I'm worried

That sunday500 post is one of the biggest fails I have seen on 2p2.

If I was a Euro and already able to play on Pokerstars, this move would trouble me, as would anything that could potentially rock the boat. As a US player, we are ****ed as it is, anything that shakes things up can't be bad for us.

Maybe I am being overly optimistic as an SNE grinder, but why the hell would they shake anything up there? Pokerstars didn't make any changes to the VIP program for 2014, so clearly they have found an optimal money making system for themselves. SNE grinders bring in millions of dollars in rake. If they were so troubled with their debt (c'mon man), biting the hand that feeds them seems like the worst possible idea. A good portion of SNE grinders lose pre-rb as it is, if it became more difficult to achieve the numbers of players who get there would drop and cost them big.

They are retaining all their staff who are familiar with our concerns and desires and who I assume will continue to do so. If the casino/sportsbook really takes off, all it would do is grow the company, create a need for more jobs in those specific departments while the poker portion keeps going as is. They probably didn't purchase the best online poker company in the world to turn it into **** and run it into the ground.

And who are you? I was actually just curious and wanted to read more about how PS operates.

This . . . .

It doesn't matter how much rake is generated if there are not deposits to cover that rake. Deposits must equal or exceed all withdrawals PLUS all rake collected, otherwise the amount of money in play is in decline, which is unsustainable.

Part of the problem with internet poker is the focus on rewarding grinders, while taking depositors for granted. You could get away with that during the period of explosive growth. But those days are gone, and they need to market to depositors if the game is to survive.

And remember this, Amaya is much bigger than online poker. Poker is not the revenue generator that makes this deal work. Casino games are where its at, and that will be the focus going forward. The platform and the 85 million players are a great asset, but poker is not going to be the focus, just a component.

"Poker business will be unaffected by the transaction, with players receiving uninterrupted access to their gaming experience" - Rational Gaming Group Acquisition Presentation, June 12th 2014

Does this mean anything to anyone here?

I think people underestimate Mark Scheinberg's influence. In 2004, he told me "in ten years all the poker sites are going to have identical features - what's going to matter is the reputation and the brand of the sites". They built this way on purpose. Their marketing strategy is down to him.

I don't agree with the pro vs casual player dynamic, but it's hard to imagine PS following their strategy better than they have.

I was just being annoying I guess. I worked for PStars for 2.5 years semi-under Isai up till Dec 2013.
I don't want to give too much info as I'm not in any position to do so.

I do have the utmost respect for Isai's philosophy and having worked in the industry with different operators I can say it's an extremely rare point of view.

It seems like a fair broad analysis, with Mark on the marketing side and Isai on the product side. Don't wanna make any comparison between the two. Regardless, I don't think they are that easily replaceable, especially if and when Amaya will encounter struggles of some sort.

do you really think that a company (Amaya) would takeover a competitor (PokerStars) and change nothing?

what do you expect their press release to say? no company would just come out and say "massive changes incoming, management will be completely replaced within 3 months."

of course they said they will retain all PokerStars staff. that doesn't make it true.

Fair enough, thanks for the info fellas.

Letter from Stars to the Isle of Man - re: the acquisition.

The industry isn't static - the good players are getting better. To ignore that is to fail.

Agreed. The revenue generator is the casino games, now and in the future.

As a small but valid sampling, all you have to do is use is the May numbers published by New Jersey:

Casino Games: $8,196,276 or 78.28%

Poker Rake: $2,273,657 or 21.72%

Casino Games generated 3.60X what Poker produced.

Some online poker players that contend that online poker is the horse that pulls Internet Gambling are seeing that this is not true by NJ numbers.

In addition, the last two months Poker has declined due to the number of players in cash games that are fueled by deposits through bonuses and rake back programs that are not on par with ROW.

That was essentially my first post in this thread - they are hard to replace. I left in 2011, but they were very autocratic (much less so than 2004, but that's not saying much). They got away with being autocratic by also being correct most of the time.

"We're buying PS and we never served US players kthxbye"

lol, that seems like a pretty accurate definition. I moved pretty quickly from being annoyed about the involvement in everything I do to being annoyed with the fact that he was right on nearly every issue.

I had that in an interview. "What do you do when you disagree with Isai?"

"Go call my boss and figure out where we were wrong"

Any idea on when we'll find out how this affects Canadian players? Seems like there's no consensus about whether or not this means the end of Pokerstars in Canada.

I have a hard time coming up with a plausible scenario where this ends up negative for Canadian players on stars

There's some talk about the possible implications on earlier in this thread.

The Scheinberg's kept this company through BF destroying the US market, being indited by the DOJ, and then even bought out FTP basically just to pay back its customers.

Why sell now then?

The only thing I can think of is that the way the past few years have gone -- the ring-fencing of countries, the intransigence of US regulators, and the realization by the casual gambler that online poker is a skill game -- all led them to believe the business has nowhere to go but down.

And anyone who thinks a large, publicly traded corporation can run a poker room 25% as well as PS has been run is completely insane. PS as a model for how to run a great company is dead.

I see that there is a lot of speculation here about the impact of this news. I’d like to share some more details with you about how you as players will be impacted.

The short version is that there will be no significant impact on the player experience. We still plan to serve all current markets, including Canada, and to work to grow the game of poker globally.

We are also excited about the potential to be licensed in New Jersey and then begin serving players there quickly thereafter. I do not have a timeline to share, but can say that we believe that this purchase has a significant positive impact.

PokerStars and Full Tilt customer funds will continue to be held in segregated accounts, separate from operational funds, so you will know that your money is safe with us. The playing experience on both sites remains the same as it was yesterday. It is business as usual here at the Isle of Man office and at our other offices in Dublin, London, Paris, Malta, Costa Rica, and Sydney.

We will certainly miss Mark and Isai. As some of you have surmised, our founders established the culture and values that permeate every decision and every customer interaction. Though Mark and Isai are leaving, the culture and values remain, along with the nearly 2,000 staff who continue to turn our culture and values into action on a daily basis. Our entire leadership team is still in place, and I can assure you that we embrace these values whole heartedly.

While I only have responsibility for our PokerStars.com and shared liquidity poker rooms (.eu/.ee/.dk/.be), the continuity of leadership and staff extends to PokerStars.it, PokerStars.es, PokerStars.fr, and Full Tilt. To a person, we are all still here.

Will you see changes in your customer experience over time? Yes, of course! We have several projects already in progress and others that we are already in the process of completing, such as PokerStars 7. The people and values behind these two projects will also be behind our next improvements. A big part of our success over the years has been constant improvement of our product, and we plan to continue this tradition.

I still feel I was lucky to have the opportunity to transition from being a professional poker player to working at PokerStars. PokerStars was more than just my favorite online poker room, it was my favorite company. This is a feeling shared amongst many of our staff here, especially our poker room management team. We come to work with the mission of trying to maintain and improve the experience we had ourselves as customers. I have full confidence that this will continue to be the case for years to come, with full support from Amaya.

I do see some references here to casino and sportsbook. I can see why certain slides in the Amaya presentation linked earlier in the thread raise questions about our future plans relating to these products. Full Tilt has recently rolled out a wide variety of casino games, so it is not surprising to see such products referenced as areas of potential growth compared to the 2013 financial results.

Thank you for your continued support of PokerStars. And for those of you in New Jersey, I hope to see you soon at the tables!

Steve Day
Director of Poker Room Operations
PokerStars

You realize that Amaya is "Amaya Gaming", right?