nope, just Poker

Very important point. If it was up to Amaya they would kill off cash games in an instant. Cash game traffic going down means more money is being diverted to gamble formats like Spins, sports betting or straight up casino games. Make no mistake about it, the end goal of Amaya is to turn PS into a casino website.

Are deposits up though or are people just burning through existing deposits faster due to the higher costs of play? That's the stat I'd be most interested in seeing.

The rec's RB dropped by what, 1bb/100 tops? I think even a small improvement in rec:reg ratio will outperform that drawback by some margin in terms of deposit longevity.

Went to double-check the quarterly report - did it maybe say that unique users is up for StarsGroup overall, but for poker the number of unique users is flat?

Am even a little surprised to hear Stars say that the number of unique users is flat and hasn't gone down - after the chest system was implemented and peoples' rewards got lowered, it has kind of started to feel like a ghost town around here, hasn't it?

And it doesn't seem like there's been a huge rise in recreational players to offset any possible decrease in pros? The Spin & Go Max games used to show the number of tables running, and there only ever seemed to be about 150. And traffic at 2nl is noticeably lower than it seemed to be when the Usain Bolt promo was on.

Every quarter, Stars does seem to find a way to squeeze out more $ from players, even after it seems like there's no more $ for them to squeeze out. So maybe you're right about their changes not hurting their bottom line any time soon. It does like more and more people are playing less and less poker these days though - so many other interesting things to focus one's time and money, like on bitcoin!

Can confirm, this is what was reported. Year over year, total active poker players was flat at 1.97 million.

It is in fact the first quarter in 11 quarters (since Amaya started reporting Stars numbers) that total active players did not decline YoY.

The question is, what is an 'active poker player'? For example, since more than a month or so I withdrew all my funds on pokerstars and I now only log in the client 2 a day to piss off my remaining starcoins in the Deal. Is that an active poker player? Maybe according to their standards, but not mine.

Sure, I guess level of activity is obviously another metric that is unknown; QAU will probably be placed a real money wager at least once during that period. Not sure if gambling a starscoin counts, probably not. But regardless your point stands - however when a company reports QAU flat, Revenue up 12% and yield also up double digits, all three metrics do suggest that player activity is at least relatively stable.

Also, while the company is certainly saved $ with new rewards program, execs did state that they saw growth in underlying gross gaming revenue too. No hard #s though.

Given that a bunch of regs have left after the chest changes, does this suggest that recreational numbers are up?

I'd say that would be a pretty reasonable interpretation of the data, yes.

I don't know about that, I was reading some article where a site's primary poker income was cash games. Just think about it, they are raking every pot that goes to a flop. Tournaments you only rake once and they last for hours and sngs I suppose are somewhere in the middle.

Big money is being made from cash games as it's constant rake vs 1 time rake.

I don't know how it was right before Amaya but pre 2011 Stars had an awesome bonus that anyone could buy regardless of VIP level where you were getting the same value as an SNE for $/points ratio (if I remember that correctly). I was only gold star/platinum I think for the most part and was getting sick RB through that bonus for a while that equated to huge a rakeback %. So recs are getting screwed big time too next to how it used to be.

Is there any substantial evidence that this actually happened?

No evidence of it in the games I play unfortunately.

Nothing substantial, but didn't Party's traffic get a boost when they introduced their reg-friendly rakeback scheme? I heard that Party briefly moved to #2 on the Pokerscout cashgame traffic rankings, and I presumed it was because of a switch by some Stars players. It was probably just a blip though.

not exactly, you could play sundays storm sattys with your fpps, which were giving you value similar to sn cash bonus if you won 1/3 of them, which wasnt hard to do

As far as poker goes they said almost all the increase was attributed to the introduction of the new reward system. So QAU close to flat and activity (as measured by rake collected) was also close to flat. But as you pointed out in your other post this was the first time in a long while that they have not declined. So it could be argued this is an improvement just by virtue of stopping the steady decline.


This was somewhat true for most operators back during the poker boom. But even then PokerStars was the exception to this simply because most of the MTT & S&G traffic was on Stars. I remember estimates even back then put stars revenue at about 50/50 cash games vs other sources. Most other sites were making most of their money from cash games. They don't break it out explicitly but especially since the introduction of spins Stars cash games represent the minority of their total poker income. Many nit regs on average rake $0 over the time it takes to play a spin just by virtue of either folding or not seeing a flop.

Chapter MXCVI

Dear Loyal Pokerstars Player **********,

Despite what you might think, you can't work out, predict or control an outcome that's based on chance and randomness
people who try to do this often lose a lot of money. They might win now and then, but this is also down to chance.
Thinking that you can beat the system can cause big problems.

Yours Truly,
Lee Jones

https://youtu.be/-DkHzOUzDjc?t=1m3s

I have no idea if that is the right thread for posting it in...

I have a question to the random bonuses Pokerstars offered from to time to several Players. Two friends of mine (former Highstakes, now midstakes) get from time to time big bonuses if they play a certain number of hands.
Afaik it is called jackpot bonuses. To x % der get xy$. for example:
to 1% 2k $
to 3% 1k $
to 10% 500 $
to 30% 200 $
to56% 100$


I play low/mid stakes with quite a high win rate (due to NL HU) and get never such a bonus.
My rakeback is approx 3%.

Does anyone know how Pokerstars hands out these bonuses?
Does any winning Player get these bonus? (maybe in a downswing?)
I am really curious for what these players get them. As I never got them yet.


I think they give it to break even/slightly loosing regs to keep them in the system. Bc they are good for their poker economy (or however they call this bs). At least in HU they are very benefitial for Pokerstars bc in a high rake environment even for good player it is often difficult or nealy impossible to beat a fish reg bc of the high rake and no rakeback.
So this guys are a nice "tool" for Stars. In that way the good regs get disturbed of these fish regs and can not just play against the fish. So the good regs have a lower winrate and create tones of rake (and get obv no rakeback). And obv lower hourly.
So it is a win, win situtation for this **** company. Bc they can harm the players they want to harm.

Any thoughts on this?

I escaped that nightmare in a heartbeat after the changes where introduced, however I only left to Party and there's not often enough action there at the games I play, so I have to open some Stars tables at night to compensate.

Im sure many regs will relate to my story, and its just a matter of a good competitor entering the market to move away completely. Regs quantity might be intact, but action has definitely gone done from us, and we are just waiting to eradicate it completely

Not trolling, but wasn't the whole point meant to be that the regs decide where the action is and that's why they should have SNE and similar benefits? I thought the regs had decided to move the action to Party Poker.