Almost all terms you agree to will have a similar clause in it. Luckily they don't give companies the right to do whatever they want.


Is is definitely sketchy and MIGHT be illegal, if it were brought before a court the lines you quoted would have literally no effect on the ruling at all.

From their site:

"MONTREAL, Oct. 27, 2015*– Amaya will host a conference call on Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at 8:30 a.m. ET to discuss its financial results for the third quarter of 2015. David Baazov, CEO of Amaya, will chair the call. The Corporation plans to release its financial results on Tuesday, November 10, 2015 at 7:00 a.m. ET."

If we organize something quickly, making a move on tuesday would be a perfect timing.

That should definitely influence financial data of teh last quarter drastically

pokerstars.

rip stars, if they keep going in this direction in three years time its gonna be another shady site with bunch of bumhunters.

I was SN3 this year. But the fact that we are now losing a lot of RB+ the possible ban from tracker at anyday.I wont grind 2016 with insecurity. For 2016 i ll search another site PS u can suck my dick.

What if we are missing important info here?
It's hard for me to think that Pokerstars is digging its own grave.

What if they are leveling the field for the USA pool combined with the actual one? We know there has been some progress regarding this.
Maybe they want their new customers to enjoy the experience by making sure there isn't a predatory ecosystem with sharks multi tabling chasing bonus.

In the past Pokerstars had soo many customers so they needed regs to convert the deposists into rake, so they incentivized them to play as many hands as possible.

Now maybe they want to rebuild that pool and prefer the recreationals keep on making deposits, and the only way to that is making sure they enjoy the experience by not losing their money in a few seconds.

If Pokerstars builds a large pool again, they once again will need the regs to convert money into rake, and will encourage them to do so by Vip rewards, use of huds....etc and the wheel starts all over again.

Sorry for my english. Just my utopian thoughts.

hoping regs dont hop over to sites i play on. lol the changes affect everyone. so much for my wr. please do not make these changes stars, its best for everyone.

ive left today sent them a "nice" email and changed my avatar to the tombstone-not sure if it will get through pending-anyway who gives a ****.

Trust me or not but you can stop searching for the bigger picture, they are that arrogant and dumb.

Hi everybody!

Greetings from Russian poker community!

I have some thoughts about what we can do together if rake is increased as promised.
There is an idea to make a strike, meaning none who joins the strike play in the room for some days. Some people suggest making massive 1-month strike starting from January 1st.

I understand the idea behind 1-month long strike, which is to suffer once, win, and continue playing as before. But let’s consider the outcome. If we go with one-time big strike 1 month, long the room will lose money once and after that will recover in several months and proceed with increased profit which is because ours is decreased. Making another 1-month long strike if there is no result after the first will be extremely difficult. I would not be happy if after 1 month the mood is over and it is impossible to bring players together for resistance anymore.

I don’t think this is best approach to do this. One time strike does not result in many changes usually in real life. At least probability of this is small from my point of view. Another point is that it is much more difficult to bring people together for such long action. That is why we should consider rather long battle.

To start with 1-week long strike would be enough, if nothing changes (which is likely) we should repeat it within month and so on. I have no calculations how big loss this would cause and how many times we have to repeat this to roll back the decision of increasing the rake.

That is why I think making good cooperation between different communities and firing regular 1-week strikes each month is a better approach.

There is only one way to win – fight, regularly, bringing more and more people, explaining why we do this, and popularizing strikes and other aspects of the fight as listed before like making video content, posts in social media e t.c. However, remember media has no much power if there is no real action following it.

Thank you!

@Matthew

This reminds me of pokerstrategy and black suits.

if u as company are promoting benefits in one period for the next one
and won't pay out the customers who fulfilled the requirements for these benefits they expected to get, they played the whole year to get these,

its just a breach of contract.

and this imagines u on a par/step with companies like pokerstrategy or dead pokerrooms.

u r breaking the law if u feel like, if its to your advantage. But your customers are not your affiliates with their aff-contracts
which u are able to terminate wit a 14-days deadline (also not a good business conduct)
to set new rules and a new contract to have a new status quo if u feel like, if its to your advantage.

this is sleazy. pokerstars/amaya is not a serious and reliable and law-abiding company anymore.

Anyone wanna take a stab at how impactful even a moderately successful strike would be and what it might look like? Could we get all games 500nl+ shuttered? Could we get all mtts overlayed for a week? It would have to be something massive like this for them to take notice otherwise I doubt they'll care. Perhaps a better tact would be a mass migration to another site to demonstrate that there are other places to take our business.

Just sorta spitballing here but there have been many mentions of a strike without really a clear idea of what that would look like so I'm curious if anyone has any real concrete ideas how to get them to take notice.

You can't make a strike when you stop playing is exactly what they want.

I don't think they are breaking the laws but maybe you can point out how exactly?

I don't want them to call too many names as they owe me a lot of money still but yeah, they may be many things but probably not crossing laws.

They are catering to the recs, at least they act like they are while filling their pockets more and more. Just check out what happened to their last business when they did the same thing.

The recs were happy with a site that was catering to both parties but more to the dedicated players - just wait how happy recs will be in a couple of years while Stars is catering to them, allegedly.

Im in for this, especially when people have the option to play on different sites you dont lose that much, moreso now that you dont have to meet the SN and SNE requierements every month (whether that matters to anyone now..).
Although it will be pretty tough to do it for one month if regs are going to see all the juicy tables so I think one week is a little more realistic than one month.

also, +1 to this

I don´t see any benefits for recs like me in the new changes.
Also almost any recs/fish/whatever like to dream of one day being SNE or playing High Stakes even though they never will. Now you killed those dreams.
Where is the new skill/fun supposed to come from? More lotteries?
Bye Stars, might as well waste my time with other games now, or get a life.

Edit:
Did I get it right, they exchange your 1.6 cent FPPs for 1.2 cent coins? That is blatant theft.

1.Not paying SNE the full amount for the next year is unforgivable and its blatantly a shady breach of contract.

2.I assume PokerStars is changing their name to PokerChumps.
Otherwise I cant support all these changes.

Both the old and new vip program ware-are not recfriendly to begin with! Giving what 10/20% rakeback where other platforms returned 30/50%+to every player, regardless of volume. Now that is reg friendly. Maybe those games were and are softer for a reason.

Only with volume the vipprogram-rakeback became average compared to those platforms in the first place, with only SNE being very good. So they already saved so much$$ on the recs, and now these changes for a better poker ecosystem?!?

LOL

A strike is never going to work because only a really small percentage would be in on it. Instead we should look for other sites and also keep our balances at the minimum.

Amaya could have done something more rational here, to really make a more "balanced" ecosystem, some ideas: Remove SNE, make the SN the highest status but obtainable with something like 15k VPPs monthly with 50% rakeback for everyone for one month, increase the rakeback for all status below in general, something like:

Bronze Star 0% RB
Chrome Star 10% RB
Silver Star 20% RB
Gold Star 30% RB
Platinum Star 40% RB
Supernova 50% RB

Obviusly letting high stakes to get VPPs, maybe increasing a bit for them the rake and decreasing a bit the rake for lower stakes.

Remove all software support and maybe sell ones on the future developed by themself? Rational... That would be ok...

This changes would not encourage high volumen game, would really help the lower stakes players to have a better experience by don't get eaten so fast by the rake or die faster by the help of other softwares. This would really be a "take from the richs to give to the poors" thing.

And maybe calculating all this changes for the end Amaya winning more on the long run, but this would be "rational" with what they say (really helping low stakes players), and would keep the harmony on the game (Players playing high stakes and being Chromestar is just ridicolous)

Greetings and ready to add myself to any iniciative to fight this absurd update.

I agree, and the thing is there are no experienced consultants in this field outside of some in the "Pokerstars 2%" (and some of their long-term staff to an extent.) There are many players with literally 10,000+ hours of experience, having been through every stage of the evolution process, that do though have a good grasp of the many intricacies. If Amaya wanted to gain an insight into how any potential new model may pan out, they would need to consult with a bunch from our community. (Just like when players worked on a proposed solution to combat seating scripts (which wasn't taken up), or when players worked through solutions to eradicate the short-stacking epidemic.)

It's a very tricky field and it's simply not possible to get someone in from the outside and have them master an understanding of it. It is completely different from their casino, sportsbook, lotteries and slot machines products, not least because of how the players network together within the client. I would suggest that anyone who concludes that the best way to increase Pokerstars' long-term profits is to virtually eliminate the only other party that profits from the game is rather naive and driven by greed.

For poker to thrive there simply has to be both winning players as well as losing players. Stars may not be intending to kill the golden goose, but it appears they are planning to remove its ovaries.

Needs more

Hi,
I'm playing online poker for about 8 years. I'm definitivly a rec but playing on regular basis low stakes MTTs and SnGs. As Silver or Gold Star I might not be hit as hard as others but I think online poker is about to change, but not for the good.

1. Rakebacksystem
I understand that many people are upset about the changes. They abandoned SN and SNE status. As I see it SN was a 2 year deal. In year one you have to put in the volume to benefit in year two. To simply cancel it midways is defraud on their most loyal customers. It might be good to move away from volume based incentives towards a more rec-friendly site but they should have taken a fair solution and let the deal run out.
If Amaya really wants to do something for the recreational player they'll have to completely change their rake system. The problem is they do not provide a fair environment for recs. Everyone should pay the same effective rake:

effective rake = (Rake - Rakeback)/$ in pot

Cutting rakeback has just the same effect as raising the rake! In addition:
why is the rake in bb/100 on Microstakes Tables higher than in high stakes games?
why do small stakes SnG and MTTs have higher rakes?
why do you get a multiplier for even more FPPs and rewards on a higher VIP level?
If they want to reward recs and redistribute the money rakeback should be highest % on the first hands. Say 70% for the 10k VPPs. 60% for the next 20k, 50%...and so on until it reaches a base level of idk 25%. But it seems ridiculous to remove all rakeback high stakes games. But than, if they give rakeback to high stakes and increase the cap the effect would be the same.
Creating unbeatable games due to enormous rake can't be good for poker!

2. Skill to casino
One thing I really don't like to see is the movement to more casino style games. Best example, the 1 Million Spin&Go. 'Come to our casino and you maybe lucky and win a million but you're probably just loosing some bucks spinning the wheel...'
On one hand they work on the image of poker for being a skill game. On the other hand they introduce sport bets, casino games and high variance games like Spin&Gos with a lottery price pool.

3. 'only 2% of the players will be negatively effected'
Maybe only 2% of the players are SN or SNE but eveyone will feel the effect. Platinum and Gold will also make less so a lot of these players will cut their volume significantly. To make up for one reg who plays 15 tables 12 hours a day you will need 10-30 rec players to create the same amount of hands and rake. If the player base declines there will be smaller guarantees on MTTs, SnGs take longer to fill up until it is just like one of the many pokersites on the web. Maybe another site will come up...

4. HUD issue
The only software I use is a HUD and it is still HM1.
Is HM1 prohibited under the new rules? It is not on the prohibited software list on stars page. HM2 is allowed but I dont find anything on HM1.
Is it a good idea to upgrade to HM2 or will they ban any HUD anyway within the next year?

regards

Disclosure: I am a sn so obviously changes affect me quite a bit.

Having said that, as i am barely winning player nowadays, I was thinking of quiting on Jan 1 anyways. With incoming changes, it is quite clear that I got exactly 2 months of online poker career left. I believe there are a lot of people like me. I have to say, it makes sense to kill me off. Amaya has no use of me. Liquidity will be provided by better pros and they will still win quite a bit even with lower rb.

The only thing that I do not understand - why they don't limit the number of tables that people can play. It would be ok with me even if they limited it to just 1 or 2 tables.

Many regs however wouldn't support that so good luck with that. Strike is meaningless IMHO, for every reg that supports it, there are 10 who won't comply.

gg Amaya. 58 days to go.