Your avatar must have been a supernova elite.

FWIW, I'd be very surprised if total rewards/promotions are maintained at current levels, unless player numbers somehow spiral upwards. The flexible (but less transparent) new system gives the site the ability to tweak the rewards payouts whenever the shareholders need some extra cash on the quarterly balance sheet. (This wasn't so easy with the annual Supernova/VIP system). The variance in the random prizes will mask the money-grab quite well though, so most players won't notice their rewards have been cut. The whole system will work on a similar principle to slot machines: Frequent random small wins make the player feel like they are winning, when they are actually losing. /cynic mode

You poor poor soul.

The reason Amaya can profit off of these changes is pretty evident in this post. There are so many people that are clueless and/or don't care.

To answer your question, you're getting killed softly.

Thank you for contacting us.

Yes, the information on the email you pasted is correct.

We understand that players may have concerns regarding the new rewards program but we believe that rewarding players on a more regular basis and giving them the chance at winning big prizes will provide a more exciting experience instead of month-long goals.

We understand that this will be a challenge but we firmly believe that our new rewards program will deliver an exciting, personalized experience that will prove enjoyable for players.

--

Quote from email of me complaining , guess it will be much more exciting receiving daily spin n go tickets and random 50 stars coins will be more entertaining than getting $10 a day/week/month however long it takes you to get 1k starscoins

Cash rewards will be like your regular legendary item. Low drop rate, you grind for it but and when it falls it will not be that useful (5 bucks if lucky). Welcome to the MMOPokerStars!

This is grim.

If I had to bet money on this, given how disingenuous they have been with their past communications, the total rewards will be a fraction of what they were for recs and regs. If you got that email, your getting the full 85% cut or close to it. I really hope I'm wrong, but we'll see what happens.

So according to the poll 56% of players plan to move most/all of their action to another site. So we can do nothing, move most of our action to other network(s), bumhunt Pokerstars and prey that an other site save us from Amaya in the near futur or we can fight back, right?

Any ideas how to fight back?

Mine is pretty simple : organise a social media campaign to educate players where to play and more importantly why they should avoid to play on Pokerstars (except for mtts). How?

- create a simple site where recs will find all the infos
2 options : option 1 it could be a non profit site (no affiliate links) or option 2 a profit site with affiliate links for 2+2 that 2+2 users will share on their social media, a cloned site for pokerstrategy (with affiliate links for pokerstrategy) for pokerstrategy users, etc.

- share weekly coordinated posts on social medias
Educating recs about how greedy Amaya/Pokerstars are, best sites to play who are not screwing their players month after month, rakeback and so on...
Imagine 1000+ players sharing on social medias, easily 100k+ people could see weekly every post on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram & co.

As you can see the idea is simple, that's not a boycott, it's a win-win for everybody, the players (we attract more players to play on other sites), the other sites (new deposits) a win for the owners of the biggest poker communities (if option 2). So a win-win for everybody except, of course, Amaya

So what do you think? Am i delusional? Any other ideas?

Is there anyway this change doesn't kill zoom? feel like it's gg zoom poker by december once people realize they're losing.

What would the motivation for recs to join the boycott be? Rewards for recs are currently very low, so exchanging them for shots at bigger rewards doesn't seem that bad. If you currently get $10 a month, will you then complain when you get $9 in ev, but a shot at for example $10 000? I highly doubt that. On the other hand if you with the current system get $1000 a month, but in the new system exchange it for $900 in ev it is another story.

i would say its the end for much more than that. sng regs probably wont last unless their standard of living is super low or they are killing pre-rakeback (which not a lot). spins? gl with 5%. zoom maybe again only if killing. gg PLO. and mtts ofc can crush those but cmon who wants to grind mtts . imho this is the beginning to the end truly ( I know we say this often ) but what else is there left to contemplate? Stars will become a bumhunt site where you look for super soft lineups mainly and play majority of your action elsewhere, or atleast thats what I believe is going to occur. what yall think? agree or disagree with this, im truly curious.

First of all, as I said, that's not a boycott. Everybody are free to continue to play on Pokerstars (bumhunt). You are right about the rewards for recs. But talking about rewards is not the goal of this theoretical campaign. The ultimate goal is to expose Amaya/Pokerstars, educate recs why they should play on other sites.

For example, take a look at two of the gold mines of Pokerstars, Spin & Go and Zoom. Make a rake comparison with Pokerstars and the major other sites, explain to recs that with flat rakeback they are going to make more money (or loose less), with the same results, by playing on the other sites with flat rakeback an that's why they should not play on Pokerstars. I m not a cash player so I can't speak about Zoom but for Spin&Go rake is for ex 8% on Pokerstars for 3$ buy-in while the rake is 6% on WPN, that's a huge difference and WPN offer 27% flat rakeback. For this ex a rec making 2$ an hour will make almost 2,5x more by playing on WPN..

Amaya think recs are degenerate dumbass. That's why I think if we do a massive campaign on the social medias to expose Pokerstars and educate recs about fees, rakeback, which sites are doing a good job offering poker (aka Partypoker, Unibet, etc) and are not screwing their customers year after year (aka Amaya). It could works and be a nightmare for Amaya. And for us, regs or recs, it costs us nothing, that's not a boycott, you can still play on Pokerstars, all we have to do is just share 1 or 2 post per week on the social medias...

Maybe it deserves a new thread if someone wants to write an OP rather than having the news buried 1000 posts into this one.

2bb/100 rakeback cuts aren't going to kill zoom

how many regs leaving to play on party would make the games soft enough to beat for 1bb/100 more?

yeah overall its going to have a negative effect and 200/500z might die but the format itself will survive

if 200z dies then the format isn't very alive..

Sorry if I missed it but could you cite source for 2bb/100 rb reduction for zoom?

what about the deal jackpot ?

im not a reg anymore so if they can keep the Deal jackpot in place it will be fine for me.

It seems like we will still earn star coins, and the vip store will still be there. So they will probably keeep theDeal too.

https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/c...s-166435.shtml

I can say anecdotally that rake at 200plo zoom is about 8bb/100, 30% of this is around 2-3bb/100. Losing 85% means regs are probably losing 2bb/100 in rakeback.

200zoom plo is still very beatable for somewhere between 5-10bb/100 according to some of the better regs I've spoken to, but obviously over time the rake will go up because "it's good for the games".

I guess that right now one of the most important thing is the question whether "personalized" rewards for regs are gonna be correlated or reverse correlated with regs' playing habits - if all regs are gonna get their rewards in casino/sportbetting bonuses it will mean that most of them is gonna get the max 85% rb decrease, while if the opposite is true the rb decrease will be less drastic.

However it's pretty obvious that the overall rake is gonna increase by A LOT, considering that they are not even trying to sell a "we're giving money back to the recs" point this time.

Most of zoom player pool is the breakeven multi-tabling regs, i'm embarrassingly enough one of those guys, only play it cause i hate the work to be done in bum hunting & zoom is more enjoyable even though clearly less edge to be had. If most of the zoom pool can't profit due to eliminating traditional rakeback then i think it's not only 200-500nl zoom that dies, 50nl fr zoom doesn't even run anymore & it's primarily because regs don't play it, once regs don't play the 50nl+ 6max zoom games anymore the game dies, it's not enough fish & crushers who don't care about no traditional rakeback to keep those games running imo.

zoom fr died bc of low traffic and low variance. Back in 2013 i played 100z fr and for me this was the best game ever (in terms of pace, softness and variance). It started slowly dying once pool didnt get more than 70-80 entries. And it was not because of there were no regs, more like there were no fish and regs are not stupid enough to play vs each other in an high rake environment. And thats the one case where low variance is bad bc fish have the lowest chance of winning in fr cash (they are constantly putting their money in w little to no equity bc of how the correct preflop the ranges are constructed).

anyway i agree that no rb is bad for traffic in zoom, but it should be even worse for spins. No rb massively raises spin variance to a point where soloing w/o being in a stable may not be worth it any more, unless u r a crusher and also a sick grinder. Even now the rake in spins is very high, but not so ******edly high as in beatthecock and super-ko. Meaningful stakes zoom most likely wont run 24/7 anymore (or if it does there will be very few ppl during european daytime), but it wont die completely since u can still bumhunt the pool and 6max needs way less traffic than fr.

well , guess everything looks clearer now that partypoker is going to give 40% rakeback , bye stars hello party

10bb/100 you say? if that's the case, playing 4 tables can net you approx. $200/hour. and that's before rakeback. who is making $200/hour at zoom plo? no one.

10+ ppl