they're not nuetral ev at all.

1)they often favor regs who play a million hours per week with the way high hands are payed out,free rolls etc

2)they're likelier to hit at 1/2 nl than 5/10 nl for example on average bc less players see flops in higher games and higher games run short handed more often.

I find it interesting that a similar topic on the main Russian forum is already 28 furious pages long, and here the atmosphere is very tranquil and 3-4 pages at most were added. Is that because 2p2 is mostly populated by US players who cannot play on PS anyway?

Russians/Eastern Euros have Supernova on NL10 and probably lower. Their livelyhood is at stake.

Neutral EV to, on the one hand the entire player pool on the whole, and on the other hand the casino.

I'll agree with you that depending on the way a specific player or such specific player's normal opponents play the BBJ may not be neutral EV for such specific player. (This, actually, necessarily means that the BBJ must be +EV for some other specific player by the way.)

I'm not sure that your number 1 actually matters though. Sure, the more hands played, the more chance to hit so people who play more frequently will hit the BBJ more often. However, they are also paying the drop for it much more often. I'm not sure what "freerolls etc" means.

And with respect to your number 2, the BBJ may be less likely to hit on any one specific hand when play is shorthanded, but when play is shorthanded there is also likely to be more hands played in the same amount of time. I'm not sure what the end result is in how it affects the likelihood of hitting over a specified time period. If the drop isn't decreased per hand when shorthanded (which I'm guessing it is not), then that is not good for the players playing shorthanded though.


And I don't really know why we are talking about BBJ's when in my initial post I specifically excluded them from what I was talking about.

It was expected in some degree, plus many have given up or keep playing as a secondary activity.

lol gotta admit I'm really happy about all the Russian/Ukrainian nitbots getting shafted. If enough of them are forced to stop playing the rakeback reduction will be offset in some measure.

yea all the eastern european bots are crushers and especially no nits at my games

all the russian/ukranian nitregs are just going to replaced by russian/ukranian bots which are just crushing msnl atm. amazed if fish dont lose quicker

is highstakesdb for real or the dude has no idea what hes talking about? A true idiot must have written this article. #PSShill https://www.highstakesdb.com/7756-po...-up-to-85.aspx

they won't quit, they'll just get better. It's not exactly very hard to learn how to beat low/micro without rb, they just didn't have to until now.

Yeah that reads like a press release. Evidently not written by someone with any recent experience on Stars given the software compliments at the end.

seems more like you're the one with no clue. there are three good reasons, why it's very likely, that HSDB is a site, not biased in favour of PS

- hsdb was recently bought by a company, that got rid of the old 'peace treaty' between PS and HSDB
- PS recently announced lobby changes, that will harm HSDB's traffic heavily
- there are plenty of affiliate links on HSDB, but non PS

anyway, about the article. while the article is mediocre, it somehow nails it. at the golden age, every room tried to get the high volume grinders and you had massive RB deals everywhere ... now all rooms try to get rid of the high volume grinders, b/c the 'rake benefit' doesn't compensate the loss of the money (trough cash outs).

so long story short, poker rooms optimize their winrates which is "unfortunately for the high volume players" ...

but yeah, keep thinking the article is stupid and that the industry will make a sharp turn ...

I cant pay PS but just curious what percent of the fish $$ PS is taking vs regs now with these changes?

85% more

From the article:

All very well for the rec players, but what of the pros? Unfortunately for the high volume players, the stark reality is that they represent a mere 5% of PokerStars customer base with a huge 95% made up of recreational players. It doesn't matter which way you slice it, ultimately as a public company PokerStars have to look after the 95%, even if it means alienating the 5%.

What exactly is their definition of a recreational player here? Also, does 'customer base' refer to every single account or just those who are actively playing poker?

What % of rake is contributed by the regs vs recs?

If so many regs had to rely on promotional money to turn a profit (which is what the VIP program is - a promotion), then perhaps they weren't good enough to beat the game in the first place.

Regarding "the dream", there will be plenty of people who still believe in it. They will just lower their expectations of what that dream is. There are 18 year old kids playing today who think grinding for minimum wage in their parents house is "the dream".

Promotional money is code for getting back the money they lost in rake. They were good enough to beat the other players in the game, just not the poker room.

Players didn't mind paying 6bb/100 in rake when they got 4bb back.

or perhaps its because rake system hasnt been modernized since bf, its only gotten worse. Less fish there are lower the effective rake should be (to have so-called healthy games, where ppl could win). Under current structure regwars in cash arent beatable (except for high stakes where effective rake is lower) and with no rakeback in the future no one is ever gonna play once the fish sit outs. There are bunch of games that aren't beatable without rakeback (or maybe are still beatable, but to a much lower clip and insane variance) even if u play ****ing gto such as spins and sngs, even zoom in some cases.

100% of rake comes from recs.

But where do the recs get it? A job or something, typically. That's where all rake comes from. Well, where ever the people get it from that the recs get it from... that's where all rake comes from.

Silly right?

player 1 deposits.
player 2 earns winnings from player 1.
player 2 uses winnings (which IS money belonging to player 2) to pay rake. They won money. It is theirs to decide what to do with. Some of it they decide to pay as rake.

It's all just different ways of viewing/accounting.


That said, net depositors are obviously *vital* to the economy.

Rake is part and parcel of the game. You don't hear people say 'well I lost -3bb/100, but without rake I'd be 1bb/100, so I'm actually a winning player'. No one considers that as beating the game and you'd be laughed at for saying that.

I'd say the lower down you go, the more regs are clueless about the unbeatability of certain games. Midstakes regs are clever enough to realise that games are unbeatable without fish. Many regs at 100nl and under still have no clue about rake/table selection and will continue to play in unbeatable games.

Confirmed high stakes super beatable and 50NL unbeatable. Can't make this sh*t up.

It seems to me that they are trying to make playing for the winning players less and less atractive.
This of course so that loosing players will loose their money less fast and they can charge more rake.

Online poker is dying.