Companies routinely buy up any and all domain names similar to their's, including misspelled versions, to protect their brand.

The reason you couldn't register CasinoStars dot com is that you were about 16 years too late. It was first registered in 1998 and appears to have had a functioning casino there since 1999 https://web.archive.org/web/19990125...sinostars.com/ ... They have nothing to do with pokerstars

Whatever, Daniel/Amaya fanboi.

I think its a brilliant company decision for them. They get rid of the 16/10 "boring, no fish friendly" nit bots, they don't need them, fish will always find a table to play. Fish will lose at the same rate, more rake but less "pros". Good regs will win at the same rate, more rake but more fish ratio. The company will win more money. Bad for poker? it will only affect at like 3% of the player pool.

Did you confirm this independently by thinking about it?

None of us really knows how the paradigm shift will alter the online poker landscape in the mid- to long-term. But price increases on the biggest network affect 100% of the player pool to some degree, in the same way that Walmart raising the price of milk has an impact on the entire groceries industry.

Just how much Pokerstars' price increases will affect us overall is unknown. Even Amaya's accountants don't know what will happen for sure.

My guess is that player numbers on Pokerstars won't massively reduce overnight, but there will be some movement to other sites, and some/many people will give up poker completely, because it will no longer be a "profitable" use of their time.

People here made the bold claim that this would be bad for poker for various guessing reasons, so I feel I'm in my right to make that bold claim based on my guessed reasons. We obviously can't confirm what's gonna happen here.

I don't see how it is a bold claim to say the HU changes are terrible for everyone?

I'll quote myself:

I also don't get your point for 16/10 playing nits. 6m/9m rake didn't even change.
Besides, additional rake is a reason to play more nitty in general. So w/e the deal with you and those nits, expect to see more of them in the future

the low and mid stakes HU cash changes are not just bad for anyone that wants to play HU, but bad for AmayaStars as well. Starting new tables is something Amaya has a selfish incentive to do, and the low stakes $1 rake is going to kill the action. Other sites offer significant RB to overcome the high rakes at low stakes HU. Without that, the games are bound to die, they'll be unbeatable.

My apologies, I didn't knew it didn't affect 6m or 9m. So it's bad for HU players which I don't know how much % of the player pool are to say that it's bad for poker. As table starting goes, I guess fish (or players that don't play for the money) are still going to start a table with you.

As a 6m player, who has started a ton of tables, this is definitely something that would make me stop, if I was playing on PS. What most players never realize, is that the tables are started by 2 regs, almost always. Not a reg and a fish. Most of the time, 1 reg hops on a table, another reg hops on, and then they hope that the table fills with fish. For a long time it's been one of the best ways to table select if you knew how to play HU.

At stakes below 200nl I'd venture to say that HU is near unwinnable vs any decent reg over a long sample at that rate, and if you're a table starter, then you know that most of your HU hands are going to be played vs a decent reg. **** regs don't start tables, generally, and fish usually join any table that's near max.

Lastly I should add that starting tables has a very noticeable affect on the amount of tables running, and even how many fish are playing at a given stake. This is especially apparent on pokerstars.

it is bigger picture. Amaya is greedy and ******ed and are going to ruin poker stars.

so what you are saying is that there will be less games running because a game can only start if it a fish sits?

will every table be 5 people sitting out with a seat open?

The way it works is fish/regs look for open tables, and join them. Generally they look for tables with 4-5 players at a 6m game, and join pretty quickly. That, or as a reg they hop on a waitlist. Fish will just join any open seat, and generally don't care too much for the stake, however, fish as a majority, do not start tables. Regs generally start tables, and with this change it's made HU reg vs reg incredibly unprofitable. It was never that profitable, just a necessity of starting tables that was sometimes mildly detrimental. This makes starting tables much more costly, and probably not worth it.

What will happen is the fish will join tables at other stakes, and the regs will just waitlist tables. Imagine your highway going from 4 lanes to 2, that's probably the easiest way for someone to get it. It will just congest the games.

^you do not have much hope of regulars working together and starting games 3 handed?

or always using table starters and have it set to start a table once 3 people register?

im just a micro donk but are they for real?!
i mean take the 3.75 hyper satties:
the top 2 players on sharkscope have these stats:

Games played: 162447 money won: 8695.- = around 5 cents per game
117573 - 7707.- = around 6.5 cents per game

and now they are actually increasing rake by 8 cents?! It´s one thing to make games unbeatable if u are mediocre, but if the best actually can´t win pre rakeback, how is there any motivation for ANYONE to be playing poker? ppl seem to forget: even most recs dream of becoming pro at some point. not all of them but id guess a lot of them. Why was there a pokerboom through moneymaker otherwise if ppl weren´t feeling they could do it themselves? and because of this boom u ppl got rich and this is how u deal with the moneymaking machine that pokerstars has become? beyond ridiculous..

in short, hyper 6m sats aren't for grinding anymore (not that they've been the best to grind anyway). These things will only result in recreationals joining the target tournament as they don't play these for the small %EV (which doesn't exist anymore) but for the chance to get in there.

Obv no reg is gonna play em if he knews that they're more -EV than roulette so it will turn into a nice rec into mtt satellite.

Not that that's wrong, but maybe PS could implement some fast 6max sngs with top 2 places being paid 50%, just like a DON with 2 instead of 3 paid places. You could call it TRON (triple or nothing)


Boy that sounds nice.

Introducing TRON.

I don't have any experience with the table starter tables, all I know is that actions like this don't prohibit things, they impede them. Meaning it will have a negative effect on the players, with an incredibly small upside for the site itself, if that.

yeah fishes def doesn't want to start or join a table with 1 player cause they suck at HU.
Of course they suck at 6max too, but having other player sitting besides them, actually "protects" them by not having to play and pay a blind every hand.

So the fish bleeds way faster in HU, which is a thing he instantly realizes. They join 4/5 of 6max tables, sometimes 3/6, rarely 2/6 but almost never 1/6 unless they wanna try HU (for which they would go into the HU section)

yup I agree.

my assumption is the sites realize this and they are hoping that if the fish are not able to find their game of choice they will go to a game where the edges are even lower. so by making it such that less regulars start 6m nlhe games the fish that would normally play them go to low edge formats. I really hope this backfires.

what makes you think a company must provide you with a game with which you can make a living?

if you actually believe they do you are extremely self entitled.

or they drop down to NL25 where the rake hasn't changed and therefore more tables are running? (not to forget that every level down has more volume)

OMG someone i agree with my sentiments exactly thankyou.
actually they were highly grind able before what made it interesting was the fast format. typically top player would make between 1-4% post rake back but what gets interesting is you can get 200 games in an hour i heard it claimed tested it and this is def doable. tough but doable maybe more realistic to do 100 and not struggle but i guess with practice maybe.

are these games really good for the poker economy well if reg filled they are pretty damm great for stars. if fish filled more debatable because rather then losing say $74 in one hit to each other and then been done that could be exchanged several times over at other games generating much higher rake.

wanting rec friendly games these games were never the best for keeping recs flowing about. so the change to get rid of the pros and leave games only to be targeted by the recs is somewhat puzzling.

as for the idea of triple or nothing/tron well thats pretty much what these are. I would not be against the idea of this exact format for that new variant but you would need the same if not lower rake then orig because the edge is very small and high rake kills it.

on the topic if stars want to copy the other sites why not simply bring the dons back i know there was difficulty before due to collusion but if they followed the system used for spin and goes and randomly allocated people rather then waiting games to fill up might solve the problem.

but if they did would probably have an unbeatable rake so meh

No, UB & AP were two of the largest poker rooms because they stayed in the U.S. market after the UIGEA. Same with PokerStars and Full Tilt. None of them became the dominant players in the industry pre-Black Friday because they were awesome or had amazing software. They got there because they continued to accept U.S. customers. PokerStars, to some extent, was able to maintain its position because of its customer-friendly management, but really, they all got to the top because they were willing to take their chances sticking it to the U.S. government.

Side note: AP's software was not very good. UB's was good, though - I was a big fan of the horizontal mini-view and the communal S&G lobby.

well it's just the brand itself. PokerStars.
That's where the stars play. That's where the people play who play poker for a living. If those Pokerstars actually play poker as a 2nd income because they are sub-regional sales manager at Wac Arnolds and those millions are just play money implemented in the client to attract fishes then we would think otherwise...

how bad is the vip rewards gonna be in 2016?