addons in MTTs is going to be a killer for me. This is also the first time I've heard of the rake being different for two players from different countries who are playing the same games.

Personally I feel like Stars are trying to grab as much from me as fast as they can, so I will be doing the same to them whenever I attend any of their events.

I'll never forgive them for not letting me have a second steak and kidney pie at UKIPT Edinburgh a couple of years ago.

I hear what you say, but I think the hoohah will all die down very quickly, & the vast majority of the players will continue to use 'Stars for their poker fix.

Disgraceful, & worthy of a thread on 2+2. That'll teach 'em.

It will and they will. But there is at least a chance now that Stars will be filed under "just another gaming company" in some players minds. That's definitely a problem. They were always mes que un poker site.

agree tikay, and agree alun.

Sammy G nailed it the other day, no chance for poker now "just gambling" forever...

This is probably my favourite post of the year

Anyone?

Well hu play below probably 200nl is unbeatable now with the rake being doubled. So nice to see these sites punishing the regs and helping out the poker ecosystem like we need.


The currency charges won't affect you directly, they will however effect fish who don't realise these charges exist, as I doubt Stars will have a huge ad explaining the changes.

Give me somewhere to go and I will boycott stars. Give me a site that doesn't mysteriously cancel tournaments when they would overlay. Give me a site without numerous thriving bot rings. Give me a site that doesn't charge on deposits/withdrawals whilst using a currency none of its consumers can actually use.


Tikay if you think a site that is beginning to promote unbeatable games is good for poker then you should continue championing stars's current approach. It will be found wanting in 3-5 years when the long term effects of these changes take place. However, I do agree this is good for Amaya in theory at the moment. Just seems very short sighted to me. They are rapidly losing any credibility that poker is a skill game, and it will only continue down this path whilst people try to capitalise on a poker market they think exists but really does not. Stars's "poker ecosystem" is/was vastly different to the ridiculous iPoker 1/iPoker 2 accident. For some reason the powers to be in poker have taken one event, small skins from the network handing out huge rakeback deals and never advertising to a new thought process that winning players are bad for the game. If you want low winrates you want regfilled games and not depositing fish. Stars are absolutely killing the golden goose in the form of hyper turbos. Yes you might pay 55% of what you take back to the supernova elites, but they provide thousands and thousands of games of liquidity. These guys are grinding out 2% after rakeback and the fucking idiots in suits think that is too much? They must be crazy. The million/warmup have 5 regs registering 6man sats virtually every waking hour of every day. Once these 5 go we suddenly need 6 recreational players to all fancy punting a mil sat instead of one. They are absolutely off their rocker getting rid of SNE in 2016. They will continue putting prices up and having people hail them as business geniuses until it all collapses.  There is no possible way they can gain the volume of the SNE players with recreational players. The market is getting smaller and not bigger.

Stars have just gone from having a player base that loves them to a player base that hates them, and this will pass onto the recreational players too. I have never promoted an online site that wasn't pokerstars whenever someone asked me at the table about online poker. Why would I? No one had anything to offer, no one currently does. Party Poker has tried to do a similar thing over the last two years, has failed miserably and is continuing to wither and die. It is very hard to continue to make money when a significant proportion of your playerbase hates you. Pokerstars are getting that way, and the hate will only spread as 2+2ers are grassroots poker. People actually think its a bunch of online players, when the majority are people who just like poker. Over 98% of registered users are amateur players, possibly even higher. Blonde poker definitely has a pro to amateur posting ratio that is off the charts compared to 2+2.

Tikay highlights a post from some guy who appears to be an absolute crackpot. I don't really see the relevance. There are 700 posts in one thread regarding this on 2+2, it doesn't really surprise me that a few are absolute bollocks. I'm sure some people read my posts and think its just more of the same shite. You can admire amayas business practices, but don't try and say it is good for poker. Poker as a game is beautiful, and whilst you might not like online poker/poker professionals, understanding that a healthy online poker scene is incredibly good for the long term nature of the game as a whole. I feel more and more like a raving lunatic on blonde at the moment, and its not particularly fun for me, although I enjoy writing these posts to some degree. It seems like these changes are being well received on here, despite being absolutely horrible for everyone. People seem to be enjoying seeing pros get fucked over, and I can't really work out why. The general sentiment seems to be that the corporation is finally sticking it to these nasty professional players with their all powering software when the reality is many pros would rather not deal with any software or bullshit at all and just play fucking poker. Seating scripts are good for fish, it means they play hands with more players in, and lose money slower and stay at the tables for longer. Why do you think Stars haven't gotten rid of them? Yeah they look horrible, but they help out the sites preventing headsup action.

I just want to wake up, load up my laptop, make hundreds of complex decisions for thousands of dollars and go to bed. Why is it so hard?

11 new posts, probably should start being a touch more concise.

I don't fully agree with this, but this is the point I was making

and whilst you might not like online poker/poker professionals

For the record, that does not apply to me.

I'm just trying to put it all in context at a time when a lot of people seem to be over-reacting (imo).  

I do happen to think that the recreationals are more important, in many ways, though. That does not mean I "dislike" Pros, not at all. There are far more recreationals than Pros, by a very long chalk, & their voice deserves to be heard, too.

I am willing to bet that the vast majority of pure recreationals have never heard of 2+2.
 
This "price increase" is not a suprise, & it's been widely known that it was coming for a long time. All sites will be re-aligning their rake models in the light of the new Legislation, not just 'Stars. Are we going to hate them all?

Excellent post Adam.

Yes. I am a consumer. I hate it when the price of milk/cigarettes go up, and would continue to do so even if I owned a corner shop.

most people on 2p2 are recreational poker players.

It's a circle though - if you were a farmer (as well as being a consumer), you'd want the right to get the highest price you could for your milk, surely? Your customers ain't gonna like price hikes, but they ain't gonna quit buying milk.

So does this mean we should expect to see Sky Poker jacking up the rake in the new year?

Also I'm fairly sure this rake change is not directly linked to impending new taxes on UK players. Didn't they previously announce there will be changes to player rewards due to this next year?

Quite possibly - but my statement remains 100% valid. Most recs have never heard of 2+2, or any other poker forum. You don't know these people, but there are zillions of them. They play a few SNGs or fiver MTT's each night, after Corrie & before Crossroads, & just enjoy themselves. But poker does not consume them, it's just a bit of fun, not an obsession.

They are a vital part of poker.

That does not mean I "dislike" Pros! Context, balance.

Thanks for posting this is beautiful in its delusion.

Bet Amayas share price takes a hit when they get that spreadsheet

I never said "jacking up the rake", I said "re-aligning rake model".

And I never mentioned or referred to Sky Poker. As you well know. ;)

For the record, I have no idea what their plans are in this respect, but I'd be surprised if they did not recognize market forces as to recreationals, as that has always been their angle. 

I'd be very surprised indeed - & so would you I suspect - if ALL sites did not do something with their rake models between now & early next year. They will want to earn increased Margin to pay the PoC thing, but they'll all go about it in different ways I'd imagine.

Yeah I was part joking part hoping for a scoop ;)

It will be interesting to see what the various companies do. You need to remember that for most of them the UK is only a part of their dot com business, so making sweeping changes that affect people in say Canada just to protect UK revenues may not be the smartest move.

Yup, it will be very interesting to see how it all pans out.

By the time pantomine season arrives, 'Stars won't be the only villain, I can guarantee, but they remind me of Ryanair right now - everyone claims to loathe them.

Ha! Nice analogy.

But that's a HUGE shift in thinking. I've never known an online gambling brand with so much goodwill towards it. Ever. Players LOVED Stars and most would have definitely said things like "I trust Stars to do the right thing" etc etc

edit: not saying people don't love stars now, but if this ill feeling becomes more widespread I mean or if they end up like Ryanair!

The thing is, the members of this forum sit at a very specific part of the spectrum - and whilst it is undoubtedly unfortunate for you, there's hundreds if not thousands more people per each unhappy customer who are sitting in their living room saying, "Spin and Go's are absolutely amazing!" without a care in the world about the rake/charges or how people playing hyper turbo heads up SNG's have it rough etc.

There's nothing surprising about it whatsoever, they've had the most exuberant rake/charges on the live circuit for some years and only a tiny minority bat an eyelid. Using that as a measure to judge whether recreational players will care now leads me to conclude the following.

 It will make no difference at all to their popularity or their business.

Well then they shouldn't have bothered doing it in the first place

Tikay would you agree that having fewer games running as the site takes a larger slice is 'good for the game'?

I don't disagree with you that these are great business decisions from the boardroom. It's kind of a freeroll too because I think even though there's a decent amount of hate being directed at stars over this, their 4.9 billion bought the name pokerstars and with that comes some of the accrued good will.

Should these changes drive out a lot of the regs that start games and cause a collapse in liquidity on stars, they could reverse the changes and get the game starters back the next day

Amaya may well be great at being a publicly traded company, but trying to justify these changes as being good for poker overall is a glaring case of cognitive dissonance imo.

My gripe with this sort of sh*t is that i get spam mail daily from stars with Dnegs face on it. Did i receive an email about the currency exchange or rake hikes? did i balls. if it isn't illegal its highly immoral in my book. The walls are closing on a number of us.....meh.

Here is a great read from a poker pro's perspective.  The poker community needs to come together and save poker!

http://fantasysportsicon.com/pokerstars-increase-rake-end-professional-poker-player/

Hi Dan,

I never said it would be good for the game if fewer games ran. I never said anything 'Stars have done recently is "good for the game".

I did say that Amaya purchased a mature company (in a declining market), so it should be pretty obvious they'd want to up prices. It is debatable if that is good for THEIR business, (if I were a Shareholder in Amaya, I would defo applaud their actions), but I never said it was "good for the game".

I was not aware that Amaya had claimed their changes were "good for the game". I don't agree they are. I doubt they are that bad for the game, either, as it happens. It won't change "the game" much overall, imo.

I am extremely confident that there will not be a "collapse in liquidity on 'Stars".

There'll be a lot of noise for a few weeks, some serious grumbling, but poker will continue, pretty much as is. There'll be winners & losers from the change, of course, but overall, not much will change really.

It's quite possible I've got it wrong, but I don't think so.

If it affects your livelihood, then yes, of course I'm genuinely sorry, but I'm not sure an Online Gaming site owes anyone a living. 


 

"save poker"?

Can I suggest that, perhaps, that is a touch of an over-reaction?

And (in that article you linked to) is terminating the contract of "The Face of Full Tilt", who supposedly lost $17 milli in the last 2 years, really a disaster? Would you really expect the new Owners to be happy with that situation?

PS - welcome to blonde. I don't usually disagree with new Members on their first Post! But "save poker" seems a tad ott to me.

The price just went up. Poker players are ingenious at hunting out value. They'll find a way to cope. And the recreationals have never really worried too much about value - they just want to enjoy some recreational poker fun. Which is what I'm about to do right now, , as I do most nights, play 20 or 30 SNG's, chill with my mates, have a laugh & some oohs & aahs, & win or lose a few bob. Best fun ever, poker is a wonderful game if approached the right way.

 

This looks a bit better than the letter you posted, Tikay ;)

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=45091150&postcount=529

Not really too bothered about this, tesco advertise every day on TV and they don't say when the price of bread goes up. The energy companies only announce price rises because OFGEM forces them to.

The issue is that there was room for Amaya to raise the rake and still make it viable for people to start games, but they chose to just rake the winner out of existence. The notion that it will all die down and be business as usual in a couple of weeks is just incorrect because the rake has been raised to a level at which it is impossible for anyone to win even with supernova elite rakeback.

I have a hard time seeing how raking the players that start games, fill the first 4 seats of a sit and go so that the recs can actually 'sit and go' rather than 'sit and wait for ages for a game to fill' like the regs do is good for recreational players.

I think we need to stop looking at these changes as being either 'rec friendly' or 'pro friendly'. Raising the rake and introducing big forex fees are bad for everyone that plays these games. It's only the pros complaining because we're the only players that are crunching the numbers. Everyone tooting Stars' horn seems to be forgetting that these changes hit the recs in the pocket too, they just don't know it.

!

I hope that does not refer to me Dan.

I'm just trying to give some balance to what is, at least on 2+2, a bit of a hysterical debate, with all this "save poker" stuff.

I don't have a flag to fly for 'Stars (think about it!), but I do know they are a great, great, poker site. Tweaking a few things won't change that.

Anyway, peace.

raidalot= talal shakerchi

Yeah, pretty shrewd gentleman, I believe.

Even though people seem to be largely ignoring my posts on this thread for some reason, I'd like to draw everyones attention to another thread on here where we ended up discussing the cartels that have developed around the HU sngs. If I remember, the argument in those was mainly that if the recreational players knew that such things were happening, then that knowledge would kill the games because of the image it projects. Is this not exactly the same issue here? If the recs knew that Amaya was upping the rake and adding these new charges in, I'm sure they'd have something to say about it. Stars is taking away the ability to win at certain forms of the game. Some people were particularly vocal in saying that the whole cartel thing brought home to the recs that saw it how they could definitely not win at that form of the game. These changes, to those that see them, give exactly the same message.

Excellent post

Having recreational players that play day to day or week to week a few hundred here and there are, I agree very important for poker and to make the economy exist. Not letting them know first hand by sending out multiple changes is IMO lazy and just highlights that the way the new owners do business is certainly not for the good of the player.

Like you say Tikay, so many recs won't know about these changes, from my circle who don't play for a living, they had no idea about the charges on deposits, do you think that's a fair way to go about your business?

I am not standing up for one side or the other, I am trying to state that all these changes in favour of themselves can never be good for poker, why do you think Rob has such a strong reputation and DTD is classed as one of if not the leading place to play live poker? Because he worked hard to build up his rep, he sticks to his word, and although it's a business and he's doing it to make money, he is also trying his hardest to find a balance where both player and owner are mutually happy.

If he thought sod all my regulars/pros, I'm just gonna go ahead and change everything for the better of myself, do you honestly think it would still be the leading place to play poker in 2 years time?

OK the charges don't affect us (if you even know about them), but they do affect people that are in a different country to use, is this fair? And the same goes for the format, it probably doesn't affect mtt players one bit (v.little if any) in the UK, but does that mean we should just say 'whatever it's happening deal with it' to all the ppl that have worked hard perfecting there style of format in poker for a number of years?

I believe the poker community should stick to together, after all that's what makes it so unique, players trying to look out for one another, the moment that changes and it turns to 'dog eat dog life' then poker will go downhill faster than a rat up a drainpipe.

Does everyone believe installing casino games onto pokerstars is going to be good overall for Online poker? Let's be honest, Full Tilt is a total farce hence why the need to try and appeal to the 'gamblers' and get them back on the site. Do any of you honestly believe that other sites are that incompetent they couldn't get a good schedule together? No is my answer, the bottom line is places like Coral, Ladbrokes william hill sky vegas/sky poker all have a massive base before Online poker boomed.

The betting shops are open till 10:00pm in the winter for a reason. I know many people myself included that have gone on tilt or had a drunken binge whatever you want to call it and gambled absolutely thousands of there cash in the casino games. Why would they start putting poker first? That is just an extra bonus for them IMO to earn some extra rake.

I specifically know of one good friend that religiously does at least £250 solely on Black jack. How many more do you think do the same on an average week?

Spin and go's are the same, the rec player absolutely loves them, same as the million, all these things imo are like buying a lottery ticket and seeing who can get the luckiest. So in turn the message the leading brand of poker is sending out is far from 'poker is a skill game' 'poker is equal to all'. Both these statements are absolutely not true when they have handled the changes the way they have.

If they really want to look out for there recreational's and other sites too then ban every piece of software and let's all start on a level playing field and see in 2 years time, who has been left behind.

IMHO cash them in or use them before the year is out. If these changes are anything to go by, then your points are going to be worth half what they are now in the new year.

You can play the sats to million (4500) hyper and generate loads of TT, and then sell them on for dollars to a website, the transaction happens instant once you enter your sn.

http://www.liquidpoker.net/sell-pokerstars-tournament-dollars

I'm not really talking as a pro ITT, I'm just talking as a person that enjoys playing poker. In my opinion these changes are bad for every stakeholder in the game of poker besides the rooms, their shareholders and their employees. As a pro I obviously have a bigger stake in poker staying accessible for all and the game being perceived in a positive way than your rec playing a tournament between hollyoaks and crossroads, but I just don't see how these changes and their knock on effects are not bad for him or her too.

I'm not anti big business per se and it was obviously coming when the Schoenbergs sold the conpany, but that doesn't mean I can't be disappointed that the vision for the future of Pokerstars spearheading the effort to have poker recognised as a skill game and to open up the game to millions of people through sensible regulatory legislation that differentiates poker from table games and lotteries has in my opinion been dealt a major blow.

One thing that does surprise me is that tey have done this so quickly.  My assumption was that the value that Amaya saw in Stars was as a full service gaming company and that they would add a casino and sportsbook and probably even other games, bingo etc in fairly short order.  Seems quite bad to tarnish the brand with all of this stuff first as it will have a knock on effect to the other stuff when they could have shown revenue growth without it and done this stuff in a year or two to keep the revenue going in the right direction without getting the blame as the bad guys that screwed up Stars.  If they did it in a couple of years they could have probably got away with the rake increases etc on the basis of "poker ecology".  Seems poor management to me even if it was somewhat inevitable in the long run.

Get it all out now in one go, in six months time when everyone has forgotten and their liquidity hasn't even taken a hit, it will just be the status quo

I was including you when I typed it but was a poor choice of wording so apologies for that

I meant the people that don't really see why this could be really bad for everyone. I sincerely hope that I'm wrong and it really is business as usual, or that Amaya uses some of the proceeds to fund a really clever marketing campaign that gets all of us talking about something else.

Actually I don't agree with the people saying that a casino and sportsbook on stars is a bad thing for the regs. I don't have any data to back this up but I suspect that a really high percentage of losing poker players play some table games and sports bet a bit already, they just do it on other sites that offer those services. Adding those services to pokerstars provides a more 'gambly' environment and the poker games will reflect that. Again it hurts the case for poker as a skill game when a case lands on a judges desk but I think that's pretty much a pipe dream now.

The thing that concerns me is that there is now a precedent for a form of the game that is raked too highly for anyone in the world (maybe besides jorj95) to be able to win at in the long run. I hope in a few years time we're not looking back at the 6max hypers rake changes saying that this was the writing on the wall and it was the first format to be raked into oblivion, with the others to follow.

Why is the general consensus in this thread seem to be that we want a judge to rule poker is a game of skill? Surely we want the opposite.

an interesting perspective


Jesse May @ScurrilousMay 

Sites are big oil and grinders are gas guzzlers. Both have been wholly irresponsible for years. But energy was always unsustainable.


Jesse May @ScurrilousMay 

Poker conservationists are long called crackpots. But a change to renewable energy takes sacrifice from sites and grinders both.


Jesse May ‏@ScurrilousMay

Those inside the industry nod their head. The rest bury their head. Me caveman. Me bash people good. Where people go?

Presumably you are referencing tax?  As has been discussed previously, the judge, in the case that confirmed that poker wasn't taxable income, specifically stated that winning through skill was irrelevant.

Not just tax though, you want more gamblers playing the game. Don't want to go too heavy down the skill side and make the game intimidating to try, like chess.

I will make an effort to play on other sites. Vote with your feet I say.
Will have to sign up for SKY now Tikay ;-)

Pure greed shown by Amaya in my opinion.

It'd help if Stars didn't keep telling me they are having to rake rebuys in future due to the new legislation when I know they are taxed on profits and not the amount being wagered. They say they are bringing the currency conversion charges in to bring themselves into line with other firms in the industry but do so by refusing to tell anyone. They strongly hint that the vip programme is going to be significantly reduced whilst telling us they offer the cheapest poker on the net. I'd honestly have more respect if they recorded Negreanu with a swag bag giving the finger instead of posts like this: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=45091975&postcount=1

He is actually saying a company with a 38% profit margin has to increase its prices in order to grow poker further. They said when Amaya took over that no immediate major changes would be occurring, and then wonder why there is an outcry from a chunk of their long term customers.


Just saw Rupert managing to get Negreanu on side https://twitter.com/RealKidPoker/status/528678718622167040

If they can prove me wrong I'll be happier than anyone. I particularly don't like being lied to. And even the biggest punter in the world is going to notice the 51$ hyper changing to 52.5$ and the 21 super ko going to 22. A tiny % of players consciously try to lose. A lot of guys on this forum who used to play online poker don't know because they don't feel like winners. Increasing rake won't change that.

Cutting the PokerStars Fat

http://www.pokerupdate.com/poker-opinion/cutting-the-pokerstars-fat/

I thought pokerstars was an insanely profitable business,  40% margins and a few billion leftover after costs each year.

Good luck to any pro being paid a huge salary trying to sugar coat amayas new direction to the player base. One of the most obvious reactions  would be be akin to mts mertons famous question:  so mr galfond why would a player being paid $700000 p/a support a company implementing rake increases? Any professional player communicating the idea that making games unbeatable, quadrupling rake and introducing high variance high rake poker-pit-games is due to stars being finacially unstable or being done for the good of 'the game' longterm is going to look ridiculous.

Amaya hold player meetings already, and have improvement sub-forums on 2+2. Even before recent annoncements people were saying that the threads should be closed and the option to send no-one offered up to the vote.

Id respect a suit explaining why the shareholders will be happy with the recent changes more than a shill poker player saying something he doesnt believe in return for a greased palm and a swanky avatar. See negreanu's current standing for evidence of that. One great cost cutting exercise wouod be to take his smug face off the spam emails I reciecve each day.

Id respect the suit more because he is speaking his own languange, promoting his own agenda and clearly his interests are different to mine. I might not agree or be happy - but I wouldnt be patronised either.

I think this is a typo, or just a random name, but Phil Galfond has nothing to do with pokerstars. He is just a player on there.

sorry was a response to the article posted above me

$82 hypers have gone from $80.60+$1.40 to $78.10+$3.90

The Double Chance turbos (which are virtually hyper turbos btw) have gone from Double Chances (no rake on 2nd chance) to re-entries (raked obviously, and up to 5!). You can re-enter up to 400/800(a) and bag yourself them 3k chips.

They haven't changed normal hyper STTS yet?  I feel like I am one rake change away from having nothing worth playing anymore.  Looking on the bright side, I am sure there must be some excellent TV series I need to catch up ok from the last 8 years or so, and I am sure all new music can't be crap. 

I like Jesse but think he's smoked one too many with this tripe. The analogy of online poker to energy is pretty far-fetched.

He's conflating one issue with another.

Should pro poker players be more respectful of the poker "ecosystem"? Yes.

Is jacking up the rake for everyone the best way to solve this? Hmm.

I had a bit of a back and forth with Stars support about the new exchange rates and rake changes when they sent me this gem

"Thank you for your message.

Please note that PokerStars did not introduce any exchange fee furtively."

Definition
Furtive - attempting to avoid notice or attention, typically because of guilt or a belief that discovery would lead to trouble; secretive.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Yeah... I mean the owner of Sky is a good bloke and has never shown any greed. Oh wait...

Haha! Nh.

I would be surprised if he even knew Sky Poker existed mind. And can confirm the guy who runs Sky Poker is most definitely a good bloke*.

*it's not tikay

Very good bloke he is indeed.

Looks a bit like this fella IMO

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3Ock2MQ9LE

An AD clearly made by breaking bad fans who thought they were being sooooooo clever

I haven't paid much attention to the laws pertaining to online gambling - but on the basis that there's a stars.uk then taxation will apply.

It's definitely not a tax on your profits, though. It's a tax on your revenue (At least that's how they tax live casinos)

Stop being pedantic - adding rake to rebuys is simply a way of increasing profits and has nothing whatsoever to do with the new tax.  (Other than the obvious increasing gross rake and consequently increasing tax paid.)

I'm pretty sure it is on the companies profits but not 100%.

For online poker sites it is gaming revenue i.e. rake less rewards (vip rakeback bonuses)

What I really want to know is whether this will affect the dtd pennyrolls. If they become 2p rolls, shit will kick off.

Wins thread.

Sigh, they are planning to bring multi-entry MTTs in the "early part of next year"

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=45136513&postcount=2203
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=45138374&postcount=2216

i think he should win a book for that

Let's use Brammer as an example, suppose he plays 1/2 the 100r's in a year, that's 182 and lets say on average he has 2.5 additional buyins (probably on the low side given he will almost always buy in double and add-on) then that is just over $4,000 p/year he now pays to play the 100r.

Lets assume a 20% ROI for him in that comp with his av 3.5x buyin, as he's the best - thats a yearlyprofit from the 100r of $13,000.

So a little under a third of his yearly 100r profit is now gg'd. Effectively taking his ROI to ~15% - I'm sure this move will have made it a -EV tournament for several regs. There's a chance that the quality of the field does increase but it probably will at the detriment of the prizepool.

Does seem like a fairly obvious money grab this one, whereas all other increases I'm sure would be justifiable in some manner this one seems tough to do so.

It varies massively by country, but in the UK it's on revenue. Confusingly it's historically been called a Gross Profits Tax, but that translates to net revenue (not actually sure if it's before or after bonuses with poker). In other words stakes - winnings = gross profits

Found a link for you

https://www.gov.uk/remote-gaming-duty

Rate
RGD is charged at 15% of your profits.

Your profits are the amounts due to you as stakes or for use of facilities you provide for remote gaming, less amounts paid out as winnings.

stars just stopped offering real money games to uk players.


deary me...

Was a glitch, all back now

Yeah I saw your post after I had posted. Too lazy to edit :)

Sit out, & increase your chances of winning?

No idea if this is true, but it struck me as interesting on all sort of levels.




http://www.flushdraw.net/news/spawn-grimstarr-pokerstars-sit-trick-proliferating/

http://blondepoker.com/forum/index.php?topic=8016.0

Haha  good bump boshi

It gets better...just received this e mail

Hello FUN4FRASER,

We are writing to you because you have previously used funds from your PokerStars account to directly buy-in to live events sponsored by PokerStars. We are sending a similar message to all players with PokerStars accounts operating under our .BE/.BG/.DK/.EE & .UK licensed operations.

Unfortunately, we are not able to offer this service going forward. While we would like to be able to allow you to directly buy-in to live events using money in your PokerStars account, we are simply not permitted to offer such services going forward.

Please be aware that this will only affect you when you are trying to directly buy-in to live events using funds from your PokerStars account. This has no impact on players who win satellite entries to live events or players who buy-in using funds that are from outside of their PokerStars accounts.

Consequently, please be aware that you are going to need to use alternative mechanisms to buy-in to live events.

We regret that we are not going to be able to offer this service. Please feel free to contact our Registrations Team at registrations@pslive.com if you have any queries.

Regards,
PokerStars Live Events Team

By making you cash out and then buy in direct you are having to use Stars new " higher exchange rate"   

Seriously what are they thinking  ?

As far as I am aware, Fraser, they have no choice in this matter, it is connected to the requirements of their UK Licence.

Cheers Tony

Just seems strange that satellites are okay

if that is the case they could play "two man sit n gos" for the tournament buy in amount  with two seats avaliable to "the winners"

First change that really affects and annoys me.

Now have to arrange 10k+ Euros cash for each EPT stop and carry it around. Marv.

Cant you pay though your bank card at the venue Alex ?

Barcelona pick-pockets will be listening closely for British accents now.

Well it would be players all these domains, though don't ask me where they are, or what sort of accent someone from "EE" (?) has.


.BE/.BG/.DK/.EE & .UK licensed operations

Pay joke bank charges that way.

Andrew Teng will be fistpumping at the news!

International Transaction of Course  :(

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I-N77O6D2E

Hell hath no fury like a poker player scorned

Or even better, the "proper" version.....

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, Nor hell a fury like a poker player scorned

Skrill card, simples

Not without charges of their own to move money around.

If you are talking large amounts fairly regularly which I guess you are you would be vip skrill Level very quickly or straight away if you contacted them

get a metrobank account.

no charges on debit card usage.

International  ?

europe. international not as good, but for EPT guys worth it imo.

When does the raking of rebuys start?

Is it for certain?

I've looked on the Stars site, can't see anything.

Jan 1st.

Have the said at what rate they will be raked?

Couldn't find it with a quick google and a look on the threads, I believe its similar to the initial buyin rake, possibly the same.

Good post from Vamplew here:

Problem is, PokerStars rake is still lower/the same as their competitors in virtually every regard.  If competitors really want to compete on rake, they can.

From PokerStars to GreedStars - a view of the recent PokerStars cost cutting initiatives by Talal Shakerchi

http://ow.ly/DLYX8

Rumours at the Financial Times of Amaya making a bid for Bwin.Party.

In response Bwin.Party released a statement which basically said 'Yeah, we're talking to people'

I'm gonna stick my neck out and say that the poker community will be overjoyed at such a prospect.

Tighty, you might want to give Blondepoker the once over with a hoover up and a bit of a polish in case Amaya come knocking with their wallet open.

Rumours circulating that Amaya are set to buy bwin.party for £1.2 billion.

rofl how could they make party any worse?!?

Very unlikely they will be buying party.

Source: Someone in the know.

Party will probably be sold soon though.

Very unlikely they will be buying party or very unlikely they will be buying bwin.party?

Bwin, sell off a few things like WPT most likely

what would the poker world look like if Amaya Gaming also owned partypoker and the World Poker Tour?

http://calvinayre.com/2014/11/12/business/bwin-party-rumored-takeover-target-amaya-gaming-playtech/

A lot more players at the events for a start (online qualifiers innit)

Who are you, and what have you done with the real tikay?

There have been some Server Issues on 'Stars overnight, & the abuse 'Stars & Amaya are getting is just extraordinary.

Two guys from 'Stars (Stefan & Chris) have been fielding complaints - pages & pages of them - on 2+2.

They might just have the worst job in the poker.


(http://www.topgear.com/uk/assets/cms/ba1fa381-b8b6-49e0-8acf-3dec1ec7bde3/Large%20Image.png?p=120418_03%3A42)

Pokerstars announces addition of roulette and blackjack with sportsbetting added in 2015

barry c has more

http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/world-of-poker/PokerStars-to-launch-casino-games-and-sports-betting_88354/

Something else to get the 2+2 regs to kick off about as more money leaks from their profits bum hunting into the corporate world!

Shame it isn't April 1, I would love to do a headline:

PokerStars to do your mum in front of you

sigh

We recently announced plans about the launch of casino games and sports betting on PokerStars and later this month we will begin rolling out blackjack and roulette to customers in select countries. Based on your current country of registration, you will be eligible to play.

As one of our most valued VIPs I want to make sure that you are amongst the first to hear the news.

First I want to share with you some of the thinking behind offering these new games.

The decision to add casino games to the PokerStars client was not taken lightly and is the result of an evaluation process that began in 2013. We thoroughly researched our customers’ reactions to this possibility, analysing the reaction of players who were given the opportunity to play casino games on our sister site Full Tilt and more recently on our Spanish site PokerStars.ES. We found that players generally fall into one of three categories: Supportive, Indifferent or Concerned.

Supportive: Many of our customers already play casino games online and are excited about the possibility of playing on PokerStars. These players like our software and service, trust us to keep their money safe, and like the idea of a single balance for poker and casino play. These customers form a significant segment of our player base and we expect this news to make them happy.

Indifferent: Some players are not interested in playing casino games, but do not mind that we offer them. These customers may be accustomed to the association between poker and casino games from in-person visits to facilities that offer both. These customers will not have much reaction to this news.

Concerned: Some players are concerned. They do not want to play casino or casino games. They may be worried that there will be fewer poker opponents to play if some move to casino. They also may have had bad experiences with other providers frequently delivering unwanted messages and incentives trying to get them to play casino games rather than poker.

We have designed our casino game implementation with each of these groups in mind, but with special sensitivity to the third group of customers. For example, at launch there will be a simple setting in our client that will allow you to remove all casino games if you so desire. In early December, before we begin casino promotion activities, you will also be able to opt out of all casino related communications and promotions.

We launched casino games on PokerStars.es earlier this year giving us some valuable insights into the playing habits of poker players and casino games. We expect that the introduction of casino games for a portion of our uk.pokerstars.com and shared liquidity customers will not result in a significant negative impact on the overall poker economy.

In case you are amongst those interested in trying out our new casino games, look for a special offer around the time of launch that is specially designed to deliver enhanced promotional value for our top VIPs without any hidden or excessively complicated terms. Many PokerStars.es customers have reacted positively to the multi-player approach we have taken with our games. We hope that you do too.

If you do not want to receive the special VIP promotional offer, email me at vipclub@uk.pokerstars.com to let me know.

I hope you now consider yourself sufficiently informed about this development and in a timely manner. As one of our top VIPs, you deserve to hear the news early and with a little extra detail.

Thank you for your continued play at PokerStars
Gareth Davies
VIP Program Services Manager
PokerStars

I am one of the 'indifferent' people. Won't play the casino games, but don't mind them being there. If people kick off about this, then it's a bit silly, nearly every other poker site has casino games and sports betting anyway.

the people who complain could be the people who know theyll do their brains trying to win back what they lost on a typical sunday :p

Why would customers not be angry at not receiving the service they paid for? Schadenfreude all over the this thread.

You can be as angry as you like when you deal with a virtual monopoly.  Betfair vip's have had this level of service for 13 years when their site goes down occassionally and all come back tomorrow no matter how much they moan.  Betfair knows this.  We know this.  Yet they all still moan every time the site goes down.  Nothing as funny as folk as the old saying goes.

This isn't really true

£2000 rake per month to £0 rake
2% commission to 5% commission
hardly ever play poker there, hardly ever bet there, and I don't think I am that unusual.  Whenever I meet someone who used to play poker on there we seem to have the same discussion, you still play on Betfair? nope, you still play there? nope. 

If stars increase fees so much that it isn't profitable to play them, those games will suffer.  If they make it too expensive to sit heads up at a cash table the games won't start nearly as often.  It is bad economics to think you can make more from 6 recs playing 2 tables as you can from 20 tables that are mainly pros.  Just because somebody is winning from the game doesn't mean the site loses.  It si more complex than that.  You need table starters as much as you need new recs.  Without one or the other the games will make much less for Stars.  I don't think Stars should sit still and do nothing, I don't see the need for 70% rakeback to make somebody want to start a game, and have always felt supernova elite and the like is pretty detrimental to games.  But ongame really twisted their reward system to favour the recs a lot more, and it never seemed to help them.

Years ago the life assurance company I worked for took over the highest charging life assurer in the country.  The charges on their policies were nothing short of obscene.  Life Assurance at the time was pretty much assumed to be something where people didn't notice the charges and because of the way projections were presented at the time it would have been pretty hard for a stranger to realise this company was charging way more than the rest.  So did that company make my company a fortune as expected?

You can mug many people for a few months, but even the slowest witted of the customers worked out that they were getting robbed in the end.  So not only did it have the highest commissions and charges it had the highest lapse rates and the worst company satisfaction.  Once somenody had bought one of these policies, they never bought another, and neither did their friends and family. Basically after a while everybody knew it was a crap place to buy a policy from and if you had one you should cancel it. 

The company never made a profit all the time we had it, and was closed down a few years after it was bought, well it had pretty much closed itself down by the time the decision was made.

 I don't think the spin and go tournaments are going to suffer much with the big marketing push on, but it will be interesting to see how the figures look in 12 months.  I'd love to see the internal figures on the hyper sats where it is also allaged that people can't make a profit anymore.  It will also be interesting to see if people go back to their previous games after they work out the spin and goes are really bad, or if they just end up drifting away as many of us did with Betfair.  Will the people who got burned still happily tell their friends that stars is a good place to play poker as we have all done for years?

Maybe Amaya will be able to make more money from all those changes than they would have done if they hadn't made any.  I don't think the answer is at all obvious.  Time will tell.

What will stars do if SNE is a winning sports bettor?  Will they close him down sports betting?

Of all the insults Betfair pays is customers, limiting punters who have paid hundreds of thousands in commission to max bets of pennies in the Sportsbook is the most obscene.

This thread and another nail in the coffin for online poker is depressing. And I thought the last owners were slightly shoddy.

Totally agree with this.  I was never offered a bet on dogs on bf sportsbook even though i could bet on any other sport when they first opened for max limits.  My account was clearly reviewed from it's exchange business to never allow me a dog bet as that was my core product on the exchange.  I think it's really fundamentally wrong that betfair is allowed to use my exchange info to make decisions on their sportsbook without ever accepting a bet from me on that sport.

No schadenfrude from me, but I have a view that shouting abuse at 'Stars reps is not an effective way of registering a protest, when did shouting or getting all angry at anyone solve anything? If someone shouts at you or abuses you, do you give them what they want? I doubt that.

Those 'Stars reps have been scrupulously polite throughout - they have to be - so I don't think anyone has the right to shower them with personal abuse. Imagine if it were the other way round, & the 'Stars reps abused the players, there'd be murders! Honestly, abusing guys who are just doing their job, regular guys like you & me, does not impress me at all. That may be a generation gap thing, I suppose, but that's how I see it.

Angry at not receiving the service they paid for? Sure, when a site has an outage, it is annoying & frustrating, whether you are a pro, or a recreational, it just is. But I think 'Stars "site availability" is well north of 99.9% measured annually. That is an imprerssively good number, especially bearing in mind that the internet is still, relatively, in it's infancy. It's only 15 or16 years ago that Online Poker arrived, & we were using dial-up then!

99%+ availabilty seems a reasonable achievement to me, for any business. Does that give us the right to hoot & holler when the 1% unavailability arises?

To me, demanding better than 99% availability is not a realistic entitlement. Of course it's a bummer when it goes wrong, but we need to keep a sense of perspective.

They are the points I was making. 

in the infancy of my interest in poker, and long before i'd even considered depositing on a site, i browsed 2+2 occassioanly. one thing that stuck out clearly amongst the usual griping, bad beats and 'onlinepokerisriggedtomakemeloseOMG!!!ELEVEN!!!-type guffery that infests most gatherings of poker players was the incredible high regard that stars was held in. i chose the word incredible carefully there. few companies in any industry were or are as well regarded by their customers, or of the customers of their rivals.

maybe apple have had similar 'approval / satisfaction' ratings, but we are talking about a poker site here. that sort of reputation is incerdibly difficult to attain, and must take years of not just high standards amongst staff, but an actual ethos. you simply dont get a reputation like that by doing your job well, you do it by somehow managing to align your interests with that of your customers -  whilst making billions of $$$ of those customers. dizzying achievement when you pause to think about it.

that they managed this year after year must put the original owners up there with the very best businessmen in history. i dont think that is bombast. to make billions off your customers and have them extol your virtues and have such a great reputation when it comes to values like 'trust', 'integrity' service etc must near unique in business. again this is an online poker site too. there's almost certainly an aspirational book to be written on how pokerstars conquered their market and how it could inspire other compnaies outside of online poker.

what price that trust? what price that reputation? difficult to build up, but oh so easy to lose.

i think the anger is that borne out of loss. not monetary loss of losing x% of rake, or having to adapt to new formats but knowing that poker has lost an outlier. they way pokerstars understood, served and interacted with its customers was pretty damn impressive. impressive for any industry, market or product you care to think of. we've lost a world- class company really. that ethos has gone. are amaya's interests inline with that of online poker enthusiasts? it doesnt seem so, and when it comes to trust apperances are everything.

pokerstars strapline 'we ARE poker' was unarguable. cant say that now.

Tremendous post.

i genuinely believe that the current standing of stars is a loss to poker, tony.

not just the players on stars, but to everyone involved in online poker. no matter how many shady sites, scams, bot-rings etc out there are uncovered, and whenever online poker catches some flack we, as players / room managers of other sites / poker - ambassadors / whatever could point to the overwhelming market leader and say "show me another company in ANY industry that serves and understands its customers like that"?

they were an upward pressure on other sites' standards, and the positives of that outweighed the potential pitfalls of having a dominant site in the market.

when the market leader sets incredible standards its all gravy, everybody wins.

i'm not in 'the sky is falling' camp, but i am saddened to see the old stars morph into this.

No I don't think getting angry will solve the issue, nor do I think it is particularly right/clever, but I don't think expecting people to not get angry is realistic either. It certainly isn't what I'm about. I imagine most of the anger comes from Stars now requesting players do their own audits and asking for exact tournament ids before they hand out refunds when they have the capability to do it easier themselves. Just another way of taking advantage of people who don't know the rules. People lose money during the 1% downtime. It can be quite a lot. If they went down for 2 hours during a Saturday, I'd estimate I'd lose over $2k in equity. That is a lot when I probably have an ev of $30k-200k this year. At that point I wouldn't particularly care about the 99% of good days. Before I wouldn't worry, I'd have been sure I'd get the money back. I would also argue that a company making hundreds of millions of dollars can put enough backups into its system that it should never ever go down. 38% profit margins remember? How much would 4 more backups cost? $100k?

Of course people are angry at the moment. Many people have had their livelihoods taken away, or their dreams of playing poker professionally taken away. Stars continue to treat people like idiots. They send out Negreanu to tell professionals its our fault. That pros are a drain on the system, and that we take more money out than them. They have put several rake %s up to make games unbeatable for anyone. They've moved the stars brand from friendly and most importantly fair service providers to a company that seems to be trying to hoover up everything as fast as it can.

Still waiting for another company to step up and provide a real alternative to stars.

Moaning at them any chance you get isn't really going to change anything.

You have a clear choice to make. The only way Amaya are going to lose any sleep is, as always, if you vote with your feet and I imagine they're going to have enough punters pulling on 13 against a 6 and spinning and going to care.

So I can vote with my feet but they won't care? Sweet, its nothing I don't know already. Its not like their is anywhere else to go. I play on six-eight sites already and am happy to avoid the sites I dislike the most when I can, however I want to try and make some money, and like you've just reminded me there is little I can do. My livelihood has gone from looking fairly secure for the next five years to in severe doubt, as it has for many of my friends, and tikay and a few others are wondering why I'm not patting Stars on the back for their fantastic business acumen. I'd love to be able to stick the finger up to Stars and go and play elsewhere, but I don't really have a choice. Its either I eat and put a roof over my head doing something I love, or find a new career, and that is something I just don't want to do right now.

Fwiw, I'm not moaning at Amaya, I'm way way past that now. I completely disagree with virtually every single business decision they have made so far but it is their choice. I'm telling tikay why I think other people are moaning and why I think they have the right too.

Ouch, I'm hurting here......:)

It's not personal, I'm just trying to explain the other side of the debate on what is, by necessity, here & on 2+2, not a very balanced debate. Both Forums are populated by players who have an axe to grind, so we see a very one-sided debate.

I do understand your angst Adam. As I've already explained, your interests & theirs are not precisely aligned, so there is bound to be ruffled feathers.

I just don't think - never have & never will - that abusing their Staff is the most optimal way to be heard. (And I never suggested you did that).

For the record, you, & any other thinking person, MUST have asked yourselves many times down the years why 'Stars never offered House Games or Sports Betting before? It is an abso no-brainer for them. Their poker product will suffer a bit no doubt, & maybe in Year One revenues overall will drop, what with start up costs & everything, but in the 5 year view, they will earn a lot more money imo. And that is their ONLY obligation. Buying 'Stars and leaving it "as was" was NEVER a possibility. The only logic for the purchase was to lever the database in other ways.

I'm genuinely sorry if folks livelihoods are affected, I am, & it's not personal, I'm simply offering the other side of the coin. 

They will go from having the best poker site, a money making behemoth to becoming just another regular gambling company. They have lost everything that made Stars unique and different. If I was an investor in Amaya I'd be mortified. Could you have seen Stars ever not being #1? I couldn't. Now that feels like it is a distinct possibility. I know you and others think it has been a good move, and we can agree to disagree on that. Having a business that is different feels important to me and Stars had possibly the best reputation I've ever seen among anyone, employees and players alike. And now they have lost all that to become one of the many rather than one of their own.

The only way to fight the initial changes, which are bad for every single customer, was to create some uproar. This has failed, and I think the majority are in the acceptance phase now. I've argued against many things that have little direct effect on me, but strike me as simply underhand. The currency charges will never affect me. Professionals simply have the contacts to get around it. I changed a chunk recently for a new mate of mine simply as a favour. I spend early parts of sunday firing off 888 $ to mates to get around the charges there. It is simply the recreational guys that get hurt by this sort of thing. And that doesn't sit well with me. Yes I too make my money from recreational players, but at least they have a fighting chance against me. Now if one of my mates chucks in 215$ and binks the sunday mil and goes to cash out. Amaya take 2.5% and I don't think that is fair.


P.S I know its not personal, and I know sometimes my posts come across that way, you have become the face of the other side of the coin to me that is all. I hope I haven't caused any offence whenever I name you, your simply "that lot". I'd still buy you a starbucks if/when I meet you in Vegas.

This discussion reminds me of issues affecting my industry where a near monopolistic operator makes enormous profits whilst relentlessly squeezing its client base year on year.  http://plc.rightmove.co.uk/~/media/Files/R/Rightmove/reports-and-presentations/2013/annual-report-and-accounts-2013.pdf

In response, and due to roll out early next year, a new site www.onthemarket.co.uk has been started as a not for profit mutual for/by disgruntled customers/agents to break the hold of mainly Rightmove. I recall there has been discussion regarding this possibilty in Poker. It will be interesting to see how my industry handles trying to reign in the monster it has created. Poker take note!

Hi Teddy,

I don't disagree with a word of that & I'm actually not sure why my stance on the matter is being so misrepresented.

Of COURSE we preferred it as it was.

But we must have thought we were living in an ideal world if we thought it could continue for ever. Surely you must have wondered why 'Stars never had House Games & Sports Betting platforms? It made no sense. Online poker is in gentle decline, not terminal, not at all, but 'Stars would struggle to increase profits. And the ONLY reason a business like that exists is to increase profits. NO OTHER REASON. Hence, Amaya spotted a golden opportunity, as the database had never been "stretched".

For all the hoohah, they are STILL a great, great site, make no mistake. Just not as "pure" as many would prefer. (Me included, as I don't own Amaya shares).

They might lose, I dunno, 5% of their market share in the next 12 months? Probably less. They have been in very gentle decline - fractions of a % - for a while now, but poker is no longer in it's growth phase, & like all things, it has "cycles".

They now plan to do other things, House Games, Sports Betting, maybe they will do those as well as they do poker, & set new standards in those areas?

If you owned Shares in Amaya, you would say do not buy 'Stars UNLESS you plan to leverage the database with other products. There could be no other reason to buy 'Stars. Why else would they buy a mature business in a saturated market which is in slow decline?

I heard a number the other day that 'Stars made $400 milly pa or somesuch. If so, compared to what they can earn in those other sectors, that is peanuts. Bet365, who are more than uk facing, but cetainly not global, make more than that. Think they made £320 milly last year. If Online Poker contributed more than 1% of that figure I'd be extremely surprised. THAT is the scale of the Market that Amaya has it's eyes on. Potentially, they could dwarf their poker earnings. A well-run global Online Gaming & Sports betting Site? The mind truly boggles at the sheer immensity of that.

Yeah, in some ways it is a bit sad, but it's inevitable, so we may as well accept that & try to adapt. We can be as sure as God made little apples that they wont change their mind about monetising their new toy better.

 

Apart from the fact that there is no evidence that Amaya has the skills to produce such a site.  Their first action at Stars has been to increase rake in some games making it virtually impossible for them to be beaten - that shows complete ignorance of the product they have purchased and I find it difficult to believe that they possess any talented senior management.

Fantastic post.


Pokerstars pre amaya believed that maintaining there ethos at the expense of squeezing their margins was the most effective way of preserving there huge market domination. Which they then sold to amaya, for a massive premium, whereas they didn't use there huge market share for immediate profit they have benefited from it on exit.

Amaya, having bought pokerstars, with its monopoly, is now cashing in. It's business, maybe they will piss everyone off and well all go play on party or 888 but it seems highly unlikely.

888 down for the 4th sunday in a row. Couldn't write it.

It made perfect sense.

Under new ownership it makes less sense. And they said from the very first day the deal was announced this is what they were going to do.

But I think the speed and the sudden shift in perspective has caught many people, including me, by surprise. To hear PokerStars happily describe itself as a gambling company? Well, I can hear the gear crunching from here.

Erm. They are about as global as it gets. All over Europe, as well as Asia, South America, Canada and Australia. So your plan is to go head-to-head with one of the best run sports betting businesses in the world? Yeah good luck with that.

As someone who has played on Stars for pretty much my entire 'career', if you could call it that, I'm officially done with them barring some of the 'Red' stuff on Sunday's.  Their only redeeming feature now is the software and field sizes (which seem to be reducing anyway).  Had the most tilting interaction with support last week which was the stick that broke the camels back.

I am 100% certain they won't care though, but still, stars can fuck off!!!

Bit of confusion there, Alun - what I was saying is exactly what you are saying - perhaps I should have said "it made no sense NOT TO".

As to Sports Betting, noted, BetEveryDay are global, I had them pegged as Europe & Australia only.

I was also assuming they would get an experienced third party to run it for them, sort of sub-contract it out. Starting it from cold, in-house, without an experienced Partner, would be a big ask imo, given the sheer scale of 'Stars. 

No I mean it made perfect sense, at the time, to not offer casino and sports betting.

They were active in the US, and then they were a company that was still facing ongoing criminal charges from the US. The whole poker is different, it's a skill game thing made a lot of sense.

Now? Meh. Break out the craps dice, let's GAMBLE!

They seem insistent on developing the sportsbook in-house with a few bought in third-party services AFAIK. And I agree it's a bit of a bold move. Many others have failed.

It will be developed in house and not many have failed with their client base and bankroll behind them.  If they set the operation up properly with the right strategy they could become one of the biggest players in the game globally sports betting wise.  It really depends whether they want to be pinnacle/betfair/365 or boyle sports/stan james.   It's amazing they haven't had sports and casino for 12 years given how well they have crushed the poker scene.

It's really not if you consider the founders' views on the game and their position within the US market

Hills failed to build their own sportsbook platform. Even Betfair have outsourced their fixed odds sportsbook. There are a few big firms that do it, but it's a big old job. And it will be interesting to see how they get on.

VictoriaCoren: This is a sad day. A statement about me and PokerStars:

"Wednesday, 26 November 2014

On Friday night, PokerStars.com announced that it will be rolling out online casino gaming alongside its internet poker. As a result, on Saturday morning, I terminated my endorsement contract with them."

http://www.victoriacoren.com/main/blog/archive/goodbye_team_pro

Fair play to her for standing by her principles.  Hard to see how Stars would ever want to get rid of her so the story has to stack up.

Wow, respect. She must have had one of the top contracts there, especially after the double-EPT.

Totally this.

Incredible.

What a complete legend she is.

wow

confirmed Mitchell runs hot!

Incred

Confirmed legend.

She's going to be devastated when she learns that Only Connect is introducing a roulette round.

:D might make it easier for the rest of us!!

Stu sums it up for me...she is just different class

Different gravy that one.

Doubt she needs stars money too much these days as I doubt she is short of a quid or two now she is married. I reckon it was an easy decision for her.

Yeah, not like Vicky was successful in any other aspect of life, was it?

Oh, wait...




Top stuff, and even has 2p2 drooling, quite rightly!

Yeah but poker players would get excited if you stuck on a pair of high heels mate lol.

Don't think it has 1% to do with the fact she's female, how much do you think her deal with them may have been worth ?

No idea, but she has made a lump off poker, has a wealthy husband, her TV appearances are on the up in the last couple of years so I doubt she needs the cash mate or even poker that much tbh. I'm obviously guessing a bit as I don't know her from Adam, but I reckon she has made a great decision that is positive PR for her with little financial downside for where her life is at the moment.

Woodseyaments :D

Send a pic in heels mate, I'll rate you v other female poker players  ;djinn;

I was referring to their reaction to the stance, and position she has taken over the situation.

I don't know her myself, but I'm pretty sure that Vicky has been pretty successful for a long time, and long before 'she got her wealthy husband'

I'd imagine the financial downside is pretty large, as EPTs aren't cheap!

You stick with the ladyboys ;)

I like you don't know the real situation either, I was just deliberately offering another viewpoint as there was a lot of backslapping going on, but cba getting into a lengthy discussion about it.

Just sometimes, it's possible that the person deserves the plaudits :)

Yeah wp to her for binking a minted husband  :D














That's a joke before anyone gets their knickers in a twist lol.  ;danafish;

I am sure it is easier for Vicky to make a principled stand because she is (I am making an assumption here) well off financially. However, I haven't seen any of the other millionaire Pokerstars pros (Negreanu etc) making a similar stand about any of the recent Pokerstars 'innovations'. She is the only one that has done so. Respect to her IMO.

Yep fair point, said better than me.

Coren's a ledge for not being a representative for or endorsing house games. Amaya are crackers.

Well you basically made the same "point" earlier in the thread when you patently weren't joking.

How anyone can possibly question Victoria's motives for doing this is beyond me.

There was literally zero chance Pokerstars axed her.

And she is refusing (I guess) hundreds of thousands of pounds by terminating her contract.

BECAUSE SHE THINKS IT IS THE RIGHT THING TO DO.

People who question her are judging her by their own moral standards, which obviously are not too high.

I didn't think it possible for me to hold Victoria in higher esteem than I already did. But she just manged it.

Is it possible that the new direction that Stars are going in could have also been in conflict to her BBC work?  

For instance I don't know of any BBC football pundits that have deals with gambling firms, but I can name many from the other channels that do.

Huge respect still either way. Think we all saw the emotion she had in San Remo, and after many years with Stars it can't have been easy to come to this decision.

And unlike many well known players from the past few years, you can just tell that the lack of sponsorship won't stop her playing.  Will be interesting to see how Stars choose to cover things should she ever run deep in an EPT again!

Robbie Savage has a deal with William Hill (BBC football pundit point)

Anyway, I agree with Keith. Can't see how motives can be questioned here

Ah right, my mistake.  And yes I think that her own personal thoughts to table games are by far the prevailing factor here!

Well I was being deliberately controversial when I posted, simply because nobody else had been so why not lol? I think you are probably right, but maybe.......just maybe she doesn't need poker too much nowadays and as Scotty says maybe there is conflicts of interest in the direction of her life, I dunno.

Either way, great move for her, she has little to lose and it's great PR for her as shown by most of the comments supporting her here.

So can I assume that those that back Vicky will never play on stars again? Seems like the right thing to do morally?  ;whistle; ;angel;

She never said that of course.

And I doubt I'm betraying a confidence to reveal she loves to play blackjack and pai gow.

But she doesn't want to endorse or promote gambling on house games because she knows what harm it can do it if people become addicted to it.

If she was a skint member I doubt she'd terminate this contract. But if she was a skint member I also doubt she would be on Team Pokerstars in the first place!

It really isn't that difficult to understand.

 :)up gotcha

Unlike you not to be cynical! Well done.

Because it's a dickish thing to do?

No, just to,wind you up lol.   ;fishing;

There are some real crazy posts ITT, but huge respect to her, never gets the recognition she deserves, and IMO, it is a very humble thing to do.

Without her, Fatimo, and Sammy G, the shark cage wouldn't have worked like it did. Stars have lost the plot in terms of driving there poker force forward... Yes we will all still play there but I don't think anyone should be slating the people that can't control themselves on the casino side games, it's a LONG WAY DOWN.

ty

Wouldn't say there are that many crazy posts, Dreenie... In fact, I'd say there are very few, and it was only Woodsey, with his very best troll outfit on that was making them :D

Ok fair enough, but come on fella, would you rather we all agreed with each other on here and smuggly slapped each other's backs like sheep? or would it be more interesting It we heard an alternative view to have a chat about?

My view is Blonde is a bit boring sometimes, moreso recently, so someone lobbing the odd hand grenade into a discussion is a good thing on occasion imo. Yeah it was me this time but it could be anyone really.

Just winding you up ;)

Ok you got me lol  ;laxie; ;frustrated;

I get what you were saying woodsey.  It crossed my mind that she had binked 2 ept's, poker is getting really tough when you have other well paid jobs to deal with like she has and can't devote your whole life to improve.  She is recently married etc etc.  It would seem a great time to walk away and not have to deal with poker any more under a stars contract with the casino issue as a smokescreen to get out and win even more fan boys with her ethics.

Also she might have gone to Stars and said 'right i am first ever ept double winner and got great image outside of poker as well in well to do circles i want a massive increase on my current deal' etc etc.

I don't think either of these things have happened fwiw so don't flame me but it did cross my mind.

I think you are underestimating the huge difference between promoting a company that makes its profits from providing a service to its customers and promoting a company that makes its money by directly using an edge against its customers.

An interesting & thought-provoking piece.......


http://www.terrencechanpoker.com/2014/11/is-regulation-to-blame-for-pokerstars.html?spref=tw

.....and this piece, which has nothing to do with Amaya/'Stars really, but touches on pro poker players & their attitude to money, is also quite interesting.......


http://www.pokerstrategy.com/news/world-of-poker/Poker-and-the-value-of-money_88310/

kevmath has been tweeting some interesting stuff, h/t to him

a profile by nathan vardi of Amaya's David Baazov, the "king of online poker"

http://onforb.es/1vZmbsO

and this stat...from the forbes article is quite telling

"60% of [PokerStars'] revenue [in 2014] was being generated by players who registered at PokerStars between 2001 and 2010"

Not sure what I would have guessed at, but this surprises me, even though I know its the grinders that generate the most rake.

Also goes against some other stuff I had heard about most of stars revenue being from mobile these days.

Must admit, swings me (slightly) more towards the side of they might be making a mistake with all these changes, if that stat is accurate.

So 40% of revenue is coming from new players who signed in last 4 years

Must be nice getting a good churn of new players

(I know it's not this simple) but the acquisition costs of the old players = zero and the acquisition cost of a new player > zero.

Great read that article.  Interesting how he said he was only really interested in the access to pokerstars 89m 'consumers'.  The guy just sounds like a typical corporate finance asset stripper and I don't think the guy cares less about pokerstars as a product for poker.  It wouldn't surprise me at all if the poker product doesn't exist at all in 5 or 10 years at a level where you can actually beat the game (everyone will be playing at excessive rake which cannot be beaten purely for recreational purposes) and he is just force feeding these poker consumers with casino/sportsbetting in the same way as poker hardly registers on the financial accounts of betfair and ladbrokes anymore.  Looks like he will just keep cranking up the price of poker to suit himself and not his loyal customers and if you don't like it then you are happy to leave.  The only way he can get a return on the 5bn investment is to start hoovering up a much bigger % of the deposits stars have and stop leaking them to poker pros.  ie via casino games and sports betting.  Even then it's still a mind boogling sum to pay for a poker only company operating in a declining market given the market caps of ladbrokes hills bwin etc etc

It's a huge gamble imo which has a fair % chance of going massively tits up.

$1 million Spin & Gos. Just lol.

http://uk.pokerstars.com/poker/promotions/december-festival/spin-and-go/

That might be the greatest thing I have seen pokerstars ever do

I think I would literally have a heart attack playing for that amount lol.

Normally yes, but given the other two guys get a $100k prize it probably removes that tension. 

Level?


Level?

I can definitely relate to this. My first and only proper job had me working 70+ hours a week on minimum wage (actually less than minimum for a time). To me then, this was all the money in the world. I mean, I used to get like £100 total for my birthday from various relatives in vouchers etc, and now i was getting double this a week. I didn't have any real expenses, I was still living with my folks, so didn't have to worry about bills or any form of money management. Having lost that job and turned to poker, I got used to buying in with this sort of money and shrugging off losing and winning these amounts every day. In less than a year, I'd gone from having a yearly income of £200 to being disappointed if I didn't win that in a day.

Fast forward a year or so and I was using this bankroll to go to university, and was nearing a point where I didn't have enough to keep playing and still get by. Bills, rent, other essential living costs were starting to factor into my decision making. Then, just as I'm starting to get a little precarious, I place second in a deepstack and 18k goes into my bank account the next day. I had literally no chance of gaining any sort of respect for money, and this is primarily really what caused me to go broke. I ended up living a lifestyle that was a complete joke, spending like £40 a day on food alone every day for over a year. I wish, honestly, that I had the respect for money that I do now, but I don't think any sort of article is going to get through to people like I used to be. I was swept up in the balla world of poker, and I had to learn the hard way how to deal with personal financial management.  

Ha has anyone ever gone from being more pro stars to more anti starts in a short space of time?

Not a level, we can spin $5 into $1m in a super turbo, that's awesome

Ha, I doubt it :(

Assume you can go on any casino site and win a mill ball on slots, this is approx the same thing.

The odds of even getting on the jackpot table are 3,333,333/1

And then you have to win it!

Better odds with the lottery.

Yeah I saw that too and thought it was an interesting comment, although he's mentioned it before in a management presentation just after the deal.

The concept being that eventually it will be a bit like Amazon with a range of "entertainment" services including poker, gambling, music, TV, whatever.

Pissing off your hardcore customer base, who are really the people you are targeting with this, doesn't seem the ideal start to this process of engendering long-lasting cross-vertical customer loyalty to me.

Following Victoria Coren's decision to quit PokerStars, Daniel Negreanu has weighed in on the debate about poker and casino gambling.

He wrote on his blog "I would personally feel like a hypocrite if I justified that it’s OK for me to take money from problem gamblers, but it's not OK for the casino to do the same."

http://bit.ly/1A74YM8

How about neither?

According to his blog, he has "more money than [he] could spend in his lifetime." You'd think that would be enough for him to stop toeing the company line on every issue.

Or to stop taking money from problem gamblers.

"I want to do good in this world! And also bad."

This quote is the honest truth of being a professional player though. I've taken money off people who have a gambling problem. I mean, define problem gamblers. Almost all of the regs in all casinos are losing players, and they come and play a few times a week at least. I took money off them. As someone who was a professional, these people are my customers. The brutal truth of it is that I encouraged their problem in some instances, and I'm absolutely certain that people have encouraged me into games where I'm a loser, and picked on me when I've not been in the right mental state to play. If I actively tried to not take money off "problem gamblers", there wouldn't be a market for me. Poker is a brutal profession and the people who want to be successful have to be brutal along with it.

http://pokerdb.thehendonmob.com/player.php?a=r&n=2363

That is a definition of a problem gambler!!!  Had the honour of his company for several hours last night in a cash game in Bham.  Legend but has a serious gambling problem.  Most of the regs in casinos are losing players but they are not problem gamblers.  It's just a hobby to them with a certain level of monthly expenditure.  Problem gamblers are a totally different beast to just being a loser long term in the game.

Every time he opens his slimy little mouth I detest Negreanu a tiny bit more.

I'll hate him more than Vinnie Jones on July 9th 2016 if he maintains his current momentum.

What all this proves is a statement I first made about 10 years ago and have repeated many times since is definitely correct.

Whenever Daniel Negreanu says a prospective change in the industry "is for the good of poker" he actually means it is for the good of Daniel Negreanu.

Now I think anyone who has ever sneered, laughed or disagreed with me when I have expressed that view down the years owes me an apology.

And a pint.

Get off the fence Keith ffs.

Seen the new Stars pro?

(http://www.pokerplayer365.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/05/vinnie-jones.jpg)

 ;applause;

Meh! I think you're wrong about the bolded bit. Lol.

Your mate Kendall thinks the sun shines out out of Negreanu's arse.

The truth is that he is actually more poisonous than Hellmuth.

It wasn't Negreanu, it was just the bolded bit I was sneering, laughing & disagreeing with.

I got whooshed.  ;booder;

Do you think that DNegs has done worse than Hellmuth? Hellmuth who kept on taking UB's money happily after the superuser affair?

I think its difficult to argue that DN isn't a very successful Pro for his site in terms of attracting players. As Keith's views show it may be a different story for the hardened poker player but completely disagree that you can bracket him with PH

I can think of few who work as hard and consistently for their site, whether you agree with his views or not, than DN

It's pretty subjective.

Hellmuth is a whore, just like Daniel Colman said he is. But he embraces his whoredom. He'll do anything for a dollar bill

Butthere is no smoke and mirrors with Phil. He is an egomaniac and he knows he is.

Negreanu is self serving, devious and selfish. But tries to maintain the image he's an all round good guy.

I have thought he's a scumbag for years. Seems like the rest of the poker world is finally coming to the same conclusion about him.

'Bout time.

Are they? Regardless of your dislike for him, I think DN's got a pretty positive image on the whole to be honest.

Check out 2+2.

but how representative is that?

as we saw on other recent issues, there is a lot of group think there, and a lot of very blinkered opinions

I wouldn't expect a casual poker player to dislike Negreanu, because he has been so successful at creating his image.

But among people who follows poker seriously, I think they are starting to see through his act.

Why should he be anything other than that?  He is a professional gambler.  Isn't that what the vast majority of people in any business are effectively?

What's the actual bad thing that he has done?

100% understand if people find him annoying, he is like marmite to listen to.

100% understand if you think he is self serving, but if you don't like that, you won't like most people.

100% understand if you fundamentally disagree with his worldview, think he is overly opinionated, his politics etc etc.

But what has he actually done that's so bad to call him devious and a scumbag? That's the sort of shit usually reserved for people who have really fucked someone over.

I'm not disagreeing or agreeing with you, you are totally entitled to hate the fella and he certainly invites people not to like him - I'm just intrigued because you always talk like he has actually done something specifically harmful which he should be repremanded for.

The reason I personally don't like him is not really important.

It's a long story which would take far too much time to type out.

I'll tell you next time I bump into you on a pelican crossing in Edinburgh.

The reason everyone else should dislike him is he so transparently fake it makes your skin crawl.

That reminds me, Rupert still owes me a tenner over our bet, I said that DN would somehow justify Pokerstars raisning the rake. Mr Elder said he wouldn't.

And of course he did. Best bet I've had in years.

I only slag him off for reasons which are apparent to all.

The personal dislike is the cherry on top.

Which brings us back to Barry's beautifully crafted question.

BTW- I have no idea how I cocked the quoting up.

You seem to have invented a time macine for that quoting cock up

His defense of Erick Lindgrens blatant lies/grim as "you new school guys don't get it" was both patronising and embarrassing. He also then went onto attack other guys such as Chino Reem, who he was happy to throw under the bus to get after Annie Duke and Epic Poker League. He comes across as a condescending tosser who is happy to outright lie for his own purposes. Hugely hypocritical, and made a few petty remarks at Tom Dwan on HSP for playing slow, which is all good and well but Dwan was the fkin show in the seasons he was involved in. If I had more money than I could spend in one lifetime you wouldn't catch me telling online poker players increased rake is good for them. His general stupidity when it comes to online poker has hit crazy levels of disbelief at times. He actually thought 80 people would play him at 5/100 and 100/200  when over 85% of the waiting list are just sat about with no intention to play a hand. He really showed just how little he knows about online poker when he made the claims about being able to beat high stakes online cash inside 2 weeks or whatever it was. Obviously just a claim for his own publicity as I'm sure he could get as much action as he wanted at those stakes. I also hate how he also seems to backup new/emerging online players with little comments, there is a great .gif where he comes up to ziiigmund who is mid-interview and is clearly like wttf is this guy doing. He is just a condescending person in general and that's one of the main thing I hate.

rfggqqabc knows.

I had a back and forth with DN online after he defended his men Lindgren and Juanda after the details of Full Tilt's business came out, specifically the part when edog was paid $1m twice and didn't pay back the second milly he received in error (ie, he stole it).

 Safe to say that DN is on my slowroll list.

I wish someone would pay me a million in error so that I could find out if I would pay it back.

I'm almost completely certain I wouldn't.

Really weird statements above. Its not "not paying back" its outright theft.

(http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjE2MzE2NjkzNF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwODM1MjgyMQ@@._V1_SY317_CR4,0,214,317_AL_.jpg)

Sent now

True.

I'm happy to amend my statement to:

I wish someone would pay me a million in error so that I could find out if I would ouhtright steal it.

Received.


So long sucker!

I have to admit that it would be an easier decision if I have been send a million twice and only the second one was in error.   :P

Makes even less sense this way too. If you had a 250k net then 4xing it through theft is nowhere near as greedy as taking a second million to add to the pile.

Its not theft is someone gives it to you in error its tough titty to the other party.  I'd be keeping it and swanning off to the sun, especially if it was full tilt.

In law it's theft mate, the same way as when a bank credits your account with a load of dosh, if you leg it they will prosecute you (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2193145/Accidental-millionaire-given-3-4m-bank-error-caught-international-fugitive.html).

Saying that, someone I know got a sizeable double credit from an online payment processor, kept the dough and they didn't, or couldn't pursue him. And I know there used to be a similar scam on Neteller where people were depositing thousands (they didn't have in their accounts) and trying to spin it up on a freeroll.

I don't blame Lindgren for keeping it. If he'd have paid it back it just would have got swallowed up by the big ponzi scheme anyway. And everyone got their funds  back in the end   ;-)

roflcopters

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29/news-views-gossip/mistake-epic-proportions-do-guys-ps-1494018/

wow, what a fuck up. Looking forward to finding out how this one gets resolved.

The play money fellas probably have no idea whats going on anyway.

What's happening here? I've read the 2+2 thread and still don't understand!

Every cash hand on Stars has a number from the very first one to number gazillion which is where we are now.  Stars pay out a lot of money to players who play in a hand that has lots of zeroes at the end.  It is obviously just intended for real
Money cash tables but last night it opened a play money table in error.  From what I can make out, that hand was then cancelled.  Cue carnage.

Love the way people say "how the hell can this happen?", as if they have spent their whole life never making or coming across a mistake before.  No idea how/if it has been sorted. 

 

The astonishment is that the programming to pick the hand managed to exclude play money hands in the gazillion previous times it picked hands.  So either that was just an astonishing coincidence or someone changed the programming, which seems an odd thing to do.

Casino is now live.

Also, they've added equity percentages to the table for all-in showdowns which is something Stars were strongly against implementing in the past.

Why were they previously against %?

As long as they don't implement the Hot-O-Meter, we'll all be okay :)

educating the fish i hate it seeing i am a 89% favourite with 1 card to come and a 0% on river is doing my nut in

might have to go turn it off

Yeah as Ironside said, educating the fish.

Can someone please confirm if there is a way to avoid being stung on currency exchanges when depositing, i'm sure I saw someone mention it in a thread somewhere? Depositing in £ then converting to $ in the cashier or something along those lines?

Ta

You're fine as long as you deposit in the same currency as the account that you're depositing from

If its from a GBP account then go to the GBP tab of your cashier and deposit there. If you deposit to the USD cashier from a GBP account they'll do you for the 2.5%

If you exchange currency within the client it is still pretty much at spot. a lot of people think it is 2.5% to convert there now but it isn't. But yeah deposit and withdraw in pounds.

Meh. I'd be surprised if more than 10% of players are unaware of the showdown %s.

Kinda feel like, if you're dreadful at poker and have been for a while, then it won't make a difference seeing the %s now. It looks kinda tacky, but yh, I don't really care that it's there now.

pokerstars software is so good that you hardly get a chance to see the %s anyway before the next card/ hand is finished, unless you can see them in the hand replayer. If anything, u think the 'fish' or fun players might think it as a cool new thing, and wont be bothered by it.

Yep noticed that, snap went into my settings to disable - ty for calling .....

I wouldn't disable the casino for a while unless you really cannot resist playing.

I'm sure they will give you all regular poker players a decent freeroll.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/12/11/canadian-police-and-provincial-securities-regulators-raid-amaya-and-two-financial-firms/

Worrying times.

confirmed, can disable it now tho :)

And so it begins.

From Alex Dreyfuss on Twitter

The "raid" re:Amaya is about "Insider Trading" concerning the acquisition of shares of Amaya before the acquisition of Pokerstars.  (1/4)

Which is obviously illegal and regulated (http://www.forbes.com/sites/nathanvardi/2014/12/11/canadian-police-and-provincial-securities-regulators-raid-amaya-and-two-financial-firms/ …) its not related to Gaming or Pokerstars. (2/4)

It should not affect any NJ licensing process as Amaya is actually the support/victim of the potential trading, not the initiator (3/4)

So don't get excited about writing/spreading/gossiping about the future of AYA/Stars because of that. It happens to HUNDREDS of companies (4/4)

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2014/12/traffic-on-pokerstars-is-booming-in-december-20053.htm

While I totally think that traffic is not going to be effected by the anger towards stars whatsoever, that's probably as much seasonal as anything else. Dec-Jan is usually the busiest time for online poker traffic. Plus that milestone promo.

It certainly includes some seasonability, which is such a powerful traffic driver, with a northern hemisphere bias. November to Easter is very much the time when the hay is made. 

Cash game traffic accounts for, on average, 65 to 70% of Margin on most poker sites, so that's quite a jump. It equates to a Y-o-Y increase, too.

i dont want to hear a bad word about pokerstars i love there promos

From Tuesday, December 16th, players will earn 8 Full Tilt Points per $1 raked for all ring games and tournaments.

down from 10, a 20% reduction

Full tilt points? Assume its staying the same on stars for the time being?

the rake on HU hyper SNG's has been reverted back to the previous,  lower,  levels. so price hike reverted.

no word on why, but it has not been done in error and unless it is an unannounced short term promio may be a long term change

stars had offered hyper players a % of rake back if they played the same player 50 times in a calender month, this was done in resonse to the divisions [cartels] taking alll their qualifying games onto other sites for a week after the rake increase. effectively this meant all reg-warring was taken off stars and onto competitor's sites and the mid-high stakes lobbies were noticably quieter that week.

early to say but maybe a bit of player power won out here as the rake increases - at least for now - have been reversed for hyper HUSNGers

Turns out making games unbeatable will not encourage people to play. Shock.

yeah the reg v reg games became bad, but still not unbeatable.

i know of a few players battling their way into divisions as high as $300's and killing the best regs for $$$ even with the rake increases.

edges v recs were still pretty big after the rake increases - the games post-rake-hike,  for HUSNG's at least, were FAR from unbeatable.

one of the reasons HU hypers were targetted for rake increases imo was because of how profitable they were - even [or espescially] at higher stakes. hundreds of thousands in profits for a lot of regs. my guess was that amaya felt that the regs could afford to give up some more in rake. they were probably right too.

very strange that they have seemed to reverse the increase, guess we will find out why soon.

HU Cap cash rake back to old lower rate too

another set of players that went on strike...

http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/en/blog/corporate_blog/2015/2015-rake-rollback-153140.shtml

Matt - check your PM's please. (Unrelated to this thread).

Amazing news! Very surprising also.

Any indication that they're gonna do a U-turn on the raked rebuys thing?

Haven't seen that as yet....

an indication of where they are looking

"PokerStars signs first Team Pros from India and Japan. http://psta.rs/1xAfQDs"

People power.

The power of data

Data that suggests people are playing these games less and its not in amaya's interests to make less money???

Well played the players imo. They voted with their feet, organised action, made constructive forum posts and got the result they wanted.

Tonnes of hyper reg wars got shifted off stars, lots of hu cap regs stopped starting games / blocked lobbies.

Ultimately either amaya made less post rake hike than before or the publicity / loss of rep was too much to bear. Probably a combo of both. All that was due to players response to the rake increase.

$1.2m PokerStars Spin & Go running now

3 players GTD at least $100k from $5 buy-in.

$1m for winner.

A 8 the new nuts apparently, winner had it in both KOs...

Wowsers

in the spin and go people are limp calling A2o

the winner was a Russian player

I wonder if support will get an email about the $25k he'll have to pay to see the money

??

2.5% vig on currency withdrawals? Though be crazy to withdraw to roubles surely! :)

Other way round, going on XE rates he'll get nearly twice as many roubles for his million USD as he would have done 6 months ago

Two more scooped a Milly this weekend

"the poker world welcomed two new millionaires during the past weekend, as the Czech Republic’s "Tornádo111" and Canada’s "anushan_2323" took home the $1 million top prize available at PokerStars’ $5 buy-in Spin & Go sit-and-gos.

The two remarkable scores came less than a week after Russia’s "sss66666" made history by hitting the top $1 million prize for the very first time on Monday, Jan. 12. "

http://uk.pokernews.com/news/2015/01/spin-go-two-more-pokerstars-players-win-1-million-16298.htm

Lol at the run good of the winner, looking at the clip.

In a quarterly update call with various members of the media, Baazov explained that Q4 2014 had been a record period for Amaya thanks to the acquisition of PokerStars and Full Tilt. During that time the sites had welcomed more than two million new customers and Spin & Go tournaments had delivered strong returns



http://www.bluffeurope.com/poker-news/en/PokerStars-Sports-Betting-Imminent_20193.aspx

More interesting than that was they said they planned to DOUBLE the size of the poker sector. Double. No idea how they plan to do that.

Camel's best mate on Amaya Stars and other things.  The Amaya Stars stuff is at the beginning

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyvIohL2_y4

Bloody Nora.

Overall, if they can increase poker interest & activity, it has to be good imo.

Yeah they are committed to growing the category in general and not just their own brand. Assuming they will gain disproportionate market share of any category growth of course.

There is an interesting parallel here with Sky Poker, recently in new ownership.

It fell to me to handle the feedback on the Sky Poker Forum, & the negativity was incredible, almost without exception it evoked really nasty comments, some of them wholly illogical, & some extremely rude & dismissive.

Now, 2 or 3 weeks down the line, the vibe is slowly getting better. New owners usually want to improve their new acquisition. Not all changes suit everyone, but if new ownership boosts general poker interest, it has to be, overall, a good thing imo. 

Most of us are semi-addicted to poker anyway, & whilst we have a grumble, we still play. That's certainly been the experience Next Door.   

Perhaps they know something about the US market???
Can't see how else they can double, in a reasonable time frame

Another rake hike

http://www.pokerstarsblog.com/en/blog/corporate_blog/2016/pokerstars-announces-revised-pricing-161006.shtml

It's almost like this company doesn't want me as a customer anymore...

FYP

Hyper STTs appear to have been missed for now by the nutters in control.  Hopefully I have read this right. 

Have I read that right that they're going to start raking rebuys and add ons?

So pleased that I don't play online anymore. Good luck to all you grinders out there.

Stars is fucked, hopefully some of the other sites step up their software and advertising campaigns and nick their customers.

Aren't they cheaper than other sites according to their rake chart?

Traffic is guaranteed to drop significantly for all RB tourneys.

A similar move to re-entry killed the popular PLO rebuy tourneys on FT.

They tried this last time on rebuys then backed out. Why have they changed their minds again?

Debts? Greed?

Maybe rake should be pro rata and on a basis of how much you play. Professionalism is killing the game, charge the high volume people loads, the recs who barely play the least and everything else in between.

Sure everyone on here will agree with that

i think that already happens the more you play the more rake you pay

Doubt the pros/semi pros will.

Fish like me and other hobbyists, why not?

Because hobbyists are probably least price sensitive. They'll play regardless

Ok fair enough, keep the rake for hobbyists the same (or lower it a little) and price the pro's/semi pro's out....

Do other companies like tescos have forums with people ranting about prices increases and lobbyists organising strikes etc?

Bizarre really. You're using a product / service and making money from other users of that service. The owners have put their prices up as is their right. Quit your moaning ffs lol you ain't gonna change their mind no matter how many spreadsheets and graphs you throw at them.

I think they would have a problem if Tesco decided to buy their main competitor(s), essentially destroy them, and then put up their prices.

Must've missed the part where Amaya bought Party, 888 and iPoker.

Imagine you were living in Nottingham and Rob Yong told you that as long as you play 8 hours a day 5 days a week he would give you 100,000 at the end of the year and then an extra 15k/month in the following year. In November he says sorry I'm not giving that 15k even though you met the requirements but don't worry I had it in small print.

Meanwhile there was Skallie who came out and tried to calm you all down, telling you that Rob was going to spend it on some really  stuff that he couldn't tell you about but would bring in so many people. But it should be around in March and it would really help your bottom line.

DTD then run a tournament with their most ever players making the most money they've ever made off s tournament, Robs work of making a card room in Atlantic city finally goes through on the same day as the huge tournament. The very next day Rob announces a new rule that everytime you pull up more money he's going to charge you a 10% vig meaning your games are unbeatable (many many games stars offers are completely unbeatable including now rebuys, hyper as well as micro stakes cash games)

Skallie then comes out and defends the changes and tells you how the casino in Atlantic city, despite never likely to change you will make the company a tonne of money and thus DTD will do better and thus you should be happy.

You have two options.

1) you quietly leave and start playing in Gala Nottingham, the biggest games are 1-1 but the card room manager is really nice and he's trying to make a difference, every few weeks he puts on a promotion and usually adds a bunch but in general, the tables are old, the cards are old, there's a draft coming in through the door and it's in a pretty rough area where there is history of money being stolen or disappearing and the police doing nothing

2) you protest, you strike and you try to reverse the changes. You know that previously Rob has done similar kind of tactics but when all the players came together and protested he changed these exact changes around.

The problem u have is number 2 will never happen because all the moaners will be back on there grinding within the week which is why Avaya win.

That's not really true though. I'd say previously stars had around 90% of my action, now they have around 30-40%, the more the other sites improve the more I'll take off stars tables and add other networks. Most regs now are moving tonnes of their volume over to party/888.

Well if people truly do vote with their feet they'll soon stop and/or reverse their decisions as they did before. Only way to effect them is to effect their bottom line.

Stars start charging 30% rake on live tournaments. They post bullshit stats showing they still have lowest rake overall. Negreanu assures you it will be a good thing for poker. Reckon you might have a different opinion then.

Think it's pretty safe to say, in terms of software, these companies are a long way behind. Sorta like comparing Tesco to Aldi, it performs the same function but with less variety and not as well. Full Tilt was the site that could really go after the stars player base, but not anymore.

You should be able to argue with the competition commission if they were using monopoly pricing.  But isn't the issue that some of the pricing on other sites has always been terrible, so people played on stars as they were the only sensibe ones.  ipoker raked 10% on turbo/hyper STTs  years ago.  Other sites have been raking rebuys, and so on.  So whilst some of the stats may be dubious, I don't think they are pricing so badly that they are too far away from the oppostion.  So even though theoretically they are taking advantage of their position, any case seems fraught with difficulty.  

I guess we just have to avoid the games we can't beat such as hold em hyper MTTs for me.  Cash NLO8 was always near unbeatable unless you refused action vs anyone but the biggest fish.  Or you could find some smaller sites, but even then, the pricing is so bad on the other sites that as soon as a couple of solid regs show up, the game becomes unbeatable there too.

The other thing is that we tend to have a bunch of people wanting to make big profits from the game complaining about other people wanting to make big profits from the game.  

Might just have to look back at the time I made a lot of money from online poker like the time when I could get drunk without feeling bloody awful, or the time I could go out without having to check 3 people's diaries, or the time I could run hundred yards without feeling like tmy chest was about to explode Alien style. Those times were good.