Seems to me there are 2 reasons they would consider this now when they haven't in the past:

1.) Online poker isn't doing well and they need to diversify.

2.) They need to diversify so they can offer more products in smaller regulated markets.

I suspect that a relatively small proportion of players who are very big losers are effectively propping up the poker economy. Take their money out of poker and it will collapse.

I think its likely that Stars can extract more money from these people via the casino than via poker games where they are obliged to share some of it with the winning regular players. This is more true the higher up the stakes you go since the effective rake gets lower.

No doubt they will capture some of the money that the existing players spend outside of Stars or even attract some new money to the site but its hard to see how the overall effect on the poker games will be positive if the existing 'whales' are regularly lured to the casino.

Perhaps it deserves to collapse, though?

I feel bad for backers when their horses end up spewing all their money away on pit games and sports

It's not a bad thing.

Casino's certainly attract some different types of players which is good, however poker has always played second fiddle on sites with both. So I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but every other player in the industry has sorta messed it up.

Look, there are a lot of uneducated opinions in this thread. I doubt any posters here can prove it's one way or the other. So we just present our logical reasoning and argue for it like it's fact. The only thing I can contribute with is that I noticed an increase in bad pokerplayers during the WC in football and I notice an increase in bad pokerplayers whenever pokerstars does some event.

My conclusion is that a gambling atmosphere is positive for winning pokerplayers because a sucker is born everyday and people have deep wallets.

Absolutely nailed it.

Surely the most apt question is, how have game conditions changed since Full Tilt started its limited rollout of casino games on its client over the last six months?

I trust pokerstars 100% they are not in it for the money, they just want us all to get on.

this, hopefully the sportsbook is decent and usable (ie odds wise)

99.54 JOB at least and please use decent video poker software
Would love cross promotion. Hit a royal and get a 215 sunday mill ticket + 1K

Are u for real or just being ironic? They want to suk everyone up as much as possible, u people are so naive.

Theyll undoubtedly have a responsible gaming feature where you can block your account from accessing casinos or sportsbooks.

They have been sold to Amaya, a company entirely focused on profits so yes, they are now entirely in it for the money.

As are the American sites that all are connected to Sports Books.

I see it as being no different than a real life casino. Sure, some of the poker fish will go gamble it up in the casino, but more of the casino fish will stop in and play poker and treat it like another casino game.

Good for pokerstars, bad for online poker being legal in the US.

Except the biggest regulated state in the US already has casino games and is trying to get sports betting soon too.. For the states that don't want casino's they can just remove that element from the software.

There is some research that suggests that players stay longer if they use more products and it might bring in some new players.

But in the end I guess they rather push casino where they rake 4% on every spin with no cap.

Sportsbook n__n

Casinogames u__u

The only cross promo that will happen is getting recs AWAY from poker and on to slots.

I have accounts with loads of sportsbooks and get spam every day with promos for slots etc. I very rarely get poker offers and can't ever recall getting a poker promotion from a site I hadn't already played.

That has been my exact experience as well, I use a few sports books, and poker is close to irrelevant at all of them. Much like used to be the case at b&m casinos. Hell, look at fulltilt, actual poker is pretty close to a non entity there already.

Would much rather have seen them roll out a daily fantasy product than pit games. They would have immediate access to the US market in almost all states with that and it is growing very rapidly. It really makes me cringe when non-skill games are partnered with poker.

This could be the early beginnings of the end of pokerstars. If zynga becomes able to transact real money and starts offering more variety, then things will definetely change for pokerstars monopoly.

I'd love to see sports betting at a reasonable rake.

From a business standpoint why wouldn't they offer all available games. As long as the promotion/marketing is done separately they will make more money and I don't think it will hurt the poker side of things too much.

was there any difference when Full Tilt introduced the casino?Maybe i missed something but at least most poker variants remained (as dead) as they were before on that site..