Maybe a mass withdrawal of funds/boycott of Stars? Test their seperation of funds, and try to pop that bubble?

Okay...... and did the union you're an activist for fall from the sky ? No, it began with some collective action, which was followed up upon.

I'd think that "all things considered" a decent base has been set for further action. What I suggested is making things uncomfortable when someone from the "scab list" sits down. You think that's "crazy" ? Some activist you must be.

Maybe as a "union activist" you'd think it okay to break bread or do business with scabs down at the company store once after your union duties are done for the day.

Which side are you on ? The players fighting for their common interests or the scabs ?

Would never work, trust me. Concentrate on the margins, their core is too solid to act against in any event.

The "trust me" part of your post suggests you have some experience in this issue... care to share?

I've long wondered the same as Snuffers' post: what would happen if a significant number of top high-stakes players – who should also have the largest bankrolls – all decided to withdraw their funds en masse?

To the OP, and others who participated, good on all of you folks. All too often, I read threads and posts calling for some kind of action, only to have minimal response. In this case, you've made an honest, concerted effort to effect change. And yes, you will have plenty of people telling you it will accomplish nothing, but then again, doing nothing also accomplishes nothing.

I love anytime the little guy stands up to the man and in this instance this advice is the only method that will work considering the little man are individualists.

I think if all the streamers switched sites it would have more of an impact long term than the regs leaving. If casual poker fans start playing on the sites that the streamers do I can see Stars taking much bigger hits on a wide range of tourneys/sngs. I don't see it changing cash much cuz... who really watches much cash game streaming? I mainly see mtts players streaming these days.


If regs quit it only impact that small sector of the community, if the visible players all go to to other sites and even more **** talk Stars that would be a much bigger reaction than a boycott.


Taking Stars' recs away is how you **** em in the ass.

If stars repeatedly has overlays and therefore reduces guarantees or quits offering hr's altogether and another site picks up the slack.. Stars can no longer claim to be the best site in the world bla bla bla, maybe the they'd have most players but not the biggest and best games. That surely wouldn't be a good look for shareholders or a direction for the company to go in right? Let ps keep the midstakes and micros but all not have any of the serious action sicne they don't take the poker community seriously and only care about consumers as somebody mentioned Bazov said?

But they basically never have overlays , like in the next 5000 tounaments maybe only a few, and this specific tournament where so many boycotted, still went over the garuentee 250k

I used to own a large part of and operate a poker network.

1. Stars almost certainly has the liquidity to cover any "mass withdrawal" that might be organized.

2. If their asset mix does not match up precisely with the liquidity demands of a surprise mass withdrawal you might assemble, they certainly could borrow short term to cover the cash flow.

I just think this is a foolish tactic that would fail because (1) it overestimates both the ability to implement it and (2) vastly over estimates the likelihood of any real impact. It appears to be lashing out without knowing very much about the maths.

3. Unless you have a place lined up for folks to deposit and resume action, consider what you are expecting them to do ..... quit poker ?

4. Conversely: Why would anyone think Stars could not fade the sort of short-lived run on the bank being talked about ?

Trying to "bust" Stars is foolish and you cannot do it, certainly not by attempting a "surprise" run on the bank. .

What MAY be more productive follow-up is working on their marginal revenues (from whoever you persuade to move on) than trying to deplete their players aggregate bankroll, especially when your actors are tournament players. Even Stars' marginal revenues stood up well versus the boycott, at least this time around.

Players moving en masse to another site, whether its Party or RIO or wherever, may get more notice because no one wants to lose marginal revenue. At least you'll learn if Stars wants to keep that segment of the business, although the results this week raise doubt it stands to lose that tournament market segment.

5. Stars may reach out or not, but they are not likely scared about this dispute. Leap at the chance to engage in any proffered dialogue.They may reach out or not, but they are not likely scared about this dispute. Leap at the chance to engage in any proffered good faith dialogue.

but what about the super hr's dont they still run 25k bi mtts in their various coop series? Is stars that huge there's scabs for 25k bi mtts? Maybe they don't run mtts that big anymore I have no idea. IIRC they had a 100k a while back there cant be scabs for that, next time they try to add one to the end of a series tell them no.

edit - I suppose they could run tons of satties or give away some seats like they did for PCA this year, ya they're probably untouchable and we're at their mercy, tough spot.

Are you going to tell them what they can/can’t claim? What are you gonna do if they don’t oblige, sue them?

Besides that, I doubt any of their shareholders care about if Stars has high stakes action or not. They care about the bottom line. If somebody finds a way to hurt them there, that might change things. Losing a couple grand of rake because of one boycott probably won’t bother too many people in charge. OTOH, if >1000 regulars boycotted a full SCOOP/WCOOP, that might move the needle.

ofc they can say whatever they want but if they can't fill a 10kbi small field mtt and meanwhile another site can fill a 100k of the same variety it's not a good look for them is what I was implying. As you said, if their flagship brand series takes a huge hit logic would suggest that they would lose some market share and profit. It would be an interesting battle to see the hs poker comm vs amayastars for an extended period of time, what would happen and who would blink first. another provider take over the good games, cash, mtts and sngs with more favorable offerings and treatment of players meanwhile ps goes on with their charade or whatever you want to call it.

Very sad that this discussion is even taking place and we have been put in this situation.

I'm pretty disappointed that this didn't work, but I'm not in the least bit surprised. You can be absolutely sure that the upper management at stars were popping the champagne tonight considering the boycott and the turnout. Props to the people who boycotted, but they also mostly don't understand the economics of the poker economy. Stars has figured out a price point that maximises their own EV, and changing that inflection point will require an enormous collective effort that involves hundreds or possibly thousands of regs sacrificing massive amounts of EV for months on end to even have a chance of making a difference. That's simply not going to happen due to the nature of this game. Again, I hope that I am wrong going forward.

progressive bounty tournaments are so sick. the winner got a $146,953 bounty and 2nd got a $19,000 bounty

All the more reason that 1rst and 2nd place should get the same amount for their finishing position, like party.

The only way to really hurt Stars is to hit their core market - recreational players. Recreational players don't give a **** about Rake or RB, I bet at least a third of people playing on Stars don't even know what EV means...

You do that by giving other sites more action at higher stakes - which results in more $$$ coming in which means more $$$ going out in marketing to the mass market.

With the growth of Twitch and Youtube, the value in stopping FREE advertising to those sites by streaming their tourneys and uploading videos is HUGE.

There is well over 1m people viewing streams on Twitch at any one time, even if 5% click on the Poker tab at one point that have never done so before, and they see the top guy streaming on Stars guess who they are gonna sign up to?

RIO has it right with the streamer RB, and other sites should follow suit,

just a few things to say:
- as a semi-retired cash poker player, Stars still has a good offering for me - top security and bot detection, regulated, top software and a big zoom pool (as im pretty lazy to do any table selection ). Me personally could care less if they charge more rake as its not a big part of my hourly anyway. I understand there are ppl in different situations in regards to winrates, but the thing is if u as a pro poker player continue to play stars obviously they have a value proposition for u (or it should be that way) thats not met fully by another site.
- as a TSG shareholder, let me tell u what i care about. Fisrt, integration of recent acquisitions, legalization effects and timelines in different jurisdictions and if they can manage their debt and deleverage in time (and eventually their plans to merge their poker, sportsbetting and casino platforms but thats not happening anytime soon). As the legacy poker business is about a 1/3 of the company revenues and is going to be less and less (because the growth comes from sportsbetting and casino and poker is flat) it losses relevancy to shareholders. Another point - as pokerstars is pretty close to monopoly in poker there are some serious network effects u just cant do anything about, unfortunately or not.. and also however much they **** up (and they do some for sure) they will keep going as thats how mechanics in big network monopolies are, scale begets scale.

There was a time when they were in fact close to a monopoly but right now they are lightyears away from it

what's the point of boycotting 1 tourney when the guys on the list raked at least 100000 usd combined yesterday in other Pokerstars tourneys?

ok sure, monopoly may be too strong of a word but pretty sure they got 50%+ marketshare (and probably more in tourneys where that matters more). The emphasis should have been on the network effects going with the pool already established.

I would very much like to see math behind that estimation

You guys do not see the point:

It doesn't matter if Stars is currently the market leader, no one denies that. What does matter is that the trend is downwards for them, whereas other sites (mainly Party) are picking up the pieces. This trend will only ever get stronger with every tournament of action regs and recs shift away from PokerStars, and it compounds with time.

I have started playing when Party was still a bigger site than Stars, and when FLHE was still more popular than NLHE. That didn't change over night, you have to notice the trends.

Stars is dying, it's just a very slow process.

can be off, the 2nd name on the list (the first is blocked on trackin sites) Lena900 raked 583$ on pokerstars yesterday with no reentries included. sundays are massive in rake in general, i don't think 100k for 100+ high stakes players combined is too wild of a guess.

EV - isnt that a pokemon?

But you are correct, in that most rec's don't care about rake or rake back, because poker is just a game to them. They have other skills and jobs, that pay a reliable income.

Another boycott though? Seriously? Is that all you guys got? LOLZ.
The message should be pretty clear by now, Stars doesn't care about you. It's like the ex-boyfriend with a guitar outside the house of the chick who is getting banged by a much better looking guy. It's over, move on, get over it.

Tell me about it. Last year on Stars I won a play money progressive bounty and won like 1.2 billion chips. At first I thought it was a software glitch or something.