This was an intelligent attempt, and the fact that the guarantee was met does not prove that it was wasted time. Well played, and I hope that this group of extremely smart individuals do not stop turning their minds to other ways of pressing Stars into fairer behaviour.

I wonder if the organisers considered more of an ambush, by having a similar group quietly agreed to de-register just before the deadline from an event, instead of publicising the boycott? Might be hard to keep secret, but could still achieve the desired effect better.

Those that say Stars are making so much money they can't be hurt have not been much in the business world. No matter how successful a company, any dip in their numbers will result in the executives coming under a lot of pressure.

You guys need to stop complaining. Pokerstars is a business that is trying to maximize their profit. Just like how everyone uses software to gain an edge. Pokerstars has the leverage here. Time to move on. The online poker dream is dead. I agree pokerstars has been a little shady in the past.

I bet majority of you would raise prices on a good or services that would increase your bottom line if you guys have businesses.

Stop complaining and time to look for something that is better for your future. Poker will not be the future

groundhog day

So, an entire day off, rather than a single event off, seems an appropriate next step ?

You never try and get someone you regularly buy from as a customer to improve their offering ? What if you can show the improvement will maximize profits whereas a failure to improve will cost them marginal revenue ?

What if that someone you've been buying regularly from has been ****ing you over at every opportunity and clearly showed the desire to eliminate you as a customer?

While I think people should stop complaining and just move to another site or quit online poker - Pokerstars has been shady. They did the same thing total rewards (caesars entertainment) did when they changed the rewards players got after they already worked hard to get the rewards.

Total rewards has been declining and is now in massive debt. Screwing over your most loyal players is not good business. The most successful businesses strive on keeping there most loyal customers happy. So what stars is doing in a sense is poor business practice to help there bottom line while hurting there over all image. I'm sure they did it because of there share holders, but I feel they will eventually implode on themselves unless they change back to their old ways of doing business.

It's not Stars' fault they have an effective monopoly on large field MTTs
Go complain that all the other companies have been **** and promote them tell your net depositing friends, build up their competitors like Party has done here. That's what's gonna make them notice not you complaining yet continuing to use their product
Stars just be doin' what companies should be doin'


What's more
By saying not playing ONE EVENT on their site makes it sound like a huge sacrifice on your part
Basically telegraphing how amazing their product is missing out on literally one event within their offering is a big inconvenience to you
Pretty sure the execs were just chuckling after reading this under their money soaked beards

They do not want regulars that win (regs are the competitions like other sites and not customers you can profit from), Pokerstars has been trying to eliminate them for years. They might give free tickets to recs or other promotions that we do not know of.

Loyal players LOL, they would leave once there is a better deal on a new site.
Only reason why they are loyal is because Pokerstars is still the best option.
Winning regulars bring 0 value to stars, that is why they are trying so hard to
squeeze them out.

Guys i would love lower rake too but this is facts, we do not have leverage. Find leverage or keep getting squeeze.

Winning regulars would bring greater value to a site that could benefit from the liquidity they provide. There is a reason Party jumped on the opportunity.

You may be correct that Stars no longer sees value in winning regs if

(a) the processing cost of net funds they take off the site is greater than
(b) the benefit of their paying rake/fees +
(c) providing warm bodies to boost liquidity overall +
(d) securing their loyalty to keep competition from attaining greater liquidity,

Perhaps this recent episode demonstrated that (c) is not much of a factor to Stars, but a more general loss of marginal revenue (b) could matter, such as 200 x $583 cited from one boycotting player during the rest of Sunday. $100K/day from poker may not really be much versus the revenue earned from "protecting otherwise losing tournament players" in both poker and other channels. Remember the less money that leaves the site versus the churn available in other channels, plus poker may be what drives decision making.

This gets posted a lot, but it still doesn't make it true.

I have been withdrawing money from Stars every month for several years when i played there. A few months ago I quit Stars for good and moved on. Guess what, since then i got surveys asking why i left, offer for promotions (which i didn't get before) and 2 times reload-offers without play-through requirements. Both times i deposited, took the free money, cashed out and didn't play hand. Will there be a 3rd time? No idea, would seriously question the company if so. So, how does that fit with Stars not wanting winning regulars?!

The truth is, they want every traffic they can get, they just happen to not want to "waste" promotional money to winnning regulars. And considering how little impact on traffic the drop of the old VIP-System had, shows that TSG knows their customers actually quite good. If you want change, don't play at Stars at all! But obv in the near future we will have another thread like this where people complain that Stars cut their rakeback from 0.005% to 0.001%.

Hey guys,
Thanks for the support in varying degrees.
We didn't succeed 100%.
But some positives:
everybody kept their word!
200+ guys united from different backgrounds within 3 days
Impromptu 5K 1milly GTD hit
We are sticking together and working on future things.
I got 500+ pictures of pets for the lowly price of $6k and the chance to make a big poker fan have a great experience.

We will continue to try and improve the overall ecology by supporting sites that offer fairly priced games and not supporting the ones who don't.

We set the bar high, by going public before the event and we knew it was going to be hard to make it overlay. But we felt it was the right thing to do.

There are many ways to point out what is bad about Pokerstars. But the best way is to just support the competition, imho. We will focus on that, aswell as continuing to try and find a way to get Stars to care.
We will try and organise an even larger group, including low/midstakes.
But for now all I ask is for some funny Memes about our failed attempt to create an overlay.

Much love.

so if i send you a cat pic i get $12? is it too late?

Excuse me, but why anyone still calls this site `PokerStars`?

Its offending to the history of online poker imo. This site must be called `AmayaStars`, never PokerStars, not on forums, not in media, not anywhere.

`PokerStars` = GOAT (even during shady blackfriday times, they came on top, w high morale, there was very good communication between company and players).
`AmayaStars` = worst possible cancerous thing that could have happened to online poker since blackfriday.

There havent been one good change in 4.5 years, except consistent murdering of what was built before them, since they`ve acquired the brand.\

P.S. `high rake is good for games, because players in the casino across started to have more recs and higher winrates.` Kappa.

Serious question: Can you elaborate on this? Apparently there is an overwhelming number of players (you and your peers included) who find their combination of game selection, software, and security superior to those of their competitors. Please do not say you are protesting on behalf of the entire poker ecosystem; it would be a laughable claim considering your entire protest group is HS MTT pros, a group of 250 players that, by conservative estimates, has a lifetime net profit of tens of millions of dollars (and quite possibly over 100 million) on pokerstars. It seems like your group's primary contention is that the players who are winning the most money are not winning as much money as they think they should, an argument that will not win you much support.

Even though I don't play on stars, I obviously support your goal to reduce rake. However, as someone who is far removed from the high stakes online MTT world, I think you guys are come off like a bunch of entitled babies with absolutely no leverage, and the long-term results of this boycott will reflect that. People are hating on Gzesh for questioning your organization, planning, and follow through, but he pretty much hit the nail on the head with respect to the necessary components for a successful effort against any organization in power, much less a multi-billion dollar, hegemonic corporation.

Question?
To those in the previous 666+ posters?
What 3 things could PS do that would give you a feeling of positive action and satisfaction that they are trying to improve the situation, bearing in mind that they are a business with their own goals of making profit and being a market leading supplier of this service?

From a business perspective irl. Aren't you the idiot for still buying their stuff? A business can deny service to anyone for whatever reason. Just because you buy stuff from my company, I do not owe you anything apart from the product you paid for.

Ofc this practice does only work as long as my company gets enough other customers besides you.

Why 666+ and not 777+

The best thing you guys can do to hurt Pokerstars is improve their competition.

Give other sites free promotion thru social - you guys proved that other sites will work with you to provide alternatives to Stars in terms of Tourneys and GTEs so just keep doing that.

Today... That's the way l ride..... What's your answer to my question

Rec player here....playing 3-4 hrs a week...Zoom 50/100 And as far as I'm concerned more rake is better if it gets Pros off the site. The games have got so much softer in the past couple of years. There's tons of us that don't even have a HUD and/Or play on their mobile device. Hope Pokerstars bans HUDS next

PStars got it right. We are the customers, not the Regs. And why would any of us leave Pokerstars? What are the alternatives? PartyPokers software sucks and RIO is just starting out and probably infested with Regs.

No matter what site you try your hand at us going to have a small EV for participation on any ring, tourney, but higher percentage payout places does something to combat to that...

Long story short ... It is a customer's choice to click in or not...
Play progressive KO's with Bounty knockouts to give yourself a better EV.
Personally 15-18% Paid places are good along with Bounty

As for my previous post.. the silence is deafening.
Typical, the complainers don't have the suggestions...

Dude, noone suggests anything at this point, because its irrelevant effort.

People who are actually playing poker for a living, winning players (unlike 90+% of posters here, who dont have a problem w Amayas actions, and bring same dumb argument for years now `dont forget they are self interested multi-billion corporation`, i dont know what you guys are doing, but its certainly NOT making money playing online poker, lets be clear here), dont bother coming to this site to actually complain anymore.

They are busy finding ways of doing their job.
Its guys like PTlou and 15 other non-winning-online-poker players who still respond and/or bring this topic, and print pages of useless discussion here.

It was shown in past 5 years any suggestion will not be listened to, there will be very little to none communication between community and AmayaStars, and things overall will only get progressively worse, until site volume decreases to laughable amounts to call it online poker (check past 5 years how many tables are running each new year, i know u dont play the game, so u need to do a little effort online here).

So yes, you will pretty much not get any legit conversation about this topic on 2p2 at this point.

+1

-1, imo it waste of time at this point.