would be rather terrible business decision to stop services to aus, rus, china and canada if that is what UK legislation implies. 100% sure those 4 countries together would pull 2 if not 3 times the amount of players and income for pokerstars then the UK does.

UK is now the core white market and worth 8% of the global remote gambling market itself. Aus Russ China and Canada might just equal the UK market for poker but nt for casino which is Amaya.

The business decision is to go for white regulated markets OR grey/black. Which do you thin a listed firm will choose? Especialy as the white market/regulated market is the expanding market? When te hope is of US states going white one by one.

Why would P/S even apply for a license in the UK if they can't satisfy one of the stipulations, which is, they can't operate in grey markets overseas given how online poker operates here in Australia in contravention of the law and the reasonable likelihood that it will continue unabated?

Can the UK authority tick Australia of the list given that we have the law in place to ban online poker but just have yet to enforce it?

man, stars support are the best. i emailed them asking about their timelines, what plans were already in place if the licence was granted, what the implications were for australians wrt playing and our funds access should we go offline.
they got back to me very quickly as usual. i feel slightly reassured by the tone of their emails that at the very least they dont already know we're toast. this is probably about as much info as they could give, though clearly a definitive "staying" would've been better.

"Hello xxxx,

Thank you for contacting us at PokerStars and allowing us to be of assistance.

That is correct, xxxx, our UK license will go live as per 2014-11-01.

In regards to Australia, please note that as always, we closely monitor regulatory developments in all markets from which we accept custom. Please be assured that we have no current plans to exit the Australian market. We will communicate all necessary information to our players should changes take place which might affect them directly.

Regardless of any future developments your funds are safe with us and they will always be made accessible to you should you want to withdraw them.

In regards to your additional question, please note that in order for us to be able to provide you with a more complete response and therefore better assist you accordingly I have now also forwarded your email to the team responsible for handling this issue. You will receive a reply as soon as possible.

Your patience is highly appreciated. Should you have any further questions we will be more than happy to respond to these.

Kind regards,

xxxxxxx
PokerStars Support
----------------
the response from the forwarded email:

"Hello xxx,

Thank you for your email.

We always do our best to adhere to local regulations. As my colleague pointed out this is not something that we plan on changing in Australia at the moment.

Please rest assured that we will communicate to all of our players in Australia should the current situation change, as it is in our best interests to provide information to you as quickly as possible. Importantly, your funds are safe with us and they will always be made accessible to you should you want to withdraw them. Your funds will never be tied up on our site should there be any regulatory changes.

I appreciate that you are looking for a more detailed answer, however we simply can't speculate on whether any changes may occur in the future regarding any changes to Australian players.

As soon as we have more details we will share it with you. In the meantime, if there is anything else that we can help you with; please feel free to contact us accordingly.

Lastly, our UK license has been granted and whilst it goes live at the start of November as my colleague xxxxxxx stated, our actual changeover will be on November 3rd (primary reason is that it was not a great business decision to do this over a weekend).

Thank you for choosing PokerStars.


Regards,

xxxxxx
PokerStars Support Manager"

Yep, Im sure we will at least get a pop up on the day we are blocked saying real money games are not available in our area

Yep. The emails sound lovely but as far as I can gather from my quick perusal of the other thread Turkish and Iranian players didn't receive the kind of communication that Stars implies would be forthcoming.

this title needs to be changed to pokerstars in australia but for how long..

who gives a crap about poker stars theres plenty of other sites out there that will still offer australians online poker..

888, Party, Microgaming and Playtech have all applied for UK licences. The US facing sites that I would not touch with a bargepole have not.

well if its good in UK then aussies will just take the same strance.. after all we are owned by them

common man.


I'm overseas right now but im not gonna lie am kinda sweating this :S

The way Amaya been going, that is just a standard reply regardless of what they know already. In truth, I think it would also be the standard reply if the PS of old was still in charge. Dont be a bit shocked if on Nov 3rd, PS loses more countries.

Any more info on this? When they applied for licenses, status etc..

They applied several weeks ago. The UKGC start issuing licences on Monday, they will either be full licences having been fully assessed and accepted or they will be continuation licences allowing them to continue to trade in the UK for the same games they have now post 1st November while they consider the aplication in full.

The continuation licence is automatic until the full application is accepted/rejected.

Um, yeah, we don't want Lock clones, we want Stars. Stars has underperformed since the Amaya takeover but they're the industry leader for a reason.

Also, enjoy your ban for unfunny trolling.

It appears that SuitedAce is not a Lock clone. There are regularly some Omaha PL tables with blinds $10/$20 running, so there must be some kind of trust.

Thanks for sharing this.
I think there is a high chance stars will notify us early if they pull out of aus. They'd be losing a lot of customers (especially if places like Russia get ditched too).

not even 0.1% chance they would notify us before it happened

this is so wrong

What makes you think Australians would be treated any differently?

if that's aimed at me, i'm not saying that won't happen. i'm just saying it's not >99.9% likely to go down that way

Stars should be able to see that they stuffed up by not giving prior notice last time (they have people on this forum who would have seen the uproar). I think there would be an even bigger uproar if they gave no notice to players before pulling out of Australia. It's in their interest to notify the players as not doing so would discredit them further. If they make the same mistake again, I think it's a strong sign that Amaya doesn't care about their customers or is just a poorly run business (possibly both haha).

Personally, I hope that is not the case.

Its possible stars know that an announcement on withdrawing from a certain market has a bad effect on the player pools for the remaining period, so announcing they were leaving Australia a few days out might kill the player pool a few days prematurely which would be a bad business decision

I'm not playing on Sunday because of this, I doubt I'll play again until after the first week of November or we get some good word that stars is staying, I'm just not motivated

People in the non effected areas wont really be bothered, I doubt a UK player will not play on stars because they didnt tell Australians theyd stop offering services, before they stopped offering services. The majority of disgruntled people will be those in the effected areas, and they arent customers any more anyway.

Stars have recently shamelessly put a 2.5% vig on currency transfers and told the player pool to just 'deal with it', do you really think they are going to do something that could kill of players earlier than needed? they want players grinding right up until they close the doors, not not showing up on the final day

I don't know where you get i'm referring to suitedace from, i'm not, i'm referring to Lock, and the unregulated sites that would pop up if Stars and the other legit sites pulled out of the Australian market. I have funds on suitedace myself (not a lot) and have had no problems there.

I feel like i'd have heard by now from one of the Stars employees im friends with if Stars was planning to pull out of Australia in the first week of November.

If anyone wants 2-1 with my side being we can log onto Stars on Jan 1 2015 from Australia then i'm happy to take some more action (I have faith a charity is getting $100 of Richas money on Jan 1)

You spoke like all the other sites out there are Lock clones and that´s why we want Stars.