separating player pools would not be needed, but it would be nice to have a filter to play 5NL on stars vs people from their country and not belarusians that 20 table like nits 24/7.
And if they would care about collusion this and that, they could just make extra zoom player pools for every country with decent playerbase. Then hire some famous people from that country to play on pokerstars in that zoom pool some hour of the week and avertise it on tv, badaboom badabing. net depositors!
If a guy from a country where the minimum income is 1.5k and he deposits a bit to play on stars 2NL/ 5NL no way he is depositing again to sit down with 5 nits at his table everytime.
people from welfare countrys don't cope with that, belarusians play freerolls to get started. probally one of the reasons for this ecosystem along with ad block

Just got 6 starscoin and a dollar from a chest, no wonders the stars stock is skyrocketing and moneys are being printed at amaya hq

Their share price has actually been performing quite poorly and has given all the gains from the results back plus more.

Yea I just saw that aswell. Too early to say but yea stocks been dropping for the past week or so.

Edit: hope it continues

At least you got a dollar.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFZP8zQ5kzk can someone remix this with some PS pictures or smt l0l

Guys, what are the best options for players atm? Been out of the loop since the start of the year

edit: considering volume/player base/rake/rakeback please. (micro-low cash)

yes, I will likely quit poker as a profession soon after.

Facebook group: Poker Ecosystem - The Dynamic Approach, here you get expert help for free:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/255901541564603/

They are using the extra money they made from stealing your rakeback programs - pumping up the price of the shares and personal posession of stars simultaniously. We are all literally paying for this. It's a freeroll for them with very high profitability.

Hey guys, I don't play on pokerstars but am enjoying reading this thread - I get the chests are sucky sucky suck suck - but what about the argument as follows...

more regs have left
Rakeback has decreased
Fish:reg ratio has increased
bb/100 has therefore increased

And in conclisuon akeback has decreased more than bb/100 has increased, Stars win regs and fish lose

Just in principle, why continue support company that keeps abusing its customers? Because their software is so nice?

Only thing that matters is $/h. Don't think many former supernova is getting better hourly with the new system.

This only matters if there is other sites that will take you in that are trustworthy, provide good bonuses and have good games.

fish dont like chests as well so they play less or leave
and rake is already 6bb/100 unless you play high stakes

So basically the leadership within pokerstars totally f'ed up not only their reg base but also their rec base?

any evidence to show your above statement is true?

I think they're making more money than ever since they're charging people more money than ever. They ****ed up their reg base by making more money than ever from them.

The evidence says the above is false.

The figures in the latest quarterly report is the number of uniques and poker revenue (excluding the effect of the rakeback changes) are steady or slightly better year over year versus a steady decline the previous number of years. Actual poker revenue is up but this is almost completely as a result of the VIP changes.

So some regs have left, those that have left were replaced and Stars pocketed all the rakeback money.

Pokerscout says they are down a bit in traffic over 6 months and winter is when people play more. Would love to see the difference in a graph over the last 3 years to get a full perspective.

Pokertscout numbers don't mean **** about anything other than cash game traffic. They don't capture tournaments, S&Gs, or Spins. Seriously it's worse than having no data because it is incomplete and does not correlate to overall results. /Rant

Even if they were accurate volume obviously drops when you drive away the near breakeven (pre rb) regs. No surprises there.

From the Stars Group 3rd quarter 2017 results:

And

Many want to believe that Stars is headed to financial disaster and will become a ghost town due to pissing off regs. Objective data indicates, at least so far, that this wish/belief does not reflect reality.

Online poker has been on a steady decline for several years. The changes at stars have so far managed to level out that trend. Despite wide spread predictions that the changes would just make things worse.

The number of unique players has increased, the amount of rake (pre rakeback) collected has remained constant and revenue and profit are up because more of that rake has been retained. This has been a financial homerun for Stars. And that does not even get into the big increases in casino and sports.

Let's not get carried away. They effectively stole money from their customers with the SNE debacle. Saying a little prayer they will leave things as they are and not increase rake further.

They are already taking so much compared to winning players. I'm paying 6.5-7bb in rake at NL100. So they are clearing about 40bbs/100 in rake from each 6max table when taking all players into account.

On each table you likely have 1-2 rec players, 2-3 breakevenish regs and 1-2 decent regs who are winning 4bbs+. It's absurd how much money they take relative to the people playing.

I was not saying I like the changes. I am a cash game player these days and the changes have definitely hurt my bottom line. I was just pointing out the changes have done exactly what Stars wanted from them and that despite what many predicted or wished for they are not leading to the collapse and downfall of Stars.

CEO should be in line for a healthy bonus this year