Really hoping that the stars reps are reading this, esp the OP

As a full time player my livelihood is dependent on the state of the games, but if I was being honest, I would tell anyone who likes to play poker casually not to bother with online poker. Their chances of actually having an enjoyable time, both in quality and quantity, are far greater in a casino, bar game, or home game, than they are online (shut ins and degens who need an instant fix notwithstanding) .

I'm guessing that most people ITT don't remember the "good old days" but when party was a goldmine of 5+ BB/100 winrates the table limit was 4 or 8... i remember when they went to 12 and it seemed like nobody would be crazy enough to play that many lol

i know i'm not the first to say it but put a cap of 10 tables and see how much better the games get. not sure what it would do to hourly earn rates but the reg /fish ratio would be instantly twice as good.

not that it matters to me... i'm an american

OP is wrong mostly.

It's simple to realize that rec players will get better over time and the same rake cannot continue to be charged as players get better.

Yes the games are worse but they will get better once legislation is passed. Most likely that will offset the high rake for awhile but in 3-5 years we will revisit the same issue.

Put me down as another mass tabler in favor of lowering table caps. 16-18 would be a good start.

The mass of multi tabling regs has been sorted by the change to WC rake. I'm sure about now the quality of the games has increased 5 fold after the change right??

I mean the incentive for these multi rakeback whoring 24 tablers has gone now right??

Yeah up yours multi tabling nits I'm glad youve all quit now and the games are back to 2007 level, Hurrah!!

The boom is over.

Games will get worse. You can do things to help, but its reasonable for people to want lower rake since this isn't 2004.

Also, OP is completely ignoring the fact the complaints are mostly about the micros. Where the rake is and has always been ridiculous.

By FAR the most effective way to increase the fish to reg ratio is to decrease the table limit. Down to 16 would make a significant difference, down to 8 would be better.

Understand though that it is not in Stars interest to do this. It is soooo much better from their perspective that a reg play robotic break even poker on 24 tables than play well on 8.

reality:

- stars rake changes wont be reversed as they are a business first & foremost

- games will continue to get harder as less fish deposit & poker isnt as attractive anymore due to all the negative press in the media + economies of the world in recessions

- stars improving their software to make recreational players experience more enjoyable should be their main focus imo & will be benefitial for us as well.... ive mentioned a million times & i will again... IMPLEMENT A PSTARS CHAT CLIENT, regs sit there n dont say a word n fish get bored n leave n pretty sure alot of them rather play live cause of this... as they enter pstars let them be able to enter chatrooms n chat & be able to send pm's etc

- more promotions

- prizes to meet the pros or have a date with some of the popular female pros on the roster( i mean actually use the signed pros for something )

- have more isildur hu along with other players & hosting them as events of sorts & allow us fans/lurkers/railers to be able to place bets on who would be the winner( this potentially can bring back attention to the h.s scene )

50% less rake and you can run your site the next years (forever??) happily without anybody complaining.

This a million times.

People often overlook the bigger picture that the economy is in shocking situation as a whole right now.

Sometimes it's easy to forget that all kinds of people like to play poker occasionally. It's fun, it's exciting for those new to the game, it's partly gambling and partly strategy combined in a nice way that's entertaining for a large audience of all ages.

The problem with the economy transcends the problem with the poker economy. More and more people these days dont have the money to waste on gambling, even if it's a fun activity. Remember why games were so good in 2004-2007? Most people think party poker days.. When they should be thinking about this..

TIME front cover June 2005 in the midst of the spectacular housing bubble:


All this synthetic money was being banded around everywhere, and some of it went into the poker economy, which was a hell of lot of money.

Now the bubble has burst, and that we're in the biggest recession for generations it's understandable the poker economy is doing worse because people don't have as much disposable income at hand. The middle classes are getting squeezed very hard right now and income disparity has risen dramatically for the average man on the street. This explains a lot more about the poker economy than the high rake, the promos, the cuts in VIP awards or anything else. Should we have a strong economy again, then it's inevitable more recreational players will play again because they'll have the extra cash to spend on entertainment.

I don't believe that is the problem.

WSOP attendance was up, yet again. The poker tables at casinos are more full than ever. And based on my anecdotal experience at home games, there's more fresh faces than ever giving poker a whirl.

It really does seem like the poker boom is still on. However, the online poker boom is dead. People decided they don't like playing online. Why is that? Well if you're a recreational player and decide to go play on the internet then you're going to be tossed into games where two things are true:

1. You're going to be raked 10bb/100, 20bb/100 if you dare try PLO.
2. You're going to be facing regulars capable of beating 10bb/100 rake, 20bb/100 in PLO.

You put those two things together and it's a very grim situation for newer players. I'm certain the games seem rigged, perhaps players can see their hole cards, etc. If they ever do win any money it's going to require extreme luck either in the form of massive suck outs or coolers. And even weaker players can realize when they're just luck boxing it - that's not going to be so much fun for most. People play poker because it's a skill based game that can be beat. If you just want to gamble it up and hope to get lucky, there are much more fun games than poker. Realizing you're getting absolutely destroyed with little more than luck working in your benefit, that's not fun. We, and the sites, seem to like to pretend like recreational players are idiots. They're not. That hubris is what's causing the downfall of online poker.

Why did you keep playing poker? I'm sure somewhere in your answer is the fact that you felt you could win. If you were thrust into today's games, even at very low stakes, and weren't already a very skilled player there is basically 0 chance of you feeling you could win. The rake is too high and it's forcing the players who stick around to be too good, which in turn deters new players from sticking around.

The sites need to do more to encourage regulars to start combating each other so we're not all just focused on skinning fish. This would result in more games running and a much more favorable atmosphere for new players. However, before you can get regulars facing off against each other - you need to incentive it and you need to make it possible. Poker, between skilled players, is a game of very small edges. Regulars combating each other when paying 5-20bb/100 in rake is simply not going to happen.

Fact: In the years of the famous poker boom there was also a house flipping boom. Every idiot could "make money" by buying a house and selling it on for more. It was basically a pyramid scheme. It busted the economy on so many levels. We can not expect the same level of deposits today as back then.
At the same time competition in poker increased.
More people are trying to be winning players and they try it harder then ever before.
The poker sites are raking the system at the same pace.
Its a zero sum game.
Something has to give.
It's the profit of the winning players at the moment.
You either need a better economy that allows losing players to lose money(its not happening any time soon) or you have to force poker sites to take less.
I'm thinking of group buying or "by players-for players" sites as potential tools in this struggle.
The recent meeting with Stars is just a beginning. There will be bigger things in the years to come.
Also i think of a system of monthly, quarterly, yearly rake caps as a way to stop operators from raking the games to death.
As for live games being busy as ever.
I think you need a lot more loosing players for 24/7 juicy online poker on thousends of tables then what you need to fill a few casinos at peak hours.

I fully agree with op.

Also the same reasoning can be applied to the problem Phil Garfold adressed of bumhunting and the sort. You can make it harder to bumhunt, but if you dont solve the underlying problem, it will keep on going.

All these topics lately are making it apperant that something is wrong with the poker ecosystem. In nature you have millions of bugs, which get eaten by hunderds of thousands of small predators, which get eaten by tens of thousands of medium predators, wich get eaten by thousands of large predators. Its a piramid-system in which food/energy flows upwards.

The poker eco-system is the same, you have millions of players in the micro's to a few hundred players at the nosebleeds. And in the poker ecosystem it's money that flows upwards.

In nature when you dont have enough bugs, the small predators will go hungry and will start dying, which lowers the food for medium predators and they will start dying, which ultimatly will lead to the large predators to go hungry and also start dying.

If you agree that the above scenario is happening in the poker world then we can either do nothing, which means alot of pro/regs will need to start looking for a "real" job :P, or try and fix it.

I agree that its a problem thats not easly fixed. But the first step that needs to be taken by Pokerstars is a change in their whole point of view on there reward-system.

Right now almost there whole system is focused on multitabling regs. with bonuses which are non-abtainable by recreational players and even "semi regulars" like myself. Focusing on heavy volume players was a great idear during the poker boom when a almost endless stream of new players was entering the pokerworld at the bottom. But those times are gone, and when the upward money stream in the pokerecosystem is drying out, heavy volume players are gonna start "dying" regardsless of a reward-system that is focust on them.

I think pokerstars need to change there whole reward-system structure and
on this point I think they can learn something from Full tilt. Full tilt had promo's like "take 2", "rush poker bonus", Happy hour and a time based reward system "ironman". All these promo's where abtainable by recreational players and where designed to make them play and play more.

These kind of promo's are even better for pro's/reg. First they directly benefit from the bonus and secondly it helps keep the moneystream, which is there livelyhood, stay healthy.

This is spot on imo. As good as Stars promo/VIP system is, it's mainly directed towards the higher volume players. Recreational see all these VIP levels and rewards but have no chance of attaining them. I'd like to see a program of realistic rewards and bonuses that attracts fish, and probably more importantly keeps them playing on the site. I think the Stellar rewards are a good example of this, but another idea could be something like an instant cash reward to making Silverstar etc. Obviously I don't know the figures and it's easier to say this stuff than it is to implement it, but this is the general idea I'm trying to get across.


Do you even play on Stars? This is one of the most ill-informed posts I have ever read. Pretty much nothing has changed. I'm sure a handful of players will have considered their options, but 24 tablers are generally earning a lot of money, especially relative to the countries a lot of them live in (China, Russia etc). For nearly all of these guys, living with the paycut/working harder to earn the same money still a better option than quitting poker. They're going nowhere.