In decreasing order of rake:

• State lotteries
• Brick and mortar casinos
• PokerStars
• Bitcoin poker sites

Daniel, can you speak on the quality of live tables pre and post BF? Because it seems like you're telling a bunch of socially awkward introverts to magically gain social skills to keep poker afloat, but I don't see that happening. Once online poker gets up and running again, I would imagine that the social aspect of live poker will improve drastically since the online guys would obviously revert back to playing online.

^^We hope so. For EV and fun purpose

I don't know what this has to do with my comment. I merely stated that it's impossible to be entirely objective in your position as a sponsored player. That doesn't mean you can't do any good for poker. As I believe you've had. In fact you've done more to sell the game then any other pro besides Moneymaker imo.

It just means that you can't be the best person to Champion the cause of players while being paid by a site. So you should just come out as I'm a nice guy and I would like to see the game do well in the long term and this is what I do at the table as opposed to writing some doctrine on why players should do what you do despite earning a fraction of your guaranteed living.

As per who makes more money the Pro online players combined or Pstars? For low stakes cash players it's Pstars. For MTT players it's the players are their combined ROI's are above 10%. Now for turbo's at the high stakes it's Pstars. The question really needs to be defined clearer to get the correct answer.

yeah no one cares, there's plenty of places to talk about this that aren't here.

read this post FFS:

You are right when you say nobody forces you to play, but the high rake(live and online) makes it much harder for your vision to come true.
It makes it just so much harder for regs to start a game or keep a game running, especially in low stakes and omaha or worse in omaha hilow when you have the feeling after 20 min of play 10 % of the stacks is already gone into rake.

The only players able to take advantage of Pokerstars FPP bonuses/stellar rewards are those who are putting in high volume.

The recreational/casual players have very little opportunity to clear anything significant in the bonuses. But I guess they're just too dumb to understand or care the rake and what they're paying to play a game for a few hours/week.

Daniel do you feel rec players are more comfortable with you at the table now that you have more hair ?

It's impossible for me to separate my affiliation with what's best for poker? Is that a fact or your perception?

As for the question, it's simply this: for the mass of people who consider themselves professional poker players, who makes more money as a whole, the pros or the site?

No. Honestly I think it makes them even more uncomfortable being around such a sexy beast with a full head of hair to boot!!!

Let's be clear. I'm not telling anyone what to do. I'm simply sharing my perception as to what is in everyone's best interest. I'm sure there are plenty of possibilities, and I decided to share my personal views on it based on my 20 years of experience.

No need to imagine that happens in every blue collar job I have ever experienced.

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. Collectively Walmart employees make more then the Waltons... but most people think it's still not fair. So I don't really see your point. Could you elaborate?

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?

Daniel,

In your opinion (and obviously you're not speaking on PokerStars as a whole), why do you think steaming high stakes cash games online isn't as viable, lucrative or beneficial to the growth of poker as opposed to pokerstars.tv steaming all of their tournament stops? HSP was a big hit and railing online games without the hole card appears to warrant nosebleed players getting big contracts but there seems to be a void in producing cash games.

I appreciate you participating in the discussions on 2+2 again!

Daniel-you were part of the poker world before the boom in 2003. what do you think the poker world will look like in 10 years? what things could happen that you think would/could drastically change things?

I think we need to stop giving internet players an excuse to act like jerks because of this stereotype. Seriously, it's really not that difficult to learn a few basic niceties like how to say a few words of pleasant conversation. Or, at a minimum, to refrain from negative comments that put a damper on the whole table. It's not just good for poker; it's good for humanity.

The players do make a lot more still. As for my employer, I have looked deep inside of the company to see how it's run and I'm thoroughly impressed with the professionalism across the board. I have always spoke out against anything they do that I don't agree with, both internally and publicly.

To this day, although there have been some improvements, I'm still unhappy with a lot of the rules promoted by the EPT. The last aggressor rule is gone, but several other rules I think are completely absurd still remain. I have voiced my opinion, but they choose to go another way. Not much more I can do on the matter, and it's not important enough to me to boycott the events.

Like, the idea that on the river if it goes bet/call and the bettor mucks his hand, no other player at the table has the right to see EITHER hand is preposterous to me. Absolutely and unequivocally WRONG. It's not a huge deal, but I don't see how anyone could argue otherwise. The rule is designed to make chip dumping and collusion easier for players. I hate that rule, but they don't listen to me.

I respect the fact that not everyone will always agree with me, and they have the right to choose how they run their tournaments, but that won't stop me from voicing my opinion that they are doing some things wrong, regardless of my affiliation with the sponsor.

At least on the UKIPT, if it goes to the river, both players MUST table their hands.

A lot of people feel that Asia (particularly China) is the future? Agree/disagree?

If so, what should the marketing strategy be? How long until Asia (considering their population and disposable income) becomes much more relevant?

About time you asked a proper question....

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.

I think there's a significant number of recreational players who would argue its perfectly fine to blind off late players. If pros and top amateurs believe its +EV to have longer registration periods with no effect on starting stack, then it must be -EV for somebody. That would likely be the recreational folks...right?

How bout a compromise? Register late with no impact on starting stack, but go to a new table with other late people and wait until you have five players. You're already registering an hour or two or three late anyway. Why not just wait a little longer...and start your tourney with level stacks like the people who show up on time. Makes more sense to many of us than arriving on time and playing short-handed for hours while you wait for late registrants to fill the table.

a post I made in the other thread:

In my experience that analogy is *exactly* what does occur on a daily basis in the 'deskjob' world lol

Id like to know where 'backing' fits in with the future of online poker.

There's a lot of swaps going on, and backers/horses who participate in the same small field tourneys who inevitably soft play and or collude in some ways. I remember Jason Somerville doing an interview along side Daniel where he implies that diff strategies should be used to maximize value when there's another player who u have a vested interest in when playing end game scenarios. This type of under hand cheating can't be great for the longevity of the game. Not to mention ghosting/multi accounting online.

And dare I say bots that are gto programmed who can rinse humans more and more as the game becomes more solved.

The vision online looks bleak unless stars clamps down on this and imo ban huds too.