Awesome responses.

It was a derail, but I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have stopped the news had there been any.

I'm not very familiar with the U.S. law, but I won't be surprised if the online poker will go live after 2020 Q1 due to the efficiency of the government. I don't think any kind of media source is reliable since I saw the news about the anticipated launch date was 2019 Q1, then March, then July 15, then now, then at the end of 2019, etc. and basically every publisher was referred by each other.

While I was reading the posts as well as waiting for the game start, I started thinking about me and the game itself. I'm going to share with you if you are interested in my thoughts:

• The purpose. The reason I want to play poker other than table games is that we know that I will never win on table games in the long run by EV and I like to outwit the opponents to profit. I don't want myself who looks like a pure gambler. However, the more I cared about the launch date of PA online poker, the more I bet on online poker to solve my financial problems, which makes me look like a pure gambler to some extent.

• The pool. Profit of poker is all about the rivals you play with. However, the game itself changed dramatically since April 15, 2011. A lot of people quitted online poker to either go into live games or just stopped playing poker. I'm not a top professional player, but I think I'm not a recreational player, either. The only format of game I played was 6MAX Hyper-Turbo SnGs and I guess I know the Nash Equilibrium and applied the max-EV-exploitative-play according to my competitors during the games most of the times I was not on tilt. I also analyzed hands with my friends with the help of ICMIZER. The most recent session I played was May 2018. I played 5k 6MAX Hyper-Turbo SnGs full time in a month against the pool of 50 people or less on Pokerstars(global). I think I worked very hard on poker, and I assumed I had improvements every day, but the result showed that I'm still a losing player. Although I can argue that -2% ROI still beat the rake, I will not invest my money and time on online poker unless I can get a +5% ROI. I have to admit that every player's poker game strategy will converge to the equilibrium ultimately, and nobody will play online poker at that time thanks to the rake.
  
  This is the profit graph for this session from SharkScope:
  

• The potential profit in PA. Apparently I believe that the games on the launch date will be much more profitable than the games in several years later. I may do some table selections at the same time to avoid the genius from Carnegie Mellon like Noam Brown who is the father of Pluribus and Libratus(https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~noamb/) so that perhaps I can get a decent curve of the first three years. Fortunately, I can search for a part of data of PokerstarsNJ. Let me see the result of the most profitable player in the pool of PokerstarNJ and whose graph was not locked: SnG player, start playing before 2006, focus on high-stakes HUs and SnG(J)s, 3.5 years, +$60k, +5% ROI, Avg stake $120, Avg 10 games per day, etc. If I have the same bankroll and skills as his and PA's pool is not so bad as NJ's pool, it seems doable to play part-time online poker in PA.
  
  This is "moledaddy" 's profit graph from SharkScope:
  

Oh wait for a second, did anyone know anything about the tax(W2-G form) on your winnings in PA?

Anyone here anything about pokerstars needing beta testers? If this is going to go live at some point before the end of the year someone is going to have to test out the software if they are doing a soft launch.

Does anyone that plays up at Mt. Airy ever hear anything about the launch? (lol, I know it's not a big player pool up there)


Thanks for any info!

Any word?

The only thing I've seen on the topic this week is the latest PokerStars PA teaser. The article has some great info for what may be available once/if PokerStars is approved to launch in Pennsylvania. It's worth a read imo.

I also think the information provided will mostly be received positively because of the anticipated larger player pool/guarantees compared to PokerStars NJ (official 2+2 Internet Poker forum thread) -- despite Pennsylvania's "sole-state" interactive gaming designation.

https://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-roo...-offer-bigger/

For poker players who are in Pennsylvania... does the information contained within the article lead you to "want" PokerStars in Pennsylvania? I think for most poker players who do or desire to play online in a regulated environment it will.

But obviously it will NOT be similar in nature (re: player pool/guarantees) to the "old" PokerStars that players in PA played at prior to BF 2011. I think that's a really important distinction to make in this thread b/c we're still seeing some players post who are unaware that PA online players won't be pooled with any other statewide/international jurisdiction.
---

As far as the logos, it's already been discussed/mandated ad-nauseam that "land-based" branding is to take priority over "online" branding, so the logos aren't really in compliance with what's been hashed over for more than a year now between PA regulators and online stakeholders.

With that said, it could be (pure speculation here) that the main certificate holder -- Mount Airy in this case -- doesn't really care.
---

I think I also read a question or two about Mount Airy's land-based poker room offering (not sure if in this thread or elsewhere), and how that might be impacted by its partnership with The Stars Group.

Here's what was revealed in a June 12th PGCB meeting, courtesy of Brian Pempus, who covers the PA market on behalf of USBets.





Mount Airy's full presentation from its June 12th sports wagering certificate petition before the Board (which was approved) is provided by the PGCB here.

The full transcript for that presentation can be found here.

I also bring this up because it will be interesting to see how a combo sportsbook/poker room functions in this Pennsylvania land-based environment.

I talked with Mason and Mat a bit about this recently (mainly just a half-hour of me whining and pouting about what a sh** show regulated U.S. online poker has become since the push picked up steam following BF). I asked them whether they were aware of any such combo room in Las Vegas, and if so, what are customers saying about it. But I'm not sure it's really been tried in any major Las Vegas casino. Those who reside in that area will know for sure.
---

Anyway, that's what I've heard. There's been some criticism in this thread that I started (rightfully so, imo) about hyping the PA online poker launch for July 15th and then having nothing to show for it months later. Since PA online poker DIDN'T launch on July 15th, I'm cautious (rightfully so, imo) about even speculating on when/if PokerStars PA will be authorized for launch.

I hope this update is helpful regardless.

-David

I'm not sure Mount Airy really has a deal with The Stars Group in place yet. Looks like they Photoshopped the logo for their presentation. Notice that they have the words "STARS GROUP" in a single line, but in other places that their logo has appeared, the words appear on two lines:



And in others where a dark background is used, the letters are light and have a gradient over them:

https://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-roo...-offer-bigger/

Wow, did they just remove my favorite Spin&Gos from the tab which is definitely on the screenshot in the previous news? Did they just allow me to pay $10 to register the $20 MTT? Did they just allow me to register a tournament after the scheduled time when some tournaments are still announced which are not ready for registration? Did they just maintain the same schedule of PokerstarsNJ and just raise a little percentage of the prize pool of only the Sunday majors but not all the MTTs to show they believe there’ll be a slightly larger pool?

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...892161421.html

TSG used the single-line logo two years ago during a preliminary hearing in Michigan (starts at about 1:40).

Uh...it was a joke referencing benny_xmy's posts earlier in the thread, including post 148 and post 152.

lol that makes sense. My apologies for being slow on the uptake there.

Ha, no problem. If you weren't following the thread in detail, you wouldn't have known.

Benny, I deleted two of your posts tonight pertaining to PokerStars logos and related material. We will all know soon enough about PokerStars entering this market and what their offerings will be.

Reposting your logo analysis does not provide anything new at this time.

Please don't re-post that again.

Okay?

No problem. Sorry for disturbing. I just wanna receive a PM to confirm this. Good luck all.

This gave us a good laugh at the office, thanks

For those PAer's who want a merged pool from other places - I admit that the bigger the pool is, the larger the prize pot. But the prize pot is not our primary goal, is it? If you consider a little bit further: more pros from other places will enter the game than the recreational players in the future, which makes it more -EV for us. If you check some tweets, you will find NJ pros wanna merged pool.

More games and more liquidity are better for everyone. Do you think the NJ only pool is better than pre-Black Friday when the whole US was playing? Do you think a PA-only pool will be? The more states that join player pools, the better the games will be.

More games with more recreational players and their liquidity are better for pros and the platform. I think the main reason for NJ-only pool is worse than pre-Black Friday when the whole US was playing is because at that time the average level is much lower. I think a PA-only pool will be kind of good at the beginning for some time and falling quickly. Again, the more recreational players that join player pools, the better the games will be.

David - You don’t have to apologize to anyone for anything and I don’t think you weren't following the thread in detail. We should all appreciate each of your detailed posts. Just one small thing : It will be better if there is any news on the logo used directly in software/client other than logos used in any kind of presentations/websites. Usually the software group and the presentation group are two different groups in a company.

Again, thanks a lot for this thread and hope online poker in PA will launch soon.

Regards,
Benny

I think the biggest draw of a shared pool is tournament guarantees. I mean cash games will be better especially for non no limit games. I don’t know how many pros are really in the NJ player pool. I can’t imagine a lot of them to be honest.

I would agree with this if we were talking about opening up the pool to eastern europe and other low income countries where you see people playing 10nl professionally on worldwide sites making those games suck for the american noobs to poker.

But just opening it up to other US states shouldn't have that kind of effect imo.

More possible players means more games, and it means $10/20nl pros can stay playing 10/20 games and not have to jump down to 5/10 and 2/5 to get enough action, making those games tougher, forcing the 2/5 pros to play more 1/2, and on down the line.

Maybe at the very start there will be softer games as PA players who havent played in awhile come online and play bad, but it will hit equilibrium quickly like it did in NV and NJ. I definitely think you want an interstate merged pool as soon as possible, if only for the bigger tourney gtds which drive fish to deposit and also play cash.

There are a lot of pros in NJ actually - between Parx and Borgata there are ample stakes live within a short drive and with the draw of online poker many moved into the region.

The games will be better without a merger, ask any NJ player who has been there since launch day. After a couple years we (PA players) will want to merge because liquidity will dry up.

Either way, there will be no merge for at least 1+ years. If this slow launch is any indication of what the state sanctioned ipoker environment is like then it could be even longer. Ad to that the inconclusive wire act ruling and it could possibly be PA only forever.

Do the NJ site other than 888/WSOP have HUDs?

Yes. You can use HUDs on PokerStars.

Nice. Moving to PA in February. I live in Delaware now and WSOP is HUDless. Hopefully online poker is launched by then.

Just moved from Canada to PA , is there any updates on when this launch is going to happen?