That doesnt take into account if your field isnt hiring maybe its there fault for not having multiple degrees.

And for those in mountains of student loan debt have to be picky about the first job offered to them since many jobs are offering pay well below the national medium, where not only do you need to make enough for yourself now and in the future but you have 30k tuiton loans to pay down as well.

And before you make a commet about being stupid,lathargic lazy etc.. just consider the guy busting his ass at some minimum wage job and has a degree in programming isnt there because he wants to serve YOU he's definitely not lazy or a moron. Your prespective doesnt apply to everyone what you see as a advantage for some comes with a trade off for others.

Lol u wana start banning countries now,everyone should have the right to play!tournament guarantees are dropping all time and u want start excluding countries,just no
what's ur criteria just Eastern Europe Vladimir comes home from a hard day chopping trees sits back with a vodski loads stars sorry man ur countries have too many grinders u are not allowed to play

online poker needs larger player pools not smaller.banning player pools with both fish and sharks will be a bad thing to do.they will just do like americans do ,shark move into exile and keep playing and fish stop play

in your private game analogy you're basically saying that stars rake is too high. yes, a pro with a huge edge will be able to overcome such high rake but isn't the goal to get more people to play poker? How is a higher and higher rake ever going to help rec players keep their money longer?

believe me when i say no reg wants to say "i'm a breakeven player before rakeback". They would be much happier if stars got rid of rb all together and decreased the rake by the same % so they could claim to be winners. and guess what? they would still play the same style they did before where they folded alot because their goal was to never breakeven....it was to play as many tables as possible and increase their hourly rate!

Stars is just spinning it in a way that makes it sound like these players would go away if they took away rb when in reality these players with their decreased winrates will each find they have to move down 1-2 stakes. And guess what.....games just got even harder for recs.


I refuse to believe stars is so stupid they dont see this. they know what they are doing and are just trying to spin it in a way that gives them the least PR nightmare. Best example they dont care about the recs is the absurd rake micro PLO players pay. Everyone knows that game isnt profitable but players at that level dont know am i right? Pros aren't stupid. this is just a rake increase.

Define ethics and morality the majority of people feel poker isnt ethical or moral to begin with does that mean they are right or just have a differnt interpretation of ethics. Is it ethical that a higher volume player pays less overall rake than a 3day/week rec player?

My point of him stepping down wasnt refering to whats ethical or moral so dont put words in my mouth. My point is no matter what Daniel says him giving up his position or others asking for him to do so isnt reasonable. PS isnt stealing deposits from players or rigging the site they are just discontinuing what is the most lucrative promotion around. I dont think its unethical for them to make the best business decision for them in fact its GTO as far as they're concerned.

And no matter how you feel about Dneg is it wise to insult someone so close to poker stars? Here he is at least taking a few hours out of his day to address these issues and you have the same dummies repeating how he cant be $500 zoom and that his skill set is inadequate and what not.

These same players expect him to walkout on a 7fig job over the RB of some .5/1 RB grinder lol.. Before replying honestly ask yourself if roles were reversed would you be willing to leave Stars over this issue..Honestly?

Online poker needs larger recreational playing pools. If a country is taking more out the economy than it is putting in it is not needed.

I missed this. What an absolutely outlandish and selfish thing to say. Vini, you're smarter than that.

Yeah but the counter balance in America is vastly expensive education and health care..IN vicksburg mississiippi where my family is originally from is one of the poorest states around and has some of the most expensive colleges in America(go figure) alcorn state, ole miss and miss are close to 40k a semester and the median family income is 40k.

To have a top tier 6 fig job you need at least 6-8 years of schooling whether culinary, enginerring,medical, or law field

So basically in america you need to come up with $240k total(before your first job mind you) in order to have a shot at a 6 fig paying job. and unlike low expense countries we dont get added medical or educational benefits. And the only people that qualify for grants and what not are those living in certain regions or those well below the poverty line.

And despite the fact our news outlets talk about welfare non stop that doesnt apply to those of us that fall in the middle those that are too poor to afford higher education (and maintain current basic expenses simultaneously) and not poor enough to qualify for education, housing and food grants.

So poker was a really good option for the states as well

+1 Excellent post.

I don't understand why playing a lot is punished, shouldn't it be pokerstars's goal to get everyone playing all the time?

So if I get a degree in Lesbian Victimhood Historiography from city college I should expect to be heading the Space Systems Division by next Friday?

You're doing lots better here, almost on par with the many other excellent posts itt, over which I sincerely hope Stars is deeply meditating.

i personally think this is teh only way to REALLY bring change. However stars isnt unaware of that tablecap option and they decided against which leads me to question their true motives. A cap of 6 tables would guarantee you 2-3 recs at each NL100 table and 1-2recs per NL200 and my guestimate is they would lose at a slower rate...




No it isnt, and he idd it very smart so always good to think about things smart people say abit more carefully. Games are what they are today bc of easily available, GOOD education and nothing else. People love to blame blackfriday, too high rake and watnot but those are only minor parts in the grandscheme.

In 2015 if you are young, hungry for money and pokerloving it is incredibly easy to become good (if you put the time in) vs in 2009 where you literally had to figure out everything yourself. Whoever doesnt see wat all that coaching/training/video/etc has done to onlinepoker is either

a) dellusional
Or
b) simply not around long enough

(Btw When i started and deucescracked came along i loved that site and just over the time i realized how detrimental all this is to the longevity of the pokermarket)

And to come back to the quote:
YES, IT IS HILARIOUS WHEN PROFESSIONAL EDUCATORS COMPLAIN ABOUT SEATING SCRIPTS, TOO HIGH RAKE AND THE PROPOSED CHANGES

You guys, each and every single one of you took a certain part of bringing poker where it is today. There was a time when there was enough cake for everybody, it was a huge ****ing cake after all. Then you invited your friends and it was still cool. Bit once you started inviting the entire world to our little party it was quite obvious that this huge ****ing cake not gonna last forever.

Peaze out!

Ummm, its pretty obvious that he is pointing out that dnegs is a blatant hypocrite when it comes to the "questioning of integrity" argument.

Perhaps, Dnegs shouldn't get so offended about his integrity so easily if he throws integrity questioning stones from his "my integrity in unquestionable" glass house quite so readily?

Is this not obvious to you?

Amaya doesn't do common sense. It does PR.

Dear Daniel,
Please ask your bosses to institute a table limit in the micros.
At the time of writing, at 6-max 2NL (1c/2c blinds), there are 152 tables running. All but 3 of them have at least one player grinding 5 tables or more. On 15 tables in the lobby, there are 5 players each grinding at least 5 tables. Is it likely to be a fun or profitable experience for a casual player if he's up against 5 mass-tablers?

I don't think this table is going to be much fun for jpp:


EDIT: He quit.

Ethics and morality is like pornography - you know it when you see it (or in this case, when you don't see it).

PS is reneging on their two-year SNE grandfathering practice, 11 months into the cycle. IMO the debate on whether the VIP changes are good for the poker economy shouldn't even be broached by Daniel until PS reverses this decision. It's like arguing whether a price increase for a product is reasonable after the retailer has stolen your wallet.

the proof is in the pudding. small stakes lost about 1/2 its regs every year from 2008 to 2011, and in 2015 only 1 or 2 out of thousands remain.

when people say "don't worry guys, the sky isn't falling", i wonder if they realize the sky has already fallen for all but the super mega ultra elite, who are forced to push their edges by scripting and bumhunting the few fish who haven't been chased off by said scripting and bumhunting

which to be clear, is a product of guys using very similar strategies from training sites. a 200nl player can absolutely hang in a 20knl game with a big enough fish for 25x their hourly because theyre playing 95 percent as good as the best regs there

You will get alot of crap for that even though its ohhsootrue

In my opinion the main problem is that the level of play is way higher than it used to be some years ago. I remembered playing 50 dollars 9 handed normal games and making 5 usd per game and this was "only" 6 years ago. Then black friday came and the quantity of games went down by a lot. Nowadays its pretty hard to beat 15 usd normal games 9 handed. Therefore i tried some other forms of the game such as mixed games (triple draw, stud hi low, razz). In all cases i managed to beat the game but paying rake i was a slight looser. After rakeback I was just break even.
My point is that the level of the game is way higher now than it was so few years ago. Nevertheless pokerstars decided to keep the rake and in a lot of cases to increase the rake during last years, therefore making the game almost unbeatable after rakeback unless you are supernova or supernova elite. If they cut the rake so dramatically the game will no longer be beat by a lot of those players.
They say the main reason is to level the field between high volume players (which does not necessarily mean winning player) and low volume players, which is fine. However in my opinion it is ok if they level the field but it is absolutely paramount to lower the rake across all stakes. The point is it does not really matter if you are a high volume player or not: if the game is unbeatable you are going to play for a few days or months but on the long run people do not like loosing, wether you are a pro or a rec (which by the way i think it s a too simplistic way to qualify players).
In my opinion there is not a lot of new players coming to the game but this does not have a lot to do with high volume players. How do new players even know who are they facing? My point is that there is not a lot of new players because the potential customers already tried or they are not going to try. The only new players are the ones who are are now 18 years and could not play a few years ago. Even if some high volume players leave new players are still going to loose their deposit pretty quick to better players and, most importantly, because of the rake.
Apart from very few new players i think the other problem is the extemely high rake (4.5% at low levels in cash games is just unbeatable, specially when the player pool is made of poor players from poor countries (Russia, etc) playing quite ok). The extremely high rake is due because Pokerstars is pretty much a monopoly. Also the network effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect is one of the main reasons why new entrants find difficulties to enter the market, and up to recently, the vip programs were also an effective way to keep its customer base captive.
Thanks God i found a real job, because if the horizon of the game is the highly skillful game of Spin and Go, we are ****ed.

Could not agree more with the post. By the way listening to Daniel Negreanu saying that only 2% of the player pool was affected I dont have any doubt in my mind that he is captured. He does not seem to play a lot online, he pobably plays for high stakes, 10 20 or more, where rake is not that important, and most importantly he probably gets huge amounts of money for his promotion, so he is not objective.

Teh 2% number is actually most likely correct, let it be 5% w/e. Teh amount of volume though those "2%" make up for is a completely different story...
But yes, those people who are really affected and outraged by these changes are probably not more than 5%

Not at all if your wallet is stollen legal ramifications are possible, but what was stolen from the players in this instance. PS has the right to change or alter a promotion whenever they feel as stated in the TC.If it came down to legality PS would be sued by a sne mob, but even they know technically ps didn't break the law so can't be pursued through the court system(they can but would lose miserably) So idk what you mean

It isn't punished. Nobody is suggesting SNEs should pay a higher rate of rake than everyone else. They are suggesting that there shouldn't be the significant volume discounts that have existed thus far.

You may think SNEs should have volume discounts but if so then you need argue for it rather than just misdescribe what's happening, because you won't change anything that way.

I don't know that I'm making a direct argument but I wanted to share some of my thoughts and this seemed like a good comment to reply to

In 2013 371 players earned supernova elite. That's the most recent figure I could find.

It takes 1,000,000 VPPS to reach SNE. At 5.5 VPPS per dollar raked each SNE has payed a minimum of $182k in rake for a total of $67.5 million in rake generated by SNEs. Assume for simplicity everyone gets the 70% rake which is the max figure I've seen so PokerStars only keeps 30% which is $20.2 million of that.

Assume that the changes made will drop SNE player volume by half, which I don't think is unreasonable. Some players will have to quit, others will reduce volume and try to increase winrate. SNE rake revenue drops to $33.8 million and at the new (temporary) 45% rakeback PokerStars' net rake is $18.6 million.

In essence, PokerStars' income from SNEs stays the same while $33.8 million dollars doesn't get taken out of player funds as rake. Maybe more importantly, it's $33.8 million that doesn't need to be deposited for PokerStars to maintain roughly the same income from rake.

Similar effects should be possibly by other means. Just limiting the number of tables players can play. Decrease the number of tables in general with possibly more decreases for very slow players as they're currently doing. That makes it harder to attain SNE while still preserving it as a goal.

Keeping the same SNE benefts would however reduce PokerStars net proceeds from SNE rake to $10.1 million. $10 million is a big reduction for Stars but pretty insignifiant to a company that hs over $300 million in revenues each quarter.

I would imagine that their VIP program helps drive players to the site and helps generate rake from players who want to try for SNE but fail.

As Ansky pointed out this isn't a take from the recs give to the regs situation that is being portrayed. It's a take from the recs, including low stakes regs that only reach platinum, ron't tive back to the rec and don't take away from PokerStars.

Except for the fact that this change in rake calculation happened in January 2012, long before the Amaya acquisition. But hey, what's the difference of a couple years?

-BD

The fairest allocation of rake would be 100% to whoever causes the table to be running. I.e the player which if they dropped offline the table would break.

All the other methods are artifacts of the historical software development and practical logistics, since the method above isn't possible in practice.

lmao at how insane this statement is. Like how can you possibly believe ppl with varying intelligence and work ethic can only come up with a strategy that differ by 5%? I play mid stakes cash on stars, I dropped down to for a short period (1-2weeks) to 200z. The regs at 200z are completely clueless compared to even 500z regs and it took no time to move up again. I have played w otb etc and others who have play 20k, and to say they use similar strategies from training sites is just laughable. This is especially hilarious, since i believe you are a guy who couldnt get out of ssnl in 2011 so you are have no idea what you are talking about.