Incredibly sad at the news. Very surprising and not surprising at the same time. I understand why the Ontario government wants to do this, from a tax revenue perspective, it's money on the table they're leaving by not regulating online poker/gambling.

Restricting the action to an Ontario player pool seems incredibly garbage. Sure the games will be soft but at what cost? will rake be higher? will there be much fewer tables going? I'm praying for there to be some cross-provincial play at the VERY least if that's possible but even then, I don't think that would increase the player pool significantly, Ontario accounts for like 40% of the Country's population.

Why do you assume the games will be soft, are you assuming this will entice a bunch of new players to join that wouldn't have already joined?

I think the population is too small to get much action going particularly if you play midstakes+ or have any aspirations of playing higher. What could happen in the future is GG and maybe other platforms joining pools from North America with ROW which would be amazing but maybe wishful thinking?

Yes, I'm also making the assumption that on average Canadian players are worse than their international counterparts. So if you were a Canadian reg and did well on the international stars pool, you would undoubtedly crush if the field was narrowed down to just your provincial player pool.

I'm also basing this off USA players in NJ/Michigan/etc. who've talked about how soft their pools are because the competition is limited to their state.

Although, like I said, it would mean less hands and less tables going. But if fish are comfortable depositing their money as a result of this regulation and playing $200nl like they would in a casino for sh*ts and giggles, that would probably be pretty good. How often this happens is anyone's guess.

any hopes they will reverse it? ... there is always ACR

i think whats more likely to happen then soft rooms is ontario gets greedy and rake is unbeatable

Games are a lock to be softer, average Canadian player is pretty damn bad and you'll lose the (eastern) European regs who can live like kings in their countries grinding 25/50/100nl...it's all going to come down to how much liquidity there is and I'm cautiously optimistic (at least for mid stakes and lower) given the size of our population

I'd be pretty shocked if rake was unbeatable, I don't even know what it would look like. Germany? Even then I know guys beating 100nl and 200nl there for decent rates. AFAIK .es/.mi/.pa all have slightly higher rake than .com/.eu but, again, this gets compensated for by a softer pool.

I'm personally just hoping there's enough liquidity from the jump to launch w/ Zoom

i highly doubt there will be zoom you dont want to split the games even more. Yes they will be beatable but if rake is like 10bb/100 more which is common among ringfences sites the softness wont make it better because less high stakes and game selection

Is it common, though? A comparison of 50nl and 100nl rake across Pokerstars.com vs fenced in markets



If it's in line w/ these #'s, which I expect it will be, the games will almost definitely be beatable (and that's before any rakeback...the non-US sites seem to be using the new Stars VIP RB model while the US sites have the old chests models...let's hope we get the former!)

well thats pokerstars i would look at the us data. also if your from ontario you know how incompetent they be. its 2 weeks out and they haven't even announced what their charging. if ontario is charging too much dont expect to get any rakeback from pokerstars

I'm a micro stakes MTT player so this is really bad. I don't really want to return to the days of single table SnGs.

I mean I dont think its too bad for you. I think sngs vs canadians is better then mtts vs row the people. Can prop get those high rois from turbos like in the early 2010's who are really screwed are mix/ non plo holdem players like me. Just learn cash tho

Blech, I don't enjoy cash much at all.

In the past year 888 it’s impossible to find $0.5/$1 or $1/$2 game that plays more than 5 minutes before players sit out.

PartyPoker might have a handful of $0.5/$1 and $1/$2 games playing at a given time.

GGPoker and PokerStars always have $0.5/$1 and $1/$2 games but not many Canadians.

Come April I think it’s going to be almost impossible to find a decent game in Ontario.

they probably dont play those because they lose too fast. that probably wont be adjusted day 1 tho. canadians dont play much low or micro stakes we aint russians are minimum wage is like tripple the buyins. holdem cash games at least should be much better when they run

I wonder how much impact this would have on global sites. I see many fellow Canadians playing on various sites NL/PLO from microstakes to midstakes. Sometimes it's half of us occupying a table during peak hours in eastern time zone. Given that 40% of Canadians live in Ontario, they are most likely Ontarians...

its going to ****ing suck but not are problem. infact 3 of the biggest poker nations cant currently play soon.

Actually there are lots of Canadians that play micro and low stakes. Those games should be fine on the Ontario site. But of course as the stakes get higher the games are going to be more sparse.

It's going to have an impact. Just eye balling some micro and small stakes tourneys and it looks like in most of them 30% to 50% of the field are Canadian. So if 40% of the Canadians are from Ontario that will for sure have an impact on global pool.

And with Russia being excluded as well some games are going to be hurting bad.

Is there any way to actually find out how many Ontarians play micro stakes MTTs on Stars?

If we assume your numbers are roughly accurate, and ~40% of players are Canadian, of which 40% are Ontarian, that implies a typical 1000 runner MTT drops to ~160 runners on Pokerstars Ontario. They'll also consolidate the offerings so there are fewer games competing against each other for a smaller player pool. So maybe this isn't as much of a disaster as I'm anticipating.

does anyone have any definitive news regarding stars?

stars support says / knows nothing

Poker is back at Casino Niagara on April 1st.

https://casinoniagara.com/

i mean they didn't give them much time. we probably wont know anything till last minute. we know they applied for a license no reports they got one but I dont know why they wouldnt. former canadian company

Niagara just cash no tournaments. for that Brantford was open for 3 weeks now.

Any sign of the WPT classic returning?

Nothing I would expect they would start with their 3 weekly tournaments first but i could be wrong. Will ask April 1st.