Quote:
Originally Posted by Everlastrr
I did not call you dumb because you are a rec in any way. In fact I'm more of a rec than a reg and my poker record is nothing to lord over anyone. However attributing to your arguments to lotto tickets because they are popular is dumb, when they are clearly one of the scourge's of today's society. So is comparing it to other pastimes that have associated costs when the changes at PS are clearly a money grab at the expense of the skill of the game. They are taking advantage of that for profit and that offends me and it should you too. Would you be ok if you showed up at the golf course and they said we only have 16 holes now because we want to have quicker rounds and have 2 less holes to maintain? As for being impressed with the KO graphic that's a 10 cent fix for them and makes no effect on me. However I can see an 8 yr old being impressed. Have fun depositing.
The fact remains that most recreational players, or at least many, won't even be aware of the rake changes (unless they've read about them of course). That's because most recs just log in and play. The majority of people reading a post from a stars rep on 2p2, Pokerstars corporate blogs etc... are actually regs. To add to this, Stars only emailed Goldstar+ players (who are subscribed to email updates) in advance about the rake increase - this excludes most rec players straight away. Most recs don't care about rake - in fact to reinforce my point, I even have a rec friend who plays on Stars regularly and doesn't even know what the word "rake" even means in the context of poker sites. He just logs in, has a good time, logs out - it's as simple as that. Rec players don't care about the "skill of the game", since most of them are aware that they aren't skilled players, but they're just looking to have a good time and try and win something if they're lucky.
Also, iirc the overall rake increase on Stars was around 4%...well to refer back to my golf analogy, let's suppose the cost of golf was increased overall by 4%, I expect most players would not be put off by this. Same applies with poker. A 4% increase can mean the difference between a winning player and a breakeven player when looking at it from a reg's perspective (because their winrates depend quite delicately on the rake costs so even a slight rake change can cause a huge difference if they're only a marginal winner to begin with), but from a rec's perspective it don't mean much tbh.
Finally, I want to address the part of your quote I bolded. I think you're basing this on your own personal opinion of not liking lotto just because there's no skill element and is -EV for everyone. But yet, lotto is still the most popular form of gambling for a reason. Ignoring addicts and problem gamblers, most who take part in the lotto do it as just a casual pastime for enjoyment, not because they're dumb. You may not enjoy it, but obviously all the hundreds of millions of lotto players across the world would disagree with you. They find enjoyment from watching the balls spin round. They find enjoyment from when their own numbers come out. It's also a social activity. They sometimes might discuss with their friends, dreaming about what they would spend the millions on if they won the jackpot. They get excitment/thrill from the chances of winning life-changing money and seeing other people's dreams come true on TV...I could go on for days here, but hopefully you get the overall jist of my argument.