Episode #390 - December 10th, 2015

Live from the Two Plus Two Studios - This week on the Pokercast: A couple of fan favourites come on the show to talk about some news in and outside of poker. First Adam opens his letter from the DMV on air and we talk about Pokercast secret santa before we get into ICYMI. Daniel Negreanu joins us to talk more about the Pokerstars changes, his recent blog and his experience dealing with the PR nightmare over the last couple of weeks. Other stories this week include some new EPT winners in Prague and RAWA hearings in the US.
Irish poker legend Padraig Parkinson then joins us from Paris, he talks about being in the city near the terrorist attacks, how he feels about Devilfish not being inducted to the poker hall of fame and of course regales us with a bunch of great poker stories. After Padraig we have a new inductee to the Internet Pokers Wall of Fame and former Party Poker room manager Mike O’Malley joins us to talk about that. After a short break we get to your voicemails, the mailbag, review some of Ross’ hands from the week, share our favourite things and there's a new password and format to the Pokercast Invitational!

Music: From Kid - Come in (2015), Exmag - Takin' It To The Max (2015)

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Invitational IDs:
$1 1406718473
PM 1406718210

Frist

2th

3th

4rd

hey there

Real 3rd.

TChan is correct. It's AFC Bournemouth, so technically they come before Arsenal FC alphabetically. This has the bonus of them always being top of the table at the beginning of the season.

It's a quiz chestnut.

Fifth

Sent from my Nexus 10 using 2+2 Forums

Top 6!

Whatever rank.

Whatever rank+1.

Haha letter opening was gold (only just listening)

Jeez, the only player coming out of this feeling worse than SNEs is this poor fish Mo-shay that DNegs keeps mentioning

DN describes Spin and Goes as being good for the poker ecosystem solely because recs want to play them!

Hilarious

Key Largo

Real 12th-1

Invitational IDs:
$1 1406718473
PM 1406718210

Anything that gets players on the site that wouldn't play otherwise IS good for the economy. A new player who deposits $50 and plays a few is far more likely to play other games than someone who doesn't deposit.
Sure, the act of playing a Spin and Go may only benefit PS, but that's a very narrow minded, short term view.

Think of it as a loss leader for your future vulture culture.

Sure, it's not the Spin and Go itself that is the problem, it is the rake on that game.

If you get 1 million new signups per year due to an awesome new game, they each have $20 and play in this $20 game that is raked at 100% and instantly lose all their money. This is clearly not good for the poker economy, nor is it a healthy ecosystem.

Funnelling new signups into a game with high rake is not going to allow Pokerstars to retain these players, their deposits will vanish very quickly. Winrates are low in those games so ultimately the money goes to Pokerstars.

A healthy poker ecosystem has money being made by Pokerstars, but allows for winning players and is close to self-sustaining. Money is spent on player acquisitions and existing recs are incentivized to redeposit and play more.

Ya, I agree with this.

Yes, in the short term some casuals will move from normal SNG's to spins, but the future of those SNG's will be made up of people who found them after joining to play spins imo.

To provide some numbers:

There was an 18% increase in sign ups this year, but they are losing their deposits over 40% faster.

Right, but that is over the whole site.

Spins, for example, are very high variance so it makes sense that if a new player signs up and deposits to play them he's going to lose the money faster.

You can't make the connection that high variance = lose the money faster.

For example: a $1 game entry for 100 players, with $1000 added to the prizepool by Pokerstars but only pays out for 1st place is "very high variance" but the rec would not lose the money faster in this format. In the long run recs would win money in this format. Sure you could look at 1 unlucky reg individually and say he loses money faster if he is on a bad run, but as a group they would not.

Therefore you can see that the reason the players as a group lose their money faster is because of the high rake, not the high variance.

Right, excellent point. Missed that.