Why don't Lee Jones grow some thicker skin and bring back these ?

If you insist on meetings with, representatives...

-More frequent video conference meetings with more (different) player representatives are worse ROI, beecauuuuuse .... ?

Let me (try) answer that.

-Because it just doesnt have the same promotional ring like 'free excursion and cookies' as someone wrote? Because you already have more than enough feedback / input, and it would not so help your image on the forum boards, that just wouldnt look as Nice, to most of the visitors ?

i want to nominate nobody and i would like to be able to vote for this nobody in the final vote as well. i assume others would be interested in voting for nobody as well, thanks

I nominate Pokie.

Dont tap teh glass bro

I don't get the animosity here.

If you don't like PokerStars, don't play there. If you do like playing there, how is a meeting with them a bad thing? You can voice your opinion. They might not listen, but they might. And they will educate you a bit more on what they're doing.

Poker sites are not charities. They provide a service that you can choose to take part in or not. But bottom line: they are a business. It's in their best interest as a business to provide a good service, yes, but they're job is not to provide you with free money.

If you're not happy with the site, just don't play there. It's not a difficult concept. You can say why you're not happy with them, yes, but a lot of what's been said in this thread is more whining about how the site doesn't go out of their way to help them. That's not what businesses do.

You are correct, there is a lot you don't get. But nice try with the ole "if you don't like it" type post.

Some of what you don't get is the history. As someone pointed out today, if you have been around long enough then you can remember how things use to be done. Comparatively more got done in the past and it got done fast. I see a old join date but not an understanding of the past versus present. But would love for you to write a detailed post about past versus present. I'll glad match you example for example and still have gas in my tank. And how many things from last meeting are still up in air?

Another thing I doubt you get is who exactly is posting what. Anyone that can keep score of the players knows that some interesting posts and nominations have come from certain people/former attendees.

Also what you probably also don't get is that there is a "sponsored" tab. Even today with the launch of WSOP, they got put in the sponsored tab, but for some reason this thread isn't in a sponsored tab and is being modded by someone who himself has shown not to be modding this thread impartially. Also as someone has pointed out, I don't see a "noboby" choice. And I doubt anyone running this thread would have the balls to put up a poll with "nobody" as a choice.

What you don't to get, is that there is a lot of hypocrisy going on in this thread.

You missed the entire point of my thread. I really do understand the point that people might not be happy with PokerStars and how they've used or not used these meetings in the past. Is a face to face meeting really the best way to approach these issues? I don't know. It seems to me that there might be more efficient and cheaper ways to handle it, such as have been mentioned in this thread. But there's more than one way to address a problem, and having a live meeting is one way.

PokerStars is not a charity, like I said before. They're a business. So one of their primary objectives is to make money.

No, I don't know the ins and outs of how the best way to do this is. But I really don't see how meeting with people to get opinions is going against their business objective.

I do understand what your saying about the sponsored tabs. PokerStars pays Twoplustwo to be promoted on the site. But what I don't get is why this is a bad thing. And I don't understand how a mod has anything to do with this.

And you missed the points of my post aannnnnnnddddddd you are missing a major points of this whole thread. But carry on, no one in the history of the planet has ever seen a "if you don't like it" post, like the one you wrote.

I would like to volunteer as well.

Here is what I suggest as your first step. Take a moment to search the names of all past attendees and match them with the posts in this thread. This thread is only 60 some posts long. Then you will be able read the true voice of the 2+2 community with regards to the meeting format. If you take out a mod who isn't impartial and you take out the past attendees, this thread is overwhelmingly against continuing the meeting format. That is what is getting lost in the noise and what you don't get.

Or research the history of these 'meetings'.

They started when Stars swapped over to weighted contributed. Players complained Stars was doing it as little more than a money grab. Stars promised it wasn't and that they'd actually earned no money on it. They even offered to fly people out to check their numbers. People called them out on that offer and -shockingly enough- it turns out they were lying and indeed were earning quite a lot thanks solely due to the change to weighted contributed rake.

After that they promised they'd make things right and introduced their new absurdly complex rake modifications where they changed the caps, percents, when money is collected, how rake is rounded, etc and stated they'd fly people out again a few months to check their numbers again. They even claimed and promised they were developing an application to allow players to compare their rake structure to other sites. That was what, 2 years ago? In time players lost focus of what the whole point of the meetings was and Stars latched onto the opportunity like a parasite on their prey of choice - starting to then do things like claim the meetings were not about rake or communicating "prior-held positions." Effectively they've turned them into little more than focus groups - something real companies often have to pay tens of thousands to organize. Instead Stars flies people out under the guise of a 'meeting' for a fraction of the cost and the best part for them is players even take care of balanced representation by working to send a PLO player, a SNG player, a microstakes player, a highstakes player, etc.

In a normal industry this actually wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Focus groups aren't inherently a terrible thing. They're just about the company making more money, but that typically means offering a better product. The problem we have is that online poker is currently dying. After a lengthy boom online poker just hit its lowest point in 6 years:



The entire online poker industry has shown a complete inability to attract new players - far from it, they're bleeding them at a dangerously rapid pace. The point here is that if Stars wants to earn more money it's going to mean we continue playing in the same dying games, but they take even more out of them somehow. Things like their recent attempt to completely get rid of table selection would destroy earn rates, but -at least temporarily- increase Stars' bottom line. They claimed the idea came from players, and likely it did - perhaps with a bit of very subtle nudging from Stars. It's not like attending these meetings is a freeroll - you're basically brain storming with Stars ways to take more money from players as they've run out of ways to do it on their own without causing yet more of their playerbase to quit as would likely happen if they, for instance, directly and blatantly raised rake.

Perhaps you might argue that they could use the information gained from these focus groups to try to attract new players and stop the decline. But if that were their goal would they be flying out the regulars of today or would they be flying out any of the millions of players who, after playing for years, have quit playing in recent times? Or perhaps flying out representatives from emerging markets? You can note they actually did do that temporarily when it looked like they might get a foothold in New Jersey in the states, they specifically flew out a player from there. Now that that's fallen apart, it's back to figuring out new ways to milk more from regs.

Who pays for the plane tickets? If it's free (or paid by PokerStars), I'd volunteer. But I'm a newbie and a complete fish.

You should go!

@ Do it Right

Still think you should / must go. I had high hopes, that this time 2+2 would not send a rep......but i was wrong. Forgot on all those "tourists" happy to make a trip to the IoM.

As we'll end up sending reps.......the last thing i want is some "tourists" attending this meeting. So please reconsider your decision!

Honestly first time I would agree but mostly due to curiosity. So far they were able to brainwash every 2+2 rep and they came back as huge Stars fanboys. So I am curious whether they would manage to spin off Do It Right too.

There are possible explanations other than brainwashing for why "every 2+2 rep ... came back as huge Stars fanboys."

There have been plenty of elected representatives here on the Isle of Man over the past few years. These players were not chosen by us nor at random, they were selected by players on poker forums including 2+2. It has not been uncommon for elected representatives to be critical of PokerStars in the leadup to the meetings on some, if not many, issues.

If the tendency is as you say, for attitudes to change, is it possible that the ideas and information gained by players do logically change conclusions on certain topics? It seems a simpler explanation than perfectly executed brainwashing with no other external signs or symptoms.

That is a very good idea and I think PS is more or less allready doing that.
There is no other option, because all the threads here get too cluttered.
That is also why these meetings are a good idea in principle.

That is the biggest problem PokerStars has as well.

Inability to keep them, most of them play less than 1000 hands. If they lose they stop, but if they win, they continue even if they lose the rest of their lives. A small increase in the amount of these winners would lead to a huge increase in the amount of hands played.

Glad you posted that, I wanted to say clowns, but I didn't want to offend anybody.
Obviously this is a PR exercise, but we could still benefit from it.

Volunteers to date:

Czar Chasm
Dabs
OMGClayDol
VP$IP

Nomination (accepted by nominee) to date:

Shane Stewart

Nominations declined:

Do It Right
Pokie

if you dont like how mike haven is handling this thread please dont go look at what he did last time. you might actually explode
after the last meeting steve took forever to report. im finding it impossible that you can organize and take these meetings seriously but then fail to be able to share a report on them for months. somehow steve and the company took this seriously but could not produce a report for ages while their customers complained relentlessly? once again the only conclusion that makes sense to me is a lack of competence or a lack of give-a-sh*t

in an attempt to make up for this disaster steve kindly set up some time to come on 2p2 and do an ask me anything. iirc i asked about WC rake and steve basically said thats not something hes even going to even talk about. i guess i could dig up quotes but im lazy

i dont blame stars for looking out for themselves or trying to maximize profit. what bothers me is that i get a sense that they dont fully understand the consequences of their actions or lack of actions on the issues that impact the health of the games. people all have varying opinions on how the games should be run but it just seems like stars is far too focused on the short term and lacks the competence to fully understand the problems. obv if you dont understand the problems its really hard to solve them correctly

everything about the rake, rathole, and seat script situations just comes across as incompetent and sneaky. they either wont talk about it, or try to angle in "solutions" that serve some other agenda they have. theres certainly a bunch of info a company like pokerstars doesnt need to share publicly but is it really that hard to communicate honestly and somewhat openly? everything comes across a bit slippery. imo a poker site should be held to an extremely high level of integrity and everything about their communication to us the customers comes up short imo

the fact that stars has mike haven running the voting process again is a bit uncomfortable. is pokerstars really satisfied with how he handled things last time? raise your standards imo. not only were mike havens actions borderline ******ed, he failed to admit any wrong doing. nobodys perfect and there will be oversights but jfc you really cant see how poorly he handled things? i guess its possible that he has a giant ego and wouldnt publicly admit anything but i dont know why you would want someone with mike havens track record running a voting process that you supposedly take seriously

This how stars fails on antes I will never know

Because what you appear to be missing is that everything is a trade-off.

The meetings system is a trade-off against 24/7/365 full interaction with all of 2+2. It provides a deeper level of quality interaction, but it takes away the open discussion of many people being able to voice their opinions and ideas on a wide range of issues. It is also less timely, as it takes much longer for things to be resolved.

There is another trade-off as well: the meetings also cost time and money to run. This time and money could arguably be put back in to the poker ecosystem more constructively.

I'm not saying whether I agree with the 'haters'... I probably am marginally against the meetings, but either way their positions are valid, and as paying customers on Stars they have as much right as anyone else to voice their opinions and give feedback on the meetings.

I do believe in these meetings as a supplement to forum discussion but sometimes feel the reps should be more active and follow up on promises and timelines.

Pokerstars are doing something and trying to discuss stuff with their customers and actually improve some of this stuff esp when its mutual beneficial.

I hope they will do even more to stop the rampant multiaccounting in highstakes games.

Ill support and nominate Joeri and Shane Stewart if they go again or any other rep that does take up PLO issues. There is some arguments to have consistency with the selection so the reps can follow up what they discussed last time and if any changes was made.

Some issues I hope get discussed.

PLO

- PLO rake structure generally (not following the nlhe structure).
- PLO rake reductions.
- PLO Sunday 6max MTT.
- 50bb min at regular tables just like Zoom have (big support for this in last vote).
- PLO specific promotions.
- PLO specific pro activities. Like Isildur partly had with his HU challenges on Pokerstars and Daniel had in NLHE with his 50 100 6m tables.

General

- Table starter rewards.
- Anti buttoning system.
- Fix that you can seat and not start as the BB on new 6m tables.
- Ban jesus seat software.
- Less time to take a waitlisted seat in cashgames to make the list more efficient. Games would also break less often. Ill suggest 30sec.
- Phil Galfond - let make some changes blog. Reread and discuss why any/most of these changes have not been made. Its 20 months old (plenty of time to fix these thing) but I think its still valid, very thoughtfull and deserve a mention.


Cheating

- Global bans / Black book (link to my blog, mod pls delete link if its against rules).
''Make a global blackbook for poker. PokerStars-specific cheating alone could get you banned for a certain time or for life from any PokerStars, Full Tilt, EPT (definitely include live circuit for online crimes and vice versa) for the worst offenders, not only punishment where you get caught. This alone should make people much more scared of cheating if there are consequences for as many poker sites and live venues as possible. ''

Im also gonna quote part of a Rob Young blog :

''Forget the fact that some people will say 'there are cheats on xxxx poker site com' - just think of the thousands of recreational players you can attract because you are excellent at detecting collusion and cheating. I know players that have been caught colluding and cheating by poker sites - banged to rights, guilty as sin, but it is hushed up. Just blow the whistle on these opportunists and show us all the good work you are doing to protect us and our money!''

- Take cheating more serious and do something against the rampant multiaccounting like this: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...-more-1354618/

- Discuss how Pokerstars handle stories (and pr + information to players) about stories like the Jeans EPT Barca http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...ojans-1369171/ and the Tourney director stealing from EPTs.

Good post Do It Right.

I have PMed the current volunteers and nominees to write posts about themselves, intentions and aspirations, etc, asap, in the "CV" Thread at http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...-only-1372526/, in order to give those that want to vote a direction as for whom to vote, in due course.

No one else should post in that dedicated thread. Any questions directed at the volunteers/nominees may be asked in this thread.

The Meetings will proceed as announced in the OP, with two people from Twoplustwo users being included.

At this point in time, as PS is open to receiving virtually any two users, I intend to use the "one man, one vote" voting system. There will not be a "no one" option, but I will add an "abstain" option for those who want PS to know they are aware of the invitation but not selecting anyone to represent them.

Of course, PS reserves the right to make any changes they wish, for their own reasons, at any time before the intended meetings.