it's as if they're relieved now that they've got their licence they can stop pretending to give a **** about their player base.

Never thought I'd give in and say it but.. online poker really is dying.

Even though in that post you quoted, David Baazov said, "Let me be clear in saying that our most important relationship will be with you, the players...", that was the last time he logged on to 2+2.

Wow, this sucks pretty hard. I don't play on PS but it just seems to me that PS's decision will result in a massive reg flow into non-PS sites.

I'm back in the good ol' us of a (lol) so the only funds I would be able to wager would be paypal funds. If that works for you then I would be down for a meager wager.

lol this. So true.

Terrible changes for the players :/

There should be a labor union for regs. The more the better. Then you can organize strikes to show them that players are not cows to milk, but actual people with the power to reduce their rake income. This is just a metaphor for the general situation, big companies can do whatever they want while people can mostly do nothing about it.
Who can take care of this? Make skype groups and orgainze something, show them whats actually possible in decreasing their rake in one day !

Rake comparison between pokerstars, full tilt and other sites pls?

how it looks like couple of last weeks

Amaya/ pokerstars is just the biggest joke ever. The most funny part is, that they will decrease their **** income massively and they just **** dont realize haha. They just make it impossible to regfight anymore with those rakechanges.

Congratulations Amaya. You finally achieved bringing the image of Pokerstars to the level of all your competitors!

One of my first posts on 2+2, and it is just to state that I am very unhappy with the developments since Amaya took over. There's a good chance it will affect the amount of time I spend on pokerstars next year. Any regular player must get the impression that he/she is not welcome at Pokerstars anymore. I don't see how this could be any good longterm for Pokerstars and Amaya. I only made about 30-35 VPP over the last years, but that's still a lot of money and there's many players like me.

Stars will be around just like the other sites, there'll only be no difference in size or policies compared to other networks in the future. Maybe this really is the and of an era then.

Unbelievable. Amaya is doing the exact same thing which sank countless of smaller sites: choosing short term greed over long term stability.

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

- Albert Einstein

Other sites will really be able to capitalize on this. Hope some of them go for it.

It really is pretty much this. It would be like Walmart raising its prices to be inline with other stores.

$50, $100? Up to you. Even odds i assume. Maybe we have to settle over skrill or something else

W-o-W, just how ******ed that is increase rake+reduce rakeback=Soon you all will end up with no jobs, Amaya. You just made too easy for your opponents

on a non-rage serious note but more concern, i do think it would be a good idea for everybody to withdraw the majority of their non-essential money off stars to skrill. They likely could implement some form of increased fees for withdraws potentially.

gg stars.

It kinda feels like Amaya took over with the expectation of being able to move into CA/NJ instantly.

This then hasn't happened/they've been told it can never happen.

And now they're panicking and thinking they gotta get as much as they can out of stars before gtfo and selling

(Pure speculation obv)

Poker is already in the most miserable state it has been in years and now the biggest, most succesful site will push online poker to the brink..
This year I am playing NLHE HU at 5bb100 and I already pay as much in rake as I am winning. With this decision stars is taking away the last crums and I would be a break even player. Seeing as I am prob still at the top 5% of winners in the pool, the picture wouldn't be different for a lot of worse regs. Interested to see the traffic decline from november on.

I was also thinking this. Already cashed out some yesterday after I heard about the currency conversion fees. What stops them from implementing more money grabbing schemes.

Now that Amaya has driven pokerstars down to the level of their competitors, such things must be expected. Just implementing a 3% withdraw fee like partypoker.