Just seems like it would never work. Suggesting the sites rely on rake generated by pros would incentivize sites to compete for the business of pros. They have actively been doing the opposite of that for the last few years. Their ideal scenario is everyone is breakeven so deposits get constantly turned over and recycled. Pros have a negative net effect on that. If all the pros went on strike, sure gtd's would take a hit, but you would have more rec fish telling their friends that they won a couple grand playing an online card game and more would follow. I fail to see how a "union" would not get laughed out of the room.

Unions have leverage over their employers in that if they stop work production is zero and it is very difficult to replace an entire labor force on short notice. What leverage do pros have over the site?

"Poker pros" as a term is impossible to define. Is someone who grinds 10$ MTTs part of this group? Russians? Barred cheaters/multiaccounters/colluders? People who owe money? What about a break-even or dare I say losing player starting out? Who decides who can be in, and who can't?

If you want to be all inclusive and just call it "the player's union", unfortunately everyone's interests are different and no one will follow the "union orders" in a massive group.

For a small group of players playing similar games with similar winrates at one point in time, their interests are alined and they can do this. But this is not a union, it's a cartel.

His plan does not sound very realistic

You want a more fair ecosystem ?

Eliminate stables and cartels (ban acc + confiscate funds)

Many poker professionals face things like stables sharing HH , colluding , ghosting at late stage MTTs...and they will join the same Union ? I dont think so.

Please ...to have an union that WORKS some STANDARTs must be defined
i see very low standarts and a lot of hipocrisy so far.

Yes... but we need state owned 3% cash-rake union in EU! With MTT
Doesn't yet look like I'll make it happen...

But, PS takes above 5% in some countries, cause tax cuts, in segregated good pools...
Give EU ~5 years, and PS is ****ing done here. Milking their former cash-co... told this b4

This is a far fetching idea in todays poker climate. During the SNE "strike" obtaining leverage over sites was feasible but I don't see it being viable at the moment without extreme cooperation which by nature poker players have proven to be not so prevalent at.

As another poster alluded to the only method that has a semblance of working is a strike. I even know the right method that will still allow "HS Pros" the opportunity to keep making a living while forcing sites to alter their offerings which would hurt their business.

My issue is I don't want to share this idea because I have no sympathy for someone like Pads. I mean it. He has a stable which hurts the ecosystem. Stables don't help the game in any long term method and while working for Party over the past few years he has pushed crazy high guarantee series' both online and live that the player base can't organically support. Only after Party's house of cards is collapsing does he turn the blame on Pokerstars whose player base is broader and doesn't suffer nearly as much of the negative effects of having big guarantee offerings on a more frequent basis.

You could PM me, I'm at least trustable, in it to win it, and won't tell.
But why not ask Joey or so, to get some feedback?

grunching, but it would be asort sort of association, not a union.

and you'd need alot of people to commit to the idea and then have enforcement i.e. "i commit to playing 50% of my poker on rake-free site XXXXX for next 2 years".

then you have "free rider" problem

not sure if there's enough money in it for this, but i'd love a new online site to have local agents, like sports books... i give my agent $5k and he goes through the hassle of getting it online. but he can do it in bulk.

i've always thought online/electronic at a B&M makes sense but it's never become popular

Has anybody thought about a rake-free site supported by ads?

I really don't know if your post is serious or a joke, but if you are genuine: It's absolutely undoable. Ad revenue is not high enough to finance the monetary transactions that real money poker entail. Rake-free ad-supported site really really can not be a thing for real money games.

Completely original thought, good thing you didn't do a search on it.

-BD

so this guy talks about tens of millions invested in poker stables and then is complaining about online dying?

well yea he's right but he's also a huge part of the problem. the poker union idea has always been a joke.pros aren't site employees.

when people have things like stables that helps kill the games. this isn't rocket science.

he really can't figure out what happened with covid and poker?

initially a lot more people were playing. the losing players money started drying up and most of them stopped playing. i'm sure the losing players looking for a fun gamble had a great time playing with various poker stables full of winning players.

The guy works for a poker site and runs a stable and thinks he knows what’s best for the players/customers

sure it's been mentioned
now why would a site be dumb enough to do this?

lmao exactly
he's helping destroy the online poker economy and thinks we should form a union bc the online poker economy is declining

This a million times. Don't know why this thread still gets traction. Stop giving this a******e pads more attention.

He is not doing positive things for the Community. He is greedy af, no one would care if he would just keep his mouth closed, but all he does is trying to portrait himself as a good guy for the community.

It's ridiculous

Well said.

So we should form a union against this annoying Pads guy!!!

And who gets to join the union like someone else mentioned before? Pads stable + the others top stables?

If anyone was to form a union it should be all the losing/fun players that keep online poker alive, the guys taking out all the profits are the vultures and now they just want more....

In fairness to pads, he said himself he didn't want to be working in a decision making capacity within the union. Any union should obviously represent a broad spectrum of the player base within the industry so its not biased to any one group.

I also don't understand the hate winning players receive in general. Poker has always been about winning and its why many of us got into the game to begin with. Over 90% of the edge in cash games on several major sites is being made from the operators with the players fighting for scraps. This is for cash games, I don't know what it is for tournaments.

I don't see why anyone would have a problem with players advocating for better playing conditions. Would it work? Maybe not, but its worth a shot I think.

+1

The prevalence of this sentiment on poker strategy forums is a complete lul and a testimony to the deteriorating quality of these forums.

Winning other peoples money through strategy(and within rules) has always been the main object of the game.

The possibility of sustained winning is what's most appealing about the game of poker for majority of those that get involved.

Portraying winning players as vultures or predators that are sucking up the blood of the world is negating what poker is all about.

Go find yourself a different game where nobody wins or STFU.

The true vultures are the operators that are eroding the edge of players to the point where poker is just another casino game and the only winner is the house.

Is that what you want? All those recs you cry about will disappear even faster when that's the case.

Completely and utterly not true, projecting your values onto the poker collective.

The "value" poker offers to an individual is personal and not universal.

you have either a naive or heavily biased understanding (or in your words: a "complete lul") of the whole economy.

the main reason why winning players receive "hate", is their total misjudgement of their own importance. and pats is one shining example.

poker rooms, recs (aka net depositors) and regs (aka winning players). the only group, that you could remove and the show would be still running, are the regs. i don't say pros can't make the games better (e.g. if they help an operator to tweak games), or that pros are bad, but nobody needs them. they are simply a by-product, since there's an opportunity to make money.

as many have pointed out, pats' stable is a negative factor for the economy. i don't blame him, since poker is about making money. but he's trying to squeeze out the maximum amount as possible (which is his right to do so ... fair play), so all his "warnings" is the pot calling the kettle black.

anyone, who thought the lockdown would trigger a long-lasting boom, was/is delusional. especially since we're heading into a worldwide recession. yes, the operators knew this and tried to make as much money as possible. just like any grinder does to maximize his winnings.


this is the main point ... a stable is playing any tournament with several bullets/entries.

and even more surprisingly ... the games still run, even many pros had to quit, b/c they couldn't make a living anymore

These last posts sum up all really well.

Some stables share HH , Software , do Ghosting ,produce an unfair competition against
single regs and recs. (Although some individual players do this and its totally wrong , the sheer scale of stables are much more destructiv)
Ban Stables and Cartels and 50% of the problem is solved.

The rest is pure hipocrisy.

Juk