Quote:
Originally Posted by Malefiicus
It's good to know amaya isn't trying to trick anyone into thinking they're the geniuses that made pokerstars the largest site in the world. It's quite obvious they're the morons that are going to tank the most profitable site in the name of profit. GG in the next 3 years, Stars won't be #1.
lol, +1, gotta increase those margins, long term thinking is for commies.
I imagine Amaya has run all the numbers and their estimates show this it be the most profitable path. Given producing pretty numbers (however potentially short term those may be) for their shareholders seems to be all that matters I guess it makes sense to try and communicate with them in bottom line terms. I'd be amazed if these changes do in fact yield more profit for the company. I don't know about other games but certainly HU I see this being the case. Without going into intangible factors like sustaining a playing environment that allows for longer term profitability and keeping their spot as far and away the most respected online room on offer and the draw this offers to players I will just mention some very tangible values that really should be considered.
For one, being the most respected poker room does offer some very tangible benefit to pokerstars (along with many intangible benefits that I won't delve into as they could just be said to be results of conjecture on my part and easily dismissed). This benefit is the amount of money people are willing to keep on pokerstars, which they of course collect interest on. Since the Amaya takeover and the direction they now seem to be pulling in (profit over anything else), I no longer feel that I can have the same level of trust in the company. Previously I felt if any issues or anything wrongly caused an issue with my account, pokerstars would make a judgement based on what is fair. I hold serious reservations that I could trust the new regime to act with similar integrity. I was more than happy to split my total money 50/50 between bank and pokerstars (often percentages even higher in ps favour). Now I honestly do not feel the security of my money is equal between pokerstars and my bank. I will keep the minimum online that I think I can get away with without having to bother depositing too frequently. Of course one person alone will have a negligible effect on the interest accumulated. If this loss of faith in the company echoes throughout your user base I imagine it will have a noticeable effect.
Secondly, I can imagine in the board room these rake increases seem like an excellent idea. You can look at how much money you made, and how much you could've made, then it is an easy choice to switch. I'm curious how much thought was given to how rake is generated in games and how these changes will effect that though. For example I like to play HU cap. I will pretty much play anyone at 2/4 and 3/6 and will sit all but a select few (that play 100s+ hypers) at 2.50/5 zoom. With this rake cap increase, there is no way I will do that now, and even if I did decide I was going to carry on, I would find it a lot harder to get action anyway (and a 4x cap increase for 25/50, you are really really killing reg action with this). Perhaps this will hurt my earnings slightly, which in theory is a good thing. It actually means there is less recycling of fish money between myself and other winning players, which allows the effective taking of more money form depositors.
Further to this point. An enormous slice of rake from HU hypers comes from reg on reg (lately it seems 300s-1ks have had so much) action. These rake increases will hurt that. Less people will try and move up. Admittedly you will get a slightly bigger slice of the money fish lose. However, this comes at a cost of losing some reg action. It seems incredibly short sighted. I could take the example of myself again with this as well. I will have a 0.3% lower roi, and that will go directly into your pockets. I can see the motivation for that. However, you potentially turn a borderline decision of whether to play 200s into a clear cut decision. I no longer play 1000s of games v 100% regs where I'm playing $xxxxx in rake. If I had that extra 0.3%, I may play 200s, using that 0.3% extra roi to play those games (along with forcing the other reg to pay another 5 fig amount in rake). So now not only are fish losing at an even faster rate, but you are cutting back feasibility of reg on reg action, meaning less of that fish money even gets recycled and returned to you as rake.
Perhaps I fail to give enough credit to Amaya and those factors were in fact considered in depth and they still concluded it was more profitable. In which case no argument is going to change their mind. I realise the only language they are interested in is one of profits and I've tried to point out why I think these are flawed wrt going for highest profitability. I hope these factors at least weighed into the decision making behind these changes.
