blonde poker forum

Hello, fellow players!
   Firstly, i'd like to apologize for writing this post without permission, private messages are not allowed for the newbies at your forum(or i didn't understand how to use 'em).

   What happened?
   18 months ago Company Amaya took a huge loan to buy Pokerstars and now makes players pay for it. In those 18 months they made a series of decisions (like introducing 2,5% fee on non-USD deposits or increasing rake in Spin&Gos or few more) to make games worse for everyone. According to the statistical service Macropoker, recent change in VIP-System will extract around 94 million USD from poker per year. In its press releases, Amaya names caring for the game’s ecology as the reason behind these changes, but it’s not clear how extracting money helps it.

   I represent wearepokerplayers.com (http://wearepokerplayers.com/) . Our site is dedicated to the protest of poker players against upcoming changes in pokerstars VIP system and against Amaya's (Pokerstars's owners) policy in general. Below I will write a short version of our plan. Longer version is available at our site(including economical justification).

    What will we do?
   We offer a few-steps strategy. First step in massive international strike on January 1-7, the goal of this step is to attract attention of the poker communities all over the world. This strike is supported by at least 1400 players at Tiltbook and also by various high-stakes players like Dani “Ansky” Stern, Daniel “Oxota” Dvoress, Andreas “Skjervoy” Torbergsen etc
   Step 2. We’re staging a strike probably on Feb 2-11, also for a week or 10 days. The most likely dates are Feb 2-11. At this stage, our goal is to reach 4,000–5,000 participants. In fact, this strike repeats the previous one. We are also hoping for your support. At this stage, we’ll begin to advertize step 3 extremely actively and convince people to take part in our next strike.
   Step 3. This is our site initiative. As soon as we get 5,000 players, we’ll start the next and final step – monthly strike with possibility of extension. The number of 5,000 players comes from our analysis of statistical data. 5,000 active players, including at least 2,500 Supernovas+, generate no less than 15% of pure rake (rake minus rakeback). If we decrease rake by 15%, we cut Amaya's EBITDA by half thus increasing their debt/EBITDA ratio from a heavy 6.6 to a critical number of at least 10.  We really hope to reach 5000 players before step 2, the earlier we make a crucial strike – the better.

   We demand:
   We demand that every game-related change be approved by an online players council. Members of the council will be elected on our site and will represent different stakes and communities. Recent changes regarding the VIP system have to be cancelled as they weren't approved by the players.

   In conclusion, I ask every one of you to join our site and join the first strike of January 1-7. If you are a poker journalist, please write an article about the protest and about our site. it is important to spread this information for as many players as possible. Also, in the next post I will write a FAQ about the site and about a few common misconceptions. Stopping Amaya is extremely important for the whole industry. Together we will win!

And here are some of the most frequently answered questions:

   Who are you exactly? Have a heard of any of you?

- Our site came from the russian poker community and our team consists of poker players and businessman. Although you've probably never heard of us before, our reputation back home is very good and more than 400 players from our community joined our site including double-digit number of Supernovas Elite. Also we're in contact with many notable players around the globe.

   Well, I expect you will advertise every other site for the players, nice trick!

- No, we don't have an affiliate program nor planning to have one.

   Guys, you are too radical. Surely signing a petition or making a short 3-5 days strike will make Amaya come to the senses?

- No, there already have been a massive action in writing letters to Pokerstars support (they replied with the standart form), then there were a 3-days strike, at which Amaya lost between 500k and 1mil, to that strike they replied with hypocritical press release stating that they didn't notice any effect on the strike. Clearly, Amaya is now cornered and won't stop at anything, and the only reason they understand is money. They plan to take approximately 1,8M per week with this reform, we must reduce rake by more.

   Everyone knows that rake doesn't matter for the poker rooms, only the difference between deposits and cashouts.

-Nope, Amaya has fixed expenses and they are pretty big. They need as much rake as they can get especially now when their debt is huge and their stock price is plummeting. And winning players make a lot of rake. Supernovas Elite and simple Supernovas generate around 30% of pure rake – almost as much as Amaya profits.

   So, all of those numbers, they are just made up, right?

- No, we have an access to the advanced statistical figures by the sharkscope-like statistical service Macropoker.

   Why do we have to register at your site? And procedure is so complicated!

- We want to be as transparent as possible so we ask players to verify their account with the screenshot so procedure takes around 2 minutes. Not much to prolong your career for much longer time. Also we are planning to make our site the center of the protest movement place for players from all communities games and stakes. If we succeed we may try to form a players union based in the protest.

   I know how to make your site better. You do * your suggestion* .

- Thank you! We appreciate any feedback, our site is still very young, it was made in very little time and not perfect yet. We have a huge improvements list and some of them take a lot of time to implement, so don't get mad if we didn't do something you suggest immediately.

   I am already the member of another strike.

- Great! But anyway consider signing in with us too. The reasons are:
1. We partner with other actions. We're allied with Tiltbook and 2+2 and if you know any other protesting group - please ask them to contact us or let us contact them.
2. We developed a special functionality to help people in finding other regs and to support you in public discussions
3. The movement must be global but needs strong coordination to be effective.
4. The important part of opposition lays in a field of publicity and information. We do our estimations basing on the data on the number of players, their VIP PS status etc

   I am not a Supernova and clearly not a SNE, why would I care?

- Our protest is not about rakeback, it's about company Amaya who wants to turn our favorite poker room into a global casino where everyone loses. If current change doesn't affect you directly next one definetely will.

How can I get a copy of the memorandum? I've sort of come to the conclusion that Amaya can't afford to care or back down at this point. If I can see the figures I might be convinced but ultimately giving up a month for nothing will make little sense to anyone. It wasn't linked on the site and I couldn't find it in the forum. I really want to support this but the end demands also seem unrealistic to me. I think the website/plan need some polishing.

Have you/anyone looked at pooling some $ to try and buy a portion of Amaya? This might be a better way of changing the companies direction. It is also a pipedream.

Source? This seems pretty hard to believe.

Memorandum is being prepared right now. I will post a link here as soon as it is available.



We have an article on the matter on our site (http://wearepokerplayers.com/main/18-protest-economics.html)

sorry but can you and the high stake big name big winners take a 6 month strike and then the fish like me might have a chance of winning ?

i don't think these guys understand that if you don't have recs depositing  then there cannot be rake generated.

these guys think amaya are bothered about the bumhunting, multi tabling rake back grinders (who think they bring something to the table), obv they don't thats why amaya have cut the rewards and want to be rid of them.

lawl

Well, this is very popular misconception, the most popular probably.
Yes, they care about deposits but Amaya also needs rake - it's the rake is what they are profiting now and regular players create a lot of rake. A lot, only SNEs(all regs) + SNs(vast majority are regs) create around 31% of pure rake(rake-rakeback) which is almost as much as amaya profits and with amound of their debts they clearly can't loose us now.

Hey, guys.
I haven't posted here for a while. In the meanwhile we made a short video with comments on Lee Jones's interview.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dtNyG--_b18

Unfortunately, whenever i tried to insert a video to be shown here, i've got "#Invalid YouTube Link#" message so only a link.

Next in line - the results of the 1-7 January strike.


edit, you tube added

I wish you every luck with your wishes mate, but as long as you say stuff like this, you have no chance.


"We demand that every game-related change be approved by an online players council. Members of the council will be elected on our site and will represent different stakes and communities. Recent changes regarding the VIP system have to be cancelled as they weren't approved by the players".


The moment I read that, I auto thought "no chance".

They are a Business, no Business is ever going to agree to having to ask their customers before they change any of the Products or pricing, it just ain't ever gonna happen.

Try to negotiate, talk to them, consult, they all have possibilities, but demanding they get player approval first? No chance. Any Business that wants to increase prices & asks that question would all get the same answer.  

Modify your stance & you might get somewhere. 

but i would be more willing to rake more and i think many more recs would if everytime we made top 2% of a field we werent the targets with the regs all knowing each other trying to get rid of all us deadwood before they split up there wages, i would also be willing to rake more if i didnt have every time a reg is in a hand it taking ages as he spins through his tables and he refered to his hud

Hey Ironside! Bit of a derail of the points that are being made in the thread and I think you are falling into the trap that has been set by pokerstars. They are setting this up as a 'war on regs' and as the benefit for casual players when in fact they are taking money from the whole poker ecomony and removing it directly to pay their shareholders and for the loans that Amaya took out to buy Stars.

You seem to be implying that regs softplay each other at the expense of unknowns? If I go deep in a tourney then I play just as tough, if not tougher against regs/people I've played a bunch of hands with, even people I know.

As for your second point, it would perhaps even put you at an advantage in some waysas you are paying attention to the table and as an unknown he wouldn't have any hands on you? If you want to play even faster then you can play zoom/rush.

I do agree about huds though. I would be happy to play online with no huds and it is one of the things that is intimidating to new/casual players.

I'm playing a lot less on Stars this year, so they have already lost rake from me.

You what?

badly worded ect

but as a rec who cant due to health reasons play enough to keep my game fresh and upto date with the regs i would be more likely to sit down and for an evening if i knew there were less regs playing
i always find they are the ones slowing us down with clock running every time its on them and also they have so much info even on the recs stored away in there HEM's that i feel at a disadvantage

As a regular, i'd say that this is a very big misconception about huds. I never use any stats aside few basic like vpip or PFR against recreational players. Never. I'm an honest players, i've never bought any mining in my career and i don't have nearly enough hands on a single rec to make me look for the advanced stats. They are only used against other regular players. And Amaya won't remove huds completely - why else would they make Jivaro? As for the complete removal of huds, i would support it if there was a solution against cheaters who would create their own hud undetectable by stars.
tikay yes, i know, that out demand seems too radical, but it's the only demand that matters. If we're correct about Amaya's intentions of turning poker into a casino game - any other demand is meaningless. So, we have to make enough leverage so our demand will be met.

I would say your demands are more unrealistic than radical. You are demanding too much.

Here's some food for thought for you - what do you think of this article?


 http://www.onlinepokerreport.com/19247/impact-pokerstars-boycotts-online-poker-liquidity/

I've been very reluctant to critise the people behind the amaya strikes because I have a lot of respect people who take action against things which affect them. However this really is, imo, a completely incorrect strategy.

What you are effectively attempting is to blackmail a billion dollar public trading company, they will never give in to these demands and neither should they, you are asking for access to their recreational player pool...use of their software...use of their cashier and you also want to (as a non shareholding group) govern how the company provides you this product and at what price? It's actually well across the border into absurd and I really implore you to stop wasting your time on this direction as it will destroy your efforts.

I am in involved in the gambling industry and I know this, your biggest asset is your recreational player pool. I accept that pro players are responsible for a huge amount of rake generation but this player pool is extremely dis-loyal (is that the word) they go where the action is...someone comes along and says move to this site, soft games and their off. No site, irrespective of it's size will allow its pro-players to basically blackmail them over how to service this player pool, it would be the most tragic business move, and Amaya giving in to your demands would be 50x a worse business decision than anything they have done so far.

You've given them absolutely no way to give in...all they can do against your action is to fight you, they have no other choice. You should have stuck to just demanding the re-instatment of the VIP scheme...even though chances of success there are very minimal too.

Remember you're not dealing with one man here you can talk rationally with, you're talking to a board of shareholders...and they see one thing only, dollars and dimes.

Here's what I would have one if I were you, rather then strike on pokerstars you need the backing of another site, Party or 888 would be the most ideal purely because of their size. Say to them on these dates you will bring 5000 players, can they provide the games you want, the range of MTT's with the gte's that are required to at least semi-compete with PS and some sort of VIP scheme maybe or bonuses and not just take 5000 players offline for a week but take 5000 players to a competitor, say to the site if you work with us and provide us with the enviroment we want then we could move permanently.

You'll never get PS to bend to your requests, you just won't and everyone deep down knows this, but you could get a competitor, with the lure of your player base to proovide you with at last something similar to the environment you want and give them a small headstart in taking on PS.

Problem you have is that as soon as games get good on PS...your players will be back...

GL with it anyways

Decent article. We will present our numbers on the latest strike very soon. We published those numbers already in russian and currently translating it to english.
SuuPRlim, the whole idea, how we see it is that Amaya is very desperate and that's why they did what they did(not only reduced vip-rewards, but cut second year of sn and sne rewards what enraged players all over the world). We don't know what exactly Baazov promised to his investors but, as i understand it, it's common practice that if he fails to fullfill this promises, he could loose the company to the creditors - my english is not good enough to translate our financial advisor opinion on that. So, either Baazov starts respecting players or new owners will understand that you can't f*** with us.

Your English is either much worse than you think or I'm missing something here. It's a public company. He doesn't own it anyway. And so long as he doesn't default on his debt then he's fine. They would need to lose an absolute shit load of money to make that a possibility.

What makes you think that Amaya is, "very desperate"?

amaya can't lose the company to its creditors if its solvent

management might be voted out by shareholders, strategy might change, it could be in more corporate activity but some of the doomsday stuff you are expecting is highly highly unlikely

I have never had a stars account.  If i was to ever sign up for one and play it would probably be on a day when all the pros strike.  This is what i would want and want stars would want.  Why do you think going on strike helps your cause?  It makes Star's position even more stronger than it already was. 

Why are these wallet talking poker players so brain dead?  I just don't get it.  Stars don't owe you a living.  If you can't beat the game on their terms then find a job.  Millions of others do.

Probably this https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AYA.TO#symbol=AYA.TO;range=1y (https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/echarts?s=AYA.TO#symbol=AYA.TO;range=1y)

Share price is tanking very hard, they have huge debt repayments to keep up which they barely are and likely to fall behind on if a few things don't go their way.

They massively overpaid for stars and then mortgaged up to the hilt to pay for it. Think of the glazeers buying out man utd back in the day and then putting the debt onto the club.

I think its a belief held by quite a few people that a big driver of these changes is simply cost cutting and raising prices to mitigate those things. Not the PR spin they put on it that it is going to be good for the ecology for the games. A view held by more than a few that actually the changes long term will do the opposite.

Hence this seems like a somewhat desperate course of action from Stars/amaya

Comments like this they are really uninformed and just seem a bit bitter for some reason and really miss the point of why people are striking.

(As a Full disclaimer i joined the 1st strike, and not this one for quite a few reasons. Furthermore I don't agree with all the 'demands' made by 'weareepokerplayers'. I play mtts do not rely on rakeback or the VIP system at all but fundamentally disagree with how these changes have been handled )

People are not striking because of this, stop drinking the stars tonic. It's not about stars owing anyone a living at all or not being able to beat the game.

They are striking because they were lied to and deceived about the VIP program which is a 2 year program which was gutted 10 months into it. They are striking because theirs fpp balances were cut by 25% (might have been 20% can't recall exactly) on Jan the 1st with little warning before hand. This 2nd point is not as much of an issue for most players but still effects some players badly.

If the changes had been announced in Jan 2015 not one single player would be striking, they may not have been happy about it. However, I am certain not 1 single pro would be complaining about how it was unfair etc.

With the current scenario, at worst they are being stolen from and at best they have been misled and lied to on a massive scale.

Stars then adds insult to injury by claiming they are doing it for the benefit of the recreational player. When in all likelihood it will become even worse for the rec player. Whether you are a pro or play for fun, I don't think anybody wants to see the biggest online poker site effectively kill a bunch of games due to short term greed either.

The whole we are doing this for the ecology is just another lie/spin, there is a ton of stuff the should have done a long time ago to 'protect' the rec player that they never and still have not done.

As I said its not about being owed a living or any of that utter BS some people keep saying, I don't know one single player who feels stars owes them anything except what they were promised.

Well, probably i lack the understanding of those kind of things, so i'm translating whatever our financial advisor says(and he's very good at this) probably confusing a lot.

Very well put post Buffy, I'm indifferent either way as I don't play online but I think you've summarised the arguments of the regs on Blonde in the most concise (and dare I say, non-aggro) tone to date.

I want to add to the great post by buffyslayer1 that nobody ever talks about any living owed by Stars. They are running business and they can do it however they feel it would be best(with the exception to the cur of the second year of benefits - that is purely disgraceful) but we have two important points:
1. We are sure that Amaya can't handle any pressure in their financial position, and if we gather more players (at least 5000), we will have a decent leverage against a company in a desperate financial position. If we gather 10000 players, we will have great leverage. Amaya bullies everyone they can - affiliates, regulars, players who deposit in currencies other than USD, they censor live announcers forbiddiing them even to mention changes in VIP-system. I think we have to bully them back.
2. The course they are taking poker to is clearly bad for the game. Yeah, we have our own interest in the first place but they actually correlate with the future of the game as intellectual sport, not the game of luck amaya imposes.

No I get what you are saying, and defo doesn't look great from the outside looking in at Amaya right now, i'm by no means an expert on this stuff but I believe there is a huge similarity to this and thre manchester utd takeover a while ago, and i think the model of servicing the purchasing debt out of short term cash flow is one that is pretty widely used in business takeovers of all sizes, and one thing is always pretty consistent with this sort of strategy and that is that the first 6-30 months are hellishly difficult because you are constantly handcuffed by the debt.

Anyways the request that Amaya are not allowed to make changes to its product before it being approved by a pannel of its customers is impossible, it can't happen - if you let this play out 10,000,000 times it can't happen one single time.

I'd love to see you succeed honestly, but I'd really prefer to see you work towards some more realistic expectations.

Thanks that's a good explanation of their possibly short termist behaviour - but if they're trying to exploit their monopoly position by squeezing extra money from Pokerstars; and they're still not making enough money - how can they agree to any 'demands' that would make them even less money? (even if that were a thing that a company would ever do)

I would have thought worst case scenario (for the players) is that Amaya just gets new financing and a new board and carries on the same, best case scenario is they become a takeover target and the new owners have deeper pockets who can put more value on customer service - but that customer service is still going to be based on what's best for the recs (I would imagine) so it would certainly not include a lot of these demands.

NB. I would imagine that the VIP programme would have the same kind of thing any money off vouchers off have; that is a notice somewhere saying their value is 0.000001p; therefore when they cut the value of what points/whatever are exchanged for they are still exchanging it for many times more than their nominal value and hence it can't be shown that they're 'taking' anything away from the people involved. If it's not that then I expect there's something similar.

Well, on a countrary, i think that we have to demand big and see what happens then demand something little that would mean nothing in the long run.

Our report on the second strike (http://wearepokerplayers.com/main/35-protest-economics-vol-2.html)

Net debt is around $2.4bn

Financing costs on this are around $200m annually I think.

You can certainly tweak the numbers so it becomes a problem, but you still need a pretty huge drop in revenues or huge hike in costs.

Share price has no (direct) impact on cash flow.

Lots of hyperbole on both sides. It doesn't help.

I don't disagree with you on some of these points.

Hence I am not supporting this strike as I think the 'demands' of the strike are not realistic.

You are likely better informed than me to be honest. But do you have the source on this as amaya paid $4.9b for stars I think and around $3b was loaned for it?
 I thought the costs were closer to $300m per year in finanicing ? The info I heard is kind of 2nd hand and perhaps the costs are not as high as believed.

Stars makes around $420mil per year profit or did in 2014 I think. In Nov this year amaya announced a profit warning ironic timing (well according to 2+2 so who knows lol) which doesn't suprise me thay much

With the costs of markets increasing quite alot (mainly taxation/regulation) and revenues likely to dip due to some markets getting closed off. Plus the $ is very strong atm (if you are going to withdraw some $ now is a great time) which is likely hurting them pretty hard.

I would not be suprised if loan repayments start getting close to profit or closer to the point it makes the board very uncomfortable. Either way  net profit will be very small (compared to pre amaya) once the debt burden is taken into account.

 It seems the reality of what amaya promised investors is not true. A big part of the dream sold was rentry into the USA which is seemingly not as smooth as they were sold.

Hence the share price tanking quite hard, obviously it doesn't impact cash flow at all though. Having worked previous to poker in a few large business I know how obessive  (overly so) companies are to share price even the the city is incredibly fickle

Like the other poster said I don't think all this is as much of an issue as the strikers believe. Likely there will either be another round of financing or the company is simply sold off to another Corp. It's not like stars is not profitable it is extremely so and this won't change overnight.

Still seems to me that these changes/cuts/increase are very short term reactionary to a bunch of macro issues. Which if the executives at amaya had any clue about the poker market before they over paid for stars. They could have easily forseen. I guess they equated gambling= poker and they know about gambling. Plus took a huge punt on getting into the USA quickly.

It's a public company. You don't need some bloke on 2+2 to let you know what's going on, you can just look it up yourself :)

Try here http://www.amaya.com/pdf/20151118_aya-presentation_for-website.pdf (http://www.amaya.com/pdf/20151118_aya-presentation_for-website.pdf)

Slide 46 shows Adjusted net debt as US$2,359,574

Slide 44 shows YTD financing costs to Q3 2015 as CAD$184,878 (US$129m).

They very recently refinanced the debt on better terms and have access to additional fund raising up to $3bn if required.

You are definitely correct that profit is not at pre-Amaya levels, and the investors were sold a massive growth story based on huge revenues from casino and sports as well as increased poker revenues. So it's not all plain sailing. But defaulting on debt seems unlikely to me. But Tighty would be far better placed to analyse that than me.

The profit warning is what sent the share price tumbling, but it's still going to make a healthy profit this year. Just not as much as it previously thought.

USA is an odd one. It's more a reputational benefit than a financial benefit. NJ wouldn't be acretive to bottom line in the short-term I wouldn't have thought.

There is demanding big and there is losing credibility with your demands and I fear you lose credibility with what you are asking for.

don't get me wrong, LOVING the ambition. GL