Targeting disabled folks because legs cost too much? Are all VR games floating torsos? I'm out of the loop.

PokerVR (PVR) and PokerStarsVR (PSVR; now Vegas Infinite (VI)) omit avatar pieces of what is below the table-top in less complicated equipment. Their differentiation took a massive turn about 2 years ago when PSVR developed far more complex graphics and density to the avatar appearance. PVR never followed suit.

PSVR/VI has an avatar editor which DOES include the lower half of the body, allowing you to see if you are wearing a dress or robes or a skirt, sandals, boots, etc., but simple equipment like my Oculus Quest 1 only ever sees the upper body when in game.

PokerVR is far less complicated and varied in avatar appearance, probably in part because they are focussed on poker as a game proper and aiming to keep attention on that rather than on casino varieties, props, and social interaction supplements. The most PVR has done has been to include avatar baldness, standardize winning-shirt awards, and install a 'Random' button for those few of us who love to vary our appearance radically and throw regular players off while we are forced to retain our ingame name. It's funny how some adult players try to bring in their gender dimorphism myopia to avatar usage (most people seem to try to replicate their out-of-game appearance to their avatar).

The casino and prop things help VI to provide incentive to its players to spend monthly conventional funds to become part of its "The Club" ($10/mo?) and (Elite Level of "The Club" - $25/mo?) and receive special props, table entrance/exit, and extra chips, plus get access to special tournaments and game zones.

It's funny to talk about it being targetting to disabled folks. In PVR there aren't even arms yet, just disembodied hands which somewhat conform to the 'pickle-shaped' torso with attached head. Avatar variety focusses on torso colour/swirl, face (male or female, you MUST choose!), head hair, and facial hair.

Here is how bad the traffic has gotten

9/28/2018 $22 Mini Triple Threat [3-Max, Turbo, Progressive KO, Zoom], $25K Gtd Hold'em No Limit $20.00 + $2.00 $37,480.00 319/1419 $0.00
9/27/2018 $22 Mini Triple Threat [3-Max, Turbo, Progressive KO, Zoom], $25K Gtd Hold'em No Limit $20.00 + $2.00 $31,900.00 988/1170 $0.00
9/26/2018 $22 Mini Triple Threat [3-Max, Turbo, Progressive KO, Zoom], $25K Gtd Hold'em No Limit $20.00 + $2.00 $31,380.00 754/1201 $5.00

And today:

244 entries and not even 5k GTD hit

Yeah it's a ghost town.

They had a monopoly and didn't listen to any of their customers.

Serves them right.

Yeah the nail in the coffin was the banning of Russians.

A gambling site trying to morality police arguably the worst country at poker and thus best customers on there because banning poker players from a country at war is going to end said war LMFAO.

I wonder would the Supreme Court allow Texas to secede from the United States.

I don't think so.

Last time I needed the support chat, a few days ago, a human answered me and everything went just fine. Stars discord works well to me, not perfect, far from it, but well enough.

I realize they are not doing well, financially speaking, but until proven otherwise, games still look the safest, and I wouldn´t trade it for any reason other than looking for softer games accepting the tradeoff of less security.

Hearing from friends that Norway just got locked out of Stars. Not the country with the most players but especially in the mix games they seemed to be a fair amount of traffic.

GG definitely won.

It's been dead for a while now. All my games are infested with players from Ukraine/Belarus and Brazil. Basically all massive grinders, huge volume and very tight style with a couple of exceptions from Brazilians. And I play micros/low stakes.

probably a silly question... but why are more and more countries (russia excluded because thats different) from pokerstars but not from GG. Surely they have to adhere to the same local laws? Or is GG simply more clever in every country getting a license while pokerstars somehow doesnt

Fun fun fun to lose money. But guess that's generally life.

GG doesnt care about having a license. Pokerstars does for some reason. One of the reasons why GG is probably much less safe for players from a lot of the world. But when Stars is unavailable its not like those players have much choice about where to play.

I find it difficult to believe that there's a meaningful volume of players from Belarus - Belarus is a desperately poor country with a total GDP roughly equal to that of South Dakota, spread amongst a population smaller than that of Michigan.

Or, in European terms: A GDP similar to Lithuania, amongst a population smaller than Hungary.

This makes me reminisce about jbouton’s reminiscing

Yeah but belarus/ukraine have a bunch of regulars, some pretty decent others mediocre or b/e. At the same time very few fish from these countries play meaningful stakes.

European MTTs running in the morning are infested by these guys along with emigrated russian regs playing from Kazakhstan/Thailand/Armenia

Same for MTTs up 11 - 109 buyins (or maybe thats what you meant with lowstakes). Whilst most of these guys aren't that good, they are certainly not tight in my experience Ahahah

At least brazil have few whales in the mix

But yeah, overall I agree with the OP statement. Stars is dead for the most part with all the fishy pools being ringfenced and/or deposit limited. To make decent money it certainly isn't the right place anymore. I still play there because I have no other choice :/

Really well put.

It's also the people they hire don't know anything about poker. The only role that requires any poker knowledge anymore is the game integrity role. None required for support or security.

They encourage volume over quality as far as the work gos. There's no incentive for the employee to do anything other than send a prewritten template with no personalization, and most of the time not tailored to your specific problem.

Yeah, MTTs in that range + STSNGs and MTTSNGS.
I also play morning schedule(i'm an Euro) and basically everything is true that you said. There are very little fish from those countries and most of them can play solid ABC poker. Brazilians have exceptions and Canadians are very "creative" also

I recently got a new rakeback deal offered from stars, 55% weekly direct RB, no minimum volume. Pretty great, almost reaching the good old SNE days.
But unfortunately there simply aren’t any games running for PLO mid/ high stakes … it’s a pity that not even zoom200 gets running and when it does it always runs the risk of stopping abruptly…
I would like to quit GG and return to stars , but it seems like the company lacks a clear strategy how to get the lost customers back and make it attractive for recs and regs alike . It seems like they would have to invest heavily into support and promotions to try to bring Stars’ reputation back to its early days.

Not looking to get better. They're laying people off now as well.

https://sigma.world/news/flutters-re...to-job-losses/

thats great yeah only problem is that no one plays on the site anymore, plo is so dead now on there

Their strategy obviously isn't working.

Instead of giving 50 percent rakeback to regs they should cut that to 30 percent and start running freerolls with the money they save to get some fish on the site.

For me as a German i can say RIP Stars.
6,25% Rake with 0 Rakeback is insane and not worth playing.

Why would they respond, they got your money…

Is there any good alternative, GGPoker?