i don't know all of these answers, sorry.

is your explanation that Stars is just cheap and acting irrationally?

is that consistent with their policy when a payment processor gets shut down (refund the entire deposit + a free bonus)? their treatment of their top players who qualify for the WSOP? the money they throw at all of their VIPs for playing tons on the site? are you suggesting that Stars typically takes care of their players very well across the board, but this one time they decided that refunding a few hundred hotel rooms from ~VIP players just wasn't in the budget?

i don't care to speculate publicly about this stuff. i mean fk, i don't even play on stars, i am sponsored by their biggest competitor. i'd really like to know some of these answers myself. one thing that i am sure of is that the answer is not as simple as: "stars is cheap and doesn't take care of their players!!!"

gl guys.

edit: when i say i don't care to speculate publicly i mean that i don't feel like throwing a bunch of wild theories out there. i don't think it's my place to do that given my affiliation with ftp and also as a general policy for posting on msg boards.

+1

While there is no longer a 'NAPT Los Angeles', almost everything about the event will go forward as planned. Online qualifiers will still play the event and it will still have hundreds of entrants and a large prize pool. The same staff will be running the event, including Executive Tournament Director Mike Ward and Player Host Neil Johnson.

Exactly two things have changed: The event will not be NAPT branded, and the main event will not be televised.

Please note that last year's main event was not announced as being televised at all. The final table being televised was a surprise not known to players before the tournament started. Still, the event managed to attract 700 players. The lack of a confirmed televised final table does not mean that the field will be small.

There is still a good option for those who were planning to attend specifically for the opportunity to be on TV. The bounty shootout is still going to be run as planned and will still be televised on ESPN. There are seats available to this $10,000 buy-in event that offers a much more TV time per player than the main event would have. If any player who qualified for the Main Event on PokerStars is disappointed in the lack of TV coverage of that event, PokerStars will be happy to exchange their buy-in to the main event for $5,000 credit towards buying in to the $10,000 Bounty Shootout, as long as seats remain.

Well, since their stated rationale for not letting people transfer their hotel package to another event is that they had already paid for it while they are letting people transfer their tournament entry, I think it's fairly clear that they're just being cheap here.

They still haven't explained why one event can be televised and the other not. The reason they are pushng people to switch to the televised shoot-out is because they are worried about selling 81 seats.

answer the man sir

Taylor--

You're a brilliant person and extraordinarily intellectually honest, given your relationship with FTP. But here I think you're also wrong. The balance of the evidence shows that Stars takes advantage of its players whenever possible, especially in B&M settings. When NoahSD can do better security work in a month than Stars's whole team can do in a year, when Jorj95 has never received a hyperturbo cheating refund he didn't report himself, and when the PCA cardroom all but has a 'cheaters will prosper here' sign on it, the best inference is that Stars cares about the appearance of security and not actual security. They have also done a lot wrong to their players in non-security areas (detailed elsewhere).

I've written about this at more length in the MTTc-Live thread, which also has good input from Todd Terry. I think you're absolutely right that this ought to affect people's shortsighted views about legislation.

I'm doubly sorry to make this post, because I think you're not in a position to respond, given your various commitments. But you're a prominent person and I think it's dangerous to perpetuate the ideas that Stars would be doing its customers a favor by refunding the hotel and that Stars generally has its players' interests as a high priority.

Thanks for contributing, & all my best,

--Nate

you guys are going to cannibalize the ME even more?

ROFL

Why do you keep acting like they owe you that explanation?

They finally explained it. Both events are not napt stars affiliated. Espn chose to film the shoot-out without stars napt sponsorship.

Why it took 2 days to get this answer still befuddles me.

I'd want to see air-quotes around the words "voluntary" and "constructive" before I'd read it your way. I will admit that, upon further reflection, there may be a subtle tone of Yankee sarcasm in there after all.

But, like Green Plastic, I don't have a dog in this whole fight. I just thought he was stringing one too many baubles along to blame this hiccup on, say, the failure of the Reid bill (a bill which I myself detested). We just don't quite have enough information here, imo.

TID Chainsaw

Ill try to take it down. Apparently they still expect over 600 players according to their twitter posts.

4 years ago I said I was going to commit suicide because of pokerstars in an email to them. An instant message popped up through the stars client, asking me to calm down and if I wanted them to send help.

They never banned me, and they continue to let me deposit/play.... Fast forward 4 years, I email because I got colluded against in the hyper-turbos, and they instantly ban me with no explanation.

This last minute pull out of the bike is because all our poker sites are about to get caught. All the advertising they have done in America/Canada is about to bite them in the ass. Prosecutors in both countries have enough evidence to press charges against major names in the game, and most people will be so surprised when some of these people go down.

My favorite will be when the "other 30 names" from the UB scandal are released. It is some of your favorite players!


Tata for now,

I have not seen a pokerstars.com commercial in years! nor any paper advertising or anything else in the USA. Now, pokerstars.net is a free play site that offer no gambling for $ in any way.

I thought that the .net poker sites are perfectly legal for any online poker company to advertise in the USA? or am I missing something?

meh, the poster above has a history of making awful posts. They don't show some of the old WSOP stuff from 2003-2004 because of the .com on the shirts. .net stuff is fine.

Depends largely how your laws are written / interpreted.

In Australia we have the Interactive Gaming Act (IGA) under this it is illegal to offer online gaming/poker services to people resident in Australia (but not illegal to play poker online)

Under the IGA it is also illegal to advertise these services

Everyone ignores the IGA though (because it's just not enforced) so PS and FT are happy to actively market to the Australian market.

The ones who have gotten in trouble recently though are the broadcast licence holders here in Aus who have their licences under a government department. The IGA also has a whole bunch of rules which restrict advertising online gaming/poker as well - and the courts here have determined that .net sites pointing to free play money sites are essentially advertising the .com sites/service anyway.

The distinction is a scam the sites have used to get around advertising bans - once courts get around to actually ruling on this it's not going to hold up - our legal systems aren't that black and white and the judges get a fair bit of lee-way to flush scams like this out for what they are.

Commercial TV / Radio stations in Australia no longer advertise the .net sites because of this

ye my post history can be whatever... but i have season tickets to a major sports team where pokerstars is advertised there, and they started tearing everything down recently....

the only tv stations that run even the .net ad's are the poorest tv stations around here (the 3rd tier sports channel for example)... so they NEED the business from stars/ftp even if they lose their licence.... stars/ftp love this sort of thing...

Even if I won a million dollars through stars/ftp I would still think they are illegal organized criminal entity's... Putting ads and taking our money is the illegal part, just because they hide behind shell companies doesn't make that **** go away...

Why do you think greg raymer chose not to be an online team pro anymore?

Huge names are not only behind the $80,000,000 theft at UB but they are also behind a numerous of other indictable offences, and officials in both countries have been looking closely for years at things like links with KGC, organized crime, and outright cheating.


I am content sleeping every night knowing one day I will wake up, turn on CNN, and see the people who we thought were world class gamblers, turn out to be nothing more than a group of organized criminal nerds.


and judging by how the Bike treated PS, MAKING THEM PULL DOWN ADVERTISEMENTS AND ANY LINK TO PS, it showed exactly how much clout pokerstars actually has in our physical world.... Probably about as much clout as a KGC licence holds in court.

edit: where they tore down the ps advertisements I saw : CANADA about 500 miles from Kahnawake indian reserve... the same place RCMP, DEA and ATF raid allllllll the time...

good google search "Kahnawake : organized crime"

lol united states government

Stars is not commissioned by the KGC
http://www.gov.im/gambling/licensees/

I'm fairly sure I see ftp ads on poker after dark on nbc. Is that one of your third tier networks?

lol americans. Welcome to the land of the free; where you can't gamble online but can buy an assault rifle; where you can lose a limb fighting for your country then come home and not be old enough to buy a beer!

pokerstars has a ton of ads for home games on during mike and mike in the morning on espn

At least our food doesn't suck.