Quote:
Originally Posted by Sect7G
Unless you truly believe that your employer is the greatest thing since the great egg white omelet or you are willing to call out every mistake then you can't be impartial. I'm not faulting you for not speaking out on all issues... and if you did you wouldn't be honouring your contract which in itself would be scummy. But you can't claim to care about players more then yourself or your employer and will truly speak your mind while being in your position.
For the record in balance I do think Pstars does a good job, and in comparison with the offshore industry they do a great job.
As per your question collectively I think out of the thousands of players that make a living combined they make more then Pstars... but they should and that number shouldn't even be close imo. The issue is over the past few years that number has been shrinking as many on here can attest to.
I have been giving you a hard time and I do value your opinion and am glad that you've returned to the forums. What strategies should the online sites do to bolster the numbers of players from Asia?
Hey man. We met at UKIPT Isle of Man a few months back. You're a good guy and I don't wanna get too involved in this whole thing, but I think you're jumping to some conclusions with the bolded part.
I think it's certainly up for debate as to which number is bigger, the total profit made by all poker pros or the money made by Stars - considering Stars just dropped $731million for the DOJ settlement they may be dealing with much bigger numbers than any of us know about. Of course, I'm just speculating the same as you are, but I think considering how ill-defined the concept of 'poker pro' is (since there are so many winning players who don't play full-time, and indeed some losing players who do), it's very difficult to say anything for certain on that front, even if we did have the numbers on how much Stars makes per year.
EDIT: It seems Daniel has confirmed the players' income is more since I started writing this. I guess...just ignore most of my post. *facepalm*
Secondly, I'm wondering why you feel like the combined earnings of all pros 'should' be more than Stars'. I don't necessarily have any kind of a counterpoint to this, but I am curious as to why you think this, because even as someone who isn't sponsored by Stars or any other poker site, I do feel that the fact that PokerStars is a successful company that provides so many poker games is a major factor in what allows me to make a living playing online poker. There must be many others like me - particularly rakeback grinders who make a living off the bonuses Stars is able to offer - and so I personally feel like Stars is partially responsible for creating the infrastructure that allows people like me to be professional poker players. I think as a business that provides a service just like any other, the market should decide how financially successful they ultimately are.
Finally, I would also contest that the total earnings of poker players has probably not gone down over the past few years. Indeed, I'd imagine it's risen. I think the average ROI of the professional tournament player or the average winrate of the professional cash game player has gone down, but the growth of the game has been so widespread - particularly in regions like South America and Eastern Europe - that the poker economy would seem to have grown significantly. It certainly wasn't possible five years ago for online tournaments to rack up $10M prizepools, or nosebleed cash players to have $6M+ years.
This is becoming somewhat of a sidetrack from the topic at hand, but I do think it's relevant, because the topic is how to improve the poker world. I, presumably like Daniel, see professional players, recreational players and poker sites as different parts of the same system, and I think it's disappointing that some people seem to believe in a "players vs sites" mentality. I'm not saying you're doing this at all, but I think it would be in all our best interests to start eradicating this mentality in general and try to understand how we as players can help inform poker sites as to how to make the right decisions for everyone, rather than continually believing that what's a good decision for a poker site is a bad decision for the community.