I hope Sheinbergs will eventually get bored and start new poker room to give this ****heads from Amay healthy competition

Yeah Galfond made a pretty good statement, wouldn't have expected any less from him

Everyone keeps saying this, but odds are they have some level of non compete clause in a 4b acquisition.

galfonds statement is really well written and realistic.

Galfond's concern about PokerStars' being a monopoly is the basis of opposition of PS entering the California market. I and a lot of other people had been hoping that the deal that PokerStars made with the Morongo tribe would work out and that we'd be able to play on PokerStars again. PokerStars would certainly overwhelm the market but as long as PokerStars gave better benefits to players that kind of leadership wasn't such a bad thing, at least for us.

But if PokerStars is just going to be like every other site, then everyone concerned is better off not letting PokerStars into the market and allowing competition to be the driving force. It's kind of ironic that the sale of PokerStars to Amaya was so PokerStars could get into the US market but the changes that Amaya has made might be the tipping point to keep PokerStars out of California.

To me it seems the only real asset PS has over everyone else is the volume of players.

Ladbrokes (UK Betting Chain that started doing poker too) seemed much better to me (a long while ago -I don't know now) but they simply didn't have enough players to be able to sit down any time and play the game you wanted.

you're incredibly naive if you think these rake increases will have any bearing whatsoever on if stars will be allowed in the united states. and in california of all places with higher rake than any legal games i've play in and i believe they also charge a dollar a hand for playing blackjack.

Qft. I played in a live tourney tonight in CA with 18% rake which is not the highest in the area. It was packed incidentally. And it's a dollar rake per $100 increment of betting in Ca cardroom for bj and pai gow.

Rake on blackjack? You're ****ting me? Mouths watering at Amaya imo

pretty sad really how a site just killed HU poker for maximizing their profits and are even trying to save face by trying to make it look like they actually need the money for marketing and expanding. you will be needing a lot more of that marketing money when people realize that you have managed to suck all the fun out of the game with your cold greedy fingers and stop using your services

strange how you find time to pull **** like this and haven't bothered solving the issues like seatscripting in like a years time

You're incredibly ignorant about what is going on in relation to PokerStars in California right now. But your ignorance hasn't stopped you and about 3 other posters from filling these threads with nonsense. I've been involved with legalization in California for years now. Currently it is not very likely that PokerStars will be allowed in any time soon regardless of the Amaya buy-out. It is completely irrelevant if someone walked into a B&M and payed a dollar for Blackjack.

PokerStars isn't going to be involved in brick and mortar games in California. But, of course, Truant apparently thinks that PokerStars will be allowed to operate in California because he played a tournament with an 18% rake. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Sounds like Truant just wants to let everyone know that he played a game in California.

I've written many times that the online rake for California was probably going to be on the high side because of taxes. What exactly does that have to do with the monopolizing effect that PokerStars might have if it enters the market? A PokerStars monopoly springs from the fact that PokerStars currently has a huge pre-Blackfriday database of players in California that it still keeps in touch with.

That player base is actually working strongly to keep PS out of California since it is seen as an unfair advantage. The entrance of PokerStars into the Cali market will surely stifle competition. If PokerStars doesn't have anything extra-special to offer, its entry into the market will be met with even stronger opposition. As I said, PokerStars can't come into the market with nothing more to offer than being competitive with the other online sites. The recent changes hasn't helped any to get the support it needs.

California is too stupid to get poker going anyway so who really cares if they may or may not get in? ( I hope you guys do though, I'd love to move)

Involved for many years? Impressive. And, ooh, ooh, tell him about how you have talked to many different people about numerous subjects during your prestigious news career that peaked when you worked on a few episodes of frontline!!

So why do you keep bringing it up in this thread of it is regardless of the amaya buyout and obviously the ****ing rake increase?
Nope. Makes no sense. Never said anything about that. The point was people are willing to pay high rake for poker. As for that last bizarre sentence, is taking about playing poker on this site odd enough to remark on?
uh...many, many, many times. LOL. Tilted, are we? My guess is you're stil mad that you made a fool of yourself with the claims here:
Rather than address my post to someone else, why not respond to my question about your assertion that once in 25 years means after 25 years?

You've got some real serious insecurities.

I never said that PokerStars won't be allowed in California regardless of the buyout. I said that currently the odds are against it. There's a big difference there that seems lost on you.

I didn't respond to your post because it wasn't worth responding to. If you don't know what the word "average" means, I'm not going to take my time to explain it to you.

I think some people just do not think things through or others assume they do not. Probably a mixture of both.

Pokerstars say that they can use that extra rake to promote the game and bring in more recs.

I am sure they will try to expand there player base but lets break this down say they succeed drastically and get the player base up to 500,000/million
Why would they cut rake to make the games beatable again? out of the goodness of there hearts? because they want people like me to make a salary if we work for it?

No the fact is they wont turn back unless some major competition arises and there is a barrier to entry, I am sure some of you here if you suddenly found some long lost relative died and you inherited several billion would rush to make this new gold site.

but the fact is bots are becoming more prevalent and whilst stars has some success stopping them now as it gets more prevalent almost no one will be able to compete with that. it would not be worth the outlay to get to where stars are because the industry does not have much longevity left.

my advice would be to focus on getting the last scraps left whilst you still can.

People have been saying variations of the end of the world is upon us for a lot longer than these recent changes at Pokerstars. You should have seen the whining when the bonus whoring days were coming to a very predictable end. Black Friday was interesting as well.

This industry constantly changes, and many of the recent changes have been tied to the regulation of the industry. Any time governments are involved it is not always fun, but long term if this industry can be on firmer legal ground that will be better for everyone.

There are many ways to approach this industry from a money making perspective, and that will always be part of the industry due to the nature of the game. Those who take a very, very narrow approach as you did have a much higher systemic risk attached to it, but overall the games continue and offer opportunities to those who can adapt to them.

Everyone should evaluate their place in it, and to Luke - you certainly should consider a break, but the majority of the current furor will be gone by the new year, as always happens with change.

The things is that PS just made HU rake on par with other networks,look at ipoker for example their HU rake cap is €1 and ipoker also rake micros to death with 6.6% rake.Cash games on PS still have low rake compare to others . The real trouble would come in 2016 when they're going to review their reward program and probably increase rake for cash games as well.Then we all be in real trouble.

Lol keep patting yourself on the back.
Next big article from Santa Cruz the pulitzer prize winning journalist: it snows during a blizzard and water is wet.


You're funnier than i thought if you actually think a bunch of shady politicians deciding to legalize poker in california has anything to do with pokerstars raising their rake or their monopoly.
they already clearly don't give a **** about rake and never have. hence the commerce casino bending people over at the poker tables since the 1980s and at the blackjack tables from whenever they got blackjack.

politicians don't care about poker or what's good for poker players. they care about what gets them votes, who donates real money to their cause and who they owe favors too.

you sound like a child for believing the recent increases will have any effect on whether or not stars ends up being allowed to operate in California or for believing politicians are anything more than bought and paid for shills.

While you're busy being a child living in fantasy land go write your letter to santa. christmas isn't that far away.

Other sites have much better reward programs and are much fishier. Their effective HU rake is now among the worst there is.

^ I'm playing on .it sites so I'm not aware of what networkds are fishier and have better RB, may you elaborate a little bit plz?

Lets hope a serious competitor arrises so we can leave this sinking ship.

And as I mentioned in another thread, your absurd and hate filled posts are why I don't waste much time responding to you. I haven't complained or specifically spoken about the increased rake in this thread or any other. I've only pointed out the negative consequences for PokerStars shift to becoming "competitive" with other sites. If PokerStars behaves like any other site, it will become any other site. Apparently where you live politicians don't have to worry about getting re-elected; I suggest that you move.

Much better reward programs exists only as shady under the table deals,especially on ipoker... 888 and Party reward programs are just laughable.As for under the table deals,how many players knows about them?

The point is you don't need to have both (fish and rakeback) to make it clear playing elsewhere then Stars is better for your bottom line when the regs at other sites are significantly weaker than Stars regs unless you play a game that is not offered elsewhere.

Stars Supernova only adds about 1.5bb/100 on average to your winrate, slightly more or less depending on the stakes you play.

When other sites that don't offer as good of a rakeback program or offer rakeback at all have player pools that are much softer than stars, it's not hard to see that that you can make up more than that 1.5bb/100 in having a greater winrate but with no rakeback.

There have been a lot of threads in the PG&C forum where regs on softer sites who were crushing over significant sample sizes have tried to play on Stars after Crushing the other sites but were absolutely destroyed on Stars and went back to the other sites because Stars competition really was that much tougher.

The most prevelant PG&C thread that comes to mind is Coopahs. He was a mid-high stakes crusher 400NL-2kNL on softer sites and won at 8bb/100. He Wanted to get SNE last yeat on Stars and was a -.3bb/100 loser at Stars 500 zoom for over a million hands. Here is his Stars results, I don't have his Euro results but a quick search of his threads will show them and they are very impressive.



I am only speaking for cash games, no clue what the fields are like for tournaments but it wouldn't surprise me to see that it was the same situation unless your goal was specifically SNE which is a tiny fraction of the player pool.

There really is no reason to play on Stars anymore, with all the crap they have unloaded on us since the takeover and the significant VIP changes that were hinted at coming in 2016

Very interesting point,i hadn't played on PS since 2011 and had know idea it's so reg infested now.