Does Daniel realise that SNE's rakeback is where they get their rake back? The money is generated by the player playing in the first place, not from other players playing stakes much lower than them.

He did one on pokerstatic years ago that was pretty good and he came across pretty well. Hopefully this has some bearing

The idea that the dream of the recreational player is to play online high stakes cash seems like a fallacy to me. Wasn't the dream to win a million dollars in a big tournament like Chris Moneymaker? The high stakes cash dream seems more like a 2p2 dream than of the masses of recreational players.

I just got the same feeling when Dani agreed and then joined this live stream that I used to get when Stone Cold Steve Austin's entrance music would sound amidst another wrestling match back in the WWF days.

haha hit the nail on the head perfectly, +1.

LOL Joey what a surprise it happened!!

Much respect to you and DN and Ansky for addressing the issues publicly and in an uncomfortable way.

gjge

Bringing in Dani and the constructive way this thing ended in showing options to the Amaya executives on how to prevent PokerStars becoming a second Ongame desaster, by approaching players feedback again like the Scheinbergs did, nearly got me believing there would be hope. But I fear it is already to late at this point just from what trickled down through the conversation of how Amaya approaches the poker business...

It was interesting to see how Daniel became much more understandable as he started talking about his dialogue with the Amaya people and how the company culture changed (broken promises etc) and that way was really open and honest on the difficulty being the face of PokerStars while fighting for players rights against people who do know nothing about the poker ecology and are only making business decision with the PR quality of a kindergarden.

The first hour of the podcast was tilting to the point I felt like tuning off, because all my fears about this being pointless propaganda seemed to come true, and I was short of just get every single cent out of my account and probably go smash something in anger of so much stupidity being propagated by the largest growthing company in online poker.

But I feel the podcast took a turn for the good when Dani hopped on and I hope that Daniel will not get repercussions for the way he opened up about the changes in the company spirit and culture and the really honest statements in regards to the new management and their way to run their operations.
I have mad respect for that what was said by him in regards to this in his position as public representative of PokerStars. Every tilting thing he said before that was pretty much put in a different context and I just hope for Dani, Daniel, Joey and all of us that someone at Amaya or at least at Stars will see this podcast and see the constructive value and love for Pokerstars we all still have and share and which is getting damaged beyond repair at the moment!

And to all those Stars pros out there, that are keeping their mouthes shut, that are silently clinging to their contracts I just say the following: Today it is the SNEs, tomorrow it is YOUR contract! Think about that and man the **** up while there is a chance for a slight chance to a better situation!

Thanks to Joey, Dani and especially to Daniel to agree to this and talking about an issue that so many shy away from talking about.

Shoutout to Vicky Coren by the way! #VickyWasRight

Is that because pros' contracts read that they can just be changed on a whim like the VIP TOC? Extremely nonsensical and OTT.

It is my opinion a lot of pros will not get their contracts extended when Amaya is looking for more business cost cuts, just like it seems to be your opinion that this is OTT. That has nothing to do with the way TOS was changed in regards to SNE, because SNE would have been discontinued anyways. Just the way they did it, was absolutely cutthroat. And while you feel that makes it a different topic in regards of the gravity of the changes, I think this is the next step that will come.

It is my opinion that it will be the next logical step on slimming the business costs for Amaya executives that do not even care for their biggest customers, so why should they care for some of the online pros from team online?
I am sure people like Jason will not be targetted, but a lot of the small guys from team online will surely be and instead of speaking up now and bring their follower base to the table and joining the player protest they keep quiet, because it is more value for them to try to keep quiet and run out their contracts with a chance of getting extended, instead of losing any chance of keeping their contract.
That is the situation. And I think it is time to call them out, when people that have raked millions of VPP are joining the strike and putting everything on the line as well. Integrity is not a popular virtue especially if you lose money standing for it and thus are only fighting once you know there is no more upsite to it for yourself.
I expect the community to fight for any PokerStars professional that joins the effort of dialogue with Amaya openly, once Amaya tries to let them go. But I also expect the community will not fight for those that remained silent.

Good podcast.

It's a shame dnegs couldnt provide any points that would make the changes more digestible wrt 'amaya has plans'.

Agree that dani provided a platform for better discussion when he came on.

Perhaps I misinterpreted your post. It reads like you mean that they're going to suddenly slash pros out of the company or just drastically reduce their pay despite having a contract. There's also nothing wrong with Amaya cutting pros as long as they're not breaching contracts, not really sure of your point there. What grievance could Stars pros possibly have if Stars just no longer wanted the lower level pros?

I miss that feeling

watching that just made it even more frustrating at how little they know about poker. Theyre supposed to be smart guys, you would think they would think to get feedback from some kind of poker players before actually giving the go ahead with implementing decisions. Especially such drastic ones. Just seems common sense and straight up bizarre that they're havent. Decisions that are affecting millions of $, you would think they would like to gather all information before doing so...


the idea of removing rb at hsnl to protect the fish is just so ******ed that i have no idea how they came to that conclusion if that is the actual truth as to why theyre implementing it. A guy who plays 2nl and been playing poker for a couple of months could probably see how dumb that logic is.

Pretty worrying.

I think they believe that certain fish will stop playing highstakes when they see they get no points and move down to midstakes. While for some fish that may be true others just want to play 1k. A guy like candela or bodamos is obv not moving down. In teh end its just a v drastic business decision to increase rake without increasing rake

You would think a multi billion dollar company and industry leader would have a better understanding of the business they are in. If they don't they should have a team of employees/consultants that know the business they're in better than anyone pretty much running the show.
Imagine a MLB team hiring a hugely successful businessman with little baseball knowledge to run a team as their GM. Think about the team they would put together with and without having scouts, coaches, training staff, an advanced metrics team, etc. I wonder which one would perform better?

Im really disappointed there wasnt a 3way dick off at conclusion

Daniel Negreanu: "Does that makes sense?"

Joey: " I don't think so, no!"

way to go papi^^

guy doesnt even know GTO.. calls it GTO optimal! GTFO

dnegs said broken promises at least 20 times i am sure.

Would like to thank Joey and Dani for podcast last night. Actually very difficult situation trying to walk the line, between losing it at somebody who for large parts of the interview appeared totally out of touch with things (hint it is a lot bigger than the broken promise to SNE) and being constructive.

The big thing I took away from it is if you think DNegs is out of touch with the situation, it is a million times worse with the higher ups at Amaya / Pokerstars. It is clear they have briefed DNegs about the cost of SN / SNE and that their main driver is to reduce the cost of this and please shareholders / stock price.

It doesn't appear they have any real concept of the likely side effects on the eco-system, or if they do they don't care. The "we are poker" slogan is absolutely and utterly redundant now.

For the players. I think the only way to even have a tiny chance of affecting any concessions / changes, is to talk the language that Amaya understand. That isn't poker anymore, it is business, profit, stock price. Going into the detailed poker specific related arguments in a way in which pros talk about poker is futile. They don't understand or don't want to know.

The angle of attack has to be all about how these changes have the potential to tank Amaya / Stars i.e these changes are bad for them, not just the leatherass grinders who are multiple SNE's. IMO, not enough focus is spent on this. Dani touches on it (and he speaks extremely well on the subject), but too often the conversion diverges to other things.

This.

Why is Daniel getting attacked here? I completely agree with nearly everything he said in the entire podcast. Amaya seem quite clueless, yes, but Daniel does not. And actually, this podcast has made me feel much better about Daniel representing the online poker community, or at least the person who's responsible for bringing these issues up with the suits. It's made me feel much worse about Amaya, but the objectivity and reason Daniel showed in this podcast should not be ignored.

I was worried about this situation (amaya not knowing what poker is about) ever since Baazov said after purchasing Stars that he does not refer to us as "players" or "gamblers", but "consumers". Most of us definitely arent gamblers, some may be consumers, but most of us are players.

That was the first time I was like, does he know what hes talking about, or is he saying it... i didnt really know the reason, but in my mind, I thought, well, they bought it for 4 billion, lets hope he has a reason why hes refering to us that way. Now Im pretty sure he had no idea what he was talking about.

Whats mindboggling to me is that they bought a huge company in an industry they dont, and, as it appears, arent even willing to understand and If this is the way its going to continue (Im not talking about these changes per se, just the overall direction) theyre not going to have the 10 years for paying the debt off. (well maybe the spins are doing good enough for them to capitalize on it for years to come, what do i know..)

Warren Buffett said that if you dont understand a business/industry its in, you shouldnt invest in it. Thats why he didnt buy microsoft shares even though Gates is his best friend.
Lets just hope Baazov et al are going to start cooperating with the players in the future for their own sake.

great podcast, and Dnegs came off really well. That being said, Stars must be very unhappy with him atm, his stance seems less and less "shilly". He also sounded very bitter about the way changes are being handled.