The game seems easy, stop playing on Stars. Also never, ever respond so many times to an idiot like RunItPony. You guys quoted him way to many times imo.

This. Rakeback gets cut from something like to 2.x% to 1.x%, does this seriously make much of a difference?

On top of that: a further benefit of not playing at all on Stars are the occasional deposit bonuses with no play-through requirements. Already got them a few times. Deposit and withdraw two days later without playing a single hand. I actually get paid for not playing there. Feels good in any regards

Do you have any idea on how this revenue impacts their bottom line? Without at least a bit of this type of information you are pissing in the wind.

the point is not to deliver some kind of financial blow to 'stars. nobody protesting is delusional enough to think they can affect 'stars bottom line in any kind of significant way. that doesn't mean protests are futile or pointless if they can lead to better communication/transparency from the company.

Not only will stars not care, they should not care. They think their way is the most profitable way for them, any regs expecting profit need to either accept and lube up or leave. If you're talking about "keeping the poker dream alive" and that sort of stuff, it should be obvious stars has already buried that one.

Stars don't want you and don't need you, in fact you need them. The fact you're still playing there despite being screwed over repeatedly shows you're still making money. If you didn't then you wouldn't play at all. If you do believe they need you then quit and show them the actual consequences of their actions. What you're doing now is just skipping one donkament and then proving them right by playing the next day again.

Pretty hysterical. Numerous on that list have no issues playing at the venetian

This one is much more reasonable in its message, scope and intent, so I believe it may have an impact in that regard (regardless of whether the guarantee is met in this tournament or not), and I wish those luck in that regard.

Years ago with the SNE stuff, the player boycott at the time was a dumpster fire, organized by those who only knew how to set dumpster fires. They presented insane demands (seat on the board and such) which made that particular protest a complete joke, when that was also a time where a measured approach like this might have had an effect.

A protest does not need to force a change to encourage change when done properly.

Bingo.

Get all these players to skip the entire SCOOP and I will be impressed.

fwiw this is one of the dumbest false dichotomies i've ever seen anyone try to set up, i cant believe you're doubling down on this absurdly stupid question

also, good on OP and the rest for organizing and taking a stand

It is understandable that frustration is arising because of PS increasing rake and reducing rakeback, effectively taking money out of the pockets of players and putting it into theirs. However, the effectiveness of your proposed boycott of today's tournament seems questionable for basically one reason: PS essentially has a monopoly on the industry of online poker.

How many of the players you listed would be able to make their same income without playing on PS? Probably none. PS could actually continue to increase rake and decrease rakeback even more if they wanted, and what are all of you online high-stakes pros going to do? Switch to other sites? Play live only? As long as other options aren't viable, PS would appear to have all the leverage in the relationship between you and them.

High-stakes pros, who study and strive to maximize their revenue, would seem to be hypocritical for criticizing PS for attempting to maximize their own revenue.

Just wanna point out one little thing lot of people (seem to) miss. When i was involved in SnG boycot back in the days, stars really didnt care that much because:
1) There are quite a lot scums which will play 60s sng without regs instead of their usuall 15.
2) You really didnt have any other option back the days, did you?

Both points are dramatically diferent in this case. Who has 5k to play just like that (and it still wont be freebe, so you cant risk it just like that). And party? Props to them, they show it is possible to provide solid games even if you have regs on your site.
And stars just dont reflect it at all from what weve seen.

And one last thing to think about for a second. Ye, "poor" HS players, but did you look at stakes like 0,5 SnG and so? I did recently and i was shocked by some turbo SnGs fees, i was literally angry, because the games are barelly even beatable (if you are relative newcomer to poker). So that is the "become a pokerstar" dream they offer?

The fact there will be no massive effect on stars doesn't mean this is not effective for what it is. The argument that players have to go all-in and not play at all to have the full desired effect is unrealistic one. It is ok to show your displeasure by not playing in one event, the most important one within this series arguably, and certainly the most costly one for stars given that 1ks would be hard to have that same effect on. Depending on the reuslt tonight, this will get them to think about the bigger picture and how much they could lose down the road if this develops into a more serious and regular thing.

Somebodys said that Recs doesnt care about changes .Well thats not true i have a friend which plays micro stakes bounty builders and when the payouts were changes and for 15-30k prizepool the top places gets so less money he said to me"what is this shi-t why theres so small prizes with so many players" i explained what does 13% rake+ **** payouts to everybody no matter rec or reg or hobby player .

additions to the list:
mountainrose
pokerkluka
futti18
thedegenfund
dariepoker
newflat
josef shveik
as leshiy
raidalot
ekziter
tmacha
funwheel
holdplz
sephirot88
neverscaredB
ILS007
ale6ka
whatisl0v3
33juggernaut
Iambobbie
Jizoint
OMGACEACEACE
swansfc_CJ
Blanconegro
paulwiter
kofi89
hoelle1
ja.sam.gale


Some viable critisism in this thread, we are planning to do alot more, but all of this was on short notice. We will work on everything and welcome discussion from Monday onwards.

Thank you.

It appears that you are completely clueless of the current state of HS online MTTs so you should not present inaccurate beliefs as facts

Not really i see alot of people who haven't played on stars in 8 years sticking their nose into something they don't have a clue about. There is no reason to criticise this move in any way shape or form its a effective protest in a flagship mtt.

One reason could be to improve efficiency of the action maybe ? To gather pros, regs, recs, reg recs and all those who could help ?

Agreed that inconsistency is dominating in this thread between those for but refusing to discuss any opposite comments and those against but not proposing a single thing.

Sums up the poker community in the last years.

lol, good luck. couldn't see all that faces when cash players were mass boycotting starscoins and sne removal. especially the english-speaking community was the most passive one offering "friendly" petitions.

Hmm it seems some stars shills are in full force on the thread and people are getting worried on pokerstars headquarters? It's understandable, party is increasingly offering good tournaments, now with Runitonce making some new offering on cash games maybe they'll have some true competition since ftp went down.

I still think party has to improve in some ways and RIO has a lot to improve in relation to the quality of software/experience, but there's some optimism on the air I guess. Now if they only made some good regulations on the market I play from this could be great for me.

As of right now there is 1 entry with 2.5 hours left to start. Chance that Stars will cancel it?

I wonder if Stars will reduce the guarantee or just take the hit. ~2 hrs to go and only 1 person is signed up. There are some sattys running so they will get a few more people but unless tons of scabs show up to get the overlay, it should be well short of the guarantee.

I mean i would not be surprised if they reduced gtd/cancel it but i hope they are still having some integrity to take loss.

2 qualifiers running for 11 tickets at least.
Event 108 : Min of players : 5

No reasons to cancel it atm, but PS is PS ...