+1000

I would consider myself a recreational player and even I recognize that Stars' low stakes MTTs are not beatable anymore... I like your boycott. Good job, guys.

So PP = half the rake and ~10x the rakeback.

Yup. Also for party the KO prize pools are fair.

Example, the 20k g. KO I saw last night had 2490 for second and 2493 for first. Everyone knows how redic KO tournaments are at heads up, depending on bounties the winner sometimes wins 2x second place, but party solved that problem with 1 and 2 winning equal amounts from half the prizepool.

Pokerstars owns the poker media, so it doesn't matter what they do. The "media" won't cover their shady ****.

Literally only way to get PokerStars to lower rake is for TSG to go private. TSG only cares about quarterly profits as a publicly traded company, so will continue to increase rake for as long as they can.

Won't be long before TSG gets owned by more competitive, private but regulated, sites that care about the players

relax

What makes u think that it will change?

If Stars would really care about the recs they either shouldnt implement such tourneys where a rec has basically no chance of winning or they would get a warning popup when registering this tournament saying that their is almost no ev in this mtt for you. Every buyin by a rec in such a tourney is money lost to some reg's pocket.
They dont care about recs either otherwise they would have banned certain countries years ago or limited the amount of tables one can play.
In fact I think they know that they need the regs to actually hit most guarantees. Can't advertise your series with record guarantees if you dont have a playerbase who can actually fill it.
Imo Stars has long given up that online poker has a long term future. They are now out to get as much money out of it as they can while its still a thing. They aren't even promoting normal poker anymore. They develop and introduce new formats which are good to recycle more money and get more rake out of it. Unfortunately they still need standard poker to somehow fill their live events. Isn't it funny how on every ept stream they cheer for the regs in the highrollers or want them on the feature table? Yet somehow these regs are worthless online.

We will see how many can resist the urge of this overlay.

Under/over 3.5 boycotters that take Stars being useless seriously enough that they actually cash out and take their play elsewhere for more than 24 hours and don't just continue business as usual for the million etc tomorrow?

Tried this for cash years ago. Quite a few of regs who signed up to boycott couldnt pass up on how good the games were and played anyways. Hope it works out better for you guys.

Level Final Boss - I hope yall get what you all want. The standard has always been 10% max, anymore than that is a spit in the face!

Do you guys think these rake increases is because of shareholders? TSG is publicly traded, so their bankroll is from public money now.

lol pls every single one of those players will be in all the value tournaments on Stars day in and day out. You guys want the cake and want to eat it too.

Skipping a -ev tournament is not a "boycott". Let's see all those regs stop playing on Stars for a month. That will be a boycott. The only consequence of this will be that Stars will reduce their highroller offerings, which I doubt they care that much about since it's not exactly a huge money maker and it carries big risks.

Boycotts accomplish nothing, you really expect a company to care whata few guys do?>

Hey guys, Stars doesnt like highstake prosl. They made that clear for awhile now. you are doing them a favor, now some random recreational might win!

If stars"gave in" guess what? that will mean they can be pursuaded to do what you guys want, so theyll never change. They will follow their policy to make the most amount of money they can. Get it thru your heads they dont care about you .They dont listen!
What a waste of time for you people

Wasn’t a boycott done like this when supernova elite was scrapped....many pros & regs signing up saying they won’t be playing....didn’t last long tho from what I remember....

man thats too awesome. i hope this makes an impact

As others have pointed out:

Party KO rake is FAR lower

888 running RAKE-FREE tournaments tomorrow

Run it Once has 51% rakeback on cash games + bonus releasing at 10%

I like to see how players come together, but I do not understand, why do they protest now and not before? I mean that reducing the chest in half does not seem as serious as destroying the VIP system, they could remove the rakeback if they want and I suppose if they do not it is for recs. So, why will they care what the regulars want now?

Especially, why should they now worry about a tournament? What will happen the next day when absolutely nothing happens? the regulars that are not going to play that tournament are going to play other stars tournaments ...: S

So, this is like a warning? Is not it a bit late to give a warning like this? I ask

Also taking into account that not playing the tournament does not involve any effort, absolutely nothing, it is simply not playing it, it is not like a strike, a strike is not going to work but to protest on the street, not to go to work to another branch office. I sincerely think that players want poker rooms to take them into account, but they do not want to make any effort to demonstrate their power, so they simply do not have power, poker houses can do whatever they want. It seems a good strategy to weaken the figure of the professional, people who are at home 24/7 doing an activity that is badly seen by the rest of society, taking money away from people as a boxer takes money from a baby, always with the fear that the online poker world ends tomorrow. So, how is it possible for these people to organize and be able to checkmate a poker room?

I understand that for a player of High stakes stars is a very large% of its volume talking about cash, but others can play in other rooms perfectly with less rake, so why do we keep playing in pokerstars? Maybe it does not make sense to stop playing there without a clear reason ...
There will be a few million-dollar poker rooms that would be happy to empty the tables of pokerstars, I do not understand why they do not invest in emptying their tables, it seems super easy, obviously I do not mean to empty them completely, but with a good campaign I think it could be emptied up to the point where they listen to what the regulars want and I'm not talking about a campaign that announces partypoker as the best room, I mean an antistars campaign that focuses on despising its anti-poker players measures

If it's big enough, even the recreational ones
they will change of room

Two or three years ago, in .es there was a strike, all the regs found out that the specific day did not have to play in pokerstars (only room in .es), it was not known very well that it was going to get, neither if It made a lot of sense to press pokerstars since it was not a protest against rake, it was because of regulation. The thing is that most regulars did not play that day, but some regulars of the highest levels (nl200 probably lol) played and justified why they did it, it seemed so disgusting ... they were not even able to stop playing a disgusting day Then how will pokerstars be concerned about this collective? They have the power to destroy their room but they are not able to make an effort for the good of all in the long term

I'm just a recreational who would like to be pro someday, from my position it's easy to talk, but please get organized, the chests would never have arrived if the professionals were well organized

Lol at boycotting 1 -ev tourney

If u guys want stars to do something by boycotting , then try not playing stars anymore till they make some reasonable changes, all this is doing is giving all the players not boycotting a +ev spot, and I doubt will even fall far below gaurentee and everyone will be back like nothing happened ASAP

Everyone, start rocking this avatar on all Poker sites!

Would this give me the title of martyr of resistance?

Although I fully support some action against stars for screwing over the players continuously, I cant really see them caring too much about this. The guarantee will probably still get close, and its one tournament that probably makes up a fraction of a % of their daily rake. Much more needs to be done in order to make them listen, but that would probably require the majority of pros sitting out for months on end - which wont happen and I'm not sure they would even be too bothered about it if it did. I hope I'm wrong, but I think this is mostly just a group of regs with an over inflated sense of self importance. A lot of that list just want their name on it for egotistical reasons and wouldn't have played anyway. I hope I'm wrong!

Also not sure why people are bigging up Party given their refusal to comment on the huge recent scandal there. They are doing some good things but many more awful things too, and the refusal to comment on the scandal while continuing to have far too close relationships with people who own stables is borderline unforgivable.

I have no dog in this fight, Just curious about plans for effective follow-up, if any.

Do you plan on playing at Stars in the future with folks you label as "scabs" today ?

Or, are you just name-calling ?

Anyone disagree with the above post ? Anyone ?

4 years ago I said the only way a protest of any sort would work is if all players agree to sign their name and agree ahead of time to follow the instructions of the leadership regardless if they temporarily agree with it or not.

History has shown that the deciders shouldn't be dependant on poker for a living as their judgement is clouded and is open to personal self interest.

A list like that could have a huge effect if utilized correctly through selected boycotts both online and live. Best of luck.

From what I recall of the SNE matter, Stars reversing its position re the program, just before year end (as I recall) after players had relied on the SNE program's terms, was probably actionable in equity if not at law. I do not recall anyone suing or filing a complaint with the Gaming Services Commission on the IOM. I think Stars' conduct was reprehensible, unethical and players should have refused to play there thereafter .... but they kept playing anyway, which perhaps means Stars knew their customer base better than the base knew themselves.

I have no dog in the current fight in that I do not play on Stars (or anywhere else online). I have no personal bone to pick with Stars. ( I did own/operate an online poker network at one time years ago, but do not now nor for the last ten+ years. I still have some knowledge of the business of poker (and online gaming) from the operator perspective and involvement in the online industry.)

I am "in this thread" because I also have some professional experience in collective action and organizing outside of "poker" and feel free to comment on puffery and self-posturing in lieu of posters' actual further effective action. Feel free to ignore my posts.

Don't misunderstand, I am very impressed at the list posted for boycotting that event, excellent work by the organizer(s) .... but it will be "one off" without meaningful follow-up by players beyond that event.

I do think players should en masse go play somewhere else on those dates, to demonstrate their collective weight and show Stars there are alternatives.

Perhaps a "newly launched site" could step up and post some large event, to demonstrate its commitment to players ??