As I have already posted, the management here is staying the same, including our executive management team and operations management team. We are losing our founders, but we have the same values. There are absolutely no plans to introduce anything like essence.

Note that essence was introduced in 2010 and Amaya purchased Ongame in 2012, well afterward. It was not a result of the Amaya purchase. You may also be comforted to note that Ongame as a network has far different challenges relating to poker economy than we do as a stand alone site. They must deal with managing competition amongst skins for players, and with allocating revenue amongst skins that provide the players playing at each table, which can cause quite significant problems comparing the value to the business of different player types. We have no such issues at PokerStars.

Was hoping for a reduction in the rake for zoom, oh well.

You were expected to disclose something revolutionary and more recurrent to the reps; instead, you gave them a peek into a promotion that would start merely ~3 weeks after the meeting and was announced before the trip reports were posted - how can such a peek be useful if the community has no chance to hear from the reps about a discussed event before it happens?

If I'm not mistaken, the only promotional elements introduced since May that are somewhat original to Pokerstars players (not reincarnations of January daily challenges and Winter Olympics avatars) are phase tournaments (which are of course copied from multiday live tournaments) and sportsbetting all-in shootouts (that happen only if a certain sports result happens).

However, analogous World Cup betting freerolls were announced by William Hill in April as a component of the World Cup Frenzy promotion under the name of 'betout tournaments' (the difference being that they're normal, not all-in, freerolls), while all-in MTTs (where everyone pays the same buy-in and has the same starting stack) and even a few promotional all-in freerolls (Stan James Affiliate Carnage Lucky Lotteries in August-September 2012, where players started with various chip counts, slightly bigger for players with bigger monthly rake) existed at least on the Microgaming network long before they appeared at Pokerstars.

Your promotions are certainly great, but you can't call them unprecedented. They're just the reshuffled old trick bag of the poker industry, normal and working well, but not as sensational as you'd like it to be perceived.

NDA

regarding Scripts: You say u want the focus on playing poker rather then on lobby-games, but actually if u dont use a script or a bad one nowadays you dont get any chance on playing poker on any good tables! I start tables at Midstakes/lowish Highstakes as well and can name u players which are there within microseconds if someone joins an empty table and if its a fish its filled up within 5seconds. How can this situation be fair or better for the majority of the playerpool? Recs will always play the same players(the ones with the best script) and get raped right away, just to see that the table breaks within seconds after they are bust! if they see this over and over they´ll feel hunted and probably not comfortable anymore(who likes to get it rubbed in the face that he sucks) after a while and just look for other options/games/clients...

Exactly. This meeting circus has run it's course. End this crap now.

I hope the new owners of PS are reading this thread and seeing/understanding that bad press like this thread show that a scam meeting is a bad idea. End these meetings now.

wrt the legitimacy of the meetings, could those opposing them explain to me why we are better off without them?

Since Stars can't share their confidential data with everyone, they should share it with noone? No player input for upcoming changes they can't discuss publicly? No face-to-face discussion on security? No way to compare different different games based on data?

All the issues can still be debated here, publicly. A public debate/poll was the starting point of the seating script discussion and PLO MTTs, for example. The reps, myself included, haven't relinquished their right to debate, I'd like to think I've been pretty active after I came back. I don't understand why people are disappointed that I can't share confidential information, when that was known all along. You now know what topics were discussed, some of the changes resulting from those discussions, and how I felt about them. Steve has also addressed Stars position on them. Use that information to debate the issues further and provide feedback from the community.

FYP

sorry buddy nothing personal, but you are just the next idiot who signed the NDA for no apparent reason and to no effect. and now you are in trouble because there is nothing of value you can report.

grow some balls and disclose all you got shown at the brand-formerly-known-as-stars hq so we can at least all have a good laugh in here.

If anyone has the time, energy and interest, they should contact the new owner and show them how much of a fail this thread and meeting format is. Then kindly suggest that the new owners end the meeting format and get some people in every sub-forum doing a better job then the past owners.

Pretty sure, that this was the last meeting in this form! And no, not because of the effectivity of those. No matter what Steve posts here....we will all soon learn what the "values" are worth when a shareholder-company takes over. The thin line between building something up and milking it to death!

@ mme

Congrats dude, you made it!!!!!!

[IMG][/IMG]

I'm not speculating on whether the new owners will do a good job. I'm stating that over the last 2+ years Pokerstars has done a horrible job. And maybe it cost them their business. For 2+ years without any real competition, PS acted like embolden ass-holes to their customer base. As a matter of fact, the first meeting was in response to an ass-hat rude moronic 11th hour change to contributed rake. They declared a rake change on like December 27th. Some companies with near monopolies are still smart enough to not act like a jackass.

Financial details Amaya deal

Is there anything significant that you can think of that has resulted from the meetings that couldn't have come about through players expressing their wants via the forum, like through stars improvement thread or threads brought about for specific issues?

If you can name a few maybe I'll change my tune but I'm pretty sure there is decent communication between Stars and players in the forums and even without NDAs everyone's suggestions can be put forward and considered.

Also this isn't a personal attack, I've been MIA because it's summer now and I wanted a lil bit of tan instead of staying in the basement all day and I didn't even know GGarJ or anyone went to willy wonka again until a couple days ago so no need to be butthurt.

Steve posted this:

But this is pretty much the case.

Everyone thinks rake is too high, Stars does not - no change.

Everyone thinks seating scripts should go, the community & reps give their opinions/ideas - Stars keeps sticking to their funny plans with table starters & Zoom (again, how is this gonna work for anything but HS?).

Finally you talked about a promotion that was going to launch in 3 weeks anyways.
What if you said it looked terrible? Would they have canceled it and made something different/better? Of course not.

Stars seems to just be gathering some opinions for minor stuff which they can also do by browsing the forums.
Proposed changes for more important topics seem to fall on deaf ears.

Now you have been shown winrates between Zoom & reg tables and can't talk about it? Like you're not even allowed to say there is a big difference or anything w/o giving numbers?!
Maybe it's just me but I'm missing the point.

We won't instantly gain anything by not attending those meetings but we basically don't lose anything/much either. Same goes for Stars, yet I think they are losing more.

We can try to get Stars to be more active in the forums and hopefully more transparent too someday.

Or we can keep sending people to fight for $0.50 9-man Turbo SNGs if people think it's worth it.
Maybe one day we will even see another 5% rake decrease @ microstakes (probably when games have progressed way further).

Steve, any chance you could increase the time to act at Zoom high stakes? Regular tables at high stakes have a longer time to act than regular tables at lower stakes, but at Zoom it is all the same regardless of stakes. I suspect this is part of the reason why Zoom is unpopular at high stakes as people play for a lot of money and don't want to be forced to rush their decisions.

TRUTH.

More got done before meeting format. More got done faster before meeting format. And a lot more people were involved on 2+2 solving issues than before meeting format.


GGARJ, read above plus the other several people that have answered. Or stay blind and ignorant.

Hi steve, I wasn't criticizing you in my first post and I do understand how tablestarters works. My point was, that if the first person to join each tablestarter at fr has his preferred starting to "9" then that table will only start when 8 others join, regardless if all the other players have their starting number set to 2.

I'm just trying to get my head around why this possible new approach would even be more preferential to the current (and i'll add awful) system where scripters get every seat? I assume stars will rake less money since games will take longer to start than currently. I imagine some recreational players will hate having to wait around for their table to start (and have a dislike of playing zoom) which means at least some proportion will move to another site, again reducing stars rake and the quality of games.

I understand that you want to remove the speed element from seat selection, whether that is using a script or manually hawking the lobby. It just seems that this proposal is an imperfect solution to the problem (but maybe there is no perfect solution available).

Under this new system, players will still be scripting existing running tables that recreational players join so it doesn't really seem to solve that issue.

I "think" party have been warning/banning people for using scripts (though i may be mistaken) so am surprised that stars could not do the same.

I know you will get a lot of questions here but could you try to briefly answer this suggestion/question. If it was possible to track and ban scripters (such as suggested by party) then why wouldn't a system where the software randomly assigns you a seat at the table work?

If a player refused that seat they get banned for x minutes from rejoining that table.... I know the question of fastest manual clickers then arises... but these guys are there doing this precisely to get the jesus seats at the table, at least 50% of the time they would be in an unfavourable seat which means that either other slower regs are able to still get good seats, or that the extreme bumhunters will actually sit at far less tables... again providing more seats/table space for other regs. Plus this also means more tables run on the site anyway/more rake etc etc.

or could just change the TOS and monitor what processes/software people are using.

I think Steve/Stars are much better at answering this question, but I'll try based on my own experiences:

One legitimate answer is "nothing". In one way or another everything "that has resulted from the meetings has come about through players expressing their wants via the forum". My agenda originated from these forums, I described my own views during my campaign, and thus the members of this forum were able to express their wants by electing a representative.

A more relevant question is that of efficiency. Do you think the changes resulting from the meetings - especially those requested by 2+2ers - would have come about as quickly as a result of traditional forum interaction with Stars reps? Also, do you think it's more or less likely that 2+2ers could affect policy changes before they happen without the meetings?

Last summer, we PLOers got a limited rake relief at small stakes, that was mostly due to the outrage on 2+2, but also a result of face-to-face negotiations conducted at the Isle of Man. In those negotiations, a representative of 2+2 was able to debate rake conditions that Stars couldn't share publicly. How do you think those stake-specific rake reductions were determined?

I'm still waiting for someone to explain why we are better off without these meetings.

I think the seating scripts are bad, but I don't see the problem with the manual clicking contest and watching the lobby like a hawk, at least that's the same for all players so you are basically not always going to get the same line-up coming in the moment a fish sits, since not every regular will be watching the lobby at the same time if they are concentrating on other hands that they are involved in at that moment.

Also, the manual clicking contest means that tables get filled a bit slower and more gradually than the auto-seating scripts that make every seat get reserved instantly. As a result, the former will feel like the table is filling in a more natural way from the recreational player's point of view.

Therefore if the seating scripts are banned, manual clicking is still a significant improvement to the current situation in my opinion, whereas it feels like Steve is saying that the manual clicking is just as bad or almost as bad as the seating scripts.

Also, with the potential big VIP club changes, does this mean that players might have to 'start again' next year when it comes to qualifying for new VIP tiers?

I am personally trying to obtain Supernova status for the first time this year, and I won't be too happy if I bust my gut to make it, only to find out that in 2015 I won't get as much benefit from that status if everything gets revised into a new format.

X-post from SSPLO

Re: the meetings being harmful; they are harmful for two reasons:

1. They waste time and money that could be better used on other promos and rewards.

2. They totally stifle open discussion. We used to all speak and discuss things. Now it's the active players have signed away their rights to speak, and the rest of us are just told to stall til the next meeting where nothing will get done.

We just need to band together and vote against sending anyone next time. That will end the charade once and for all.

Steve said in the OP of that thread that there had been internal discussions between the April and June meetings, in particular, it had been decided to avoid changes in the VIP program. Also, one of the reps (eldodo42) mysteriously disappeared without leaving a report of his own. Perhaps the meetings in fact changed nothing and the reps were just presented with an already taken (but not disclosed previously) internal decision, disguised as a concession that was 'won' by the reps' negotiation ability.

Yea... maybe they didn't. I have no way to dispute that speculation.

Is your conclusion then that the meetings in general are useless, or even harmful? Cause that's what we're talking about essentially.

^^^ yup #1, yup #2, yup #3

It took awhile, but the Willy Wonka Chocolate Factory meetings finally laid a big enough egg that players are against this gimmick.

Regardless of the value or lack thereof of these meetings... I'd like to say thanks to GGARJ for his time spent and effort that he put into this. By memory I can hardly think of another rep that put this type of effort pre and post meeting so I thank you for that at the very least.