I'm pretty sure 'strike' is fine, considering all the connotations of the word aside from the specific thing trade unions etc. do; at least it's in line with the fairly aggressive verbiage the movement leaders have been using in other places.

But the connotation of "strike" is that there is an employer/employee relationship.

If you decide to stop eating at a restaurant because they refused to honor their coupons and raised their prices, are you striking?

Its even worse than that: They are stopping eating for a week, but then they promise to come back...

And eat even more to take back the "lost volume".

Amaya must be really scared of this "strike".

The only thing that would matter is if you all withdraw all your money and start playing at one of the competitors.

I am in the minority , but I think pokerstars changes are a step in the right direction for making the games better. I think Elminating vpp's at 5/10 and 10/20 cash games will have a negative effect on the the Cash game pool making the games at 2/4 and 3/6 tougher. But eliminating the Nitty regs who's goal is to fold there way to SNE are a virus to the game of poker. 24 tablers are no longer needed, and spending money in other ways makes sense to grow the game.

If Amaya decided to reduce the overall rake and reduce the vip benefits it would be good for poker. Just reducing the vip benefits without also reducing rake is just a money grab. Don't be fooled by the Amaya PR machine.

Again, that's one specific meaning of the word. More commonly it refers to 'striking a blow', etc. Since the aim of the 'strike' is not just to 'make a point', but to cause harm to Amaya's bottom line, the word works in context. Perhaps inadvertently.

Puor frommagio, he`s damned to live with himself.

thing is amaya doesn't want anyone to win except themselves. All they want is depositors and 0 withdrawals. therefore your statement is pointless

In. I was staked to play in the Sunday Million, but will not play on January 1-7. I withdrew most of my cash during the December boycott, and will withdraw again on January 1. I play mostly tournaments online.

The most effective protest against PokerStars is to play elsewhere, such as softer sites and live. In my case, I will play more live tournaments instead of online.

Pretty much this. Depositors and close to no withdrawals. Next thing they`re gonna bring is cash games with even higher effective rake, and hyper turbo tournaments types with even higher rake. Everyone either loses or breaks even in the end. Some ppl will obviously hit positive variance runs (simulators can predict sick things even if u are a breakeven player) and will think they are beating the games, but that wont last for long. Good plan Amaya.

Once this idea of `Bring us Depositors, but our games will have no withdrawals` is widely spread across all major media sources for longer period of time, gg online poker becomes online chess with no money in it, noone is attracted to feeding a bunch of rich hypocritical capitalists, thus resulting in a dead business. Shame.

END OF DISCUSSION

It's not a discussion. It's a registration for the protest obviously. Let's move on guys.

To clarify, step 1 is what you sign up for in this specific thread.

I am in. I support the idea of continued pressure on Stars, and gathering more support amongst poker players. I disagree with some of the specifics on the website, but overall I think it's more important to stay united for now.

The way I see it (these are my own opinions, I don't necessarily represent others with this), we have three major fighting points:

1) SNE and SN rewards were promised, and not given, and that is not right. We demand this be made right.

2) Taking away rewards specifically for HS cash is an unfair attack on a specific subset of the poker community. It seems especially unbalanced, and goes way beyond what would be a fair redistribution of rewards. There are many ways to restructure the VIP system in an effective and meaningful way, but slashing 100% of rewards for the high stakes players is a very sloppy way of doing it.

3) The online poker community has a lot to say about online poker, and we'd like the opportunity to talk about it with PokerStars. PokerStars and players have many aligned interests, we do not want to be enemies in this. I suspect that because there is so much noise to come out of the poker community, many at Stars don't think it's worth listening to us anymore. I'd like to prove them wrong about that. I don't expect Stars to hand us a living, I do expect them to be honest, fair, and open with us. I am apparently going to get a meeting soon with some executives, and I want to prove to them that the players can help move the game forward and adapt over time. I fully respect PokerStars right to run their own business, just as I expect them to respect our decisions as a community.

Full disclosure: I will be playing PCA starting on January 6th, but I will not play at all on PokerStars as is written in the OP.

The Current “Unsustainable” Poker Environment is a Myth

i am in too but wouldnt making 10M, creating a new site with lower rake be better than striking. If we get 1000-5000 pooling our money and making a new site with lower rake be more optimal?

Is the higher net percentage rake paid by low stakes players, when compared to high stakes players not the long term historical "unfair attack on a specific subset of the poker community"?

If you're arguing for equality between high stakes and low stakes in rewards, in order to avoid an "unfair attack on a specific subset of the poker community", I presume you would also advocate equality between high stakes and low stakes in terms of net rake paid, in order to avoid inequality between specific subsets of the poker community? I do not know, and am largely guessing, but I imagine even in 2017, as it stands, the net percentage rake (percentage rake paid minus percentage rewards received) will still be substantially higher in low stakes than high stakes.

Pokerstars could [again I'm guessing] give you everything you're asking for, and come up with a standard rate rake across all stakes (including making the rake cap a multiplier of the big blind). If they did that, they could give rewards to the same rate as the low stakes players, and you'll still be substantially worse off than what stars is proposing.

For example - the rake cap at 5+ player NL2 is $0.30 (15 big blinds) whilst at 5+ player NL20000 it is $5 (0.025 big blinds) - as a proportion of big blinds, the rake cap is 600 times higher at the lowest stakes than the highest stakes. (Jeeez - I really hope my maths/information is right and I'm not made to look too much of a fool!!).

I absolutely sympathise with the issue of high stakes players not getting the 2016 rewards that they earned in 2015 - that is totally wrong and unfair of pokerstars - however I have little sympathy that net rake paid is being increased for high stakes players a little towards what low stakes players pay. The bottom line is that rewards are not the significant figure - the only factor that matters is the net rake paid after rewards have been deducted from gross rake. And I suspect that High Stakes players will still have it substantially better than low stakes players.

I also take the view that a strike is futile and absolutely playing into Amaya's hands (though not any bad publicity) - Amaya and withdrawing players are competing against one another for their share of depositing players funds - the less that goes to withdrawing players, the more goes to Amaya.

I hadn't seen that thread. I try to stay out of NVG. Several days ago I wrote a post that I saved but never actually posted, as part of my effort to play more poker and post less. MeleaB's post is more thorough than my own but I was certainly thinking along the same lines. To say that the crises is a myth sounds a little paranoid but, with so many inconsistencies, I'm having a hard time believing that it isn't the case. Below is the post that I wrote:



My own opinion is that the crises that PokerStars speaks of has been somewhat fabricated. PokerStars has as many players as it ever has, is taking in more rake than it ever has, and is making more of a profit than it ever has. There is no reason in the world for PokerStars to take away the SNE's benefits regardless of PokerStars' insistence that it is an absolute necessity that they do so.

Rec players today are more skilled than the rec players of several years ago. As the skill gap between good players and bad narrows, the poker site gets more of each deposited dollar through rake.

There is a crises but I think that the real crises is that the skill gap has narrowed over the years making it hard for players to show a profit. To maintain a healthy ecosystem, I think that the real solution is to decrease the rake across the board to compensate. But a board of directors, as we know, is just going to dismiss that type of solution. So their solution is to essentially raise the rake for many players which I think is more of a money grab than a solution. It's exactly the wrong way to go.

It's more difficult for high stakes players to make a profit than it has ever been before. PS has been the beneficiary of the narrowed skill gap. And they've also been the beneficiary of the increased rake revenue from the Jackpot games; not to mention that I think that they'll soon start gearing up their advertising to entice rec poker players into their casino games with complete disregard to any effect that might have on the poker ecosystem.

PokerStars is not hurting financially. But to listen to them one would think that they're about to go belly up. They're problem is that they want even more money from the site than they have ever gotten before. The greed is coming entirely from PokerStars; but their PR machine would have us all believe that it's the regs, not them, who are greedy. PokerStars misrepresents the crises as something that is damaging them when in reality, the crises is only hurting the players.

I have no doubt that there were plenty of players who were counting on the 2016 benefits just to break even or minimalize their losses for 2015. If an earlier poster is right, and Dani Stern is in fact about 400k in the hole for 2015, then even he falls into that category. Characterizing the complaints of the SNE players as nothing more than a reflection of those players' greed is really just blaming the victims.

Dani said on Joey's podcast that he's down $400k. No speculation there.

Ansky, does it mean, that if u get sn+ bonuses till the end of 2016 and hs vpps back u would be satisfied and join negreanu stating that future playing conditions' nerfs would be great for poker ecology???

Thank god PCA isnt run by stars...
Ohhwait...

Kinda interesting that particularly you are still GRINDING their events after wat happend in Barca which pretty clearly outlines that $>everything else ALMOST ALWAYS. It also shows how difficult it will be to accomplish anything with that boycot if ONE OF THE OPINION LEADERS is incabable of making a clear cut at Stars (after everything what happend). For me that really poses the question what needs to happen to you that you finally say enough is enough...

The last few posts sum up a good issue. Pstars is willing to talk with players. But if players are satisfied with a few small changes that benefit their own interest and are willing to ignore the bigger picture then as a community we're doomed.

Why is Pstars handpicking people?
Why isn't there a vote like was done in the past?

I'm not saying that Ansky wouldn't be a good choice to serve the community but it's important to get other types of players as well.

lol, why do we still give a ****, i thought the idea was to leave stars in 2016
they made it clear they don't want us there, fine i will f off somewhere else
they are not going to change anything cos they have no business ethics
i'm all for giving amaya bad pr, cos they deserve to be bashed for these changes, but expecting them to compromise at this point is naive imo

I think its quite clear that:

A) Community should elect their own representatives for future meetings

B) People seem to miss this part/ the implications of this demand: ''a rewards review in games that have a low percentage of winners''. This is across all games and stakes. Not only highstakes.

C) We dont want presedence for removing rewards from games.

D) Its an online only boycott this time around. We want to stop them from drastically changing online poker, and want to hold them responsible for their promises and want to focus on that aspect going forward. While trying to bet back the operator-player dialoge from the past. And the relationship where the community felt PokerStars cared about us and online poker.

The online only part is on purpose, and part of the media strategy is having visible members playing and making interviews etc during PCA. I see where people are coming from, and if its the opinion of the majority to boycott live events in the future Im sure it can be done as part of future boycotts. Im not playing PCA, and Im totally fine with anyone playing there during the boycott since people signed up to boycott PokerStars online. I dont think it make any sense for Ansky specific to just boycott PCA, when others that are signing up will play it. Especially since he is very good at being a spokeperson, and he (possible ironically) does that best from a live poker table on Bahamas.

In fairness, Pokerstars pre Amaya were starting to not listen to the players too. It just never appeared this hap hazard and clueless.

Old Pokerstars were probably making some of these changes with a heavy heart. New Pokerstars does it and smugly calls you an idiot for ever thinking it wouldn't happen and for trying to make a strike against it.