Eric Lindgren is already planning to move to Costa Rica to take advantage of this fantastic turn of events.

lol yup. I remember playing on this back in 2003 in my high school library. seems like nothing has changed in the last 11 years.

Good point. The only way I see this being good for the games is if somehow PS manages to establish itself as a top bookmaker and actually shows up on the top searches for "sports betting online" on Google or something, and that they have multiple TV adverts for sports betting. Unfortunately, I think they will just advertise PS for Poker, and just get some of the fish money (along with some reg money) going directly into their pockets.

might help if you look at what NJ is trying to do

Sports betting is illegal in the U.S also Fantasy Sports however is legal but they are 2 totally different things in U.S law wise….

Sports Betting and Fantasy sports would be a great add on to PokerStars to bring in more fish for poker…… With Sports you only can bet on them at certain times in the day and in down time these people could play poker…… Where the problem lies is in introducing Casino games….. This will suck out the money so quick from the degens and compulsive gamblers it will hurt the poker economy…….. When people go on tilt they will try to win it back in black jack or roulette

Everybody, grab some lube and prepare your anus. GG Stars.

So they expect it to be bad for the poker economy. Oh well, guess we know what to expect then.

I know its legal in 4 stats to wager bets on sports. Are the laws set by the states, or does each state need federal approval to allow it in their state?

Yeah, if there was a decent chance this would be good for poker, they wouldn't already be admitting that there will be a negative impact.

Yep, this pretty much sums up what Party did.

Countdown to tables of card-sharing East-Europeans folding all day until a slightly +EV situation arises...

(this actually happened at Party and is why they stopped taking sidebets, etc)

Juk

I suspect they'll quickly have the a world class player-profiling department capable of insta-limiting anybody stealing what they perceive as "their" money...

Juk

They could have some sort of sport betting exchange where people put in the odds they want and they just take rake. This would allow winning sport bettors and make odds highly competitive and bring in sport bettors. Casino sucks balls though.

This is terrible for poker Players . most of fishes ll try to Play poker 1st ., n when they ll lose then go on tilt n Play all Kind of Casino games. and we all know how much addicted Slots n roulette can be . so PS in other words taking fishes away from poker tables to make more rake n Profit. terrible

Excellent news for poker players. Why all the hate? THis is going to bring in some degens of they market right and I am sure they will

I can only think about what a casino poker is like comparing to poker only card room. Not that i have always liked the action at online sites w a book, but they were small places. Some bigger sites up to party should give a better picture. But i am not seeing this is bad for poker. I expect to do as well or better at casino places. The money sometimes goes to casino, but sometimes it goes to me instead to some other site.

You mean something like Betfair, lol?

https://www.betfair.com/sport

Just to reiterate, BWIN may be slightly bigger than Pokerstars in terms of revenue while Betfair is much, much smaller, but NONE of them is anywhere near close to being as profitable as Pokerstars as a Poker only business. As a matter of fact, Betfair posted big losses in 2013 while BWIN hasn´t been truly profitable in years and lost $400m+ in 2013 (most of it being one time stuff admittedly).

This would be bad if it "only" took gambly players away from the poker tables, but it would be much, much worse if it also shifted investment/brain power budgets badly needed for the poker business. Running up losses in starting up both casino and sports betting might also increase the pressure on AMAYA to think about further rake increases.

LOSE-LOSE for everyone, imo.

Are you suggesting you raked 10s of thousands just for Stars of did you do it to benefit yourself?

OK

So what you´re saying is you hate Pokerstars for doing this, yet choose to play even more on Pokerstars next year? lol

Where from?

If they keep sportsbetting out of the poker client itself and manage to not get blacklisted in any grey markets then that's great. If the sportsbetting follows a similar model to Pinnacle, that's great. If they do it wrong, this could be disasterous.

I had cautious optimism for the Amaya merge, I have hope but overall pessimism for this change, but I hope they do it right as I enjoy sportsbetting and if they offer a low-vig winner's welcome option that'd be great

Juk

I'm sure that a lot of fish will take the bet that an ace comes on the flop when you have kings against like 1:1 odds, no problem.

We were Poker

In before name change to Amayastars...

I guess we all knew this was coming, I see why in a business sense but oh so bad for Poker as a whole.

I actually send the twitter message in pic to a friend 48 hours ago as a joke about the latest Stars update taking 45min...