My opinion on this changes.

first of all this is gold

Mixgrill: "Good job killing pokerstars with your greed.
At least you're making random fish millionaires, with spin & go's."

I think soon will be SPINandGO v2 were after spining stoped will apear button where with 1$ extra you can spin again and then you can spin again and again and everyone will just spin that *** thing. This is addiction like cigarettes that kills you. PokerStars really want to be a company that produce cigarettes and kill peoples? That how I see those spinandgoes

PS brought FTP and they introduced casino games.
OK, fine! FTP is poker+casino, PS is exclusive poker then they introduce casino+sport beting (puke)
Where is old pokerstars that promoted poker as a sport and even cretead at EPT stop country teams to compete each other?


"return the game back to one that rewards skill via winning at the tables rather than playing primarily for volume"

how you reward skill in that case? You think to grind 24/7, to put a lot of volume, to analize hands to make ranges to analize stats isnt skill? players are doing this cause this was your VIP program. more rake more cashback at the end.

Question -

when black friday happened, didn't DOJ, FBI (or someone else) suggest that FPP was a sort of currency and forced stars to pay out it's value to US players, as well as their bankrolls?!
if that's the case, there must be some regulation on Amaya (from today I refuse to call them Stars, as it is offensive to their previous workers and management) not being able to steal 25% of player's money?!

whew.. just withdrew 90% of roll, gif posted earlier is spot on

you shouldn't give them ideas you know... 10 people were just put on the Spin and Go rebuy idea

next step to improve ecosystem: removed cashout button

btw dear AmayaStars, how about u finally stop covering ur greedy self-interest with ur willingness to care for recreational players (and thus lolpokerecosystem)?

No one with half brain is buying it anymore, not even recs.

It is a poem used as a way to show when people are divided into groups and show apathy for others being affected the powers that be have their way. Do yourself a favor and please try not to be so serious in life I truly feel for you. No one is down playing the horrors of the holocaust not sure why you would think otherwise.

small stakes plo rake is already killing the games and now this...

how about doing something about BOTS where you have done nothing (if not silently supporting boting).
I mean you really want to convince me that some random grups with limited data are better at catching bots than your enitre security team.
LOL give me a break. But now with many regs leaving I guess you will be more and more happy with bots playing.
Like seriously AMAYA for once do something for players and prove that you care e.g. by fighting against bot rings.

Geez PC much?? The quote has more to do with complacency and not calling out a injustice.

Issue is/was everyone knew Stars was going to do something as of last year, as players no one could do anything but continue playing and hope it wouldnt be that bad.

Like it or not, the poker landscape is changing.

Maybe you fpp pros should learn how to beat the game.

ok serious answer, imo site points should always be just a site thing and worth $0 otherwise and as such are supposed to be spent pretty much when you get them (people complaining after not spending them before have always bothered me a lot; you had plenty of time and didn't care at all then--they're giving you plenty of warning here so spend them or shut up).

"hard earned rakeback" what? None of us deserve rakeback at all.
well at least none of us are stupid enough to believe that when stars says "long term ecosystem" that they really mean anything other than "our pocketbook". If they really wanted to help the ecosystem; they'd lower the lower stakes rake which is kinda nuts with the stakes. (I'd get rid of the penny cash tables/tournaments if it costs too much to run them)

Reality is when a corp isn't making as much $ as they used to (or publically owned and need to make as much $ as possible b/c shareholders and execs often get bonus based on short term share price [and often do so at the expense of their own business b/c why would they give a **** when they get paid more to ruin it]), they're going to make some changes to try to justify their own way too high salaries at the top and **** everyone else. Luckily for many of you there's still plenty of sites willing to take your action. (some of you don't realize how good you have it even after these changes... sigh)

Unfortunately for stars, I think they're gonna lose here and then their solution will be to make even more cuts/higher rake/less RB/whatever they come up with and so on and so on. They won't get it or care like every business.

No problem with criticizing what stars has done but stop going after the rep so hard personally--what the heck else you expect him to do? He's not dumb enough to upset the guy signing his paycheck. (presuming he gets one, otherwise he's an idiot)

Guess it's mostly amusing to me that most of the players bashing stars for greed only are doing so because they only care about their own.

edit--if high stakes drops off so much they lose $ as a result of less volume than they did while increasing rake I'm gonna laugh at stars like all of you will too. I actually expect that to be the case so lol the genius who thought of that who's making more $ than I am.

Next up, Spin & Go All-in Shootouts.

You realize there is gametypes (at higher stakes obv sngs 30$+ mainly hypers but regfilled turbo formats too) that are only beatable by a very small margin pre rakeback because of the HIGH RAKE???? (What you can possibly earn pre RB even with good gameselection is not gonna be enough to cover living expences in a 1st world country) So yes, the rakeback is hard earned and rightfully deserved ffs. "learn how to beat games pre rb" you have no clue what your talking about but i think you were just kidding anyways at least i hope so

It's confidential of course, but i am 99,99 % sure, that this was one of the conditions of the sale agreement.

In before epic changes revert (like the rake increase one)

I guess this is what the world is coming to, a bunch of moaning people constantly going on about changes, there is other poker sites out there - maybe put your efforts into googling *online poker sites* instead of being drama queens lol - Pokerstars owes you nothing, deal with it.

Looking forward to hearing the Pokercast this week that's for sure.
I wonder who they will have on from JokerStars this week???

From Steps page: https://www.pokerstars.com/vip/steps/
If I read this correctly, pokerstars is going to steal half of our fpp’s that don’t make it to the next step?

I really thought about playing more in 2016, but this makes it easy... bye Pokerstars!

Matthew,

Since Portuguese players are temporarily blocked from accessing their FPPs while Stars obtains their license to open in Portugal, will we be given the opportunity to convert them to cash under the rules that were in place when we earned them, or will we be left with devalued coins after the first of the year?

Ok so here's MY view. I expect some to disagree heavily with this, but I'm just putting it out there as it is only my opinion:

With the old system, it was like "the rich get richer". I mean supernova elites were already making 5 or 6 figure profits a year and on top of that Pokerstars decided to award them with even more rewards compared to everyone else with $100k in value for SNE. This new system helps to level out the playing field by taking away from the rich and awarding it to the players who need it the most, including recreational players, which as they point out will help the poker ecosystem immensely. If I did my maths correctly, it seems like the new system gives a better deal to players at goldstar and below. I'm borderline silverstar/goldstar and it definitely seems like i'll be getting a few % extra rb each month if I complete the right number of steps.

The new VIP steps is awesome. Just think about how attractive this is going to look to recreational players who can now much more easily monitor their progress and work harder to fight for those extra steps. The improved reward system for recreational players will also keep them in the games for longer at the expense of some high volume grinders leaving, and these strategies work cohesively together to provide a more balanced, healthy poker ecosystem which shall aid its longterm sustainability in the foreseeable future. It's a well-thought out business model.

I think a lot of the people this site is going to affect the most are already making 6 figures a year so if they lose 10 or 20k they can STILL make a 6 figure profit, which many people could only dream of achieving. So whilst they throw toys out of the pram, their money is being redistributed elsewhere to where there's more in need.

And yes, the site may take some of the money themselves, but it's ridiculous to think they're just going to use it to extra layer their own pockets! They'll use any leftover money to help improve and finance their software and customer service support base, add value to their promotions etc.. If anything they'll be more likely to donate the excess money to charity, as they have demonstrated by their generous donations after the earthquake earlier this year in Nepal. Problem is people are very quick to jump to assumptions on this site and they're usually negative.

the changes are very annoying.

would someone please explain to me how the step system works for a existing SN? i understand i need to achieve it within 12 months, does that mean that i never have to worry about losing 50% of my coins? is a 2015 SN also SN for the entire year of 2016?
in my case ill be grinding january and february, but ill be taking a complete month off in march. how is this going to affect my vip status?

pokerstars employee ITT

Just chrome is getting a boost (of 30 cent! lol)

Please tell me u made this post drunk/high/to troll ?
if u are serious its the funniest post i've seen here

Did I miss the part where these changes are accompanied by an across the board reduction in rake?

Ansky has said it better than I ever could, but please at least honour the tacit agreements you have with your existing high-volume players for next year, so those that have worked hard in 2015 do have something to show for it.