Tang Hao (Hong Kong businessperson) has purchased another C$80 million in Amaya stock over the past month. I googled the stock price just now and his name (reversed as 'Hao Tang') came up on the news feed.

There's an article from April 2017 at USPoker which outlines his percentage holdings at that time, as well as speculation on whether he has ties to Baazov along with an Alex Dreyfus mention.

https://www.uspoker.com/blog/chinese...t-amaya/16943/

"The lack of information on Hao or his company has some people privately wondering if there might be a connection between Hao and Baazov (or someone else for that matter). It’s unusual for an unknown person to make an investment of this size and for the industry to have no idea regarding his or her business plans.

Of course, the lack of transparency could also be completely innocuous.

According to Alex Dreyfus, Hao is simply very private. (Dreyfus has been pitching Chinese investors on poker over the past few years.)"

Very favorable 2nd quarter results released today

The vast majority of the "business experts" in these stars threads are going to be very confused. But there were also a very few who will be able to claim victory.

Huh? Pretty much everyone is agreed that repeated rake increases are designed to make money in the short term.

He also got about $11 worth of star coins

Sorry the above was about the guy who posted the video of himself opening chests.

Avatar size if anyone wants it:

It was funnier when I thought it was a reward for buying C$80M of Amaya stock

Haha yep thats what I thought it was at first as well.

Completely my fault for the weak post (#1576). I apologize for any confusion. I should have taken more time before submitting Post #1576, as it's obviously an irrelevant answer to the quoted material.

Q2 2017 Results Highlights

http://www.newswire.ca/news-releases...639388093.html

Online Poker Revenues: $202.9m, down 5.9% YoY
Casino & Sportsbook Revenues: $89.6m, up 50.2% YoY
Total Revenues: $305.3m, up 6.8% from $285.8m YoY
Profit: $70.4m, up from $22.5m YoY
Users: Up 2.1 million from Q1 to a total of 113 million

Yep.....and there it is.

Amaya's business plan was always to grow the casino and sportsbook to be the big source of revenue. I have to admit I was sceptical about their ability to do this simply because of the highly saturated and competitive nature of those markets in regulated Europe. Guess I was wrong so fair play to them for succeeding there.

It was vastly agreed on a simple thing:

Price increases as in chests increase short-term profit (very surprise, much wow) but are likely to decrease long-term profit by ruining the poker offer due to making it a non-beatable game as every other casino game. This prevents ppl from depositing who would've done it for the reason to make money, not solely having fun with cards and be willing to pay (a big hidden price) for it.
Amaya bought a platform that consisted of a poker player only pool. So likely a very huge part of participants were in it for the potential to make money. Once the word is spread that this is not possible in newly developed casino games labeled poker (Beat the Clock, Spin & Go Max) anymore, this will have a negative influence and likely cut their long-term profits in the "poker" sector (actual poker with the possibility to be +ev plus casino games without this possibility). The problem lies in: Amaya management decision are being biased towards creating short-term bucks.

But I suppose you were just trying to hit on ppl who have a valid opinion on how things might develop anyway, so not sure if any argumentation helps your case.

Stars will open to Chinese markets , heard it here first

Currently still paying $120M/annum on their debt. Since that is almost half of the 2017 projected profit we can't expect them to let off the player rape just yet.

Them having to pay 4.7% interest in times where interest rates are historically low kinda helps to assess it's a risky thing from investor's view.

More Info pls!

No info I just made that up. But Jungle playing in China, saying pokers not dead because of inside Info, now Chinese investment on stars .. wouldn't surprise me

Yeah just hope if there is something going on, they aren't separating the chinese market from row right from the start.
Somewhat sure they are in constant negotiations with US, chinese and other potential poker markets (i.e. the ppl that can legally allow them to enter) that just lack legal security to be entered.

89 mil is a drop in the ocean of PS finances even if it has increased 50% from its low base. They have failed to get people who thought they wanted to play poker to play other stuff instead.

It would be interesting to know how much revenue PS players have generated by playing casino and making sports bets on other sites. If PS had some decent odds they could maybe get some more of that business.

Unlike others I have nothing against a poker site trying to get the "other gambling" business of poker players, seems like a good idea, just it's daft to think they will stop playing poker.

Casino (plus small contributions from sports, corporate and other revenue like freeplay) now makes up a third of the group's total revenue. That's very significant - not a drop in the ocean at all. Despite online poker revenue declining in 5 of the last 6 quarters YoY, total group revenue has grown 5%+ every quarter during that period, specifically because of casino. Casino is a big contribution to the group now.

Almost all of this has been cross-sell of casino to poker players. Almost nothing comes from external (i.e., they've barely started to compete in the "highly saturated and competitive" casino industry, as SootedPowa says, at least not directly. That's still to come, and so far untested).

Stars Casino is the largest in the world in active player numbers, and probably a top five online casino in revenue globally. And that's all come in 2 years of cross-selling to poker.

Can't see how that can be seen as a failure.

There have been failures, imo - one is with sportsbook; initially this was touted as a big cross-sell, and they launched big external marketing, and that flopped. Turns out poker players not that into sports and marketing externally turns out to be ultra competitive in markets like the UK, and their product is not up to scratch. Also, down a couple of % points so far this year in poker is a concern and there's a headwind coming (Australia, 2.5% of group's revenue).

But casino has been crazy successful.

I know the press releases are written by marketing wonks, but...

Did they confirm this by thinking about it?

Well stars is banned in aus now guys in a month but they did remind me to open any unopened chests i may have.

Thanks for nothing stars.

And if anyone heard the jungleman polk podcast the other night he is prob dead right, why do we even bother with stars now anyway

Unfortunately that's a common approach (in all industries) - for marketing purposes a customer/client that doesn't complain is assumed to be perfectly happy.

This is why Amaya's complete disregard for the PS brand will be it's (as in PS's) long-term demise. When Amaya finally finishes torching PS enough to destroy any remaining legacy brand awareness for the poker product, it will become just another online casino/sports book with a poker room attached -and will not be able to compete in any of the three verticals.

Short-term, this will 100% make money for current executive management as they take fish money and funnel it into casino (this is indisputable, as we can see the numbers). Once they run out of players to convert, I'm sure they plan to sell and make a nice profit to some sucker who still thinks the brand has moxie in online gaming circles.

But anyone who thinks this is a long-term viable strategy b/c "I hate regs poker is cancer to companies blah blah blah" is delusional. There are too many other brands that enjoy strong loyalty in key markets of casino/sportsbook space.

Amaya is going to profit off of leaving PS as a shell of itself and there isn't a damn thing any of us can do about it. Sad!

There are posters left and right singing the praises of and hyping up the idea of playing at Partypoker. Hell, someone could maybe successfully revive the UltimateBet brand - it wasn't a big enough deal for one of the earliest Nevada legal sites to worry about re-using their UltimatePoker.com domain name initially (and their iovation security services!).

The problem I see with going more and more towards casino games that it could eventually lead to grey markets like Germany becoming non grey markets. For years we tried selling poker as a skill game. Once it becomes clear for authorities that Stars is weighed more and more towards casino games(gambling) it could eventually lead to legislation down the road that will push Stars and similar sites out. Esp. Germany has no interest in a major competitor to its land based casinos.

This. Anyone who is deluded enough to think that these moves are to make poker last long term or improve the ecosystem needs to think again. These moves are to eliminate people from playing profitably on the site so they can make more Money, period. After the period where they eliminate most breakeven rakeback grinders they will move to games with smaller edge until all pros leave And only recs remain. Then they can convert their site into creative poker like casino games and increase their profit to be more in line with those of other casinos.