this is great news, ty Stars

Seriously, who cares? There are so many forums, let alone books that teach poker. 2+2 is not some secret haven for poker players. People still play bad.

They could allay fears by simply hiring gambler2K4 as an instructor.

Someone mentioned the difference between a poker school like this and people mentioning 2+2 in chat.
The difference to me goes something like this...
Bad player sees pokerstars school info- thinks "hmm... i can learn to play mtts in order to play more real money, cool."
Bad player sees morans chatting up their stats, sites, and berating them and thinks "this really isnt very fun, and apparently there are people who take this very seriously and I'm really not up to that. Secret Handshake [censored]."

In short, the more you mention 2+2 the more likely 1) you alienate players thru berating or intimidation 2) some will actively seek to improve and realize there are players taking it seriously and 3) others will view it as some secret handshake society of colluders.

At least the stars school will be in plain sight for anyone who wants to learn, without risking intimidating the fish off the tables.

Fish find safety in schools. LDO.

Edit: one last point. I would much rather have people think they are learning most or all of what there is to learn thru a site like Pokerstars instead of coming here and investing real time into becoming good at the game. How hard is this for people to see?

"In the near future all of the activities of our members, including the regular visit to the IntelliPoker™ website, the writing of comments and evaluations, as well as other contributions, will be recorded in a points system very similar to PokerStars' FPP-program. These credits can be traded in for PokerStars merchandise articles, buy-ins for special online and live tournaments, or even real cash into the PokerStars account."

MicroBob can become an IP-SNE.

Illegal??? You'd like lawmakers to lesgislate what it can tell players? I'm sure they'll be jumping all over this idea.

I didn't need the dictionary to tell me just how wrong you were, but I thought I'd paste this here for you:

col·lu·sion - [kuh-loo-zhuhn] –noun

1. a secret agreement, esp. for fraudulent or treacherous purposes; conspiracy: Some of his employees were acting in collusion to rob him.

2. Law. a secret understanding between two or more persons to gain something illegally, to defraud another of his or her rights, or to appear as adversaries though in agreement: collusion of husband and wife to obtain a divorce.

I must be confused. It doesn't seem that Poker Stars is doing this secretly. It must be that Poker Stars has identified the fish, and ONLY lets them have this information, then? They won't allow you to have it as well?

Wait...I thought Poker Stars was paying people to write and provide poker advice to their players. You mean that instead they have stolen all of your own original material on the subject? Bastards! Well, since it's all of your material they are using, you should be able to sue them...contact a lawyer!

Huh?

I'd like to know what site this is that doesn't provide all of their rake structure for you to view on their website.

Tuff_fish has been a CR member for how long? How is his game? No school in the world will help you if you're unwilling to learn, and most fish have the attitude that they know everything, or close to everything, and are just unlucky.

My initial reaction was that this is bad, but I quickly realized this can only be good. I think it might even be good in the battle to show poker is a game of skill.

This is definitely a valid concern at lower limits but for higher limit players who view almost everyone as a fish this is just going to bring them more fish, so its a good thing.

out of curiosity, what do people who are unhappy include in their email to stars?

Does it go something like this?

How can anyone possibly claim that PokerStars have an obligation to you to maintain ignorance amongst their customer base?

Is this not one of the most silly things posted here in the last few hours?

What languages will IntelliPoker™ offer?

German. Other languages will follow as soon as possible.

They don't have an obligation to us, but it is in THEIR best interest.

how?

Because if the fish all go from losers to break even players, they play longer and pay more rake.

WOW, A poster with ZERO IQ. Congrats...

I don't get how this is bad for PokerStars.

huh?

Poster claims that PokerStars benefit from their players being bad poker players.

I ask how this is so.

I am then accused of having zero IQ.


wtf?

You asked how it could be in PS interest to educate players. Obviously you meant something else.
I retract my congratulations. It seems we haven't found the first human being with ZERO IQ

Its good for PokerStars......obv, thats a no brainer....

I don't know how people can compare FTP e-mailing out 1 stupid article every other week to a full website with.....blog,s rankings, videos, forums, lessons from pros, etc.


I don't know how people can compare 2+2., P5s, Cardrunners, etc to this. These sites are hidden away and not going to be shown on commercials or advertised on a Pokerstars pop up every time you log in to the software.

I used to be a donk, i can prbly still be considered a donk but when i found out about poker message boards, i started to read them and learn and went from a losing(lost several hundred) to a small winning player. I can hold my own in a SNG or ring game and not just get completely abused.

How many people thought a gambling bill would effect PokerStars this much? You dont think a poker school will do any harm.....?

I dont see why anyone would be for helping the fish learn at all.....

while it is self-evident that any poker player would rather win than lose (and, to help that, would like their opponents to be less good) I cannot understand how people get so indignant about pokerstars helping players to play better.

no one has an exclusive right to play good poker.


p.s. i think i may have been unclear in my earlier posts. hopefully this is cleared up now.

I really agree with this and think people should start thinking about it. The initial reaction to being berated and humiliated may be tilt and blow off your whole stack, maybe even buy in again and drop another stack.

Long term, however, I think poor players are OK with losing their money considering it a hobby or such... But no one wants to be called a "donk", "moran", etc. everytime they draw out on you.

And #3 above is a really good point. When I have told friends that I play online (and my freinds have been playing 7-stud in home games all of their lives) and how easy, convenient, and fun it is their first reaction is "don't you worry about being cheated?"

Many people don't play online for that reason alone, fear of being at a table with 2 or 3 people that are colluding on the telephone or AIM...

It really annoys me when some jackass starts telling someone "you know you've lost x amount of dollars since 2006, or you play 62% of your starting hands!" Why the hell would your use your Pokertracker stats to tip someone off that you have "information". Most of these people probably don't even know that programs like PT even exist.

I hope PS turns on the doom switch for you with sending that stupid email. OMG get a life or learn the game if you are so afraid. All it will do is bring more fish into the game. Big plus for PS++++++++++++++++

Thank you, were now on page 2.

I'm stupid and need to get a life cause im agaisnt a poker school.....what does it mean for you to actually believe there is a doomswitch? you really believe that....'OMG GET A LIFE'

This is one of the dumbest posts I have read in a long time. I am sitting at my computer slackjawed right now.

LOL no i dont but you must if you think a online school is going to hurt your game.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here, but games ARE a lot tougher than they used to be. At any reasonable stakes online, the majority of players have some clue regarding how to play. This wasn't always the case. 5 or 6 years ago, there would be like 2-3 decent players and 7-8 drooling ******s at the highest stakes games the sites had.

The German version was opened a few months ago. They've announced educational videos and articles a few a times now, but nothing has happened yet - only a few blogs and news are published there. So it will probably take even longer until the english version is ready.

Btw, there is another German poker schools w/ a few 100k members (I think its about 400k, and almost all good German players started by this site) who also made a lot of advertisement of TV. They offer free $50 on Party and a lot of strategy/coaching etc., and when they became big a lot of their members were afraid that they would stop all the fish to deposit their own money and the games would get too tough...but despite the fact that they have so many members the games on Party are still soft as hell...