The RB on 888 is even worse then Stars. Ipoker still has some decent RB offers, as does microgaming. Personally I am playing on ipoker. You can check the rakeback section or PM me if you want to know specifically what is available.

The reality is the smaller skins would be way better if more people were playing on them.

It does take a couple days to get used to playing on a different site, but it's quite doable.

506. Avibin (mtt abi 25$)
507. Omnishakira (nl25-100)
508. Gadmo (nl z 200-500)
509. Riskysoldier (mtt abi 35$)
510. milac171 (nl200)
511. starwins (spin 100$)
512. p***** (nl200-400)
513. meteze (mtt abi 50$)
514. *****el (hu nl50z/hu nl100z)
515. T******* (nl50 nl100)
516. istack_U5 (sng7-30$)
517. FL**** (plo 500-5k)
518. Donger Kim nl1k-nl10k)
519. QaizAfghan (mtt abi 100$)
520. w********s (plo 200-600)
521. Dan*******o (mtts abi 100$ z nl 25)
522. r**4 (nl 400+)
523. hendrixjimmi (plo200-1k)
524. s****i (nl 50+)
525. One_Time184 (mtt abi 15$)
526. chi....ic (nl100-nl200)
527. hneves182 (mtt abi $100 hu sng 100$)
528. cgordon1988 (mtt abi 10$)
529. des********* (nl25-50)
530. BeNiNhO_GaYa (mtt abi 10$)
531. ekko1 (hu sng 100$)
532. ferdi123zzz (mtt abi 100$)
533. Lionet (mtt abi 20$)
534. T******* (spin 15$)
535. correia.tp (abi 2$)
536. Br3akoo Cash (nl5)
537. sry2good4u (plo 100-400)
538. FAustuxXP (nl50)
539. stillfan (plo50-200)
540. RussianSanta (60-100 sng$)
541. Drynbaspoker (nl60-100)
542. steakaddict (mtt abi 150$)
543. oxxxy (nl 25)
544. kolos22 (mtt)
545. Mitry**** (micro sng, mtt, spin)
546. 1pivasik1 (sng, mtt)
547. MVSRussia (z plo10-plo50)
548. xpoh1 (hu sng 30-100$)
549. Starsin_ru (nl5-10)
550. mavdef (mtt abi 5$)
551. BaBiloff (z nl10)
552. ice-pasha (z nl100)
553. Alexeyka_30 (mtt abi 10$)
554. Rz***t (mtt abi 20$)
555. IvanFlay3r (sng 3.5$)
556. MaxWarHawk (nlh, znlh 10-50 6max)
557. Norpadekali (mtt abi 15$)
558. Te***m (z50-100)
559. PIacebo (mtt abi 30$)
560. Slavnoslave (sng 1.5-3.5$)
561. Knightdabest (nl200-5k hu, 6 max)
562. 6e3_LLIaHcoB (nl10-nl25)
563. dimastik007 (sng 7-15$, mtt abi 15$)
564. Uraganchik (mtt abi 12$)
565. Easy_rank (nl5)
566. chrome535 (mtt abi 2,5$)
567. DauteKynJ|et (mtt abi 6$)
568. eb**r (nl50)
569. madmanco6 (z nl5)
570. grishabul (nl2, sng 1-1,5$)
571. Antonovec (mtt abi 25$)
572. translocated (nl 5)
573. ReallyOo (nl5-10)
574. b******** (nl50-100, sng 15-30$)
575. V@lDis_86 (spin 15-30$)
576. maxiv608 (nl50)
577. art2404 (nl50)
578. koreanpowah (fl 1-2, 5-10)
579. strori (nl z200)
580. LordAgrael (mtt abi 50$)
581. Ste*0* (nl 50-100)
582. RedCafe707 (sng 1-5$)
583. KazNord
584. Rock********** (sng 1-5$)
585. O********** (plo50)
586. grafFIN7 (nl z25)
587. rolexxx1991 (micro mtt, nl10)
588. RemmeMee (mtt abi 20$)
589. ch...m... (nl50-nl200 hu)
590. Nic***etr (mtt abi 20$, spin 5$)
591. shabalinvlad (sng 1k+$)
592. niabios sng (nl cap 400-5к)
593. sonic257 (mtt abi 5$)
594. Protchenko (mtt)
595. Demj... (z plo200)
596. TEX@S^ALL"IN
597. zarifula (nl 400+)
598. shpr0 (nl10-nl25)
599. I_unix144 (nl25-nl50)
600. ElmanOne (mtt abi 50$,spin 30$)
601. Bukinist (mtt abi 15$)
602. toprmaw (nl100-nl600 fr)
603. Dentist1 (plo 200-1000)
604. mm*****n (nl50-nl100)
605. f**c*-l**k** (nlh plo play money)
606. Ant1sport (mtt abi 5$, mt sng)
607. mrak1988 (spin)
608. Z Dmitry S (mtt abi 5$)
609. beerandbear (mtsng 3-22$)
610. Peu3aHy (nl 100)
611. Proflipper77 (mtt abi 50$)
612. Alexey Levin (nl2)
613. d0m0voi (nl100, z100)
614. CrusadeDREam (nl100)
615. normannolly (mtt abi 50$)
616. Vlad1slav S (nl5-10 fr)
617. beckhamnovos (mttsng 3.5+R; 8-15$, mtt abi 50$)
618.

To register, you'll have to provide the following:
I (PokerStars nickname) shall not play at my stakes (type of game and stakes) from the 1st to the 3rd of December.
If you don't want to disclose your full nickname, replace some symbols with "*" (e.g. "Nickn***").

Think this is absurd idea that wont work. Hypothetically lets say most of the regs do decide to leave stars and move to anothwr site why would recs then go on play said site full of regs. At the end of the day the recs will be at stars because its the biggest online poker room and thats what they want.

Add me

T*******72o NL25-NL100

Watch this ad from 2005.

http://adland.tv/commercials/poker-s...em-2005-30-usa

I think recs are drawn to sites with good players.

My two cents. I also posted this in NVG.

I believe that the changes that PokerStars is about to implement will hurt the company itself much more than the players and will clearly show the incompetence of whoever made this decision.

Basically, as I see it, the problem with the way many people, apparently including PokerStars management, look at this issue is that they only see two categories of players on the site (professionals and recreational players), when in reality there are at least three.

1) Solid pre-rakeback winners. These players will generally see their profits on the site go down a bit due to the decreased rakeback, but it will not be a huge drop, and they can compensate for it by playing more often on other sites.

2) Truly recreational players. The guys with -20bb/100 winrates. These are essential to the poker economy since they are the ones depositing the most money. However, they don’t generate a lot of rake since they lose their deposits too quickly. Most of them don’t care about rakeback and should not be affected much by the changes.

3) The rakeback pros. These are the worker bees of the poker economy, generating the majority of the rake for the site due to the volume of play they put in. Most of these players are small losers before rakeback. At any given moment there are a lot more of these guys playing than the other two categories combined (maybe excluding microstakes and the really high stakes), and most of the money provided by the deposits of recreational players initially goes to them due to their numbers. Then they slowly lose it to the winners and the rake, or cash it out eventually when they get that end-of-the-year milestone bonus.

Obviously, there are no abrupt boundaries between these three categories, and there are some players that might not be easily classified. In general, though, I believe this provides a fairly accurate picture of the current poker food chain on PokerStars.

Now, what will happen once the new rules, including the removal of SNE and the general reduction of rakeback, are put into effect? As I said above, I don’t think the first two categories of players will be severely affected by it. For the rakeback pros, however, it’s a totally different matter, since a lot of them will now become losing players post-rakeback, or such marginal winners that the grind will not be worth it for them. Thus, they will have a choice. The better ones will probably concentrate on the quality of their play instead of the volume and will join the ranks of pre-rakeback winners. The other ones will either move to other sites or quit online poker altogether.

Once this happens, there will be a much clearer separation between big winners and big losers, with fewer people in between. There will still be a lot more winners though at each given table, so it will never get to the point when there are 5-6 recreational players at the same table exchanging money with each other and generating rake for PokerStars. What will actually happen is that the amateurs will just as quickly lose their money, but now the majority of this money will go straight to the coffers of the solid winners and will be cashed out sooner or later, with minimal rake generated for the site.

I am a cash game player. I am not sure how this will work in tournaments since I don’t play them much, but I suspect that at least in Sit-N-Gos it will be similar to what I described above.

To summarize, I believe PokerStars is making a huge mistake from a business standpoint by implementing these changes. Once they see what happens, they will probably try to bring some of the incentives back. If they do it fast enough, they might even keep their position as the leading online poker site.

Great post, and I would think that the way you have described the poker landscape is pretty accurate.

The thing you have missed, and which is in Amaya's Q3 business statement, is that their business plan is to aggressively add more casino style games across all territories, and to expand into new territories as well as build player numbers in existing fledgling territories for both poker and casino games.

So I guess they feel that they can replace the losses in your model of group 3) with much bigger numbers of new players being added to group 2), and most likely the savings they are making on rakeback they will use for marketing and procurement of new players into group 2).

Of course a certain percentage of new group 2) recruits will go on to become group 3) players as their game improves.

They are a gaming company so their natural instinct is to try to make as much money as possible as quickly as possible from the most people, and they don't care by what means, whether it's through poker or through other types of gaming products. They also would appear in my opinion to not have much sentimental or other kind of attachment to the history of the game of poker or its place within (mind) sports and world culture.

I suppose they just see a lot of net winners, groups 1) and 3) so want to raise taxes on those two groups.

The question is then, could they carry out their expansion into new territories and procure a lot more players into group 2) without raising taxes on groups 1) and 3)?

The board at Amaya must think not, but they could be wrong of course.

If they can bring more recreational players to the site, it will obviously be great for everyone, but I don't see how raising the rake can help accomplish this. I don't think they will make even a short-term profit from the rake increase, especially considering the removal of SNE. If they just decreased the FPP multiplier, reduced the milestone bonuses, etc, maybe many players would still pursue these, but without SNE a lot of players (including myself) will drastically reduce their volume starting January 1, so I think their rake profits will go down right away, especially if you add a strike to it.

And at this point it seems pretty obvious that they can never make it possible for amateur players to realistically win money in standard poker variations. As long as there is a really bad player at a table, there will always be enough regulars waiting to take his money.

They also mention in their business plan that they want a "safer"/"not lose as easily to sharks" environment for newbies, giving the banning of 3rd party software as an example of them executing this policy, so presumably discouraging a lot of winning players with higher taxes is a part of the strategy of creating this "safer environment" for newbies.

I am not saying that everything that they are doing is either right or good for poker but it is worth looking at the situation from all perspectives, including from Amaya's.

in PrsHarlequin (mtt 1$-100$)
i basically do not even play Stars now anyway, but i will make sure not even to log in

Yeah, but what I am saying is that I don't think it's good for Amaya in the first place. I think they will be the main losers from all this.

For poker, actually, it might turn out to be good in the long run if other sites pick up the leadership from PokerStars and provide more competition in the market instead of essentially having a monopoly as it is right now.

Actually what's gonna happen is that the ratio of fish to regs per table is going to stay the same and all the regs will make less money because now instead of having 3 strong regs, 2 weak regs and 1 fish at the table, there will be 5 strong regs and the same fish as before. So all 5 strong regs will just make less.

Greetings!

After a little discussion some of the highstakes regulars decided to join the strike.

6max cash:

AdvancedFear
alextrev1111
antoha1998
СooL1992
Educa-P0ker
elde30cm
fish2013
FMyLife
forhayley
gordon0410
hhecklen
ICEMAN2710
IReadB00ks
jinmay
Katya_18
Lottenice
Th3_Gecko
therattest
Tochminator
waki77

6max CAP+HU CAP:

Alex Borodin
annjne
Arhangel_29R
aroustamian
A.Ryzhenkov
bankroll sux
Furkay
jonesbn
Josh_Lee981
JustNoPain
J. D. Daan
Kot_Spartac
Lesha-Bablo
niabios
Oxota
Pumpon20
QKareQ
-r3d/l!ne
rku4
Rumatu
SayNo2Racism
Shkipe
Sman9876
TCfromUB
vaterguy
YouMyRoi
Zarkon999


There is a bunch of regulars who are going to support the strike as well, but asked not to put their screen names on the list for various reasons. Some players are willing to join us, but need a bit more time to make a decision.

If you’re a member of any Skype conference, try talking to everyone there and make your own list. We’re hoping to see more MTT guys in this thread.

If you’re a lonesome cowboy, just join us. Let’s have some fun together!

in! semibravo NL50 HU

Yeah I believe this will be the case. PS also made the argument that fish are losing money faster than ever before and these changes are supposed to help that but in fact it will do the opposite. Fish will lose much faster to 5 sharks than they do to 5 rakeback pros.

It's bizarre fish lose faster when they promote the hell out of ZOOM and Spin-n-Go's.

bigacsiga, add me to the list. SSNL, MSNL cash

I, pahen503, shall not play on PS from the 1st to the 3rd of December 2015.
HU NL400-5K.

add me, name: AlexAlmighty will not play 1-3dec + try cash out; nl16z
btw: really impressed of seeing 650+ ppl join + high stakes regs, gg boyz

on the nay-sayers. Ofcourse this will have an impact.

Vamooos!

oh no, some people arent going to play for 2 days, what a disaster[/]

in

morilka nl500-nl2k

In, humans_LOL

1c/2c FLH