He said they are bad for the enjoyment of the game. They are slow, don't chat and play boring. Doesn't really matter if they win or lose between 0% to 5%. It's basically the same thing as the hoodie, headphones, no talk live players. Playing with them is no fun, no matter if they are marginal winners or losers.

If you play for fun and don't care too much if you win or lose, you don't want to play with that kind of player.

Kinda surprised how open PokerStars is about that topic. We all knew what they are doing, but in the past they didn't talk about it. I still think there are better ways to do it like banning 3rd party software, limiting multitabling and using cash out fees.

People itt still not understanding that profit is profit as long as weighted contributed is being used. They are making money by winning at poker.

I don't care what they say. Their actions speak. They don't want a healthy ecosystem. They want to take more money and could care less if players robotically multi table as long as they win little or none at all.

> poker is not trendy anymore

> wsop had the 3rd biggest main event of all time

lol bloomberg doenst know what they are talking about

I did some rough calculations 18 months ago based on cash game winrates.
My estimation was 90%+, and I'm confident it was accurate. "Back in the day" I'm sure Old Stars' take would have been less than 87% though.

Regular players just “want to enjoy the game as a fun entertainment experience that offers many winning moments and the dream of the big payout,” said*Rafi Ashkenazi, Stars Group chief executive officer.

Really tilting how disingenuous their communications are.

I'm not getting what is disingenuous about that statement, seems to be just stating a simple fact.

Although I disagree with stars methods, it's pretty obvious that the market is way over saturated with 'professionals'.

Something needs to change to keep the poker economy healthy.

Most players don't log into Stars to lose their money in a fun way but believe mistakenly or not that they can outplay the competition. The changes they are making are designed to take a bigger piece of the pie and have nothing to do with enhancing rec player experience.

Not sure if that's really true. I don't think most players are that stupid/delusional.

I would think it's not too different from lotteries and slots. Deep down lots of losing players know that they need to get really lucky to win big.

how much money has stars spent over the past 10 years in the service of legalizing US poker?

The goal is to increase the number of hands where bad players lose to other bad players rather than to good players. What is your alternative solution?

Like what? Hiring lobbyists to represent their interests, I imagine they've done this, what else would you expect?

It'd probably be wasted money to spend anything in the current political climate to lobby for change, at least at the federal level, so the question is whether they should wait for regime change or try to hasten it.

Wonder why Stars isn't in Nevada yet? Guess Nevada hasn't granted them a license? Is there a chance they might get one soon?

Happened to stumble upon the amount they spend yearly on lobbying worldwide in their earnings reports a while ago - it seemed to be about 14x less than they spend a year on interest payments to service their debt?

Why is it pretty obvious? Evidence to back this up? Winning players take a tiny portion of depositors money. How can they possibly be the problem within the poker economy!?

Expanding on your statement, you're saying that their goal is to keep money out of the hands of winning players so that [virtually] all of an amount deposited is kept by Stars (and you are correct.) My ground-breaking alternative solution would be to allow winning players to exist so that poker can continue to exist.

Why are winning players necessary for the existence of poker? If rakeback pros go Galt to protest changes, Pokerstars isn't going out of business.

One alternative would be to try and find a way to force winning players to play more hands against each other without bad recs at the table. How would you go about doing that?

force winner of previous hand to post a straddle

i'd play that all day long

well of course that would just make good players play each other with fish at the table

bumhunters are never going to play each other with no fish

not everyone who has played poker thinks they are a winner but anyone who sits back down to play thinks they can win.

have you ever tried to convince someone they were bad at poker for their well being? you wouldnt believe the responses and delsusions. yes everyone who plays thinks they can win over the long haul even with mountains of evidence otherwise.

i think this goes for chess too at least to a degree. i think a site with wagering on chess would do very well for the same exact reasons.

It's not, that's the problem. It's a heavily regulated and taxed market. It's like any other "sin" economy. People are willing to pay a lot more for their vice than would be charged in a free market. So the government steps in, forces the price up, and pockets a big chunk of the difference. The "supply" of poker has been artificially restricted, and only those willing to pay the resulting inflated prices will get their fix.

WorldWinner used to allow wagering on chess. It must not have done so well because it doesn't anymore. One chess Grandmaster well known for gambling commented that the Elo rating system ruined chess gambling/hustling.

Imagine if every player on a poker table had their winrate posted on screen alongside their name.

I don't know if it's "artificially restricted", maybe just no one is dumb enough anymore to pay $4.9B for a poker site in a declining market.

Plenty of startup poker sites have come and gone bust post-Black Friday.

Name me these poker sites pls.

https://www.safestpokersites.com/failed/

Quite a few mentioned in the above failed well after Black Friday.

Ultimate Poker was a Las Vegas based, post-Black Friday startup, with Jason Sommerville as one of it's main guys. It ended up going bust due to vast revenue shortfalls.

The deposit volume decreased while the costs (regulation & taxation) went up. Now the operator (who btw has some heavy debt burden) tries to maximize their winnings.

So a poker-pro, who uses a HUD and selectively targets bonuses is smart, but a business is greedy, even both have the same target?

seriously ... operators provide the tables and all those 'fish' pay the bills. i don't see why grinders think, they have a stake to claim. the only problem is, that far too many ppl thought, online poker is a never ending gold rush.

and about saturation. of course there's some sort of saturation. if this effect wouldn't exist, the 'mass exodus' - which according to NVG should have happened 2 years ago - would have taken place and we wouldn't have this (ongoing) conversation.

or take unibet as an example ... they made some nice changes, but ppl still think they need RIO poker instead of giving those swedes a try.

anyway ... with GVC and PP there's some competition coming, so the next years will be very interesting.

Juk