i'd be interested to know what this number actually is. Could anyone estimate or point to any data from their financials?

The problem with limiting the no. of tables is that ppl just multitable across different sites

how? if a rec player deposits but is slightly losing rather than massively losing, and now plays more, stars is gonna rake more.

if a reg is forced to move up to keep making a living, stars is gonna rake more at higher stakes.

and a few break even nits start flipping burgers. shame. they probably still play some part time, and stars still gets some rake.

obviously they arent gonna lower the rake. just playing devils advocate here.

Short decision clocks and small timebanks.

Completely agree. If you're going to promote the hell out of a game that takes the recs money quicker than ever (spins), at least give the regs a chance. As someone who has played thousands of spins, those periods where you get 2x after 2x and aren't winning crushes the bankroll very quickly, so I can't even imagine what it's like for recs with a lower skill edge and a fairly limited bankroll.

Jeremiah 19:9
I will make them eat the flesh of their sons and daughters, and they will eat one another's flesh...

yeah we get it. you old men want those games from the good old days back. but guess what? aint gonna happen because these days are long gone....

The problem in todays games is not really the rake (for the most part) but too many regs.
And there is literally nothing which is going to change that - that train is gone... They can make all the changes they want, in the end there will still be too many regs.
All changes will do (especially the proposed once) is to shift the regpool even more into lowcost countries (read: mainly eastern europe) because some western guys will quit when they for instance cant make 5k/month anymore while all belarus would be happily go to work for 2k/month.
I am preaching for years to stop educating the masses but it still goes on and on. The main reason why we are where we are is pokerstrategy expansion into eastern europe (mainly russia).
When i started out in 2009 with my first SNE run there were no russian pro's, there were no other eastern euros either. Now like 75%+ of the reg pool is east europe and its growing.
It's also fairly easy to explain why. Apart from that 2k/month is a ****load of money in alot of those countries the entry barrier for guys to grind for a living there is very low.
In western countries going pro is a huge deal bc at the same time (more often then not) you say goodbye formal education and will leave a giant hole in your CV. Alone this kept the regpool somewat steady because of the many uncertainties not many westerners decided to go for it. Now if you are in a country where even with a degree your future is uncertain it's fairly easy to go for poker and see what happens.

I honestly have no solution for this and all what sites can do atm is maybe postpone the inevitable unless there comes some sort of gamechanger (dont really know what that is or could be though)

so long, gg

Stepping back from the details/economics of the ecosystem, this is a good read on changes from the perspective of corporate strategy (for those grinders never in the business world, think of that as GTO for business people /companies )

Their are now kinks in the armor of the Juggernaut that once was PokerStars. This opens up opportunities for competitors to out PokerStars, PokerStars, where 12 months ago I would have thought that impossible.

http://www.pokerupdate.com/news/poker-opinion/11182-the-pokerstars-brand-is-no-longer-about-poker/

this is the truth nobody wants to acknowledge, and is why stars is venturing towards other (unbeatable) games - and i cant blame them.

mason does bring up the best and pretty much only solution in this thread - new game variants.

tho he runs a poker book publishing company, which is a negative externality entity in the poker economy, accelerating the ecosystem to the endgame that we see today

It seem to me that the attributes of live poker mostly attracts 'gamblers' customer-types whereas the current set-up of online poker mostly attracts 'investors' customer-types.

Therefore the most profitable business approach for these formats are to rake the live games high, as gamblers are interested in occasional short-term wins; But rake the online games very low to allow the natural swings in the game to disorientate investors, and to entice potential investors with the big winners a low rake game would produce.

Now as online has evolved, there seems to have been a clash of these 2 customers as the rec players (gamblers) are now struggling to play/survive against regs (investors), so recs are leaving the game; At the same time regs and potential regs (investers and potential investors) are being put off by the obviously unbeatable games and lack off success stories in online poker due to rake being priced too high.

The obvious answer seems to be for sites to cater to both customer-types seperately.

They could offer a Unibet-style format with higher rake, 2-table max, strict zero HUD/software rules, no HH etc. ie pretty much mirroring live poker; And also seperately offer what Pokerstars has now but for a fraction of the rake ie *1bb rake per 100 hands.

They would keep and grow both customer-types as now recs (gamblers) aren't getting chewed up by the high reg:rec ratios at the table and would have a quicker funner game, and regs (investors) would be more attracted to the prospects of a good investment, and have a far more difficult time assesing their skill level relative to the pool.

*I know this seems laughably low for sites to take seriously, but with the increased interest from investors, increased reg-v-reg action, and the extra rake taken from the live poker-style format, this could be more lucrative in the long run.

Pokerstars and other sites may suceed in making online poker a rec only game but its highly unlikely to be more lucrative for them as current regs will continue to dwindle, good regs will stay around to butcher the recs in the live-style format, so the recs will dwindle, then all that will be left is a very small pool of players.

The sites' customers have split into 2 types and the skill gap will only get bigger, they must recognise the need for appropriate rake-pricing and game rules for these customer types individually to truly capitolise on the Online Poker industry and make it grow again.

i guess there are enough rec. players, but they play 1-5 hours/month on average, stars' intent should be get them to play 1-5 hours/day instead of bring in new people, but these rec guys have no benefits in the new system despite what PS communicates. they wont having fun and will be bigger and bigger losers in the games.

recreational players exist heavily and willing to play games they have legint shot winning in, back then when FTP implemented Rush poker in the first couple of days the amount of fish at rush tables were infinite then it rapidly dropped when they realized they suck in poker the same as on regular no limit holdem tables, and rush is no different but losing more $ hourly.

i cant believe they will find passion in any poker game where skill is involved big time (basicly any form with deeper than couple of big blinds stack) as insistently to sit in day by day. ****, basicly there is no people on the planet that likes the defeat that much, they either realize they suck and has no chance / or say poker is rigged / or pokerstars is cheating them out of their money, the conclusion is to play as little as possible for most of them. the other factor is, fish have no bankroll managment and always short on money buyin-wise, so forced to quit till next wage/pocket money/succesful cocain transaction in case of busto.

These rewards are technically a partial refund or a discount. The system isn't play X amount of hands and we give you Y dollars. It is pay X amount in rake and get Y% of X back. It's not free money that PokerStars just gives players out of nowhere.

If the goal is as you say to eliminate multitabling nits that slow the games by reducing the incentive to be multitabling nits then the direct way to address that problem is to limit the maximum number of tables a player can play. That would force players to get better, move up, play fewer tables or quit. it would add more liquidity to higher stakes games, continue to reward players who pay a lot of rake, speed up the games.

Out of the super nova elites I'm sure there are some that aren't the types that hold up the games. They're being lumped in and punished for their loyalty because of others.

Can you explain why such a roundabout approach was taken to make the games better when it just could have been done more directly? The only reason I can see is doing it the way it's been done is it has the benefit of more profits for the site. Even though just limiting the number of tables would also do the same by limiting the number of SNEs.

Stars has been monitoring the time it takes you to act and limiting the amount of tables for slow people for years, it's just another thing they are saying to distract from the effective rake increase.

Ditch Hold'em all together and force people to learn PLO cash/sngs/mtts or other games

@DNegs

It might be that these changes are good for poker long term. But are you claiming that Amaya made these changes because of that ? Instead of short term profit ?

Ya despite everything being said about him at least he gives a damn hes advocating more for SNE than todays online heros, like it or not he has more pull than all of the SNE players combined.

As far as him putting his job and lively hood on the line as iv stated before I dont think its fair to hold him to that especially since it wont change much at all. In fact it could hurt us more since we dont know what other changes PS is implementing and those chages could be far worse.

I dont think this will happen but im sure amaya has considered the possibility of letting daniel walk being able to save his salary expense and where would we all be then including daniel?

Like America?

trust me, you can't compare the situation in USA to this in Easter Europe, not to mention some 3rd world countries.

TimStone is pretty much spot on, except he's got the numbers wrong. I live in Poland, which is one of the richer easter/central european countries, and 1k$/month is a really solid, and 2k$/month is more than like 95% of people will ever earn. Most low-level jobs, like cashier, salesman etc will actually pay the equivalent of 300-500$/month. And it's way less in countries like Belarus or Romania.

Of course, if you happen to get a degree in medicine, engineering or smth like that, you won't have too many problems finding a real job that also pays well (although, unlike USA, doctors aren't getting paid significantly more than people with "normal" jobs). But you have to make that decision when you are 19 years old, as we don't have any equivalent of college, you just pick your school right away, and you have to get in and then make it through, which isn't easy.

So, to sum up, poker is a great option here, which makes it much more for western regs.

The "they'll do it anyway so why should Daniel do without his salary" isn't a convincing argument in terms of ethics and morality.

This is a myth. If you have a 4 year degree and cannot get a descent job right out of college, then you are a moron or being way too picky with the first job you take. Having a 4 year degree can almost guarantee you a 'descent' job in the US. Now the flip side of that is if you have a very specific degree that has limited positions available or a very broad degree like 'mathematics', the likelihood of you getting a good paying job in your field is not great. But that does not mean you still cannot get a descent paying job in another non-specific field. I said descent, not fantastic.

Literally ANY 4 year degree in ANY field can land you a job paying 40K+ at companies like Enterprise, Lock Heed Martin, Booz Allen, JP Morgan, Walmart, Walgreens, Nestle, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, ICF, etc., and I am not talking about $10 an hour cashier job or floor salesman. There are many companies like these that have manager-trainee type jobs available for 40K to 50K.

As for online poker. Meh, who needs it anymore when the B&M games are so good now. There is nothing Dnegs can do to help online poker now.

you guys flaming dnegs when he might have some small chance of helping (or at least offer some insight into what's happening) is incredibly stupid. yeah, let's piss him off so he just says "you know what **** these guys they don't even want my help."

what do you hope to accomplish by being a douche to him?

I think this is a insane way of thinking to say players better educating themselves is killing the game. As if your entitled to take advantage of misinformed players. Arming players with poker knowledge is their best defense against mass tabling human hud bots since the hud bots will run through the food supply as fast as possible hence todays situation.

All the players that chose to stay ignorant have gotten crushed to the point they no longer wish to play poker anymore. So the ones sticking around are the players that invest in Run it once,2P2, and Dueces cracked, which have become necessary for anyone that wants any type of success in poker.

In fact I would direct anyone new to poker to one of these sites where as a few years ago a basic pocket sized hand chart was enough. For anyone new that isnt aware of GTO and its purpose is at a major disadvantage to the point they're better off playing slot machines and people like Galfond realize that and want to give back to poker which i applaud

Fwiw these dreadful uneducated players are still around in groves they just happen to be playing live now.

If this is the case that russia & eastern europe players are more of the lower winning regs as lower $ needed to be earnt for it to be a worthwhile career, then surely these countries are taking more out of the poker economy then they are putting in?
In which case maybe it would be good to ban Russia & other eastern europe countries?

wouldn't it be better for recs to just reduce the amount of tables allowed? to like 6 or something?

online poker would get much better with removal of huds, banning scripts and max tables something like 4 or 6, and well obviously give the same rakeback to 5/10+ players, 0% is a ****in disaster

I think it's the best solution to the "too many regs" problem that timstone is talking about that has no solution, it won't fix things completely but it will definitely help out