GL man!!!

Your first scenario purports to reflect the current state of the games. It assumes Amaya has a 28% conversion rate on new deposits. Finding out what the real conversion rate is might serve as a good reality check. The last one I read was 95% although I can't find the source and am too busy to look for it right now, but that is a reasonable estimate imo. So what is your model failing to take into account if its estimates are so far off? Probably a lot of things but chiefly its ignoring the huge volume of reg vs reg battles that especially happen at lower stakes.

Just another side note, deep stack No Limit has a very high skill ceiling. That means the absolute best can get enormous edges on the absolute worst.
NL is unique in that respect but PLO also has a very high skill ceiling compared with Limit. Its Darwinism 101 that as the environment gets harsher and kills become tougher, local apex predators become more formidable killers. In limit holdem the biggest and most formidable a predator can get might be an arctic fox but in NL there's just that, no limit. You end up with polar bears or worse.

Anyone arguing that the games will get easier or more fun for recs as Amaya pushes the poker environment to polar extremes through unbridled greed and bad management doesn't have nature on their side.

Online poker has been getting worse and worse over the past 10 years in terms of profitability for recreational and professional players. At this stage with recent changes, there will be a lowering of the % of players that are long term winners and there will be a significant reduction in the amount of money that ALL professional poker players will make and fish will probably meet quicker losses.

This is how it is, due to the climate of the industry. Pokerstars has little serious competition. Things may change in the future as the industry of online poker develops.

Professional players need to think about either playing live poker or making a living outside of poker.

There will be a few crushers who can still probably earn a decent amount of money in a year, but their redline will still be severely hurt.

Nobody is entitled to earn money as a professional poker player. Will these changes hurt Amaya's value and profit, probably. Their platform/service may move more towards the format of an online casino (obviously still with some skill element). In the long term, the direction the company is moving may well hurt them.

I think unless the company see's a big impact in the short term from a reaction of professional players then there will be further moves towards what I have stated above. I think if they see a moderate drop of their traffic and holding balances from what it would be expected at that time of year and then things return to normal afterwards, it's probably unlikely to make much of a impact on their stance.

At the moment i am not going to play much online poker for the foreseeable future.

Unless a large % of professionals are seriously ready to stop playing on pokerstars (heavily reducing cash game and SnG traffic and reducing MTT prize pools etc) and either play on other sites, play live or earn a living outside of poker, there will still probably be an ongoing trend towards the 'online casino' format of online poker

Yeah a legitimate poker room who decided to not honour $ 16m in player rewards....Jennifer Larson can learn some new tricks here.

This

Lol @ Amaya discouraging regulars from starting tables heads up.

Understandable though. Amaya believes nerfing rewards will encourage regulars to play a looser, more aggressive play style.

Negreanu quoting an Amaya executive on the reasoning behind the rewards reductions: "[high rakeback] creates a playing style where you got paid to not play poker. It promoted a style where, you know, people got paid to fold and not play poker."

Thats how i feel if anything these boycotts will tarnish PS rep with the community(casuals included). By showing such disdain for PS decision making and the way they conduct business players are ready for another company to take their business. Boycotting weakens any notion of loyalty between players and regs that talk highly of them and recommend the site to friends and family. The boycotting will be successful once PS is regarded in the same sense as Adelson which shouldnt be long considering the rate PS is aggressively alienating players.

Agreed. I think stars are forgetting the value of word of mouth advertising and I definitely wouldn't recommend PS to anyone that asked me the best site to use.

Yeah, they're idiots. They don't understand the most fundamental, basic poker concepts. Effectively nearly doubling rake at smaller stakes will result in significantly tighter play being optimal.

This, among other things, is why I believe with Amaya we're headed for a train wreck.

The cash games will be less dry? If yes then yes i will enjoy that.

Can someone explain something to me? As I understand it the main complaint is, in essence, that (1) Stars promised that anyone who played X hands during 2015 would get such and such rewards throughout 2016 (2) a number of people did in fact play X hands during 2015 (3) Stars now says it will not give these people the promised rewards in 2016 (having not given any, or any sufficient, notice).

Given this, why aren't any of the people affected at least considering taking legal action? There must be quite a lot of money at stake once you add everyone up.

^ and/or those players could simply complain to the regulator at no cost.

https://www.gov.im/categories/busine...er-protection/

Good post.

Im neither a SNE in 2015 (but been SNE 3 time lifetime).

This boycott is for sure not only about SNE rewards. Its also about etablishing player feedback/communication again, review of the effect these changes make in specific games, focus on the issue of games where they removed ALL rewards (the effect on a 1k+ SNE is ~70% --> 0% RB = ~110k+/year), and also suggestions that we think will increase traffic and grow the game.

I'm not complaining bout anything, because I'll still be playing -- and winning -- at PokerStars. So, for me, life couldn't be more grand!

As far as people doing what they want, I have no problem with that. I'm just tired of all the childish bitching and moaning and crying about you guys acting like you're victims.

LOL

But, try as you all may, PokerStars is not about to change its mind.

Bite the bullet or move on.

(1) Bad idea. You're just letting go of all that cash and +EV
(2) FAT CHANCE!
(3) BINGO!
(4) DOUBLE BINGO!

Fish, Sharks, Recs, bring it on!

Frankly, I'm not afraid anyone, because at the end of the day or night, it's all a +EV numbers game for me.

Petulant Phil Ivey's idiotic and sometimes backfiring bluffs don't even scare me. I'm not boasting, just telling it the way it is.

What are you talking about? You're complaining when people complain about a company's policy and you're complaining when they don't.

From Twitter:

Resistance to Amaya ‏@dontkillpoker 1h1 hour ago

Thanks for everyone signing up so far. Its NOT to late to join the 1-7 Jan. strike/boycott #boycottpokerstars $AYA

In fairness, though, the word "promise" really has no business in the game if capitalism.

Paging, Ayn Rand?

Ayn Rand, phone call.

You should make the effort to find to source as it seems to be pretty out of this world. Player net deposit balance exceeds revenues quite significantly every quarter so the 95% logic does not really add up.

Wow, an Ayn Rand call. Let us know if this ever comes to matter.

I have hopes for more likely to occur events.

Uhh...no.

What I'm talking about is a bunch guys playing victim card by trying to tell a publicly traded company how to run its business.

I wouldn't dream of telling Warren Buffet how to run Berkshire-Hathaway or tell Tim Cook how to run Apple. If I didn't like how those companies were being run, I'd sell my shares and move on.

Like me hitting the Jacks or Better Royal Flush at Bovada for a cool $1,000 last year!

Didn't it for less than $50.

Lucky!

Just logged in Stars, new VIP changes are a complete joke, HOWEVER i don't think you will achieve anything with this and i will still keep playing, but i am only some rec monkey, so no one cares imo. Gl though!

+1 on raidalot post

I think the changes are designed to kill high stakes. I think you will see a lot less regular action at mid to high stakes and a ton more bum hunting.

I wouldn't be surprised if Stars at some point also axe'd heads up tables completely. The HU tables are going to be even more dominated by the best players beating up the fish and bum hunting as people are less likely to battle.