Live from the Two Plus Two Studios, January 3rd 2012 - PokerStars Ring Game Changes & Jason Mercier The feature guest this week on the Two Plus Two PokerCast is tournament wizard & Team PokerStars pro Jason Mercier. Jason joins Mike and Adam from his home in Florida to talk about his fourth consecutive year with over one million dollars in tournament earnings, his plans for the upcoming PCA and even trys his luck at some Miami Heat trivia. The guys also discuss the controversial change to the way rake is calculate in PokerStars ring games effecting the VIP program and how Frequent Player Ponts are distributed. In forum static Mike and Adam talk some Phil Ivey gossip, crown the winner of "Ms. OOT" and of course give away the password for the January 8th Poker Stars VIP Club Invitational for PokerCast listeners.


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good!

S/B tries.

calculated

Points

PokerStars

http://pokercast.s3.amazonaws.com/twoplustwo_204.mp3

2st!

Turd =)

DL: http://pokercast.s3.amazonaws.com/twoplustwo_204.mp3

farth..............urgh

9TH

sexth

some number that doesn't matter at all-th

ocho-th

Great episode guys. I`m glad you didn`t hold back the tough questions I respect that. You were unbiased and covered the topic very well, thank you. I`m a Supernova from PEI so I`ve taken a 24% hit to my bottom line. I was planning a SNE run but it`s up in the air right now. I hope Stars and the players come to a mutual agreement which softens the blow.

Happy New years guys and go Canucks go!

+ 1, I was abit aprehensive before this but you guys did a great job. I take back my recent criticism of the show being biased.


however

Steve D was suprisingly bad. I found him at some points to be rather bitchy and unprofessional. Sad really because normally he is great. guess the stress of the situation is getting to him.
wonder how he would react if he was told he would have to work 20%+ more to acheive the same salary from his job

can your file Be any bigger?

>100Mb

TWSS

Brilliant show guys and nicely balanced discussion. Disagree on the criticism of Steve D too. He came out off the bat and said there was a net benefit to Stars' bottom line and respectfully pointed out that PokerStars is a for profit business in a competitive industry.

Personally, I think this does come down to the question Adam raised re the issue of whether mass multi-tabling regs are the clients or customers.

Imo, like it or not the mass multitabling regs amongst us are just paying customers (whom PokerStars have no obligation to please) for two reasons:

1) They would not still be at PokerStars if PokerStars did not have such an exceptional business model with reinvestment to bring in new players. PokerStars have brought in more recreational players than any other site. The mass multi-tabling pro's amongst us have only survived because PokerStars has done this and provided a platform for mass multi-tablers to exploit these players (the software to mass multi table comfortably with tracking software).

2) For better or for worse Online Poker is currently a free market (in countries where it's legal ofc). All players at all sites can talk with their feet at any time and every poker site has to consider this with every business decision they make. PokerStars have benefited from other sites getting this wrong. If there is a better option for the mass multi-tablers they will now take it and Stars will lose out. If not, they won't. Either way PokerStars are under no obligation to please a specific type of player within the player pool: tight mass multi tablers specifically.

Aside from PokerStars, who gains from the change?

Steve D answered it directly.
A: ALL players who play looser than the median loose player at the tables

Obviously, skillful players at the top of the pile like Nanonoko who make considerable money from mass multitablers probably aren't too unhappy about the changes (in the short run anyway).

Question to those of us who aren't poker freaks but do play looser over say 6 tables (and who are working hard to be better poker players):

How do you feel about the changes?

FWIW, Steve has probably slept about 10 hours since the announced the changes in late December.