All deposits have wagering requirements now, not just with a bonus. The available to withdraw amount will increase as you play.

No bonus here

What? Thats pure scam. How the hell im not allowed to withdraw the principle let say after 2 work days like it was before. This is insane.

The $40 bonus is withdrawable immediately. The $200 that you deposited has to be 'played through' (wagered) 1 time. I don't know how playthrough works in cash games.

In tournaments / SNGs, it's straightforward - you need to spend as much on buy-ins (not necessarily at the same time) as you've deposited, no matter how much you win in those tourneys. The total gross winnings in those tourneys that you've played so far become withdrawable. (E.g. if you buy into two $5 tourneys, lose one, win $20 in the other, then the withdrawable amount increases by $20.) So if you're a tourney player, it's the same as if your deposit were turned into non-transferable T$.

People are still surprised you have to wager deposits? Been like that with many bookmakers sites for years.

Since when? I have played in Stars on and off for 7 years, not even once there has been this issue. Nor do i have same issue with 888, party, unibet, microgaming. So your comment really is surprising. I mean you deposit 200$ , but decide you dont want to play, you can withdraw your deposit after 2 days.

At Stars, this is last month's change. Other sites are not as transparent about the wagering requirements, however, if they think you haven't played enough for real money, they can subtract a fee (e.g. 5% in the Betsafe case) from the withdrawal amount to cover their processing costs (ewallets do charge gambling operators for customers' deposits, just they hide the fees from the customers - they're paid for by customers' rake).

I guess, it works like this: every time when I put money into the pot, it's subtracted from my non-withdrawable balance (if it's non-zero); if I win money from that pot, it's added to my withdrawable balance.

Tried out William Hill (ipoker) last week, deposited 200$. Software was horrible, disconnected all the time, so I withdrew the deposit two days later, no problems.

Pokerstars became EA (Electronic Arts) of online poker world. From best brand with unquestionable reputation to a dumpster in just two years.

I can already see that my game is starting to die out (nlhe z200). Less rakeback grinders and way less recreational players.

paid 2k in rake this month, took down $11 in chests, these changes are great!

Where you going to go .
Take a look at Party forum.
Sites a joke . At least PS runs well .
You hardly notice your getting less and less.

i dont see the 40$ deposit bonus ?

That bonus is for selected players only. (Maybe it's for those who haven't withdrawn anything for the last 2 months - losing is not mandatory to get it, as far as my personal experience shows.)

To check if it's available for you, you can click 'My Bonus Status' in the cashier every week; besides, when you have the bonus offer, you'll be notified by email.

The motto has become:
"Welcome to Pokerstars - You cannot win"

I think less people are playing online poker because less people are actually winning.

5-8 % of the players are making a profit the rest of them is just losing.
Sure it sounds nice to say we charge those who are winning more and invest it into new costumers and those who are losing.
But its hypocritical to blame the winning players for draining the pool if they make like 5 % and 95 % goes into the rake.

Also the idea to protect certain players from others is silly.
How will a recreational player win or move up in such a environment if you protect the bad players from them ?

Sure its nice to invest some money into getting new players into the game.
But if its at the cost of creating more losing players it is going to backfire.
5-10 years ago it was no issue to have a certain amount of losing players if you can provide some winning players where others can look up to.
But right now you have barley anyone making profit even pros dont play online anymore.
Even the low stakes are tough to beat, to make them tougher for the sake of advertisement and promotions is crazy.
New players are going to start playing see that the games are super hard, close to pure luck, will leave and never come back.

The key should be to make beatable and fair games for everybody.
And not to increase rake and variance.
If they want to advertise the should hand out some opt in or deposit bonuses,
but leave the edges so its still playable.
It should not just be beatable for those players who have a insane edge or are super lucky.
Casuals and people who are not playing on a pro level should also be able to make a buck if they play worse players.
You get what I mean ?

are you crazy, man, how else would amaya pay their ceos their yearly bonuses and pay off their huge debt? Gotta take $$$ from hard working players who are "ruining ecosystem" and "scaring away all recreational players".

Just watched FT Micro Millions 39
Two players waiting 30mins for mod so they can deal .
They gave up waiting .
The site is imploding.

i requested a deal last night, a host came and said basically that their deal making system was broken

Nowadays, online poker is more about fun and less about winning.

So I have a problem.... Until recently I had no problem withdrawing money to my Skrill account(which I had used in the past to deposit), or my neteller account. But now, when I try to withdraw the funds, it only allows me to withdraw to neteller and there isn't any option for withdrawing to skrill (i realize all deposits are tracked back to oldest one etc but there werent any issues until now).

I contacted support in hope of fixing the problem and letting me choose my preferred method of withdrawing(quite simply I have Skrill card and I dont have neteller card so it is more convenient to withdraw to Skrill)... the answer from the support was to supply my stars ID as confirmation of the request and so I did... a few hours later an email arrives from stars security stating that if I have problems accessing my account I must supply them with (insert long list of account details to prove my identity) in order for them to change my password.... SO MY REACTION IS WTF ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT I JUST TOLD YOU I HAVE WITHDRAWAL ISSUES AND NOT LOGIN ISSUES and you just ****ing sent me a formal email with a completely different topic?!?!?!?!?!?

I replied back again stating that they are mistaken, that I have NO PROBLEM accessing my account, I just want another withdrawal method and now its been 24 hours and no reply...

seriously... how pathetic stars support has become....


EDIT : fellow 2+2ers if this is the wrong topic to post this and you have better suggestions(a place where some Stars rep will see it) please comment!

Yeah but then how you are going to get people to deposit and spend money ?
Why pay Rake and risk losing money if you can just play freerolls and for playmoney ?
And why increase the stakes or play higher stakes ?
If its just for fun you can play playmoney on zynga.

Their goal is to make poker a deposit-only game (apart from occasional jackpots for PR purposes). "People play for fun, not money" is just part of that process. Repeat something enough and some people will start believing it.

Poker is gambling, people gamble to (try to/hope to) win money. That's it. Poker has lasted so long because it's a great game, normal poker will still exist after all the gimmick variations have died out.

They gamble to win in the short term and in a memorable way, and so that they can tell a sweet lie to themselves that their win was due to their skill superiority over the particular 'suckers' whom they were facing, but not necessarily to keep winning in the long term. The EV doesn't matter all that much to them if the potential maximum win in a single session is big enough, and e.g. in Spin & Gos, it's huge.

'Gimmicks' help people remember their wins better and forget about their losses quicker.

If you want to play a great game of skill, play chess, GL with becoming a GM to get paid for your outstanding intellect.

What separates poker from other games is that is a competitive game.

Outcome has to depend on play style and strategies.
You got to reward making the right decisions.

You play other players not the house.
The job of the casino is to provide the accommodations for the games and not to be a participant.

If the provider gets to involved it just ruins the game.
If you have to high variance it is not the same game either.
Mean if you just want to gamble you can go and hit the casino games - Slot machines, Roulette or Blackjack - instead of poker.

Sure there is gambling aspect to it but poker is also a game where you interact, compete with other players and the best players / sharks make money in the long run.
If you take that out of the equation you pretty much get a slot game with cards instead of spins.

I have a bug where every time I change anything about the table display (felt colour, theme, cards) the stars chest progress bar shows back up even though I have it turned off.

Extra frustrating because we all hate the chest progress bar.

Just noticed that there looks like there may have been a little bit of overlay for some of the non-NLHE Micro Millions the last couple of days?

Was looking at the schedule to see if there's any more mixed games on the schedule for tomorrow, and it looks like there's still an 8-game at 10am EST - not sure if maybe there's a chance that one might wind up having a little overlay as well, or if it might wind up doing okay on Sunday Funday, with the Main Event happening later in the day and stuff?


For anyone planning on playing the MM Main Event tomorrow, it looks like it should be great, with all the occasional players maybe taking a shot and the huge prize pool Have played it before in past years while trying to learn more about tourneys - funny thing though, as my learning has improved, the more important it's seemed for me to drop lower and lower in stakes? Have already dropped all the way down to the $0.22 tourneys, and am still learning new things every day that make me want to drop down stakes even more - except there's nowhere left to drop, because $0.22 is lowest that's offered!! Wonder if there'd be much interest in a Mini-Millions? With no buy-in greater than $0.50?

GL to everybody playing MM games tomorrow, especially the Main Event!! Some really nice prizes up top