You telling me without SNE, there won't be any games running? There always will be games running on stars if stars is allowed in that country. The only difference is recreational players wont have all these multitabling regs on the tables. You think they care if theres 40 tables of 100nl or 10 tables of 100nl to choose from if they only playing 1-2 tables? Recreational players dont care how many sngs are going at their stakes because they only play a few max at once. Many play 1 only.



16+ multi-tabling SNEs are way weaker than basically weaker players who might have only 1-4 tables open


You have got to be kidding me. That doesn't even make any sense. Any multitabling SNE with that many tables open will be better than a weaker player with 1-4 table open WITHOUT A HUD. With a hud, a weaker player won't even stand a chance playing 1 table.

Sounds like a prob bet.

Amen.

here is how I see things, as a semi-recreational player:
games are declining and Amaya needs to pay its debts. It is more likely that we are going to witness more "negative" changes than positive ones, although IMO it is true that much of the games have become appalling because of all these nits and regs.
However, my hope is that they ban HUDs at some point, if they really want to get rid of some reg parasites and attract new recs. These things are surely killing the game slowly.
After all, any good player should be able to play profitable without it, especially with available notes and color tags for other players.
And surely, short term this might cost Amaya some player base, but long term they must calculate with better holdings, if all other important things stay at the same quality level or better.
They know what they are doing, and everyone is free to judge for themselves if they like it or not, but one fact must be accepted and that is that too much regs/nits/huds are killing the game for everyone in long-term.

the complaint would be that Stars are adding a surcharge to UK (and some other) players on the false premise that this surcharge is to cover the regulation / extra tax expenses. Specifically, the rake on rebuys. This is at the very best disingenuous, and could well be considered a false representation and/or an abuse of a dominant market position.

Yes, iirc Steve said on pokercast that they spent a decent chunk of time working out a way of making rake fair for everyone in all games except satties? So they scrapped it for that reason?

Obv if they actually cared they could just state that it's impossible to rake players differently by country in satties due to the unique nature of the prize pool.

Goodbye pokerstars, thanks for all the fish.

I want to start by saying that I'm obviously not in favor of these changes happening.... I would like to play as close to rake free as possible after all.

That being said....

I think the point that everyone here is missing is that stars is a company. This company has a job. That job is to make as much money as possible. It has been and always will be this way. Just because things have worked out in such a way that has allowed you to have a job that is to play online poker every day for the last 10 years doesn't mean that stars owes you that or needs to create an environment in which that is still feasible.

People around here are reacting like stars is their employer and they're expenses are being raised in such a way that it's stopping them from making money when they go to work... The fact is that stars is under no obligation to offer games which are easily beatable, or even beatable at all for that matter. They are simply in the business of entertaining. This is no different than any casino in the world. I can't speak to whether or not increasing or decreasing the number of regs is good or bad for their business. I trust that they didn't just show up one morning and say "hey guys, let's increase the rake!" This was clearly a decision which was looked over with a fine-toothed comb on multiple occasions.

There is a shocking sense of entitlement among poker players. The fact is that we should consider ourselves lucky for having been able to do this for any amount of time at all. The plan in all our lives should remain the same as it has always been. Play online poker for as long as that remains the best use of our time (where that's measured as a function of monetary gain, happiness and free time among other things) before moving on to the next stage of our lives.

If this means that the next stage of our lives comes 3 months sooner now than it would have before then that's unfortunate but at the end of the day stars doesn't owe us those 3 months back of some sort of advanced warning etc.

First post, hope I get som credit

Unfortunately Amaya as the owner of pokerstars can do whatever the **** they want. If they want us all to play HUPLO with 10 cards and one bb or just offer Tetris instead of poker tomorrow they can do this.

The changes they have implemented show that they dont care about the game of Poker, they acquired the player pool and now they are figuring out the best way to make as much money as possible from it. Being poker or something else.

I agree with people saying that Pokerstars dont owe players anything. However even if they hate all regs and just want fishes playing and depositing, the changes they are making and the ways they are communicated are horrible and someone could even argue unethical.
These are changes that affect the players that play the most and probably have played the longest, Amaya clearly show that they dont care about their costumers. Even if regs arent their desired players and they dont make money from them They are still part of what made/makes Pokerstars the biggest online gaming site in the world and should as costumers be treated with some sort of respect.

As a company to implement changes that have affects on peoples livelyhood, should be communicated with proper notification and with some sort of care. Its not like they are raising the prizes on chewing gum with 10 cent.

The way it is now just shows that Amaya dont care about its costumers and the game, they just care about money. If its poker or maybe Tetris we are playing in the future doesnt matter for them.

Its just bad that all the other sites are as bad as they are and that there is no alternative, because then the choice would be easy.

the problem is people will not listen I stars stance is you cannot find anyone who offers better prices you cant get the same volume or services as we offer so we can do what we like and if you dont like well tough you have no realistic alternatives so you just have to accept it.

thats literally there attitude I went out and researched and found that actually you can get better prices/pay less rake then what pokerstars is offering so if people knew about this stars would be at risk right now.

but unfortunately people will not listen to me or spread the word its frustrating as hell.

I have even offered to share my spreadsheet with others and am even willing to work out fees for peoples specific chosen games to prove the point that pokerstars does not offer the best value but no one wants to know so what can i can do.

but it's not completely true, yes breakeven reg will earn 29% less for SNE but now for much less time he can reach SNE, so before 1 year= 125,000 and now playing 25% more time in same year he can reach SNE twice and earn 250,000, yes he will have much less .$ per sng but he will earn much more

and who cares for HU players lol , for years they take most money from fishes, tournamet ,sng and cash 6 -9max players put much bigger volumen , help to grow pstars community and pay a lot rake, on other side hu players wait only for fishes on xx tables whit no action, take fishes all money, fishes lost for sure the biggest money on hu tables and the fastest, and regs pay the at least rake, so f... them :P

if your talking about the satalite hypers i already did the maths and showed most of the current regs would now be flat out losing now.

further anything but SNE is not really realistic under the new structure to make a profit since youd need to match the win rate of the most successful player ever in these games anything less and you lose.

its not practical to lose large sums moving towards SNE to hope to be able to beat it once you hit that status this game is effectively killed.

I'm not sure about the last sentence but otherwise I agree with this post. Multi tabling, HUD using, silent regs have already done far more damage to the game than these changes by Stars.

You mean fish is not happy playing vs 5 regs at the table and he is loosing and will stop depositing.

Now is it not the same with roulette?

Fish is crushed and has no way to win in long term. Lets say he bets allin on red and he looses.

Anohter thing which came to my mind - will fish be depositing if they will not loose fast enough? They just keep playing until they loose and only after that they deposit I think.

for many its not a huge luck when during 5 years or more you only made bit over 1000 eur but more a waste of time with hoping to make more (I am talking about me)

and who cares about 6max grinders, for years they take money from fish, sit 5 regs and wait for 6th fish on xx tables with no action, take fishes all money, fish lost quite a bit of money on 6max tables, so **** them too :P


I mean 6max is just similar to HU, only the speed of fish loosing maybe is lower, but really is it when fish plays against 5 regs? After flop most pots are HU reg vs fish anyway.

Err, no. If they would they would extort people, kidnap celebrities and rob old people.

Their job is to run a business that doesn't go broke by alienating all their customers. It's like mc donalds would switch to meat-free burgers all of a sudden.

Probably a redundant question but have they specifically mentioned that full tilt will also be facing the same changes?

I'm presuming everyone having a s... fit about this has, or is in the process, of withdrawing their bank roll from stars? That is the only way they will take notice - mass withdrawal.

If you haven't/aren't in the process of withdrawing, there must be a reason. If that reason is they are still the best bet out there, then I'm not too sure we can moan too much about it can we?

will the rake increase affect the MTT's? in what way????

The UK definition of a monopoly that can be acted against or investigated is 25% of the market minimum, this is a pretty standard international level. Now I would have to do a bit of digging but I would be surprised if Amaya had less than 70% of the UK online poker market.

Come Dec 1st every poker site will have to supply HMRC with details of their UK poker play in order to get the very valuable VIP/Rakeback exemption - their Gross Gambling Yield from Poker in the UK will be absolutely transparent to the UK government. They even need to split out tournament and cash play as the rakeback approach differs as the rake in cash games varies and is split between players who pay UK tax and thoe that don't. The tournament charge is more simply allocated to a player.

They will also have reporting requirement to the regulator from today.

I would limit the argument to the rebuy/add on charge issue not their entire pricing strategy -too much work and they are broadly comparable to other sites anyway on other products. I would argue that it is a market abuse in the area (MTT) most vulnerable to monopoly abuse due to liquidity issues.

The contrast to not charging other EU and international players for the exact same product whilst abusing the UK market raises some very serious issues re the EU single market that they would care about, it introduces a risk of tax evasion/avoidance that they would care about and is an abuse of the UK consumer that they should care about.

The Stars line of blaming the UK government is unlikely to play well with the UK government :-) I would exlain how the VIP programme chages passed on half the corporate tax bill to the consumer anyway before adding the outrageous rebuy for UK players charge.

I would make the case that the monopoly is punishing players in EU countries that regulate and tax such as the UK and Belgium - over and above the tax impact.

The case is a simple monopoly abuse, made most obvious in the MTT rebuy market. The linkage to a recent significant regulatory change and act of parliament raises its priority for government. I would make this clear to them.

I would then contrast the Canadian listed Amaya poker revenues and margins to the London listed BWIN.PARTY poker results arguing that the UK listed firm is the victim of monopoly abuse founded on a history of serving the US market when Party had to pull out. Similarly for Ladbrokes, William Hill - UK firms being abused by a monopoly competitor.

Now the UK goverment is not supposed to care more about UK listed firms but in reality its hard to avoid some bias/sympathy.

I would then start lobbying my MP and the responsible minister(who have heard form me on gambling before) and also my MEPs who by a stange coincidence represent not just me but Gibraltar residents so they have online gambling as a significant employer in their constituency.

Now I think that IF Stars do this I have a pretty strong case to put. Whether I have the time to work it all up is another matter and I would need to wait until Jan 1st when the changes are clearer and have actually kicked in to complete the market abuse complaint but as a minimum if I did it the government would have to consider it and respond as to why they were or were not investigating Amaya and what actions if any they had taken or asked others to take.

You are not informed properly. Under UK law (which I assume they accountable to due to the recent licience). Any business that holds anymore than 25% market share is considered a monopoly (It might be 30% but can't recall offhand).

The reason for this is that at this level you have such significant market power to essentially abuse the market.

Cutting off affilaites for example as was done recently is a example of this. Its a abuse of your supplier akin to Tesco in the UK presenting all their suppliers with new hard terms or cutting them off if they did not accept.

Also actually with regards to raked rebuys poster richas in the reaction thread (he was involved in the UK legislation process) has said there is actually a good case for the raking of rebuys under the false guise of UK tax (which does not effect rebuys in reality) to be considered a abuse of monopoly powers. Therefore essentially an illegal operation.

Its also not inline with competition either.

With regards to increasing prices well they might be inline with other sites but for all intensive purposes this is not true.

Really no other site spreads certain games in the volume that stars does. HU hypers, 180 mans, cap games etc.

Also the other sites actually have a better rakeback program so whilst rake is somewhat inline on the surface in reality it is not on games they do spread such 6 max NLH and PLO etc and rake has been driven very high especially for starting tables.

Furthermore VIP benefits will be cut slightly in 2015 and severely in 2016 again increasing the differential. Players basically have little choice to play these games on stars as stated before many sites don't have the player pool to sustain them.

Also bear in mind the reason many of these games even have a player pool to start with is because regs played the games enough to give those games liquidity. One of the big reasons for stars to build its base so well is the rec/semi rec could log on and play a wide variety of games pretty much instantly.

Ok did not see richas post but what he said.

haha, excellent

Trouble is that the player experience is poorer vs the human (multi table reg). Even worse the outcome for the player is worse. Real data from B2 fixed odds betting terminals in the UK covering 80% of all play, that is play of about £800m lost to the house and about 80% roulette but some BJ and 3CP had sessions too had outcomes of:

5.9% Loss of £100 or more
5.2% WIN of £100 or more

67% of sessions player loses
33% of seessions breakeven or player wins
http://www.gamblingcommission.gov.uk...20analysis.pdf

Now to me those REAL figures for house edge games compare pretty well to what even a half decent fish would experience playing online poker today.

The hate in this thread from some posters for HU players is getting a little out of hand. It's the only game you can't be colluded against, so it's important players have this option. Don't know about anyone else, but I've been colluded against and it sucks.