That's one of the most ridiculous comparisons I've ever seen.

You don't go through Bahamian entry customs IN THE US, traveling from the USA to the Bahamas. You DO go through US entry customs when traveling from the Bahamas to the US in the Bahamas. I would not reasonably expect to be handed over to Nassau police if I misreported cash to US custom authorities at the Nassau airport the thrown into a local prison.

Also, many players are naive to how dangerous the Bahamas actually is.

So yes I think that they should make a much bigger deal out of this to the players. Something like "If you mis declare cash to American customs on the way out of the Bahamas you may be thrown in one of the worst jails in the western hemisphere." http://www.breakingnews242.com/break...ide-the-prison because that is the reality.


And the people that went through this over the last few years didn't deserve it. Get off your high horse the punishment doesn't fit the crime and never would be reasonably expected.

If I was traveling to an exotic country through a travel agency I would expect that that agency would inform me of a strange local law where the punishment for J walking was a public stoning.

Been thinking the same thing for awhile. May be contingent on PokerStars getting more penetration in the US market though. They need to find a resolution to their issues in Nevada and get a successful outcome in California or have several other states regulate without restricting them. Unless of course they see this as a way to leverage themselves in. It would be hard for them to swallow operating WSOP.com through one of their competitors, if they would even be allowed to operate it at all.


Part of the announcement was a new unified website that would allow preregistration/payment and presumably allow winnings to be deposited back into an account. This should in theory greatly reduce the need to carry cash back and forth.


Last season the TV shows went to a final table only format. They then added hole cards up for the early day coverage on the web stream. They are going back to multi day coverage this year for the TV shows. This will mean no more early day hole cards for the web streams though. Their explanation is that when they had hole cards up for the early days they were switching the feature table every couple of levels to spread out any sense of disadvantage players may feel from having their hole cards shown on stream. With going back to early day TV show coverage they want to stick with one table throughout the day to build more of a story.

can't predict the future, but so far all the fun was about making "StarsFun" a recognizable brand and this meant stuff like offering beer pong, sports challenges and whatsoever. the new websites definitely focus on that a bit stronger and tbh, i think it makes a lot more sense to 'sell' a poker holiday, rather than a ultimate grind experience. especially, if you target players, who might want to play their first live event.

i would put all the 'crazy tournaments' also in the fun category, but i wouldn't except that the schedules will be filled with to many 'deuces wild' or whatever. i guess it would be also no surprise, that they offer more casino-crossover stuff like a blackjack tourney.

It's pretty absurd to have the festival as together because no one is gonna travel from outside the USA or perhaps canadal to play a 1k. I guess Prague will have one because that's been really successful. There won't be much continuity from one tour event to another in players because they are all so far away.

Licensing/regulatory always front of mind for them. If you peel back the onion a bit its really not that big of a deal as it relates to operating online site.

We are currently only talking about NV and NJ. Amaya already licensed in NJ. Unlikely to get licensed any time soon in NV. So, NV online is the only thing a CI/WSOP owned by Amaya would lose. At the end of the day how important is NV online over short term or even the long term?

I am not sure what if any regulatory issues exist in an Amaya owned WSOPc live MTTs. The casinos that host are the licensee. Third party companies (also licensed) usually run and manage circuits.. WSOPc is really just a brand that the host casino uses.

I think a purchase helps legitimize Amaya in other states where bad actor clause is always a road block. WSOPC has economic benefit in each state with a stop. Lawmakers and voters and lobbyists like economic benefit, especially when it is actual and not just projected. Plus with CI/WSOP absorbed , one less group lobbying against Amaya in all the various states muddling through new potential online legislation.


Amaya owning the WSOP Main Event and WSOP Summer at Rio, is another matter. The WSOP brand is strong in this one. But Amaya already feels they can successfully implode the EPT and PCA brand and build a new one, so who knows.

Totally missed this one. pretty huge if they can pull that off. getting cash to and from tournies in your own currency is hard enough. Dealing with forex makes it even worse. A fully functional, global stars bank at each stop would be HUGE benefit for players, especially new fun players with little experience in such matters.


all good points. they did hammer on the "fun" factor in all the recent changes.

with 20% payouts and other tour changes its pretty clear that Amaya is taking similar strategy for live MTT as they did with online VIP / rake / game changes last year. From Amaya business perspective, kind of hard to argue against their strat.


Amaya is building a tour with a bit more focus on fun players having fun... and a bit less focus on a tour where a reg can be a reg.

The new wave is coming, Smart, live MTT regs might who still want to show profit, might want to think less about GTO and more about why Hellmuth is GOAT at WSOP Rio. His play style in those large, fun player fields is almost anti GTO, but you cant argue about the positive results. but I am sure many will post he is just a fish on a 10-year heater !!

oh regarding possible Ceasers Interactive purchase... forgot to mention above that I think 888 would be most likely one to purchase.

amaya would just be alot more interesting

Need to see details of the schedules to give an opinion. In Asia when they merged ANZPT with APPT they kept only one stop in Melbourne.

I hope that they this re-branding is not an other way to rationalized their offer and to cut all events that are not profitable enough...

You don't say?

In a nutshell this is what it is. But I'd much rather see 20 quality stops per year rather than 80 so-so stops. When I gauge quality I mean factors like-

* Location and easy access
* Amount of quality satellite options
* Amount of extras given away at events, (players bag, freerolls, parties etc)
* The genuine buzz about the stop and number of attendees

I think these changes will improve things a lot for Pstars and the players.

Had the most awesome playing with Americans on PokerStars before Black Friday hit Back then PS was offering league freerolls by region, so it was only the US and Canada who would play together. And it was still possible for a beginner to win up to $50 a month just by playing at night - so everybody was really relaxed and social, and really supportive of newcomers, helping with tips and resources, and all sorts of stuff.

Still get nostalgic for those times, even though Stars has undergone so many drastic changes, like being sold to Amaya. And then there's been so many legislative changes and stuff like that affecting the player pool ...


PokerNews had an interview with the Head of Tourneys a couple of days ago though, and he did admit (paraphrasing ) that their new strategy is to try and squeeze more money out of people? PokerStars' Neil Johnson About the EPT Now Paying Out 20 Percent of the Field : http://www.pokernews.com/news/2016/0...yout-25625.htm

Guess a lot of us who still play on Stars get frustrated with them, not so much for their attempts at profit-seeking, but maybe more because of that element of 'don't pee on our leg, and tell us it's raining'? Was it really Judge Judy who said that - guess am so at a loss for words on how to quite describe Amaya on my own, will have to quote Judge Judy

Like these days a lot of places will ask if we want to add a soup and pie to our quarter chicken dinner for $3.99 or whatever ... so that part's not uncommon. But guess maybe it can get a bit tiring to hear one thing, and then always be having to try and figure out when we need to double-check all the fine print?

For example, in the client today Stars added a link to the PS NJ Festival, and it looks like the rake for some events might be as high as 15% ... is that new?

• PokerStars Cup - October 30-31 ($300+$40)
• PokerStars Open - November 4-6 ($200+$30)
• $300+$40 Survivor ‘ Immunity ’ tournament

Looks like the structures are the same as EPT events though? Guess there's a lot more competition in the US, so maybe Stars might not have that much room to change too much?

Agreed. Poker holidays ftw. Just ask the 85-year olds that went on Jamie Gold's Island Breeze Poker Cruise. The company went bankrupt, but the customers had top-top fun. Possibly.

Who exactly is "They" Pokerstars? The US or Bahamian government? The Hotel? The Airline? The website the ticket was booked on? What every happened to personal responsibility?

And let's be real. The people you interviewed last year did not "mis declare" cash. They were deliberately trying to circumvent the law. They gave money to the girl who had never held that much cash before. She panicked and they got caught breaking the law.

It's really unfortunate that they were put in an unfortunate situation but it was their own fault.

The reason that rec players, like myself don't play the live events any more is that they are too expensive, I am talking about what they now call the festival tours, UKIPT etc. They started as £550 buy in and are now £1,000 and that is too much. The online satties are just full of regs and almost unbeatable as people grind them just for the t$.

I agree that they should consolidate the tours but you are right that this is just a reduction in events packaged as a rebrand.

Stars needs to go back to what worked before for the festivals if they want to attract rec players. Well run, reasonable buy in tournaments in accessible locations.

There is a lot of competition now, Genting, GPPT, GUKPT that run decent structure tournaments for reasonable buy ins for recs, Stars have effectively priced themselves out of this market.

Are they adding new stops each year and replacing them with some or how does it work?

and after that they will keep running 1m spins promos. ok, i guess it's my mistake that im still trying to find a single sensible argument for pokerstars doing it right. i just can't believe they keep their customers as total dumb as**oles.

But I am sure a fish would rather tell how he qualified for ''a Pokerstars Festival'' .

I see they've just released the list of festival and championship events for next year. I'm assuming this is just for the first half of the year (plus a confirmation of Barcelona later in the year). Quite cool how they are going to Panama and Macau.

They have been going to Macau and Panama since like 2010.


Does anyone know if they are also canceling all their regional series like UKIPT, France Poker Series, IPT, Estrellas, ANZPT, etc? If those 3 truly are the only festivals Stars are having in the first 6 months of 2017 then this is more mindblowingly absurd than anything Amaya has ever done. It would mean they are cutting more than 90% of their festivals. Where the **** would Aussies play? There used to be an ANZPT like every 6 weeks for years. Same for Italians French etc.

The PokerStars Festival schedule has London in January, Rozvadov in March:

http://www.pokerstarslive.com/festival/

Highlights of Pokerstars Live London include:

StarsFun Roulette Tournament
StarsFun Blackjack Tournament
StarsFun Craps Tournament

Yeah but I mean it's cool how these are basically going to become 'EPT' like festivals with all the heroes playing rather than just being regional events now.

Yeah I dunno about Australia...I assume given what's going on with the possible new legislation that they are leaving it alone till they get clarity?

Yes.
Regional tours are gone.

Why the **** are the regional tours gone? Seriously? Were they somehow secretly losing money having those? Given that all those also work as free marketing, create a bunch of online satellite rake etc on top of all the insane amounts of rake people pay (500-person FPS/IPT etc people pay 500k just for the main, plus all the side), it's really hard for me to see how on earth they could have been losing money on the festivals.

So why the hell quit them? I just do not understand. Anyone got any theories?

It's cool how the WPT is expanding heaps tho, there's a WPT or WPT-n somewhere in the world almost every week and they really are all over the world, so maybe Party will actually take over PS as a market leader at some point. They sure would if they could improve the software, without live tournaments PS has nothing but the software going for it. Worst rakeback, scummiest company, worst live event calendar. WSOP Circuit has been expanding outside the States as well and I assume it's sponsored by 888, Unibet has the Unibet Open, MPN has their own series, if Stars seriously only offers 10 festivals a year or something and they are all reg-filled ******fests with craps tournaments they are going to ****ed. Whoever runs that company now is a complete idiot.

Yes Estrellas and UKIPT in particular seemed to be very strong tours. Amaya gonna Amaya sadly.

Stars just tweeted @ me that the regional tours will stay but just under a different name. I think that press release they sent out is really confusing. Not sure what exactly will happen but if I understood them correct the regional tours will basically stay but just under some name like "Pokerstars festival" or whatever. Quitting them all would really have been pure lunacy.