Might seem like old news but it was mostly overlooked in all the other horrors represented in the press release.

From their press release from a month ago:
All good and fun right? Seems like a great idea to attract new players. What we didnt know is that it's a standalone app with a completely new game variant which is ONLY ACCESSIBLE through a mobile device.

Pokerstars Rep Matthew released some more info:
DNegs was talking about this new thing they're working on which would be insanely good for the games and will make everyone forget about all the bad things happening.

This effectively segregates any new (and current) recreational players from the regular player which plays through the client.
I can only assume that this is the big thing DN was talking about, which goes to show how he has little idea about online poker, how bad this is and how it does exactly nothing good to the current state of the games.

ok

here we go again. let the crying begin!

Does PokerStars still differentiate mobile players from people playing on the regular client? I can't remember the last time I played someone with an icon for mobile. I haven't seen a tablet icon in awhile either.

Isn't it more likely they removed the phone and tablet icons.

& guess it's time to buy a sick smartphone so I can bumhunt this new game. Actually you probably won't be able to play this phone game while playing regular games. This looks like a REALLY bad move for obvious reasons but I'm not going to jump to conclusion so soon.

Yes, and this is what I assume happened. I was just asking to be sure.

How dare they offer a game where players can opt to play a game of cards with equal premises!

In b4 mobile huds and seat scripts

There are more information on Amaya's third quarter earnings call:

From CEO of Amaya:

CEO's insight on SNE when asked about the impact of VIP market share and loyalty program.

All sources are from conference call transcript.

Thanks, good find. I'm not at all a fan of grammar nittery but I think once you start getting to the CEO level exceptions can be made. It appears in this case Mr. Baazov, head of a major gaming company, has no idea what the important concept of equilibrium entails. Also he doesn't even address the very real concern that the elite players who will be left will destroy recs much faster on later deposits, at much higher rates than the bad regs they replace because that's what elite players do. More hands played vs villain, higher wr. This is important because unlike in the case of average, static badregs, elite bumhunters with large samples can achieve truly grotesque win rates vs true fish. And extreme bumhunting in ubershark lineups is exactly what he's promoting with these changes.

He also thinks he's going to have increased revenue by likely reducing drastically the number of hands raked. This is one of those things where I guess we get to just find out after a fairly quick trial period but his outlook seems dubious. Not to mention the misrepresentation about players "sitting at the table to break even", as if that is their explicit goal. As if that has nothing to do with the rake levels not being adjusted downward with increasing skill level and game maturity. He says he wants winners but there are formats the VIP changes will kill, making them unbeatable at least some of the time.

He might just be dissimulating to nagging investors but overall every new statement I've read from this guy makes it look like he has little understanding of his own business.

A question I was asking myself that doesn't necessarily follow logically but that's interesting nonetheless is, if this guy whose barely ever played poker can't currently beat NL2 much less mid stakes NL/PLO (and quite possibly couldn't learn to without massive coaching intervention), what is he doing running the largest poker company in the world? It's like political hack Dick Cheney taking over Halliburton, minus the guaranteed defense contracts.

You’re talking about a small percentage of players that are a very large percentage of net
withdrawers, and I mean that's good and that's fine; we want them to be winners. But there has to be an equilibrium. And you know what? I think that the player experience needs to be better. You shouldn’t be able to have a lot of players that are break even because of the rake and still be making money, but rather make bum hunting a fun player the only way to win. But even better, not only are we increasing the rake we are going to remove all the fish from the games and sell them games that are even harder! And you know what? I have no idea what I'm talking about and I am mentally ******ed.

Can you explain how decrease the number of hands raked will increase overall revenue for the company? Isn't the % of rake per hand fixed(unless you are talking about overall effect after the VIP rewards)? I think 2+2 can should create a model of how everything will workout with the new VIP plan instead of just using words. It will be way more convincing to Amaya.

Decreasing hands raked will decrease (poker) revenues. They are betting in the long term it will increase revenues due to increased player retention, on that they are on very shaky ground imo although there could be synergistic effects with their other "verticals".

I agree someone with more talent than us armchair economists should do a model but anyone who can do a good one probably won't waste their time without being paid for it. And some might hesitate at the thought of giving succor to the enemy.

Thanks for the feedback JudgeHoldem. I think there is a fundamental mistake in the Amaya's thesis. Let me lay it out and see if you agree with me. Amaya is basically trying improve the game play to lure more amateur players to play by decreasing the number of professional players.

Lets assume that only the professional players will be affected. Once the shock happens, the worse Professional players will exit the player pool, and the amateur will enjoy a better game player with less professional players in its initial stage. However, once this change happens, more professional will join until it becomes unbeatable again. After a period of time, the game play will get back to the same profitability as before, and because of the rakeback decrease, more profitability will have to be attributed to the skill difference. Thus defeating the purpose of this change.

It is pretty much like supply and demand. If you increase the overall price of poker, undoubtedly there will be less players playing, and therefore less revenue for Amaya. A better thing for Amaya to do would be to increase the Poker community as a whole. They can do this by advertising and marketing to get more fish into the game and improving the game play by decreasing the edge between professional and amateurs(like eliminating HUDs). But its approach of purposely killing part of the ecosystem as if it will increase the overall poker industry is silly to me.

I think they are comparing this period to the poker boom, where there are a lot of entries to this market. However, the current market condition is very different from before. The online poker community is at its mature stage, you can't reverse the order of cycles. These changes really indicate how the CEO's lack of knowledge of the industry.

Interesting.

So then could it be that Stars has known this for some time and are pretty much resigned to moving the company to a pit game format and this is just a last ditch effort to milk the pokerz as best they can and by the time we get to poker endgame as described in quote, the pit game side of operations will have established itself as profitable, affording Stars the op to get out of poker w minimal to no net loss?

When you say profitability you are talking about from the pro's perspective?

I'm speculating, I have no special knowledge that other grinders lack, but I think its very safe to say that the players who will be left in the tougher environment will be able to achieve much higher win rates, especially vs high hand count villains, than would the badregs they replace. Another problem is the effect of market inefficiency, namely that the current crop of lower stakes regs are mostly bad at table selection when it comes down to it. They are playing when they should be sitting out. The elite bumhunters who are coming to in to replace them won't make that error.


What that means is games that fill up now because a pecking order either hasn't been established or hasn't been recognized will no longer fill at all. The best regs know when they're the best reg at the table. They aren't guessing and they won't take the worst of it, ever. This is a fact that people new to the industry probably have no way of appreciating, but its huge. It will kill games that would otherwise run.

The other problem this leads to is that the rec player may (or may not) have a better playing experience, at first. But what awaits them is horrifying. The difference in wr that a badreg vs an elite player could hit vs a true fish when each have a 5k hand sample is on the order of 50bb/100+ at HUNL >100bb. Elite bumhunters are applying the jumper cables to their nuts on every branch of the game tree while badregs are out on a smoke break. By the fourth deposit the fish would be better off getting captured alive by cannibals.

Problem is the whole thing is grift, a value added ponzi scheme, a soft swindle. Maybe they can expand it, maybe they can't. It would suck if you were a fisherman on the Aral sea circa 1985. "Maybe we can solve it by doing a rain dance and sacrificing a goat". It sucks to be in that position but maybe there's nothing you can do. First do no harm imo.


Agreed.

Absolutely hilarious examples. I absolutely agree with everything you said. Definitely learnt new things in your post regarding the current poker environment. Haven't played poker for a while. It seems the management is really short sighted and did not know what they are doing. But I hope everything will turnout ok.

After all, a lot of poker players are whiny, entitled little premadonnas and I would absolutely understand Stars eliminating poker completely in particular markets.

I also wouldnt doubt (with their push to get into US) that they could very well be wanting to get out of poker in regions that are problematic in regards to hacking, program running yada yada (that none of us would truly know about) simply because the workload associated with preventing such shadiness has grown to a more than manageable task in the past so many years.


Total speculation

I don't think stars are thinking of divesting any aspect of the poker operations yet. In their conference call, the company is still targeting to grow business, whether it is poker or utilizing Stars name. Poker still makes up for majority of their revenue.

I don't think the management knows what they are doing. The CEO is 33 years old and has no experience playing poker before. The endgame will be the same as the effect economic sanctions. Less revenue for Amaya, and game play being the same difficulty as it was before the change.

But I am not sure how big of an impact it is going to have? Like how many professional poker players will eventually quit the game? That will ultimately decide the loss of revenue for the industry.

Problem is its like they took over Coca Cola (bad example, PS has way more market share) and now the CEO's dropping hints of abandoning the software business entirely and diverting all corporate resources into medical marijuana and dexedrine verticals production.

Looks like a gamble, to say the least.

Whats wrong w medical marijuana?

Ima fan

ps is in idiots' hands, do they really think no pro can enter a segregated pool if he wants to?

a couple of them made a phone icon in zoom games just for 0.00001bb/100 edge to fake they are playing from mobile device just for the confusion...

You guys are ignoring the part where they analyzed the numbers over a 2 year period and decided they wouldn't have any depositors x# of years in the future unless some big changes were made.