Who's sitting out?

[POWWWWWWWW]

the other thing that makes me laugh is when these online bedroom nerds say 'we loved the previous owners but hate the new ones'.  The previous owners have selfishly cashed out and sold the firm at a premium (they don't care less about you) now the new owners who have paid the premium to the legend set  up guys who are on a beach enjoying your cash have to get a return on their investment to justify the fee they paid to the 'great set up owners' you laud.  Comical.  If they loved you and the concept as players they would never have sold out.  They sold out because its business.  

Players loved the previous owners because they ran the site in the right way, making it the market leader and best site to play on by an absolute mile. Players don't expect the owners to have any affinity towards them. They were running a business, and running it the way they did means they can sell it to Amaya for whatever ridiculous amount they did. They hate the new owners because aside from flat out stealing from pros, they are also stealing from recs (and only posting about it on 2+2, where recs would never find out) so the business people (who know nothing about poker or the poker market/economy) can knock 25% of the companies liabilities off the books to improve their figures, all the while trying to mask it behind removing HUD's and other software. Which all the dribbling, old spastics frequenting this forum have fallen for. Nothing to do with the long term longevity of the economy as a whole.

[arbboy]

the other thing that makes me laugh is when these online bedroom nerds say 'we loved the previous owners but hate the new ones'.  The previous owners have selfishly cashed out and sold the firm at a premium (they don't care less about you) now the new owners who have paid the premium to the legend set  up guys who are on a beach enjoying your cash have to get a return on their investment to justify the fee they paid to the 'great set up owners' you laud.  Comical.  If they loved you and the concept as players they would never have sold out.  They sold out because its business.  

Players loved the previous owners because they ran the site in the right way, making it the market leader and best site to play on by an absolute mile. Players don't expect the owners to have any affinity towards them. They were running a business, and running it the way they did means they can sell it to Amaya for whatever ridiculous amount they did. They hate the new owners because aside from flat out stealing from pros, they are also stealing from recs (and only posting about it on 2+2, where recs would never find out) so the business people (who know nothing about poker or the poker market/economy) can knock 25% of the companies liabilities off the books to improve their figures, all the while trying to mask it behind removing HUD's and other software. Which all the dribbling, old spastics frequenting this forum have fallen for. Nothing to do with the long term longevity of the economy as a whole.

No idea who you are but is there really any need for this?  Pretty reasonable debate going on here and there seems little need to lower the tone in this way is there?

They run the site the right way in order to get the maximum price for it when they decided to cash in and exit.  Like most start up businesses with a 'first in' strategy to create a virtual monopoly do.  If they cared so much when they sold the product they would have took less money when selling and put a clause into the sale contract saying all their great ideas for the poker pros in the world had to be kept in place forever even though the product doesn't need the pros anymore like it did when they were still creating the monopoly position they now have.

I haven't fallen for anything either as i have never had a stars account so i see this totally impartially unlike the vast majority of people on here who have vested interests.  I agree they have been under handed regarding the vpp's and the 2 year period for SNE.  Legally they must be 100% covered for doing it otherwise they wouldn't do it.  They want rid of these top 500 players and have all the power.  That is why the strike is pointless.

[POWWWWWWWW]

online bedroom nerds

[/quote]No idea who you are but is there really any need for this?  Pretty reasonable debate going on here[/quote]

Very reasonable choice of words to attach to all online poker players.

[arbboy]

online bedroom nerds

No idea who you are but is there really any need for this? Pretty reasonable debate going on here[/quote]

Very reasonable choice of words to attach to all online poker players.
[/quote]

I would happily wager my net worth i have played twice as much online poker than you have without even knowing who you are and i haven't played online for years.  I was a fellow nerd in my bedroom for years.  I have done the volume for years that would have got SNE levels so i know how much of a nerd you have to be for this to really be affecting you financially.  Believe me you will have a much more balanced life when you don't play poker for 15 hours a day.  I don't think my choice of words was anywhere near as offensive as yours were.

[POWWWWWWWW]

Yeh my choice of words was out of line, apologies.

[arbboy]

http://calvinayre.com/2015/12/02/poker/daniel-negreanu-pokerstars-and-the-death-of-the-online-pro/?utm_source=hootsuite

[vegaslover]

I wonder just how much stars have noticed the sit outs tbh. Now, I haven't played stars for quite a while but obv still get the emails from them. Don't they have an xmas promo running atm? The type of thing that attracts all the recs to deposit and play more. Just what stars are aiming for

[rfgqqabc]

The most annoying part for me is that I think its terrible business for both me and Stars. I'm not sure how many times I can write this but I will try again. If you remove my rakeback, you are increasing the rake, if you increase the rake, you force me to look for better games, which means I will play less poker and win at a higher win rate off the recreational player. Bear in mind, the rakeback the SNEs guys get is money that Stars have already collected. Job done, they are just giving some of it back. Without this, they have to collect the money somehow, and presuming your most economically aware customers aren't going to change their habits is obviously a mistake. A SNE hyper guy will go from paying Stars 200k and getting 110k back for his income, to playing mtts and winning at a 20% roi post rake, whilst Stars collect somewhere between 7-10%. It is so so so stupid. They would do much better by encouraging poker players to play as much poker as possible instead of forcing them to win off recreational players instead of rakeback. I have no idea how they cannot see this. I also have no idea why people think they are a smart company. They leveraged capital to buy a business and then decide they need to change the whole business model to get things to work. If I tried to buy Rolls Royce and turn it into Ford would people on this forum tell me it was a good idea simply because I managed to convince someone to invest the capital to allow me to do so? They can't even handle the PR for major changes like this, I see absolutely no reason for me to think this is the best route for Amaya to take. I understand they think it is, and honestly I think I'd get over it if that was the case. I think what they are doing is burning the ship down and I'm a passenger.

Arb, they sold because they couldn't get it into America. They also wanted to stop working. I think you would think it was a lot more ridiculous if I demanded they continued working, instead of hating on the new owners. Do I wish they had sold to someone who cared about poker or had the vaguest idea of what to do with the business? Absolutely, but I'm not going to expect them to dedicate their lives to poker.

I also don't know why you expect people to not be angry. That is one of the most absurd things to me. You seem surprised that online pros are pissed off. I play virtually every site you could have access to and a few more you don't. This doesn't mean I'm going to applaud someone for making "excellent business decisions".
I'm not sure Stars will exist in five years tbh.

[rfgqqabc]

Limit tables and remove huds to help the fish and appease them would lead to making pros work harder and fish will lose quicker. Stars take 20 bb/100 at SSPLO and then wonder why the fish lose so quickly...

[buffyslayer1]

The most annoying part for me is that I think its terrible business for both me and Stars. I'm not sure how many times I can write this but I will try again. If you remove my rakeback, you are increasing the rake, if you increase the rake, you force me to look for better games, which means I will play less poker and win at a higher win rate off the recreational player. Bear in mind, the rakeback the SNEs guys get is money that Stars have already collected. Job done, they are just giving some of it back. Without this, they have to collect the money somehow, and presuming your most economically aware customers aren't going to change their habits is obviously a mistake. A SNE hyper guy will go from paying Stars 200k and getting 110k back for his income, to playing mtts and winning at a 20% roi post rake, whilst Stars collect somewhere between 7-10%. It is so so so stupid. They would do much better by encouraging poker players to play as much poker as possible instead of forcing them to win off recreational players instead of rakeback. I have no idea how they cannot see this. I also have no idea why people think they are a smart company. They leveraged capital to buy a business and then decide they need to change the whole business model to get things to work. If I tried to buy Rolls Royce and turn it into Ford would people on this forum tell me it was a good idea simply because I managed to convince someone to invest the capital to allow me to do so? They can't even handle the PR for major changes like this, I see absolutely no reason for me to think this is the best route for Amaya to take. I understand they think it is, and honestly I think I'd get over it if that was the case. I think what they are doing is burning the ship down and I'm a passenger.

Arb, they sold because they couldn't get it into America. They also wanted to stop working. I think you would think it was a lot more ridiculous if I demanded they continued working, instead of hating on the new owners. Do I wish they had sold to someone who cared about poker or had the vaguest idea of what to do with the business? Absolutely, but I'm not going to expect them to dedicate their lives to poker.

I also don't know why you expect people to not be angry. That is one of the most absurd things to me. You seem surprised that online pros are pissed off. I play virtually every site you could have access to and a few more you don't. This doesn't mean I'm going to applaud someone for making "excellent business decisions".
I'm not sure Stars will exist in five years tbh.

Listening to Dnegs on the Joey podcast its actually pretty clear they don't understand poker (as in the new execs). Which is really very very worrying they seem to be treating Poker as any other gaming product and it really is way more complex and different to the majority of casino/sports betting.

From what he was saying a bunch of stuff they thought would do X will actually do the complete opposite Y.

I think the example he gave was that they thought reducing rakeback would make SNE/SN mass grinders player differently in regards to actual style. Suddenly they thought these guys would be playing 30/10 and splashing around for some reason.

Obviously it will have next to no effect on how they play. In fact it might even make them play tighter in some spots in theory if effective rake is higher less hands are profitable to see flops with.

Similarly they seem to think removing VPPs for example at 5/10 cash will protect the fish from being hunted. when actually the opposite is very likely true. Those games will only run with a big fish in the game and he will be hunted to extinction very very quickly. Also the big fish who likes to play high now doesn't get a bit of a kickback when he does play the games.

Much better would be if they gave the fish a much higher % of RB than the regs imo but it seems they are not going down this route

By the way your analogy with ford/rolls royce reminds me of when General motors bought Saab and totally balled it up trying to make it run like GM did. Feels like Amaya is trying to shoehorn on their general business model onto Poker.

As a general aside it always baffles me how companies are allowed to raise tons of capital to buy a business and then load that same business with mountains of debt. I recall Man UTD had the same thing when they were bought out also quite a few years back now.

[POWWWWWWWW]

The most annoying part for me is that I think its terrible business for both me and Stars. I'm not sure how many times I can write this but I will try again. If you remove my rakeback, you are increasing the rake, if you increase the rake, you force me to look for better games, which means I will play less poker and win at a higher win rate off the recreational player. Bear in mind, the rakeback the SNEs guys get is money that Stars have already collected. Job done, they are just giving some of it back. Without this, they have to collect the money somehow, and presuming your most economically aware customers aren't going to change their habits is obviously a mistake. A SNE hyper guy will go from paying Stars 200k and getting 110k back for his income, to playing mtts and winning at a 20% roi post rake, whilst Stars collect somewhere between 7-10%. It is so so so stupid. They would do much better by encouraging poker players to play as much poker as possible instead of forcing them to win off recreational players instead of rakeback. I have no idea how they cannot see this. I also have no idea why people think they are a smart company. They leveraged capital to buy a business and then decide they need to change the whole business model to get things to work. If I tried to buy Rolls Royce and turn it into Ford would people on this forum tell me it was a good idea simply because I managed to convince someone to invest the capital to allow me to do so? They can't even handle the PR for major changes like this, I see absolutely no reason for me to think this is the best route for Amaya to take. I understand they think it is, and honestly I think I'd get over it if that was the case. I think what they are doing is burning the ship down and I'm a passenger.

Arb, they sold because they couldn't get it into America. They also wanted to stop working. I think you would think it was a lot more ridiculous if I demanded they continued working, instead of hating on the new owners. Do I wish they had sold to someone who cared about poker or had the vaguest idea of what to do with the business? Absolutely, but I'm not going to expect them to dedicate their lives to poker.

I also don't know why you expect people to not be angry. That is one of the most absurd things to me. You seem surprised that online pros are pissed off. I play virtually every site you could have access to and a few more you don't. This doesn't mean I'm going to applaud someone for making "excellent business decisions".
I'm not sure Stars will exist in five years tbh.

Listening to Dnegs on the Joey podcast its actually pretty clear they don't understand poker (as in the new execs). Which is really very very worrying they seem to be treating Poker as any other gaming product and it really is way more complex and different to the majority of casino/sports betting.

From what he was saying a bunch of stuff they thought would do X will actually do the complete opposite Y.

I think the example he gave was that they thought reducing rakeback would make SNE/SN mass grinders player differently in regards to actual style. Suddenly they thought these guys would be playing 30/10 and splashing around for some reason.

Obviously it will have next to no effect on how they play. In fact it might even make them play tighter in some spots in theory if effective rake is higher less hands are profitable to see flops with.

Similarly they seem to think removing VPPs for example at 5/10 cash will protect the fish from being hunted. when actually the opposite is very likely true. Those games will only run with a big fish in the game and he will be hunted to extinction very very quickly. Also the big fish who likes to play high now doesn't get a bit of a kickback when he does play the games.

Much better would be if they gave the fish a much higher % of RB than the regs imo but it seems they are not going down this route

By the way your analogy with ford/rolls royce reminds me of when General motors bought Saab and totally balled it up trying to make it run like GM did. Feels like Amaya is trying to shoehorn on their general business model onto Poker.

As a general aside it always baffles me how companies are allowed to raise tons of capital to buy a business and then load that same business with mountains of debt. I recall Man UTD had the same thing when they were bought out also quite a few years back now.

This quote from Amaya's CEO pretty much sums this up.

The players will not last longer and their experience will not be enhanced if you take away the middle section of the eco system. This will leave the absolute elite players who can beat any game, the elite bumhunters who will be on every site and don't take rb into consideration as they don't put enough volume in on Stars alone, and the recs. Having 5 elite players on 1 table instead of 2 elite, 2 avg regs, 1 bumhunter and 1 rec, the recs are going to get smashed. Who is going to want to redeposit if they never win a hand?

Yeah. We’d say that you're looking at essentially—from an ecosystem perspective this actually is a big positive, Chad. We don't view this as being disruptive to the ecosystem. We view it as being very positive.

You’re talking about a small percentage of players that are a very large percentage of net withdrawers, and I mean that's good and that's fine; we want them to be winners. But there has to be an equilibrium. And you know what? I think that the player experience needs to be better. You shouldn’t be able to have a lot of players who are sitting at the table to break even and still making money.

And so I think that by actually having players in the ecosystem have a better equilibrium you’ll have players last longer, you'll have increased redeposits, you’ll have a better player experience, and you know what? I think we're going to have increased poker revenue, but also increased player engagement and retention.[quote/]

[buffyslayer1]

^^^^

I think they also don't seem to realise that many forms of poker they spread are basically unbeatable since the rake is so high. Games like small stakes PLO and limit games for example. The only way there are winning players in those games is due to RB, and now the recs are getting punished much much quicker for reasons you said amongst others/

Now maybe that's what they want (who knows) but a big big part of the appeal of poker versus other gambling is that you can win at it imo and I think the poker punter is way different to the casino or betting punter who knows they are -ev but do it anyway for fun

How the whole system was set up was really successful for a long time and I certainly think it needs to be overhauled. Gutting the VIP system on some vague promise of bringing in new players who in turn will be fleeced really quickly by the site because they are pushing rake and go's can't be good.

Like I said I would have massively increased the benefits of lower teirs, especially silver gold and plat rewards because this is the most valuable customer they have. Some who plays enough that it is clearly a hobby, but not so much they are obviously a full time player (that said I know 2 Super novas who work full time).

[arbboy]

The most annoying part for me is that I think its terrible business for both me and Stars. I'm not sure how many times I can write this but I will try again. If you remove my rakeback, you are increasing the rake, if you increase the rake, you force me to look for better games, which means I will play less poker and win at a higher win rate off the recreational player. Bear in mind, the rakeback the SNEs guys get is money that Stars have already collected. Job done, they are just giving some of it back. Without this, they have to collect the money somehow, and presuming your most economically aware customers aren't going to change their habits is obviously a mistake. A SNE hyper guy will go from paying Stars 200k and getting 110k back for his income, to playing mtts and winning at a 20% roi post rake, whilst Stars collect somewhere between 7-10%. It is so so so stupid. They would do much better by encouraging poker players to play as much poker as possible instead of forcing them to win off recreational players instead of rakeback. I have no idea how they cannot see this. I also have no idea why people think they are a smart company. They leveraged capital to buy a business and then decide they need to change the whole business model to get things to work. If I tried to buy Rolls Royce and turn it into Ford would people on this forum tell me it was a good idea simply because I managed to convince someone to invest the capital to allow me to do so? They can't even handle the PR for major changes like this, I see absolutely no reason for me to think this is the best route for Amaya to take. I understand they think it is, and honestly I think I'd get over it if that was the case. I think what they are doing is burning the ship down and I'm a passenger.

Arb, they sold because they couldn't get it into America. They also wanted to stop working. I think you would think it was a lot more ridiculous if I demanded they continued working, instead of hating on the new owners. Do I wish they had sold to someone who cared about poker or had the vaguest idea of what to do with the business? Absolutely, but I'm not going to expect them to dedicate their lives to poker.

I also don't know why you expect people to not be angry. That is one of the most absurd things to me. You seem surprised that online pros are pissed off. I play virtually every site you could have access to and a few more you don't. This doesn't mean I'm going to applaud someone for making "excellent business decisions".
I'm not sure Stars will exist in five years tbh.

The key thing you miss out here is how much this SNE withdraws from the system in donating his £90k of rake over a year.  Stars don't want big winners (relative to their rake contribution) in their system anymore so they are changing their pricing structure.  I don't believe all of these players will move down the stakes to make a living.  A lot of SNE/Winning/Pro players will simply stop playing (which is want Stars ultimately want imo) and find alternative forms of income and instead of stars paying them a wage every year this money will churn through their system.  Remember the casino/sportsbook have been added now where they can also keep hold of people's deposits through cross selling other products to casuals.  They just simply don't want big withdrawl winning players on their site taking money out of their system.  Therefore they are committing to price you out.  Stars are saying if you are still good enough to beat the game with the increased charges all the best and we will make enough out of you to justify your wage.  If not then please get your wages elsewhere.

I am talking as someone who is shit at poker and stopped playing in 2011 online when i couldn't make it pay anymore.  I made most of my money from rakeback and playing huge volumes of stts (not on stars but the reward system on bf was similar to SNE) before the firms caught onto the fact that people like me where bad for their ecosystem.   I could have dropped down the stakes and beat 20/40p but it wasn't worth the effort and made more sense to find alternative forms of income.  I am sure this will happen to a lot of current pros.  It is about being ahead of the game.  Once the firms catch on you just have to take your skills elsewhere.

[rfgqqabc]

The most annoying part for me is that I think its terrible business for both me and Stars. I'm not sure how many times I can write this but I will try again. If you remove my rakeback, you are increasing the rake, if you increase the rake, you force me to look for better games, which means I will play less poker and win at a higher win rate off the recreational player. Bear in mind, the rakeback the SNEs guys get is money that Stars have already collected. Job done, they are just giving some of it back. Without this, they have to collect the money somehow, and presuming your most economically aware customers aren't going to change their habits is obviously a mistake. A SNE hyper guy will go from paying Stars 200k and getting 110k back for his income, to playing mtts and winning at a 20% roi post rake, whilst Stars collect somewhere between 7-10%. It is so so so stupid. They would do much better by encouraging poker players to play as much poker as possible instead of forcing them to win off recreational players instead of rakeback. I have no idea how they cannot see this. I also have no idea why people think they are a smart company. They leveraged capital to buy a business and then decide they need to change the whole business model to get things to work. If I tried to buy Rolls Royce and turn it into Ford would people on this forum tell me it was a good idea simply because I managed to convince someone to invest the capital to allow me to do so? They can't even handle the PR for major changes like this, I see absolutely no reason for me to think this is the best route for Amaya to take. I understand they think it is, and honestly I think I'd get over it if that was the case. I think what they are doing is burning the ship down and I'm a passenger.

Arb, they sold because they couldn't get it into America. They also wanted to stop working. I think you would think it was a lot more ridiculous if I demanded they continued working, instead of hating on the new owners. Do I wish they had sold to someone who cared about poker or had the vaguest idea of what to do with the business? Absolutely, but I'm not going to expect them to dedicate their lives to poker.

I also don't know why you expect people to not be angry. That is one of the most absurd things to me. You seem surprised that online pros are pissed off. I play virtually every site you could have access to and a few more you don't. This doesn't mean I'm going to applaud someone for making "excellent business decisions".
I'm not sure Stars will exist in five years tbh.

Listening to Dnegs on the Joey podcast its actually pretty clear they don't understand poker (as in the new execs). Which is really very very worrying they seem to be treating Poker as any other gaming product and it really is way more complex and different to the majority of casino/sports betting.

From what he was saying a bunch of stuff they thought would do X will actually do the complete opposite Y.

I think the example he gave was that they thought reducing rakeback would make SNE/SN mass grinders player differently in regards to actual style. Suddenly they thought these guys would be playing 30/10 and splashing around for some reason.

Obviously it will have next to no effect on how they play. In fact it might even make them play tighter in some spots in theory if effective rake is higher less hands are profitable to see flops with.

Similarly they seem to think removing VPPs for example at 5/10 cash will protect the fish from being hunted. when actually the opposite is very likely true. Those games will only run with a big fish in the game and he will be hunted to extinction very very quickly. Also the big fish who likes to play high now doesn't get a bit of a kickback when he does play the games.

Much better would be if they gave the fish a much higher % of RB than the regs imo but it seems they are not going down this route

By the way your analogy with ford/rolls royce reminds me of when General motors bought Saab and totally balled it up trying to make it run like GM did. Feels like Amaya is trying to shoehorn on their general business model onto Poker.

As a general aside it always baffles me how companies are allowed to raise tons of capital to buy a business and then load that same business with mountains of debt. I recall Man UTD had the same thing when they were bought out also quite a few years back now.

Its something that happens in the business world all the time. So many mergers and takeovers are unprofitable because of both the premium paid and because the incoming management overestimate their ability to manage. This case is even worse than the norm, as we have to presume the old management was successful, and even more so if like Arbboy states, that they were bringing in the changes slowly anyway. And then add to that they had spend to get the capital for the deal and seemed to pay a bigger premium than normal. They paid 11.1x Stars 2013 EBITA which is just outrageous for a shrinking market, even if it is the market leader.

http://www.amaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Amaya-Oldford-Investor-Presentation-FINAL.pdf

"Brand awareness, players want Stars and Tilt to come back to US" LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. I'm sure all those Americans that had their funds seized for years are desperate to get back on Full Tilt.

Amaya's business model is fairly interesting. They do have a history of buying up poker networks and stripping them of value before selling them on to a company that they pay to take on the failing asset. They managed to  sell Ongame to NYX Gaming Group, some newly emerged Swedish firm. To do this they had to lend them the money and give a minimum revenue guarantee.

As the Corporation focuses on its B2C operations, on November 24, 2014, Amaya divested Ongame Network Ltd.
(“Ongame”), its B2B poker and platform provider, to NYX Gaming Group Ltd. (“NYX Gaming Group”).
Concurrently with the transaction, Amaya made a strategic investment in NYX Gaming Group via a subscription of a
$9 million unsecured convertible debenture, which matures two years after the date of issuance and bears interest at
6.00% per annum, payable at maturity. Interest and principal are payable in kind in NYX Gaming Group common
shares at Amaya’s option.
The Corporation derecognized the net assets, resulting in a loss of $ 32,219,000 that was recognized in net loss
from discontinued operations in the consolidated statement of earnings (loss). The Corporation has provided for the
full minimum revenue guarantee of CAD $4.2 million payable within the next 12 months

http://www.nyxgaminggroup.com/for-investors-dashboard/stock-chart-and-quote/


On February 11, 2014, the Corporation announced that pursuant to a Share Purchase Agreement dated November
27, 2013, one of its subsidiaries has completed the previously announced sale to Goldstar Acquisitionco Inc. of all of
the issued and outstanding shares of WagerLogic Malta Holdings Ltd. for $70 million, less a closing working capital
adjustment satisfied through cash consideration of $52.50 million and a vendor take-back in the form of a promissory
note of $10 million, bearing interest at 6.0% per annum payable semi-annually in arrears.


http://www.amaya.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Amaya-2014-Financial-Statements.pdf

So who are Goldstar? Goldstar are a private company that is fairly difficult to find information about. However, I did find a company filing.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1595949/000114036114001105/xslFormDX01/primary_doc.xml

Keith Laslop is the contact name for Goldstar and the Intertain CFO. Both building are registered within 10 minutes walk of each other in Toronto. You can see the Intertain Annual Report for 2014 here; http://2014ar.intertain.com/about


So somewhere along the line Goldstar became Intertain. Where have we seen Intertain before?

Lets go back to the Amaya 2014 Annual Statement; During the year ended December 31, 2013 the Corporation acquired subscription receipts exchangeable into
1.35 million common shares and 353,000 common share purchase warrants of The Intertain Group Limited (TSX: IT)
for a total cost of $5.4 million and 38,500 convertible debentures (TSX: IT.DB) which have a maturity date of
December 31, 2018 and bear interest at 5.00% per annum for a total cost of $3.85 million. The debentures are
convertible at the Corporation’s option into fully paid common shares of The Intertain Group Limited at any time
prior to the maturity date at a conversion price of CAD$6.00 per common share. Each warrant is exchangeable into
one common share at a price of CAD $5.00. The Corporation exercised all the warrants during the year.


This is an example of the bullshit you read when searching through these company statements.

"The company completed its listing on the TSX in February 2014 and immediately embarked on a series of accretive acquisitions. Intertain is now one of the top 10 online gaming companies globally1, the largest online bingo-led company globally, has the highest percentage of revenue from regulated markets amongst its peer group, and is a major player in M&A activity – after only 12 months of operation.*


*1 BASED ON COMPARABLE ONLINE GAMING COMPANIES WITH A SIMILAR SCOPE AND NATURE OF OPERATIONS."
http://2014ar.intertain.com/letter/overview


This got really messy really fast and I'm not sure it will make sense but I hope it provides some people information about how shady Amaya is.

[rfgqqabc]

The most annoying part for me is that I think its terrible business for both me and Stars. I'm not sure how many times I can write this but I will try again. If you remove my rakeback, you are increasing the rake, if you increase the rake, you force me to look for better games, which means I will play less poker and win at a higher win rate off the recreational player. Bear in mind, the rakeback the SNEs guys get is money that Stars have already collected. Job done, they are just giving some of it back. Without this, they have to collect the money somehow, and presuming your most economically aware customers aren't going to change their habits is obviously a mistake. A SNE hyper guy will go from paying Stars 200k and getting 110k back for his income, to playing mtts and winning at a 20% roi post rake, whilst Stars collect somewhere between 7-10%. It is so so so stupid. They would do much better by encouraging poker players to play as much poker as possible instead of forcing them to win off recreational players instead of rakeback. I have no idea how they cannot see this. I also have no idea why people think they are a smart company. They leveraged capital to buy a business and then decide they need to change the whole business model to get things to work. If I tried to buy Rolls Royce and turn it into Ford would people on this forum tell me it was a good idea simply because I managed to convince someone to invest the capital to allow me to do so? They can't even handle the PR for major changes like this, I see absolutely no reason for me to think this is the best route for Amaya to take. I understand they think it is, and honestly I think I'd get over it if that was the case. I think what they are doing is burning the ship down and I'm a passenger.

Arb, they sold because they couldn't get it into America. They also wanted to stop working. I think you would think it was a lot more ridiculous if I demanded they continued working, instead of hating on the new owners. Do I wish they had sold to someone who cared about poker or had the vaguest idea of what to do with the business? Absolutely, but I'm not going to expect them to dedicate their lives to poker.

I also don't know why you expect people to not be angry. That is one of the most absurd things to me. You seem surprised that online pros are pissed off. I play virtually every site you could have access to and a few more you don't. This doesn't mean I'm going to applaud someone for making "excellent business decisions".
I'm not sure Stars will exist in five years tbh.

The key thing you miss out here is how much this SNE withdraws from the system in donating his £90k of rake over a year.  Stars don't want big winners (relative to their rake contribution) in their system anymore so they are changing their pricing structure.  I don't believe all of these players will move down the stakes to make a living.  A lot of SNE/Winning/Pro players will simply stop playing (which is want Stars ultimately want imo) and find alternative forms of income and instead of stars paying them a wage every year this money will churn through their system.  Remember the casino/sportsbook have been added now where they can also keep hold of people's deposits through cross selling other products to casuals.  They just simply don't want big withdrawl winning players on their site taking money out of their system.  Therefore they are committing to price you out.  Stars are saying if you are still good enough to beat the game with the increased charges all the best and we will make enough out of you to justify your wage.  If not then please get your wages elsewhere.

I am talking as someone who is shit at poker and stopped playing in 2011 online when i couldn't make it pay anymore.  I made most of my money from rakeback and playing huge volumes of stts (not on stars but the reward system on bf was similar to SNE) before the firms caught onto the fact that people like me where bad for their ecosystem.   I could have dropped down the stakes and beat 20/40p but it wasn't worth the effort and made more sense to find alternative forms of income.  I am sure this will happen to a lot of current pros.  It is about being ahead of the game.  Once the firms catch on you just have to take your skills elsewhere.

Arb I think by pricing out the SNE players, they will price out everyone. Imagine if Betfair decided to introduce Premium Charge to everyone who bets more than £100, just because their were a few winners with abnormal profit levels. Its basically Betfaur saying, you guys win too much so we are going to increase everyone's commission, and because you are addicted gamblers, you will remain betting with us.