Excellent post

Ah right, I see.
Yeah, there were several marketing messages over the years, and you happen to like that one the most.
There were several campaigns which included among others, a 'be the next Chris Moneymaker', a 'win a porsche or WSOP tickets' and a 'be a grinder' marketing campaigns.
Whichever one you like the most is fine, they are all fine dreams. The purpose of each is to keep us playing.

I suddenly realised, reading your post, this is pretty much the same discussion as here, in this thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...?#post52049324

In that thread there was a guy who prefered the 'Moneymaker' campaign, over any of the other ones.
All of these different dreams are fine of course, it's just a matter of taste.

Of course it's worse for the players now then back in 2006, circumstances changed radically.

As for rake and rakeback now you have a situation where Party players rake 24$ in a week and get 0 rakeback. There you have loads of players unaffected by a recent rakeback increase (deliberately so).

Was wondering the same, didn't play for 1 week and was still at my chest level, so it seems there's no downgrade except after 3 months.

I agree and this sense of entitlement is something God frowns upon. We should not feel any resentment for what we don't have. Instead, God commands us to be thankful with what we do have and trust in His perfect plan. 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says: "give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus". Sure the Stars changes are not beneficial from a purely monetary standpoint - I too am losing money from these changes. But I realise that money does not equate to eternal happiness, often it has the opposite effect. Do not allow money to become an idol, for "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:25)

We can speculate over whether aspects of what Amaya is doing is sinful. I can get on board with the people who suggest the may be in certain ways greedy, deceptive etc. But we should not be angry at the sinners, but the sin - for we are all sinners in a fallen world! When we curse, retaliate and get angry about the Stars changes, we are being sinful. For Jesus commanded "Do not repay evil with evil or insult with insult" (1 Peter 3:9). When we verbally attack Amaya and accuse them of acting sinfully, we are also being hypocritical, for we ourselves are sinning in the process of ridiculing them: "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" (Luke 6:41)

So in summary, accept Amaya's business choices and either adjust your strategy so you can continue to play profitably, move sites or find another job. Do not anger or curse, but instead be content with God's grace, the gifts he has provided you, and have faith that His plan is perfect. You shall then receive the invaluable gift of eternal happiness and an everlasting relationship with Him. Jesus declared "that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." (John 3:15)

Just opened my second chest - with each new chest, seem to be paying more rake and getting less back (sample size of 2)? Kind of a strange experience though, to be making them worth less and less each time ...

Chest: red
Points required: 223 (240-17 start)
Rake paid: $1.20 (3 tourneys, 3 spins, 1 satty)
Time taken to unlock: 7 days
Bounty: 8 Starscoin
Rakeback Rate: 6.7%
Points towards next chest (red): 5 of 240 (17 points already earned with no boost from tourney)
Size of boost: 15 (down from 75?)


Only played when the boost was on this time, now that was aware of how the boosts work - and got fewer starting points and a much shorter boost period as a result. Not sure how it will work to play a $1.10 tourney - does that mean only part of the 10c will get a boost?

wtf is this?

Allah akbar.

This.

But this advice need not be explained by religion - it can be explained by business sense.

Poker ecology 101:

Withdrawals = Deposits - Rake

Amaya isn't going to ever make any change that would lower the total net rake collected. If nothing is done to increase deposits, then regs will always be the losing side in the tug of war between their and Amaya's profits.

The only way to make everyone involved happy is to enhance the recreational user experience so that more deposits flow in. Such enhancement implies that regs need to learn the new games that recs like more, but it's a lesser evil for the regs than continuing to battle each other in boring archaic poker formats.

Of course you can also find another poker site that's willing to levy relatively less rake, but it may end up a rather short-term solution, as the site's bottom line will always win in the end unless it's a charity.

Very good post.

Yeah but its way harder to notice some rewards missing than cards not being random and rigger towards a losing player. The only real reason i can see behind the random part of the rewards is that some rec might get excited about the rewards and keep playing. But i wonder how long this is going to last when they will get penny`s all the time this effect is going to vanish.

I think many players believe that there is no fairness regarding the cards RNG. Despite the fact that it is not against specific players we can see the Ace magnet boards when two players have Ace rag against a third holding big pair. It is almost like pair vs overpair but in this case big pair loses most of the time. I have checked many other situations too. For the Stars lovers freaks i am not saying that i am robbed, it happens for my benefit too. But it is not RNG, we accept it and playing accordingly. Don't even bother about Stars rewards. There is no transparency at all

So Amaya is aiming to increase deposits by increasing rake and lowering rakeback and dressing it all up as so called "rewards". Yeah, that some strong logic there. People just love it when they get less for their buck. Seriously though this would only work if majority of people are incredibly stupid. What will happen is recreational players will get fed up with this so called "rewards" and just stop depositing and move to a different site like Party for example.

If there are still people out there who don't get it, Amaya is here to quickly and efficiently milk this company for all it's worth in the short run and then get the **** out before this house of cards collapses.

Yeah, good point. On the plus side though, at least they (Party) make that crystal clear on their website.

In the context of this thread (Pokerstars & Chests), I was just saying in a case where you pretty much always get rakeback, you should definately consider it. It affects any players winrate. It's not necessarily a small thing - if you got 100% rakeback, there would be no rake.

For you stealing someone's big
blind is sinful. Quit poker mate. Just don't get involved in here really. Amaya is ****ing us over and ruining our game with these bull**** games they have introduced over the last few years. Now Power-up is in the making.. Jesus would have been very angry with Amaya! Rightfully so, would have thrown them out of the temple!

Thanks for the update

That boost reduction . Yeah I think they often reduce peoples boosts (yours is a bit steep though). I thought in your case though, they might give you a red200 since you were doing 1 chest a week. Or if they were reducing it, I would have guessed it would first go boost75 -> boost 50. Hmmm, interesting.

In answer to your $1.10 tourney question: I think 10c gets 20 points (during boost).
Or you might find it more useful to think of the overall points required as: 240-boost = 225

So your first chest you needed to generate rake of $1.65. Second Chest rake required $2.25.
So you've gone from potential ~8.9%, to ~6.5%

I wanted to start a thread just discussing chest values, to make it easier for people and possibly another one for rake comparisons, I'm wondering which part of these forums is the right place?

(EDIT: hang on, I see you said rake paid was $1.20 - is the 15 boost for your next chest (third)? maybe u did get a boost of 100 this time )

Has anyone tried if a neutral deposit/cash-out has any influence on point requirements? E.g. u deposit 100$ and cash it out 3 days later.

No, these are the measures aimed to cut marketing expenses and increase the percentage of deposits that's converted to rake, because - surprise! - poker operators care about their bottom lines. However, they're also trying to attract new depositing audiences, having spent some time and money to get to know what the majority of their depositors need - MTTs that don't last for 10 hours but still allow for deepstack final table play (Escalator, aka Bubble Dash, aka Bubble Rush, initially designed in the Scheinberg times), SNGs that allow to win quite big and very fast (Jackpot SNGs aka Spin & Gos, copied from Winamax's Expresso at the end of the Scheinberg era), time tourneys / Beat The Clock, finally, Power Up that's probably Amaya's own idea (if its development started before HoldemX went public in February 2016, but anyway, Mediarex didn't bother to make HoldemX a real-money game, so Stars will be the first to the real-money market with this idea).

It's unfortunate that Amaya's shareholders have pushed it to cut rewards once again, however, it was done in a way that's quite friendly to recreationals. Among the possible options of spending the same small marketing budget:

1. The chests program as it is now;
2. Flat 5% rakeback for everyone;
3. 3% rakeback for low volume players, 10% for the few high volume ones -

chests are the lesser of the evils.

Actually, those who grind for red chests exclusively on boosts receive 14% RB, which is a bit higher than what they'd be getting as Bronze/Chromestars under the Steps program, and also, it feels more like 17-20% due to the variability of rewards and some gamification, because most recs don't bother to count pennies precisely.

* Not 14% but 12% EV if we don't count the $10M promotion.

That's if the low volume player is breakevenish; massive net depositors reportedly get a bit more:

Of course it's all pennies, but these are pennies that feel lukewarm, a bit warmer than a deterministic and similarly small amount of StarsCoins.

After beeing Sn for a couple of years, paying 400k rake and already beeing *****ed, now iam at 8,7% rb. Gg Stars....
Thats after opening 4 Chest for 12$ cash and 882 Sc

I cant see the point how this can rec feel "good" , pretty much all the fpp/sc a rec earned wehre either raked via cash (Bonus ) or via mtts/ sattys.

Time to move on

This 👍👍..the nuts 😂

In my 6 years posting on 2+2, this is the first time recall seeing people turning to scripture to cope with Amaya?



Gosh, did in fact wind up screwing up part of my reporting Wild Card Guess since it's only my second chest, and it's me with my patchy attention to detail, this may take a while to get everything more accurate

My last tournament that wound up filling my 2nd chest appears to have had $0.17 of carryover to my current chest (3rd chest) - so it looks like my rake paid on the 2nd was only $1.03, and my rakeback rate was 7.7%?

Revisions for chest 2

Rake paid: $1.03
Rakeback rate: 7.7%

Also, am not totally sure of the size of my boosts - didn't realize the boost was on, so it looks like the number didn't get written down The boost for the second chest may have actually gone down to 50 - it probably did It was still large enough to look like a German flag like his screencap of my first chest - and now here's what the boost looks like for my 3rd chest - not sure if maybe my $0.17 carryover already got a boost or not?

Chest 1 Boost

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrustySam

Chest 3 Boost

The post with your data collection sounds super helpful!! Hopefully one of the mods sees your post? Looking forward to that, and thanks again WildCard for your help - really like that tip of looking at points needed minus the boost amount ... will use that, thanks!!


EDIT: oh, just remembered something else - only needed 2 boosts to complete chest #2, and the second boost was about 1/3 the size of the first because that's all that was left of the bar?

The remaining 2/3 of that boost were carried over to the progress bar to the next chest.

Stealing a big blind is not sinful because it's part of the game. Jesus may be angry with some aspects of Amaya, and God has a right to exercise his wrath over them if and when he chooses, as a form of Godly anger. However, we don't have that right. As Jesus stated: "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” " (Romans 12:19). But we are instead called to "love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44).

The introduction of new game variants may not be to your personal liking, but they have a tendency to be very popular among many other players. So do not make judgments about Amaya as a company, and their business decisions. Even if they are acting corruptly (plain greedy), you must be willing to suffer some persecution for the Lord: "But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also" (Matthew 5:39). Don't worry about Amaya, worry about yourself!

Ahhh, the boost carries over - thanks ****

Will have to go back to the drawing board, and redo everything - am not feeling super motivated to put in much effort to make sense of a system that's so far been paying out 8c or 9c a week

Guess my rakeback rate may be less than 7.7% then, but definitely more than 6.7%? Will double check later during the WSOP stream ... it should be good, looking forward to it!!

My rewards are getting worse every chest. Got like 2 star coins and $10 cent torny money in my latest chests. Earlier chests was getting 25 star coins.