It is incredibly frustrating to read all the recent reactions to the proposed Stars buyout of FTP. While basically everyone agrees this is an amazing breakthrough in the FTP saga, there is a lot of reluctance to totally embrace it out of fear of a 'monopoly'. This thread is not about this deal specifically but the market in general.

I don't want this to devolve too much into a purely economics debate that belongs in the Politics thread and it doesn't need to be Stars specific (although our best example in the present) so we can keep this specific to the topic at hand: The online poker industry and potential 'monopolies' within it.

A lot of people have a general uneasiness with the idea of a single site being too huge. We have all grown up being taught monopolies are bad for the consumer and that competition is healthy. I do not dispute either of those points. The good news is that monopolies can't really sustain themselves through fleecing customers within a free online poker industry. For the sake of this thread lets also take away all the individual roles governments can play in actually creating monopolies that screw us all.

Let's take Stars as our example. Stars grew from nothing to number 1 by offering the best combination of games, software, customer support, promotions etc. As it grew, it continued to focus on improvements and staying at the top of the industry and ahead of the competition. This was good for Stars and very good for the players. It should also be noted that Stars, whether it buys FTP or not, would not at all meet the definition of monopoly as dictionary.com or wikipedia lays out.

Stars is now the giant in the industry. There are a few other established sites but they are all much much smaller than Stars. So should we be afraid? Nope, not really. While competition is healthy, it still exists despite Stars being the beast that it is. People like to go on and on about how Stars has a big competitive advantage having such huge player pools, and of course that is true, but if they are not offering the best combination of other factors like rake, support, and software, the site that does will still gain market share over time. Just like Stars rose and Paradise Poker fell, these things take time to shift. Any industry leader who is so far ahead of number 2 will stay number 1 for some period of time after they stop offering the best service to consumers.

The only way Stars can ever totally kick back, say screw the customers we're number one, is if they somehow partner with a government to 'regulate' out competition. This has been pushed by some US casino interests but that's for another discussion. As long as that doesn't happen, they will always have to focus on improving in order to sustain their market share. While obviously it would be even better to have a few more giant poker sites right now, it doesn't assume we need to fear a single site dwarfing others at the present.

If Stars buys FTP (and even if it doesn't) they are pretty much a lock to be number 1 for a decent chunk of time. That doesn't mean they still don't have a ton of incentive to grow or sustain market share rather than cede it back in the coming years. The sad part of the competitive situation for the last year has not been frustration that Stars has stopped trying but disgust at how pathetic some of the competition presently is. For example, Party is a pretty large business and yet most agree they have done a terrible job trying to compete and offer a better service, player pools aside, than Stars. Had they worked harder on improving the player experience on 4/15 they could have grown quite a bit but sadly for everyone, they were the ones sitting on their hands. But that's neither here nor there.

I guess the point of this ramble is just to say that players need not be overly worried about an online site growing to a dominant position in the industry in a free online poker market. Choices and competition will always exist in some capacity (again assuming no government interference) and if the king starts to act like the joker, you can be sure he will follow the path of Paradise and eventually be overthrown.

At present, the reason it's been so hard to compete with Stars has been because they are just so much better than the competition. We should always want to reward those offering us the best overall experience with more business and as long as they are that business, they will be the 'monopoly' you never need to fear.

they terk arrr blargs

have no fear op is here

I would love to play at an online poker monopoly.....but I can't.

Once poker is legalized. Stars will have competition from other sites not made yet.

Nobody is realizing once the brick&mortar casino's drop they will attract millions of fish. We will play where the most fish are present.

Pros follow the fish, stars and fulltilt together can't keep all the fish its impossible. Other sites will be more profitable.

Imagine if a nevada casino bought zynga. What about some epic strategy someone will come up with. Deposit and cash out in brick&mortar casinos. Better deposits, bbjp. Something will come along just relax.

Stars&ft is not windows. If you ask me that's a monopoly.

+1 to OP

.

Why is it that when 25 people in the FTP thread point out that your "argument" about poker monopolies is just naively simplistic, you start up another thread about it? And since you seem to have completely ignored the many, many well-reasoned rebuttals to your position, it's hard to figure out why it would be worthwhile continuing a conversation with you.

Let there be a monopoly, I just want my FTP roll back

Thank you OP the dolts in the other thread complaining about monopolies are giving me headaches. What do they think they alternative to having Stars around is going to be? Do they think Caesars and Wynn and Harrah's will treat players better than PokerStars has? An online poker world without PokerStars is far worse than an online poker world with only PokerStars, and I as an American would be ecstatic if my only option for the foreseeable future would be that I was forced to play on the greatest poker site we have ever seen.

25? Please quote. Simply pointing out that it is difficult to rise from being small to number one is a pretty damn pathetic and 'simplistic' argument and thats what all those posts concerned. It is hard in EVERY SINGLE INDUSTRY to go from being small to dominant. Welcome to reality.

Was really looking forward to an insightful post till this happened:

Stopped reading there

This post sums up this thread.

Tons of debate about this already, but it's a good thing you started a new thread OP - your opinion really is more important than everyone elses.

There's a lot of different directions you could go with in refuting what you said, but I'll just pick this:


What you said here might be technically true, but you're missing the larger point. Being #1 with no clear option for #2 (at the moment there's no other site out there that has the traffic and software to effectively masstable at your chosen stakes) lets Pokerstars have a LOT of room to make unpopular decisions. For example, the New Year's rake shuffle was very unpopular among players. If there had been a decent #2 poker site on their heels, Pokerstars would have been a lot more careful about how things were rolled out, if they were at all.

The further you are out ahead of the pack, the more room you have to make inappropriate, anti-player decisions if you so choose. Pokerstars has reached the point that they do what they want, and ask for player input after the fact if at all. This wasn't the case when such disregard might actually cost them market share.

Competition keeps prices lower, innovation higher, customer service better, and communication with players more frequent.

Will Pokerstars having such a massive piece of the market kill online poker? No, of course not. But it will certainly keep online poker from being all that it could be.

PokerStars being huge is irrelevant to your weak argument. It is up to the competition to compete with Stars. No matter how big or small Stars is, that is the same. But hey, ignorance is bliss, right?

lol... what? Pokerstars being huge is the whole source of the entire argument.

Are you trying to suggest that market leaders do not have more room to treat customers poorly?

I dunno. It's clear you just want to be dismissive of anyone who puts forth a well reasoned argument because that's the easiest way to keep telling yourself you're right and everyone else is wrong.

I should have known better and not spent time posting in this thread.

so why did stars just recently raise the rake for 6+handed lowstakes fixed limit games? The fact that since the FTP disaster they are the one and only site with reasonable traffic probably had absolutely nothing to do with it, right?

heh, whatever you say. Stars is the best site in the market and that is why it is huge. It is up to the competition to compete. The only reason competition would be unable to compete is if they don't offer a better overall service.

Yes, I get that pokerstars is huge and that is why it is huge, and it's the responsibility of competition to compete. The question is - why do you think that refutes anything I've said?

There are plenty of reasons that it becomes difficult to compete other than "not offering a better overall service." There are so many examples of this in poker and out I don't even know where to begin.

Because mostly everyone is ******ed when it comes to anything logical. Just because you think there's well-reasoned rebuttals to a simplistic answer doesn't mean it's actually well-reasoned. Just the fact that you equate simple as being wrong is illogical.

JFK, Pokerstars, this thread has photoshop potential

If I had the money to make a poker site, it would be better than pokerstars. It's easy to get it to be better than pokerstars.. Just make the price of poker cheaper and make the rewards higher.

The simple fact that Pokerstars likes money is the only incentive it needs. Regardless of how far ahead of the competition they are, doing anything unpopular will cost them money. Even if they had a 100% monopoly it would cost them money due to people putting in less hands or quitting altogether. This ensures that they do everything in their power to please the consumer. This is why regulations aren't needed to make sure companies stay in line. In a free market, their bottom line directly reflects how well they adapt to the consumer. There's no reason to deliberately do sketchy things or get lazy because it costs them money.

I completely agree with OP. If Stars lowers the quality of their service (rake, support, bonuses, etc.) and you're still playing there, you have nobody to blame for them becoming a monopoly but your sorry ass.

I think this has more to do with the fish pool and advertising. Stars is huge already and a smaller site with better deals for regs wont ever be able to compete. We are forced to play where the fish are regardless of rakeback/bonuses.
You make it sound like we could easily change to a different reg-fest site with 90% rakeback and great customer support but without fish and massive advertising this wont happen.
For example for a player starting at 25/50c on stars their rakeback is just aweful and most players profits are mostly lost to rake... but they wont change this and wont have to.