cliffs:
new conversion fee
SNE lowered by 5k + incoming changes
Hyper MTT: rake increase 300%
Hyper HU: rake increase
Hyper 6m Sat: rake increase 300%
SNG regs: RB cut
PL/NL 50$: rake increase for table starters and setting a new record in highest rake per hand on an online platform (former hold by 888 with 4$)
Spin & Go: rake increase and less normal payouts to make money for the ultra 3000x

Goooood Brains

This is an obvious battle for money where Amaya realizes that a substantial number of players make a good annual income, wants their share of it and assumes not many will leave the site.

The key is whether other sites are capable of offering regs a better deal and secure a sufficient number of recs to make the play profitable.

As a general advice, I'd recommend everyone whose life is based on online poker to start thinking about a plan B as too many changes (most of them negative) have occured in the past few years.

I dont feel neccesarily sorry as they still make a hefty buck in what seems quite an easy industry (for now). But yes When i spoke to steve, gareth and other ps employees at ps live amsterdam they seemed genuine in the conversations we had about poker, pokerstars, regs relationship with pokerstars (mutually beneficial etc).

Unless that was all bull**** which i doubt they cant be too happy about everything thats going on. Why is it happening then? Quite simple, AMAYA expects money, and apperantly what the cashcow was making isnt enough. IT is a fair its a publicly traded company, just like any company they need to make money, even more so than privately traded companies, but there are many examples where maximizing this backfired, in particular in businesses with network effects, big guaranteeds, always a game to find etc etc. \

For now for me there still isnt a better alternative, but its getting closer and for many other formats/stakes im pretty sure your better off moving sites, or splitting action. I dont think this will reverse any time soon with this management.

i dont get this why, target table starters even if you want to target regs and get rid of them so you only have fish or recs. it makes no sense it is literally punishing people for getting games started.

seriously is stars now owned covertly by sheldon?

Agreed this gives every other site the opportunity to take huge market shares from pokerstars. Years of creating brand loyalty has now been tarnished.

I don't really buy the intentionally targeting regs to get rid of them theory because it would be completely trivial and more effective to restrict the maximum number of tables.

Didn't party already try that route and fail?

Apparently the shareholders like it : http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/AYA:CN

Although I play only regular SNG's and I am just aspiring reg, I've also cashed out. I don't like the way things go with P*.

On the other hand I love the way their software is customizable...

Alright, I know this post is gonna be very controversial and I wanna start off by saying that I do not like the changes at all, but here's my rationale on why I think most people are overreacting a little bit:

Look at the games that are most punished by these changes.

- Hyper HUSNGs. I played a lot of HUSNGs earlier and I really disliked where Hypers were going. Basically, I think it's a broken format. It's very easy to plateau in skill level in these games and consequently, there have been introduced other measures to ensure an income, namely Sharkystrator and the cartels. In short: The skillset required to beat this game now is less than 50% poker related imo.

- HU Cash (low limit): Same applies for this. The amount of bumhunting going on in SSNLHU is incredible. No one is willing to play another reg and people ensure their high winrates by only playing the biggest fishes, basically breaching the intended spirit of the game. In my opinion, also a broken concept.

- Spin & Gos: These things are not really grindable by any reasonable winning player anyways, even in the old format. This is a format that is designed to lure new players onto the site (which is shown by the commercial they run for these in the UK), which might then venture into other games. They don't care for the rake and they're able to win big and bleed it in other games after that.

My conclusion: The games that have been targeted by these changes are conceptually broken anyway and (profitably) played only by players exploiting the system, much like SSS has been doing before. You will see that the "skill-heavy" variants have been left unchanged (deep cashgames and MTTs basically).


I really don't like the changes for the hyper MTTs, although I don't play them but I know there are people who enjoy them. I'm fine with the rake increase in the KOs, it's very minor.

BUT I feel, action is going to be driven back to the more skill-heavy, less misused forms of poker, which I really like. A lot of posters here have to stop panicking and sit back for a second and think this through. You also need to understand that a lot of the uproar is created by these HU Hyper cartel players, bumhunters and so on, much as it has been with the SSS-players earlier on.

Again, I think there would have been much better measures in order to fix the situation but it's NOT the end of the world. In that spirit, I wanna highlight that very good post from earlier in the thread:

This does not personally effect me.
However.

Not sure if this has been mentioned, but a PROTEST can easily be implemented! Nov 3 would be too early to organise but possibly in a few weeks all that would have to happen is even $2,000 players protest and not play on a certain day and email support of their protest.

Just an idea. Even Mtt players who are not affected would do it in support of hyper grinders etc.

I'm sure poker players don't like it -- but what Amaya is doing is completely to be expected.

This is the standard play when a business has a monopoly (or even logical duopolies) like market share. Why do you think they bought out FTP and paid back players? Because they're nice guys? How do you think Microsoft, Visa/MC, Google, etc. make so much $$$$.

If you're making $250K, $100K, $50K what are you going to do ? You're going to simply leave? If you can make more elsewhere you will. They'll tax you so that you'll make less -- they'll of course have to be careful to not hit players too hard. They're competitive position is strong -- and you should fully expect them to exploit this for more profits.

/facepalm

This is mostly because the rake was already too high to make battling any decent reg a losing proposition for both players.

Yeah, this is very depressing and very bad for the game.

Pokerstars selling to Amaya, very bad for poker.

Need to change the name of 'pokerstars' to 'Amaya poker' or something. They have tarnished this brand and do not deserve to use it with this money grabbing bull****.

Now, this is a huge opportunity for competing pokersites to try and pull players away from Amaya poker. I fo rone am goign to seriosuly consider if It's worth me playing my 6 max plo games on this site anymore. They are going to lose ALOT of rake in doing this. The decision makers are absolute imbeciles if they think this was a profitable move. Whoever is now chairing the company needs to take a good look at his management staff because they have clearly traded short term gain for devestating long term losses. These (we) are poker players saying this stuff, they (we) know what they are talking about in terms of ROI and consumer behavior.

Ye all the regs move there, very nice! why would the fish care about these rake changes? they will just stay on stars.

Thing is, if ure a sng player ure ****ed and you have nowhere to go to make a living. Amaya not sure about that move... Seems very stupid

I would also like to start my post with saying that I'm not happy about any of the negative changes going on and my post may seem controversial/offensive, but:

It baffles me that so many of you think a multi-billion$ company has no idea what it is doing. They have the top experts in the world and the biggest data possible, believe me, they know what they are doing.

Also I would like to second what @AvoidMe? said, some of the changes are regarding formats that are being heavily exploited in an unsportsmanlike fashion.

Considering the thread is full of 80% whining one-liners I would assume you guys have the same attitude towards your poker career as well. You bought some softwares, learnt a bit of math and expect to make easy bucks all day everyday. gl with that. I just don't get it how most of you see everything black and white. One might think that as poker players you've developed qualities that are designed to help you in situations just like this one, poker wise and life wise.

A poker player's strongest quality should be to be able to adjust/adapt and read the situation. You guys can cry all you want, the changes are happening whether you like it or not. The best thing you can do is to evaluate the situation and do the best possible deicsion for you. For some it might be withdrawing all their money, for others it might be playing new formats, whatever.

The biggest problem I see here is where Pokerstars(Amaya) draws the line. Considering the fact they already announced that VIP system is going to take a big hit in 2016, all we can do is hope that they won't have to make more adjustments(aka bad changes for regs) in order to meet their profit goals etc.

Also please note that it's not entierly Amaya's fault, they bought the company right when all the regulations started happening and things just cant be the same as they were pre-regulations. I play on pokerstars.bg which I believe is the newest ps.xx site and I know how greedy the government wanted to be at first.


tl;dr things are happening whether you like it or not, adapt the best way possible for you and take the situation as a true poker player!

p.p. After I've finished this post I realize i sound a bit like I'm on the enemy side, believe me I want to win money from online poker for as long as possible just like you, but you guys need to step up your game imho.

Sooner or later you're gonna hate it
Go ahead and throw your life away
Driving me under, leaving me out there
Go ahead and throw your life away

They probably signed a non-compete, so that's not going to happen.
I had no idea about the ****ing withdrawal fee, I should've withdrawn a while back instead of waiting. Now I'll lose $1k to these greedy ****s

lol shills