but also shareholders will also be upset if they all of a sudden see the profit margins start to lower…. like people have stated before its risk vs reward…. thats why i cant see poker stars cutting off any country that has a significant size in the ROW player pool unless they are absolutely force to like with the USA

Finally a reasonable post.

And laundering using poker sites/intermediaries is so 2000-2005, when you could ship $100K via Neteller to another Neteller user and no one said ****.

I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you've never owned shares of a publicly traded company.

Stars wasn't forced to exist the US. If they hadn't, they would have been in a worse position; they simply made the choice that was best for the company, like they are doing now.

LOL you assume wrong of me never owning shares in a public company…you might be right they were looking at the long term outlook by exiting USA back in 2011…… but common they were clearly at least bullied into exiting.

Couldn't they just block player-to-player transfers for certain players to avoid money laundering?

Pretty much. It's obv a bit more nuanced than that, there's a cost/benefit analysis operating in legal grey areas (they remain in Oz, Russia, Canada, Poland, Hungary...).

But yeah, this is a public company who has some different priorities than Rational Group as a private company - withdrawing from tiny markets that have little to no effect on their bottom line to reduce their exposure makes sense.

There's no mystery and no need for searching for a more complex answer or pattern, with all this money laundering/tourism chatter.

You would think so. Conversely, in USA they could have blocked bank debits and allowed player to player, then no laws broken.

None of this makes any sense from player pov.
It's why so much confusion as to why they do what they do and what the future holds for online poker.

on stars they could avoid fees though

yeah, we in the US are pretty damn gullible when it comes to buying BS from our political leaders and the media.

All you need to do to get any legislation passed is utter one of the following phrases:

War on Terror...
War on Drugs...
To Protect the Children...

Doesn't matter how ludicrous the argument is, all you need is to just utter that phrase and come up with ANY argument and the sheeple will buy it and parrot it...

To be fair to Poker Stars though, ultimately the reason they did this move was to buy enough goodwill from US politicians so that they can reenter the US market in 2015. From a dollars and sense point of view, it does make sense. The US market alone is the white whale that would easily add 25% to PS's bottom line. So that is a pretty big incentive to drop 3% of their business.

Yep. The terror angle in thread is a massive reach, why are some people still clutching to this theme?

They could have just blocked P2P transfer to these countries if that was the driver and use chip dumping controls to auto block further xfers attempts. (TBF I wouldn't be surprised if P2P transfers are completely abolished in the future... for a "clean" public company this should be appropriate transparency measure imo.)

Stars literally can't just come out and say; oh by they way, we are pulling out of these countries in x days time, also, we really shouldn't have been operating in these grey countries in the first place but we have been (since the takeover) and we are going to carry on doing so for the next x days. "PokerStars Bobbie Bendover" will be politely handling the PR trainwreck of a thread at 2+2, we look forward to replying to your 1000s of questions, blasphemy, swearing and trolling... Bob will be using a whole portfolio of two text transcripts to answer all queries.

I know it sucks greyhound ballsack, but things just don't work like that in the real world.

How about give some warning. People play poker for a living, have kids, have bills to pay.Pokerstars showed ZERO class here and even less respect pulling out with NO warning and than having the nerve to say please enjoy our purchased free play chips. If anyone continues to trust this industry that's on them.

I feel empathy for people in that scenario but I think my point moots your first sentence. Which demonstrates exactly why they haven't come out and given a detailed stance on their decision.

That said, completely agree with your other comments. The industry needs a massive cleanup, a lot more transparency and providers who show class in more ways than just turning over customer service emails within a 1 day sla.

This thread makes me sad, gl to all those affected.

The problem is that governments (mine included) pass laws that prevent adults from pursuing happiness. Public companies have a harder time ignoring those laws than private companies or individuals do. Relatively few people saw that coming.

What's done is done! I actually as one of the affected ppl don't give a *** why they did it cause there's a 99.99% chance the reason is some kind of bs anyways as usual! My main concern now is where the F's ok now to move to to be able to play on the site?? I mean there're speculations that canada'd get on that list!! Latin america, east asia?? They're all considered gray markets or whatever by their measures!! Seems like it's an ongoing thing and I personally don't like the idea of moving to a country (which would cost me a good amount of time & $) and then BAM one week later "Dear costumer our services in your area = F off! BUT hey the good news is you can still play on our app with your play $ if not w***ing is always available to you"!!!

The way Stars/Amaya has handled this is ATROCIOUS

The ship is on the way down if they continue to not communicate and look after their customers

So sad and disgusting whats (predictably) happening

Comeback Scheinbergs, comeback!

Does anyone here think they will leave Canada anytime soon?


What country would you say is safe from stars withdrawing?



To those affected countries, are you guys still not allowed to withdraw?

They won't. If they withdraw from all non regulated/ shady markets they can close Pokerstars completely. Regs and all other recs will switch to some other site and gg.

Nobody can tell. It looks Amaya is putting in an effort so they don't have to, but that isn't guaranteed to succeed.
Any country where poker is regulated and Stars has a license. France, Spain, Belgium, Bulgaria i.e.

The ship is not on the way down. It's now going to be allowed into some more major ports.

France, Spain and Italy has segregated markets and you can not play with PS.com player pool. From Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Bulgaria and some others you can

.

Yep, those ports might keep the Stars Titanic afloat for a few extra years before they alienate those customers in the name of profit too.

It seems like Amaya has the Pokerstars brand on course to hit a massive iceberg at some stage

They have already burst a hole in the boat imo and its possible this leak will slowly drown the company to death

I know I'll be jumping ship if the change their vip program too much in 2015, or the rake increases, we'll see...

All in the name of the ****ing shareholders

Pretty solid assumption to make after what, a month and a half of them taking over?

If that assumption isn't justified please tell me 1 positive development in the past 2 months.

I'll tell you the negative ones:

- Added casino games and casino-like poker-formats;
- Retracted from 29 countries without any notice beforehand and with piss poor communication afterwards;
- Insane rake increase on satellites.

Ok, I know 1 positive thing. They stopped payments for the rake I payed to an affiliate because I clicked a stupid banner on their site years ago.