exactly.

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/prom...utm_campaign=1

see amaya not all that bad :/

It definitely is a good promotion. It doesn't come close to taking 2.5 million out of SNG's and the increase in rake across many games... but I give credit where credits due and the combination of these upcoming promos benefits a huge portion of the player base and that is undoutedly a good thing.

You could have just said winning players are killing on-line poker and not so much almaya/pokerstars or most other poker-sites.

And you are right on-line poker is boring, live cash game poker is the real poker game.

I would say to all those grinders/regs that make between 1 and 5k a month get of your lazy ass and go work or start your own business, and leave on-line poker players that play for fun and/or make a couple of hundred extra a month play, without those bumhunting 2 trick boring leeches chasing them, because how they play has not much to do with poker, it is just a math game they play, with cards, so almaya/pokerstars rake the hell out of them, you got my blessing.

And for all that not agree with me: i am not sorry for saying what i think what is happening.

And for those who are going to insult and/or curse at me: I’m sorry, I’m a little busy. Can I ignore you later?

QFMFT

borg putting on a ****ing clinic in this thread.

if you want to do anything that might help, it's too cash out your balance and play somewhere else and then send them an email and tell them why. Anything else is a complete waste of time. Even that is doomed to fail because there's no other decent site to go play at that can handle a huge influx of regs, and you'll never get more than 30% to leave anyway even with the most brilliantly organized campaign because poker players are far too greedy and the second stars gets softer other people will jump in or not leave

there's also the possibility that stars would be better off without all the mass grinding regs and you'd be doing them a favor. that question will be answered if they ever announce cut backs to the VIP program.

Hate to be trite but I must have missed that part of economics.

I play HU zoom, how does that work out? From what I've read here there are other formats where hands raked or equivalent are linearly related to entries. I haven't been completely convinced deposit conversions are unrelated to number of players even in ring games either.

So you're saying you would play the same # of hands if the hu zoom pool were all regs as you would if it were all fish?

Not if were all good regs but I would play exactly the same number of hands below a certain good reg:fish entry ratio. That ratio for me has been around 50%, it is rarely reached given how I define "good reg" - someone who has few or no perceptible leaks or who is paying less than half the rake after >500 hands.

But the idea I was responding to was that regs are bad for Amaya. Given that they are playing HU zoom that is clearly false.

I want to make as much money as I can. If I owned a poker site, once money got deposited I would want to get it all. If someone else took some of it I would work to stop them in the future. Anyone who withdraws money would receive scrutiny. If he's not cheating and seems to be a steady winner I would ban him or get rid of him some other way. I want players to push the money around until it's all gone to rake. I would probably offer free poker instruction to make everyone more even so that no one can beat the rake in the long run and I would thank god for 2+2.

Isn't it a zero sum game, if a player withdraws(is a winning player) the site operator will make that much less money? I don't know why a winning poker player would think he's doing the site a favor. Is it just because poker tracker tells him he's paid X in rake? But the site could have made all that money eventually and the profit the player withdrew as well if only the withdrawing player didn't exist.

The danger is they discourage players who mistakenly think they are good enough to win but aren't. This is why a hand-per-week limit would be better. Players who loose money probably don't put in high volume anyway, also get rid of micro stakes - that's probably coming - to force people to gamble off their last dollars on the casino games. They will probably raise the rake cap all the way up and drastically. I would. $5 at $100/$200? No way.

yes but if people no they can never beat the rake they wont play the games. not to the same extent anyway. Their will always be some gamblers that just pure punt however, there are so many players that want to try and make it big and fail.

I know of quite a few cases that tried to make it as pro poker players lost and went away after a year or two. They were still active on the site for a while.

If they know it cannot be done they will not play.

of course with Amaya's strategy they will have a larger percentage of peoples deposits, but they will have significantly less deposits and its better to have a reasonable share of a very large cake then to have the lions share of a tiny cake.

Alobar, Borg...just out of curiosity...do you play online? I mean like...in 2014 not 2008 or something?

Let's use a simple example. A Supernova Elite pays around ~150K$ in rake per year. A substantial amount is given back as RakeBack ofc. However, on the other hand you have Steve, a mid stakes donk who deposits 200$ everyone now and then to play on the weekends when his wife is out with her friends. Obv the SNE is a much more worthwhile customer. He is continually contributing his rake, day in, day out. Steve loses his stake quickly, and goes away, paying as little rake as possible. While it is true that winners take money out of the poker economy, they are also a pillar of that same economy. A poker room derives revenue through rake, not deposits.

In this sense, the poker economy, as it stands, needs winners. Winners grind losers deposits into rake, and losers attract good players.

The level of play above the micros is quite good. Bad players, even those with a remedial understanding of the game, lose quickly. This creates a rather predatory environment where poker hasnt become an enjoyable past time; it has become an uncomfortable transaction. You pay a heavy price for wanting to play poker. I believe this is the big problem online today.

Winners are not an evil, they are a natural part of the game. Take all the best players off stars, and you will still have winners, and losers.

Somebody wins, somebody loses, and Amaya takes the rake.

Alobar and Borg owns this thread

Problem is that 24 tabling nits cant or wont understand how a buisness works, and they surely know nothing about how a rec player thinks.

Going to be fun when Amaya cut the vip progam for regs and distribute it to recs, then we are going to have a real uproar on 2+2 (exept for the people who understand whats good for poker)

I withdrew 80% of my roll from Stars, not because I think this room will necessary fall, but because I don't trust them anymore as providing a customer-friendly experience.
Even if a room like 888 may look shady for some here, as a rec low-stakes player I feel infinitely more welcome on 888 than on Stars atm.

I think it's pretty obvious they don't, like every single other poster defending Amaya.

And here's another one. You know someone haven't played on Amayastars in years when they still use "24 tabling nits".

But keep up the good fight im sure someone over at Isle of Man appreciate your hard work.

I've been playing since 2008 and I don't defend Amaya since there's nothing to defend. Most of the changes were pre Amaya. As for Forex exchange, that's a very normal change, still cheaper than the banks. As for the rake increase, it's business and still cheaper or equal to most sites

yes

Im not defending Amaya, im just pointing out the flaws and hypocrisy in the logic of the outraged.

Of course I wish sites policies and rules helped my bottom line and not hurt it, but its ****ing ******ed to think that the site OWES you a living or anything else.

Microstakes is most likely the bread and butter of a site, theyd rather get rid of everything over 100NL id imagine (and theyd really rather limit was the game everyone wanted to play). The rake is higher at the micros and you dont get people donking off thousands of dollars to some winner who withdraws it. If you look at how NL started online, it wasnt with high limit games and then spread down, it started small and spread up.

<cough, cough>
I use ozforex.com.au for all my forex exchanges because they are Soooo much cheaper than the banks.

There are these funny things called computers which make it really easy to shave costs off things like forex transactions. 2.5% seems like robbery to me.

I think you are making a fundamental mistake. Players don't get raked, no matter what poker tracker tells you. Pot's get raked. The only way the poker site can get all of Steves money is if the SNE doesn't get it first and withdraw it. They want Steve and all the other Steves to win and lose and move up limits(where there is more rake) or down or deposit more. The only mortal sin is withdrawing. Okay, yes, they definitely need deposits but that is a bit of a different question.

If we can agree that pots cannot occur independently of players then your statement is nonsense.

I've just been thinking about this more and was about to reply to my own post. You're right, the wording isn't relevant. However, my larger point is still correct, it's a zero sum game. Also, the site doesn't care who pays the rake(wins) provided the winnings are not withdrawn. It's also true that there will always be winners and losers but the future behavior of the winners is what matters.