insider trading is rec friendly - David Baazov

Time to stir the hornets nest: can someone give me a bullet point list of why everyone hates DNeg now? I tend to play with my tightknit community of regulars and stay to myself when hitting the casinos. I don't get involved in whatever the drama going on is so I'm still in the dark about what happened. Seems that he used to be looked up to and admired but nobody likes him anymore.

It feels like these threads always end in the same way but a far better step towards a solution to creating a better environment for recs online at the low to micro stakes is to lower the table cap at these stakes.

This would;

1) decrease the reg/rec ratio per table
2) decrease hourly winrates for some "professionals" to the point where these games are not worth grinding for a living.

Let's look at an extreme example in tournaments. If a one table cap was inserted online how many professional players do you think would be playing in <$33 tournaments online/SnGS online?

I'm not arguing that sites should move to a one table cap but it's ridiculous when people like Daniel Negreanu start commenting that raising the rake is a necessary step to creating a better environment at these stakes when the multitabling issue one is such a more obvious and a clear much greater first step in improving the games at these stakes and should be looked at first way before any comments about rake.

Stars should drop him and use the money for more card hunts

Oh, some guy who hasn't played online for 5 years talking about how higher rake is good for the games, he must be right !

Anonymous tables would be the best way to go, and give losing players bigger rakeback bonus.

I haven't looked at the video but I can imagine the jist of it by reading these responses.

The fact is rake is only an issue in online poker because the online game is just such a terrible game.

Rake should be irrelevant. The fact that online poker is a volume based nit fest with players battling over 3bb pots is the problem, not rake.

Fix the game. Rake should be the least of your concerns.

Does he not realize he is describing a catch-22 scenario or does he simply not care? If the pros are kept away because they can't win after rake that must mean that the better recreationals don't have a large enough edge over the weaker recreations to win after rake either and so it would have to be a game will all net losers. If it was the case that the better recreationals were able to win vs the weaker recreational after rake when no pros are playing it would mean that the pros would have an even larger net positive winrate than the better recreationals and so would not have left in the first place for the reason that they couldn't beat the rake. The opportunity to win money via a skill edge has to be there otherwise players will stop playing.

put a table cap on specific stakes. 1-4 tables for the nanos so 3rd worlders can't mass table them for a living. 1-6 tables for micros-low. unlimited for mid+

Lol I just hope galfond destroys PokerStars one day

Guy is shameless, he's just a corporate pr person so there's no point trying to evaluate his comments.

Negs has made off better than anyone out of poker. A few years ago he said to Stars he would not fly across the Atlantic unless it was 1st class, so there you go. Kudos for him that he was able to keep his money, and good luck to him in the future. A good poker player for sure, but an even better money manager and a very very good marketer / self - promoter.

The only sad thing with Daniel is he did go corporate a year ago when Baazov and his crew robbed the players. Daniel was told to fall into line or potentially lose his X-million per year salary as a Stars rep, and he chose the money. I don't have inside info but that seems how it played out. I think most people would take the money anyway. Let him enjoy his money and his life, up to you if you want to listen to his media drivel, well it isn't any worse than most of the stuff out there.

Ok Daniel. Now please **** off.

Daniel, you've changed man. There was time you made it look like you care for players. You tried, even if you couldn't do anything and you always knew it all. Now it is all about what is good for rec players (if it's even better for Amaya). Nice to see you relaxed, doing some yoga and therapist? What is your secret?

After Amaya took over Pokerstars they made a change to their VIP system which royally screwed over their most loyal and high-volume players, especially supernova elites. The way they structured their VIP system was to promise money next year for the volume you're putting in this year. The effect of this was to keep players from ever leaving Stars because you will forgo the money you've already earned, so to speak. Amaya basically said "**** all that" and pulled the rug out and said you're not getting your money next year, we're ending the program now with no compensation.

Everyone could see how wrong this was and some of their sponsored pros quit over it. Daniel came out and said something to the effect of "This isn't right but I'm your knight in shining armor and I'll get them to change it and if they don't my resignation is in play". He thought he had more leverage than he actually did, and when Amaya told him to suck eggs because they weren't changing a damn thing, he came back and said "you know what, now that I've looked at it from Amaya's perspective, I think these changes are actually good for the game."

This has been a running theme for him ever since, with Amaya clearly giving zero ****s for the good of the game and Daniel rationalizing each of their moves by trying to paint a picture of how they are improving things.

Can we get a petition going for people who don't want Daniel Negreanu to be a Team Pokerstars Pro anymore?

I'd be the first to sign

I'd be fine if Daniel and Pokerstars just said that we made a terrible investment in Full Tilt Poker and are now trying to maximize our revenue by reducing rewards and increasing rake.

Their a business. It's their right and obligation to do that for the benefit of their shareholders. That I could live with.

But saying that increasing rake is good for the games is such Bull****.

If they were interested in making games better and making the overall experience for recreational players better as well, table caps would be introduced and seating scripts would be banned with immediate effect.

Lol at anyone trying to give a legit response to this dickhead and the incoherent **** dribbling from his mouth (except sauce, but he's sauce).

Renegs may be one of the biggest gooses around atm, maybe the biggest.

He thinks Trump looks and sounds like a ****wit, he should look in the mirror

The company should max their profits. 90% of players dont care what the rake is but how much fun they have. They should be served, not the parasites. 10% rake with no cap makes small games good and puts the higher limit rake more correct. The site more than doubles its profits.

DNegs I got you dude. Don't hate the playa, hate the game. For the win!!

#gettinthat****you$

Really think Amaya have upped their pay to DN- maybe equity offer as well- he was far more critical of their changes only a year ago

puppets gonna puppet

Limiting the number of tables you can play might be the best way to preserve the rec players.

At a casino, the biggest fish can sit at one table, and the best player in the room will be stuck at another table. Online, the best player can multiply himself x amount of times and be at every table in the room... except it's not just one player, it's 10-20 of the best players in the world multiplying themselves over every table giving the fun player no where to hide or have a chance. They just get absolutely destroyed and then when he loses his one or two buy-ins, the game completely breaks. I feel if this was addressed there would be more games running with more fun players (thus making up for playing less tables)... but it may be too late.

I thought about teh same thing - if we get enough traction we may get him booted

Dnegs just doesn't care/bother, in his silly head his intentions are just to creat a friendly poker site, which isn't beatable, tho the pros wont bother playing there and the fish players lose at a quite similar rate to the house.

i don't think thats what Pokerstars is all about, or he should be start playing/organizing live events with 5000$ buyin + 5000$ rake from his own pocket and reconsider.

they should be rather fight for the players from the segregated markets/USA and make online poker great again, not completely vanish the whole thing.

ps.: and **** NEGREANU, that's not a good experience for a micostakes recreational guy seeing himself winning a 40$ pot and only getting 35$ because of pokerstars' share, even tho he may or may not be losing at a smaller rate than beforehand. even for a pro its disaster to see how much less he's getting after winning a flip than he would've lost in the opposite scenario, what do you think a single tabling fish won't notice and think that fake ass pony guy with his fake ass beard is a **** for assisting this?

i guess a monthly fee for playing on the site is more reasonable than raking every pot to death. i guess the volume would increase a bit as well from the fun player side of the player pool, but just guessing.