Who's sitting out?

[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.

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.

I agree with that but the vast majority of casual poker players couldn't even tell you what the rake is.  They couldn't care less.  This is the market stars want now given their actions.  Whether it is right or wrong long term who knows.  I think the PC would work well on PS if it was adapted slightly.

Their turnover is bound to fall but their profits might rise as a result of the increased margins. When i worked for a low margin sportsbook in the past we did a similar thing on our baseball product which was highly competitive in the market place.  Betting it to 102%.  We decided to double the margin to 104%.  This caused a lot of complaints from the pros who made a living out of us.  As a result our turnover dropped 10 fold but profits more than doubled.  Bank charges/fees and customer service issues also decreased massively as a result.

[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.

I agree with that but the vast majority of casual poker players couldn't even tell you what the rake is.  They couldn't care less.  This is the market stars want now given their actions.  Whether it is right or wrong long term who knows.  I think the PC would work well on PS if it was adapted slightly.

Their turnover is bound to fall but their profits might rise as a result of the increased margins. When i worked for a low margin sportsbook in the past we did a similar thing on our baseball product which was highly competitive in the market place.  Betting it to 102%.  We decided to double the margin to 104%.  This caused a lot of complaints from the pros who made a living out of us.  As a result our turnover dropped 10 fold but profits more than doubled.  Bank charges/fees and customer service issues also decreased massively as a result.

I can't argue with much of this post. I think recs are a lot more aware of rake than you would think, even if it simply comes in the form of losing quicker. I'm sure when I used to play live at a casino then if the nearby casino lowered the rake then people would have gone there. I'm almost certain they would have cared. I'm not sure why people think this translates to online, just because some people feel a certain loyalty or affinity to sportsbooks.

My only real question is; why do all the none pros seem so happy about it? If you think Amaya are going to make more money, why are you happy about that? So many recreational posters seem happy pros are getting fucked. I don't understand why. I'm not saying its given you a big grin, but I think thats why POWWWW gets so offended, and its certainly something that has riled me up in the past when other posters have spoken about it. I wouldn't be cheering if Betfair decided to make commission 5% (why don't they if every rec is price insensitive?)

[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.

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.

I agree with that but the vast majority of casual poker players couldn't even tell you what the rake is.  They couldn't care less.  This is the market stars want now given their actions.  Whether it is right or wrong long term who knows.  I think the PC would work well on PS if it was adapted slightly.

Their turnover is bound to fall but their profits might rise as a result of the increased margins. When i worked for a low margin sportsbook in the past we did a similar thing on our baseball product which was highly competitive in the market place.  Betting it to 102%.  We decided to double the margin to 104%.  This caused a lot of complaints from the pros who made a living out of us.  As a result our turnover dropped 10 fold but profits more than doubled.  Bank charges/fees and customer service issues also decreased massively as a result.

I can't argue with much of this post. I think recs are a lot more aware of rake than you would think, even if it simply comes in the form of losing quicker. I'm sure when I used to play live at a casino then if the nearby casino lowered the rake then people would have gone there. I'm almost certain they would have cared. I'm not sure why people think this translates to online, just because some people feel a certain loyalty or affinity to sportsbooks.

My only real question is; why do all the none pros seem so happy about it? If you think Amaya are going to make more money, why are you happy about that? So many recreational posters seem happy pros are getting fucked. I don't understand why. I'm not saying its given you a big grin, but I think thats why POWWWW gets so offended, and its certainly something that has riled me up in the past when other posters have spoken about it. I wouldn't be cheering if Betfair decided to make commission 5% (why don't they if every rec is price insensitive?)

I am indifferent to it either way.  Like i say i have never had a PS account.  I am certainly not grinning for ear to ear about it but equally it was always going to happen and i am just trying to give some balance to the argument of why Pokerstars as a business are doing it. 

Betfair do charge recs 5% commission.  As you trade more and more you pay less and less commission on a sliding scale down to 2%.

I feel for the PS pros because betfair have done the same thing to me just in a different way but the net result is the same.  The PC has killed liquidity in the exchange in a lot of areas and the BF sportsbook has taken away all the new 'casual' money in huge lumps so it is so much harder to make a living.  Identical to the PS situation.  I don't expect people to feel sorry for me.  If i can't make it pay long term then i will have to knock it on the head, like i did online poker in 2011, and find another way of making a living.

[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.

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.

I agree with that but the vast majority of casual poker players couldn't even tell you what the rake is.  They couldn't care less.  This is the market stars want now given their actions.  Whether it is right or wrong long term who knows.  I think the PC would work well on PS if it was adapted slightly.

Their turnover is bound to fall but their profits might rise as a result of the increased margins. When i worked for a low margin sportsbook in the past we did a similar thing on our baseball product which was highly competitive in the market place.  Betting it to 102%.  We decided to double the margin to 104%.  This caused a lot of complaints from the pros who made a living out of us.  As a result our turnover dropped 10 fold but profits more than doubled.  Bank charges/fees and customer service issues also decreased massively as a result.

I can't argue with much of this post. I think recs are a lot more aware of rake than you would think, even if it simply comes in the form of losing quicker. I'm sure when I used to play live at a casino then if the nearby casino lowered the rake then people would have gone there. I'm almost certain they would have cared. I'm not sure why people think this translates to online, just because some people feel a certain loyalty or affinity to sportsbooks.

My only real question is; why do all the none pros seem so happy about it? If you think Amaya are going to make more money, why are you happy about that? So many recreational posters seem happy pros are getting fucked. I don't understand why. I'm not saying its given you a big grin, but I think thats why POWWWW gets so offended, and its certainly something that has riled me up in the past when other posters have spoken about it. I wouldn't be cheering if Betfair decided to make commission 5% (why don't they if every rec is price insensitive?)

I agree actually I think recs do care a bit more than is realised

There are many semi recs playing prob more than pure punters. They realise it's a skill game want to get better and on some level realise the level of rake.

To follow up on why so many seem happy about it (this is not at arry at all who seems to know what's up)

It's 2 fold
1st they think that tons of mass tabling pros will quit and now they can win. Quite incorrectly of course they will lose quicker. They also seem to think without huds they can also beat regs. Which again is obviously not true at all.
2 bitterness/jealousy they are not good enough to win at poker. That doesn't feel good and if they can't win then screw the pros

Pro's have not helped this at all by the way, generally looking down on weaker players and also the prevalence of scripts etc really hurts them.

I said this on 2+2 when the first outpouring of hate came out against regs and stand by it

[titaniumbean]

Beezov is in this for short term profit and to leverage the instant reach to a massive player base to try and push more -ev gambling. poker will suffer from collateral damage.

[TightEnd]

the PokerStars boycott that took place from December 1-3 by over 2,500 players. Did it make an impact? http://ow.ly/Vxmre

[MC]

"In that spirit of transparency, we can tell you that we did see effects from the recent boycott that give us even greater confidence that our strategy is on the right track to improve the health of the ecosystem. During the three-day boycott we recorded the healthiest consecutive three-day ecosystem results of the year with steady net gaming revenue, even though our net-depositing players lost at a much lower rate than they have all year."

http://www.pokerlistings.com/pokerstars-to-launch-free-quarterly-1m-tournaments-in-2016-54334

[tikay]

^^^^

Morning James.

What has been the reaction to that over on 2+2?

[AlunB]

We are cancelling the four $1m freerolls scheduled for SN players in 2016.

In totally unrelated news we are proud to announce FOUR $1M FREEROLLS FOR 2016

[lucky_scrote]

Finally a chap that has spoken some sense. I didn't sit out, it was never going to work and I stood strong by that in my own blog post.

https://medium.com/@skolsuper/pokerstars-strike-waste-of-time-2d34b67acc9c#.amdkt0tx3

Pokerstars might get tougher with their reduced rewards to all players, but, if you can't take the heat then get the hell out of the kitchen.

[rfgqqabc]

Finally a chap that has spoken some sense. I didn't sit out, it was never going to work and I stood strong by that in my own blog post.

https://medium.com/@skolsuper/pokerstars-strike-waste-of-time-2d34b67acc9c#.amdkt0tx3

Pokerstars might get tougher with their reduced rewards to all players, but, if you can't take the heat then get the hell out of the kitchen.

Why are you so happy your mates are getting screwed? Do you prefer Amaya making money to me or pads? You are potentially watching a company ruin your career and are doing nothing about it. Soon there won't be a kitchen to get out of if it carries on like this. These changes are bad for all players, not just regs. Can people stop being blindsided by what stars tell them. Next year there will be four disastrous Sunday's when the new one mil freerolls are on.

If you like poker and you like the idea of being able to be a poker professional, you should probably be finding a way to do something about it. That is what the strike was, an attempt at doing something, instead of sitting back apathetically. I understand you think the strike would be ineffective but I do t understand why you seem for the changes. Amaya are a very shady company. You should be worried. I don't understand why you would actively belittle the protests, is it to prove yourself right? I said many times, at least in private, I don't think it will work, but just wanted to try and control my own destiny instead of being forced out by others.

I see several big problems. What would stop an entity claiming to use the open source software, and slightly tweaking the back end for their own purposes to rig the games? I was going to mention licencing/regulation issues but I guess SWC exist, and any sensible operator who wanted to use this software would do so anyway.

I think a semi open source idea from the competitors to Stars could work but unfortunately its just not a particularly profitable industry for the gambling companies. They really shot themselves in the foot with the ridiculous deals they have given out to Skrill and co. I would have thought they would be desperate to be the early bitcoin adopters, but its just too early for multinationals.

You're mixing up two different things.  OSS != Bitcoin.  SWC poker client is not open source.

iPoker is actually almost the same thing I'm talking about, except their software cost a ****-ton of money and was closed source so the providers had to beg for upgrades their customers wanted.  Remember how long it took for iPoker to get sync-breaks?  It doesn't have to be this way.

Providers would still keep their cashiers and their licenses and their player pools, just their software wouldn't ****ing suck so much.  How quickly would skypoker, with their awesome community, TV channel and massive brand, grow if their software wasn't dog****?

I don't think Skol got my point, but I think I slightly missed his too. If 888/ipoker and the current sites started the open source software idea it could work. My worry would be is someone taking it, depending on how open the open source is, and using it for nefarious purposes. I also think the barriers to entry are so great both financially and from a legislative perspective that it prevents new comers.

Ipoker have had forever to develop there software and its still not been done. Party are a plc that just brought out new software that still has infinite problems.

I brought up bitcoin as a point that stars could lower their costs elsewhere instead of paying so much to skrill. I copied it over from 2+2 as its too messy to post there.

[arbboy]

Finally a chap that has spoken some sense. I didn't sit out, it was never going to work and I stood strong by that in my own blog post.

https://medium.com/@skolsuper/pokerstars-strike-waste-of-time-2d34b67acc9c#.amdkt0tx3

Pokerstars might get tougher with their reduced rewards to all players, but, if you can't take the heat then get the hell out of the kitchen.

Pretty much what i have said from the start.  Keys always really got the 'business' side of poker and how the ecosystem really does work.  He always correctly referred to pro poker players as a 'supplier' to a poker site and not a customer years ago.  His blog is spot on on all points.

[jakally]

These changes are bad for all players, not just regs.

This is not just aimed personally at you, as I've seen this trotted out in numerous spots over the last few weeks.

The reason players are protesting is for themselves. All of the players protesting are professionals, or very regular regs - or their mates.
The only players who will be significantly affected, in a negative sense, by the changes are the professionals, or the very regular regs.

I have no problem with the protest (apart from the fact it's most likely a useless waste of energy), and there is clear justification to be disgruntled.
I have a problem with the way the changes are being made into something they are not.

I don't think many people are railing against the players who feel short changed / cheated. I do think they are getting a little irritated by the whingy, whiny demeanor of those players, and some of the laughable stuff that they are spouting.

[lucky_scrote]

Why are you so happy your mates are getting screwed? Do you prefer Amaya making money to me or pads?

You are potentially watching a company ruin your career and are doing nothing about it. Soon there won't be a kitchen to get out of if it carries on like this. These changes are bad for all players, not just regs.

Can people stop being blindsided by what stars tell them.

Why are you so happy your mates are getting screwed? I'm not at all, I've not even thought about it in that way. If people aren't happy with something they can choose not to do it. If Audi bring out a car that keeps tipping over, people aren't going to petition about it.

Do you prefer Amaya making money to me or pads? Stupid question.

You are potentially watching a company ruin your career and are doing nothing about it. Soon there won't be a kitchen to get out of if it carries on like this. These changes are bad for all players, not just regs. Poker isn't going anywhere. If Pokerstars end up ruining their poker side of things, inevitably people will leave and the smaller sites will begin to thrive. It will be a long process, just like pokerstars was a long process of becoming so big. Equally, if Pokerstars begin to ruin it for the small stakes guys and the recs, so be it. Currently people are pissed off because they are getting pieces of their cake taken away from them. Like I said before- boo-hoo. If Pokerstars were to disappear today, my bottom line would definitely be affected, but I've not been a professional poker player for over 10 years now to then not adapt and find ways to continue in my own little world. I can make lots of money live, possibly as much as I do on stars or more. I can play only on European sites, it would probably be less enjoyable since I can't win as much but I could still do well.

Can people stop being blindsided by what stars tell them

Bit lost here? I am not delusional by any means, I can see what Amaya are doing is very bad for the upper tier of poker players. If they get more people playing on their site and putting more money into their business, then they are doing what is best for them. I am not a fly on the wall in their meetings and I have no idea exactly what their agendas are so I can't comment. I've not run a business like Pokerstars before so it would be purely guess work.

Pokerstars belongs to Amaya and if they want to fuck it up, that is completely up to them.

[pleno1]

It's not really like that though Dan. The top tier have money saved, can invest into different ventures, can afford not to work and contemplate what's next. Stars are going after all tiers. The low and mid tiers will be fucked too, the difference being they depend on poker for a living and without it will struggle to pay bills.