It is a cash grab. Steve Ruddock is a clown. Whatever way you try and spin it, more money is being taken out of the game by Stars and less goes to the players. I could understand if the money was redistributed to net depositing players but that is not the case. They are taking money from the winning players and pocketing it.

I like Steve, but let's be honest, he loves to be contrarian with his sizzling hot takes.

He doesn't do himself much credit in this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...d-off-1296659/

steve rubbbcock thinks hes writing an essay for english class and has to hit that 500 word target , none of the things hes talking about make any sense .

he's using several fallacies and several things mentioned are outright lies or given a pro amaya spin .

he'd be a good propagandist but he sucks at writing anything poker related.

Vaguely remember that. What a tool. His site is also getting sponsored by Amaya so take that for what it's worth.

Yes that is true, however it is pointless arguing about these changes as Amaya are well within their rights to make them. Time will tell if it was a good business decision or not but if they have miscalculated, they will be the ones that pay the price.

They have crossed the line before into clear misrepresentation when they advertised that if you made SNE in 2015 you would get specific rewards in 2016. SNE cost a lot to achieve in rake paid and I believe that it is illegal, at least in the UK, to clearly advertise "If you pay x to us over the year you get y next year" then refuse to give y once x has been paid. Whoever came up with that blatant theft and signed off on it should hang their heads in shame. They could easily have cut SNE completely after giving the rewards to the final players who made it plus every other cut they made was fair game.

They have done other dubious things such as paint every change which is negative for all players, like removal of rewards, as positive for recs. They also have falsely painted their motivation be to protect recs. The vast majority of changes they have made are negative for all players to some degree and their motivation is simply to rip more money from every person on the site. If they really wanted to make positive rec changes they would ban all software aids, ban all staking groups, introduce table caps and so on. They don't do these things as they would be expensive and difficult to police. Some would affect their bottom line - so instead they simply take more money and misrepresent their intentions by claiming to be rec friendly. This is nothing unusual. Almost every publically listed company loves spouting PR lies.

When it comes to informing customers about rake rises and reward cuts their is also nothing rec friendly about them as they selectively choose who to inform. Sure everyone with emails set to on gets blasted endlessly with adverts for BetStars but rake increases or reward cuts? You don't tell the recs about these things if you are PokerStars..

Amaya have always been looking to turn anything they buy into a carcass at the expense of players and the site itself, a fact which was pointed out when they bought PokerStars but the lies started straight away.

Steve Day also, at the time Operations manager from Stars claiming positive customer focus will continue for years

We were all lucky the Scheinbergs owned PokerStars for so long but without them and with Amaya in charge this was always destined to happen.

Online poker is completely dead anyway, pretty much all due to the world being a lot better at the game than on Sept 11, 2001 when PokerStars launched (yes really that date). Government regulation was a huge blow in lots of countries but software has ensured it will never be the same again online no matter what ridiculous dream regs might cling to. It cannot be policed so unless you like playing against a GTO bot you might as well withdraw now. Amaya are massively in debt, fudging their figures and relying on a dying game to bring customers in to the casino. It's not working and they are heading for the end as all the recent cuts are showing.

This is looking at it from the simplistic perspective of rake=profit.

If we switch our thinking to operator profit = deposits - withdrawals - bonuses - tax, then the speed at which a deposit is turned into rake (i.e. midstakes games) is less relevant. At microstakes games, it may take longer for a player's deposit to convert to rake, but ultimately a higher proportion will.

I'm not arguing that microstakes games are the cash cow, but I think from PokerStars perspective, these mid- and high-stakes games, while immediately profitable, may not align with their ecosystem goals. A long-term view may well aim to reduce play on these high-profit tables and shift action to lower stakes games, so that deposits last longer (an explicit goal of Amaya), # of "winning moments" increase, and ultimately more goes to rake rather than the balances of net withdrawers.

This is a usage of entitlement that is, as near as I can tell, unique to twoplustwo. Do you guys who use the word in that way know what entitlement means? Do you understand the contexts in which it is normally used?

If it was any forum other than this one, most readers would find the use of the term entitlement to describe the ethos of enterprising, self-funded entrepreneurs hacking out a living in what may be the single closest approximation to a theoretical pure free market ever to have existed either deliciously ironic or laughably inept.

But the Russian can just grind it up and get the $5 back, making rent. The Western beer drinker is still a thousand short on his.

Where would you rather live, St. Petersburg or San Pedro?

Exactly. Also, the SuperNova/Supernova Elite status encouraged players with those goals in mind to move up in stakes in order to achieve that status as once they reached that status those players were receiving a massive decrease in effective rake in the games that they played on PokerStars.

Post the removal of Supernova Elite I'm assuming many of these games run far less often and many of those former higher stake players have probably dropped down in stakes. PokerStars also removed rakeback in some of the higher stake cash games.

If their goal is really to get "professionals" to play higher stakes to increase better game quality across the lower stakes then why not decrease the rake across the board for those higher stakes while adding a table cap on the lower to lowest stakes.

I really don't understand how they and other poker writers keep quoting high volume play at lower stakes being a concern to them yet they fail to address the obvious solution of a table cap in those games before they address all these rake changes.

Dude is an affiliate marketer, not a writer.

Funny how much crap i got when i first suggested a 1st world only site like a year or 2 ago. Good to see moar and moar people on board w this!

don't worry bro. if this happens you get 10% stake and full credit

As a recreational, getting raked $1 at $5nl when you win a "big" pot does kinda suck.

The free market is stars can charge whatever the **** they want and people can choose to play or not play.but entitled people think stars/some new site should only charge x rake so x number of people can beat the games.

I think that both x and y should be a ton higher than they are now, but I don't even play on Stars and probably won't ever play there again. The term "entitled" has mostly been thrown around as a clumsy insult in an attempt stifle or shut down debate.

It's hilarious that it's being used to describe struggling entrepreneurs in one of the most ruthless markets on earth, and a lot of its coming from the Stars side, the rest comes from people like you who are rich and already got yours, with accident playing a significant role.

As a rule, open contempt for the Bourgeoisie isn't a formula for longevity. The sociologist Charles Murray calls this unseemliness, he actually measures it in his book Coming Apart. America used to be a seemly place, the rich didn't feel the need to flaunt and taunt. That's since gone by the wayside. The French Revolution wasn't carried out by some other species. Civilization's veneer is thin and the guillotine always looms.

Nice post . Always heartening to see a post from the ~5% of pros actually equipped with some self awareness and perspective

There's a significant chance he's not a pro, at least not a pro poker player. See reg date, use of term "entitlement", "we were heavily subsidized", parroting management talking points about turning rewards program into means of existence i.e. "playing for rewards, not to win", use of term "fairy tale job" etc.

I would suggest that Zoom is going to be the game that suffers the most because of this. It is commonly known that zoom games are worse than normal games because fish can fold and get a new hand quickly, the positive was that you can play way more hands and get rewards faster. With rewards gone it will tilt toward playing regular tables and bumhunting more which isn't good for games, or for Stars for that matter. Certainly something to consider for those playing Zoom as their regular game.

Ultimately I think what will happen is a new equilibrium will be reached between deposits / rake + cashouts. I think it's obvious Stars are aiming for that equilibrium where rake is as high as possible and deposits = rake + cashouts, that's what would be best for Stars, a sustainable environment where rake is as high as possible.

Good news for grinders is cashouts can't be zero or there is no longer any point in playing and if a lot of grinders stop playing then rake drops significantly as grinders make up a far higher percentage of rake compared to the customer base.

In the deposits / rake + cashouts equilibrium where deposits = rake + cashouts I wonder what the ratio of rake:cashouts is where grinders still keep playing. Maybe what ends up happening is poker goes from only 5% of people win to only 3% of people win. Obviously if nobody wins then grinders leave and Stars suffers, much like they would if a strike was actually possible.

2nl pro maybe

Surprised nobody has mentioned this line, perhaps I am the only person who has misinterpreted and that is why, but it seems to me like that line suggests tables will no longer be in $/€/£ offerings but instead in terms of amounts of StarsCoin.

You're not wrong to interpret it that way. But I think they're just inept at wording. If they switched game play to an imaginary currency, it would be an industry first afaik. Although it might present them with a whole new set of fee-charging opportunities.

No, why do people keep perpetuating this rubbish?

100% of the rake comes from depositing players. Grinders win the money off depositors, and that money gets constantly raked and re-raked until it is withdrawn by a winning player. No depositors = no rake for the site. This is why Pokerstars wants to get rid of you. You don't contribute anything to their bottom line. In fact, you impact negatively on their bottom line, because you take money out the system which could instead be raked. Get the idea out your head that you're somehow "valuable" to the site - you're not and never have been.

As for your point on 'no point in playing': yes plenty of people will still play. The beauty of poker is there is variance. It keeps people playing and believing they can win.

Regs are there to actually provide the games. Any game a fish wants to play there is always a reg ready and waiting to provide it. If there was no regs there would be no stars. Thankfully stars knows that too and I'm confident the changes will still provide an opportunity to grind and profit from poker

Your logic is terrible. Are you saying the site could exist with low volume rec players only?