in the sense of majority of regs get ****ed (the breakeven/slight winners who have to change sites or move down in stakes), recs get to play vs recs + super crushers meaning they will lose just as fast, but with a bonus higher rake on top of it , amaya makes more money and says the recs are better off this way.

Also in this new proposed format from what I gather when the recs are tired of getting crushed by the really good regs who can still play at certain limits , they can go blow off some steam @ blackjack or virtual slots giving more money to amaya while getting whatever new % of their lost money back in the new VIP program, and Dnegs gets to tweet how great it is that amaya is giving back to rec players and not the rakeback grinders

Yes, but only to very small number of people, and more so in zoom than reg tables.

It might have some positive effects on Zoom Pools if b/e Regs have to quit since the good Regs get more Tables with Fish but this is very bad for Regular Tables.

Disregarding absolute micro Stakes. the number of Recs determines the number of Tables running since every Table has the same composition:

1 Rec
5 Regs

If you remove the b/e and slightly losing Regs (Rakeback Grinders) they will get replaced by better Regs or bad Regs have to improve to keep playing.

As Result Good Regs win a bit less due to worse Rakeback and by being forced to play with more other Good Regs and Fish will go broke a little bit faster because they have to play with more Good Regs, who will exploit them harder.

Yeah at regtables the impact is a bit different and doesnt actually benefit the best regs, who hold the lobby as they will always get a seat no matter how many regs there are. But if some regs quit, the rest of the remaining regs, who don't hold lobby, are more likely to get into the games.

The lower rakeback/action against the better bots from the last years is why there's 2 fish per table most of the time at z200.

Look at party, i played 5k hands at z100 there and already found the bots the beat midstakes(funny enough, all these bots i have found over the last year are above ev godmoders). Most tables have 5 regs, you rarely get a fish. There's a few really bad reg but for the most part with the 3bb in extra rakepaid its no where near as profitable as stars with 0% rakeback unless you have 0 tilt issues(rakeback by itself on party is 35-40$/hr)

I have been thinking about all of this, and actually it is starting to make sense in my brain that the volume focused rakeback system have not a lot of sense with respect to atracting recreationals.

So, giving back more to the loser players make sense, to keep then happy and actively depositing more money.

But Pokerstars should lower the rake for everyone together with this also, if they really had noble intentions.

A good poker ecosystem is one where you make recreationals live longer and have more fun, but also a one where you assure a beatable rake for every single poker modality you are offering.

There is where the real issue is. For Amaya, they are not interested in beatable rakes, but finishing with all winner players.

Poker is getting tougher and tougher, and if you also indiscriminally increase rake, you are killing the game as one of skills, and making it just a one more gambling casino kind game.

what would make sense for recs would be 70%+ rb in tickets/$ for really low raked amounts(300 & less) and gradually get worse where 1.5k+ gets 5% or less

That way recs lose all their $ and get cashback and pstar gets their $ through reg's rake and good reg get higher winrates when the bad regs with 5% rb go busto thus leaving them alone with all the fishies.

The loss in rakeback becomes a way to get rid of the competition that lowers your winrate.

don't agree. anything above pennystakes typically revolves around 1 fish. that won't change just because the weaker regs get driven away, if anything at all the average skill level per table rises as it's now 5 good regs vs 1 fish instead of 1-2 good regs, 3-4 bad regs and 1 fish. kinda puzzled some people still don't get this tbh.

the only winner here is amaya.

Yeah sorry i meant at zoom

reg games are ****ed until bots/eastern euros are banned.

agree on the bots. the geographical stuff, not so much. why is it that regs from certain countries somehow feel entitled to play whilst they also think regs from other countries shouldn't be allowed to?

and don't go full circle and say 'yeah but them bots coming from country x ya know'. it's a load of bull. just because russia/eastern europe has the most bots doesn't mean every russian on stars is botting. and, to pound this home once again, there's not a single reason a honest player from russia shouldn't have the same privileges as a european on the virtual felt.

You don't make poker better by decreasing the % of winning players, you do it by actually increasing them.

It is not about 'privileges'. Stars has the right to choose who they do business with. When players from particular locations show an abnormally high tendency of shady/dishonest behavior, stars has every right to blanket ban these locations to protect their business.

If shadiness and winning are the issues then they should ban U.S. residents immediately.

1) Only winning players left on the RoW sites - they are not the winning player inspiring any corresponding fish

2) A large proportion of them are VPNing from the USA and stars has a legal obligation to do anything it can to prevent this. Closing the accounts of US residents is something they can do to prevent this.

3) Hastings and the attitude of other Americans to him.

4) No, having a second home in a RoW country does not make you "resident" there unless the local tax office, immigration department etc. consider you resident. Otherwise you are a tourist not a resident.

I'm sure Russia has more bots/cheaters than most other countries, but also I think Russia is stars biggest market or at least top 3, no way they are going to ban them. They love the business they are doing just fine, even better if they can limit the amount of winners or take a cut out of their profits by increasing rake.

i like the fact, that you just make things up, w/o any knowledge about numbers. best part is, that you contradict yourself in such a short posting.

let's say your assumption (1 rec, 2 good regs, 3 bad regs) would be true (even that leaves out the masses of depositors feeding the bottom). so we have a pool of 50% bad regs, and they will gone, why should be the new ratio 1 rec vs 5 good regs?

the main point, why your theory fails so hard, is plain and simple. if the operator wants a bigger cut from the deposits, it won't be possible, that there're more big winners. while the best players might increase their win rates, the total amount of net withdrawls will be smaller. the money will also stay longer in the system, so it can get raked several times.

so either your theory is wrong, or the operator would be a net loser, b/c the "average skill level per table rises" and more money is taken out of the system

eh, logic much?

when the average skill level per table rises, it's not more, it's less money taken out of the system, as a tougher playing field means less edges. do you understand that? that's also why i stated that amaya is the only winner in this scenario.

also, "if the operator wants a bigger cut from the deposits, it won't be possible, that there're more big winners". <--- i never anything like wrote that, no idea why you think this is my 'theory'.


also, jump into any lobby above 50NL. how many fish per table do you see? that's right. it's just 1 most of the time. the rest are regs of different skill. if you now drive away the weaker regs, the open spots won't be taken by rec players, but by stronger regs.

-- > average skill level rises --> fish lose quicker --> winrate of regs decrease as well --> amaya is the only winner.

Just return rakeback to normal (maybe slightly decreasing with higher volume) and table cap of 4 max per player. No need for all this elaborate bull****.

Make it 8 and you got yourself a deal.

The VIP scheme/SNE was introduced effectively as a way of employing regs to play high volume and service the vast amounts of recreational players who wanted to play, with the long term goal in mind of building the business and gaining market share. The course of history would have been very different if Stars had IPOed pre UIGEA like Party but after that they couldn't really, so instead they looked to the long term which happened to be the perfect plan to gain a monopoly as other sites fell away or self-destructed.

So its not that complex - the increasing reg/reg ratio is something that Scheinberg era Stars specifically helped create in the first place as it suited their purposes post UIGEA, but now after the sale and with the poker boom over Amaya is at best indifferent to regs/winning players and will eradicate them insofar as doing so can increase their bottom line.

What remains to be seen is if poker can really exist just as a casino game with few true winners, or if there is an aspirational element to it that drives people to play over roulette/blackjack etc. Its pretty clear Amaya has no interest in poker as a game of skill so anyone invested in that idea better be doing what they can to promote it as such and then hopefully some sort of pokerboom 2.0 can emerge in new ways through gamification/sportification/Twitch etc and the coming of age of online pros who care about the game resulting in projects like Run It Once poker.

btw, made a financial analysis on amaya, for the interested it's here

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...015-a-1662343/

6 cash, x amount of sng's and unlimited mtt's. + 2.5% withdrawal fee for stars to wet their dicks.

Reduce rake by 40-45%, give option for max 20% rb via cash rebates or up to 35% if willing to take it in form of casino/sb/ect..

I'd like an east facing corner office okthx

and all i'm asking for is a balla hairdo like dnegs

DickLatte you are clogging up this thread with your 5hitposting.

i promise to stay on topic as soon as we have some news, my dear overlord. sorry for that one troll post. or do you see multiple ****posts from me?

right now it's just people bringing up the same speculations/ideas over and over again.

btw nice circumvention of the auto-censoring.

do you have anything to contribute?

I think the company name & brand itself is inextricably linked to 'the dream' : play Poker and become a Star (a pro).
The aspirational element is embedded in the meaning of the brand. (as further explained below).

I'm going to refer to this as a 'brand loyalty' scheme.

Ok so I like your post and I just wanted to add a couple of ideas/questions to the discussion:

1.) public vs private company
2.) why buy a brand to destroy it?

1.)
Isn't one of the main problems: it being floated on the stock market rather than being a private company?

Shareholders simply want to see their shares constantly increase in value. How it increases - they don't care.
A private company could have consistent profit, without having to answer to shareholders. Seems like as long as they keep a player pool, it's a license to print money.
Maybe a private company can offer the brand loyalty scheme that pokerstars is threatening to remove and thereby steal their customer base?

2.)
PokerStars over the years have created a brand. A trusted brand, I think is what drew in new customers over the years.
(you may not feel like it now, but that is what drew customers in, in the first place. And by 'you' I mean anyone reading this post who plays there ).

'Find the Poker Star in you' = play here and become a pro / play with the pros / the pros play here
'We Are Poker' = we have a monopoly / everyone plays here / you can find a game at 3am or whenever

Seems to me their brand is their most valueable asset.
It is what brings people in and it's what keeps them there.
The name itself is inextricably linked to 'the dream' : play Poker and become a Star (a pro).

They could increase the rake until it is an unwinnable casino game (all luck and no skill).
But why buy a brand to destroy it?
Why drown yourself in debt to buy a brand and then destroy it?

The only reason I can think of at the moment is short term profit, but they damage themselves in doing so.
If they fail to offer a decent brand loyalty scheme, other companys can offer a better one and take their customers.