By the way I am in for "no play on PS" strike on December 1 till 3
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...ation-1569711/ - registration is here

It's about 465 registered strikers right now, 121 from 2+2 forum.

This is a preliminary warning strike before http://www.theykillpoker.com/

Good luck with that, tho I doubt it will have the desired effect. Do you personally think that the new VIP system is worse than the players rewards available at other sites, or is it just a matter of principle that they had such a great rewards program for years and are now scaling it back?

I probably just quote good answer Sam Grafton
The Future of Poker in the Post-Boom Era
http://www.runitonce.com/chatter/the...post-boom-era/

And don't forget that last spring strike on PS was succesfull

It seems well written, but tl;dr

I'm just a casual observer at this point, but it seems to me the past couple years the most common complaint on these forums is that the games are reg infested and "no money in poker, everyone's solid". A large part of the reason for this is the ability of regs to grind many many table with HUDs for a pretty low winrate, but still make money due to rakeback perks. It seems to me there are only 2 solutions to this problem:

1. more fish
2. less regs

I'm sure Stars and everyone else would love to hear ideas on how to attract more fish. Until that happens tho, there may need to be less regs. This will suck for those forced out, or forced to downgrade from pro to "winning rec player" but may work out best for Stars and for the regs who survive the shake up.

That blog ends w/

'Above all, now is the time to show that the idea of a poker community is not an empty fiction of marketing conceit, but an active and dynamic collection of people who care about the game and care about the livelihoods of their peers.'

IDK what the first sentence means, but the 'care about the livelihoods of their peers' part is BS.

If room wants more fish and less regs room should decrease rake for fish, but they just increase rake for regs and increase rake for middle and high limits.
There was enough fish at least on middle limits.
So they just want more money asap and don't care about poker ecology they trying to talk about.

Stars has to have smart number crunchers and they and they alone know what's going on in their business. I doubt they make the moves I'm seeing being talked about on here w/o serious thought. This really isn't the right forum for this discussion, though, and I'm not affected by it at all but I do wish the Stars players gl.

I'm afraid it's the most right forum. Stud games would be killed first. Cap is reached rarely so effective rake is higher compared to NL and PL. And in HiLo rake in split pots is just awful.

That's a good point. I mostly meant that this forum doesn't have a large number of posters so you're not reaching many. I'd thought that perhaps you were making your first post in every strat forum which would reach as many players as possible.

Maybe you're right, maybe not. Fish don't sit around and calculate how much they lose per 100 hands and then say "if only the rake were lower I'd lose 2.2 BB/100 instead of 2.5 BB/100. FML!" Fish know two things:

1. did I win or lose this session?
2. is there any money left in my account?

With higher rake, they may have more losing sessions and may run out of money quicker, which I agree will be discouraging for them. But with less grinding regs at their tables siphoning off money, their "loss rate" may not actually go up and more of those losses go to Stars and less to the winning players.

Does this suck for winning players? yes
Does this suck for Stars in the long run? who knows, but I'd lay 2:1 odds that Stars knows more about this than all the poker community combined

Could be. Could be different.

I think PS knew much more in the past also, but they didn't increase rake previously. They thought about long run.

Now it looks like new owners want more money asap. May be to pay loans. May be to show good profit in the short run and sell PS with great margin. Anyway they focused more on the short run now.

I think the winning players on 2p2 think they're way more important to Stars than they actually are.

I've always laughed to myself at those people.

I (a recreational hobby player with a lose rate) think they are.
It's important to me to easy find tables to play my favorite games.
Unfortunately it's hard, even now. And I am sure it would be much worse in the future, when rake would be increased.

Gonna be in Vegas this weekend Fri-Mon, anyone know what mixed games run these days? Does Venetian still have 6/12 or 9/18 horse?

Not for a long time that I know of. Binion's was having 6/12 HORSE Monday nights for awhile, but it didn't go last week when I showed up and dk if it did this week or not. Aria often has 9/18 mix, but with none of the traditional HORSE games; lots of crazy draw games and super varieties.

Hmm I'm staying at Aria so maybe I'll check that out. Honestly I've forgotten how to play a lot of the weird Badeuci/badacey type games so I don't know how fun that would be.

The Orleans still runs a $100 HORSEament on Sundays at 7 pm. Not sure how often mixed cash games go there, but would expect some people to stick around after busting the MTT and form some cash games as well.

The Orleans kind of makes me sad, but if I can convince my buddy to play that tourney with me it would be fun. Wonder how many entrants they get for that.

Oh yea, I've also got two lower level extra tickets to the Cotto/Canelo fight on Saturday if any of you guys are looking for tickets. Happy to hook a stud forum member up.

Why is the stud forum so quiet?

Here's one for all you mathematicians out there.
1. Adam wants to buy 500 poker chips to use in a micro-stakes (£10max initial buyin) cash game typically of between 6 and 10 players.

2. Adam believes that the total cash value of the chips for the sake of ease of cashing out *must* be divisible by 10.

3. Adam knows that the possible denominations of chips that can be purchased are 5p, 25p, £1, £5 and £25.

4. Adam requires that the total quantity of each chip denomination must be such that there shall be a low frequency (preferably less than once every 5 hands on average) of making change in any given hand. In other words, at least half of the distribution must consist of the two smallest denomination chips.

5. Adam prefers that the quantity of chips each player receives when buying in for £10 in the initial buyin stage of a 9 handed game shall be exactly 40. Take this to also mean, then, that the quantity of chips that remain in the chip carry case at the start of such a game most optimally is 140 (360 chips are on the table), the cash value of which will greatly exceed the total chips in play so as to never need to play banknotes on the table.

Given the 5 parameters set, determine the optimum denominational distribution that Adam should purchase.

Tell Adam to get over himself

I'm interested in the answer too but, yeah, GFY Adam!

This may be true to some extent, but it's a pretty narrow view.
I'd think you'd know by now that not everybody on 2p2 is a winning player. E.g. with Fold&Forget's example:
The changes are very bad for everyone. They are bad for regs, they are bad for recs, and they are bad for Stars. Many games just will not run with those changes put in place (even without the protest), and their rake made will be severely reduced. I don't think any of that is debatable.
Long term or short term I don't really see it being good for anybody, unless something changes.

What is this part about?