Quote:
Originally Posted by ImePaskaa
If we are talking about cashgames above the smallest stakes then it's a rake issue not skill issue.
I have 9bb/100 at PLO50 R&C while raking above 16bb/100 over 120K hands. As I said, the games are beatable. Rake is high AF and PVI cuts my regular RB more than 50%. Still making more money than I would on Stars, especially with how bad Zoom pools are atm, if they are even running. If it weren't for the Leaderboards, then I would agree that it's not worth playing on GGpoker, but even with like 3 hours of 3 tabling a day, you generally make at least 10-15$/day on LB, which adds up to a pretty significant amount to your net winnings.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ImePaskaa
And don't really get it what you mean by sheet stars has done over the years. Ownership has changed like three times and the current one brought back base rb with the chests and personal challenges. When they noticed that the personal challenges didn't work they changed it again.
I am not exclusively talking about the last 1-2 years, but anything after the initial selling of Stars to Amaya. Obviously the insane 70% RB and the old RB system was unsustainable, no1 denies that as far as I know.
But Amaya and co literally started of their "work" by cutting RB in consecutive years (they also lied to people about SNE originally, and only after the huge backlash by even their own pros, did they partially revert the changes). They raised their rake on multiple occasions as well, and then eventually we got to the infamous Chest rewards, where after a short while you actually gained 1% RB if you were a winning player. Simply because Stars knew we have no better option than their site. At the time regardless of the changes, PS was by far the best, be it with traffic, series, or client.
Yes you could migrate to Partypoker if you were okay with a client full of bugs, uglier UI and the mass account-sharing Eastern-European regs taking most of the leaderboard money. They did not offer real competition to Stars, even with RB figures at Party being 40%+ compared to the 1% of Stars. And Stars ownership was fully aware.
I don't care who actually owns the site, most of the changes they made to their RB system since that time has been because they were reacting to the market, and started to see that they are bleeding customers, not because of their kindness or because they care about their players. Party improved a lot, and then GGpoker also showed up.
Even their current changes are due to the all time low traffic they have on their site, not because they care about you. It's simply PR talk, even you acknowledge that this attempt is simply not it (most players actually get less money).
If they actually cared, they would not offered unbeatable challenges over and over to most players (and we are not talking about stuff like you needed to grind 1.5x-2x your usual amount of hands, we literally talking numbers in 60-70K and above hands for non-professional players). But hey at least they could talk about how they are offering insane rakeback, despite most people not being able to clear their challenges without moving up in stakes or playing 24/7). Their challenges slightly improved when they started to offer weekly instead of monthly, but not by much. And you can be assured that change was also not out of kindness.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ImePaskaa
I agree that aurora was a major fockup but I gues the intentions were good trying to make it more rec friendly like ggs client. Unfortunately the software dudes seem to be bunch of idiots.
Their old client was literally the only thing keeping them above the rest, and they even managed to ruin that despite the mass negative feedback when Aurora was in test phase/non-mandatory. Kinda serves them right IMO.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ImePaskaa
Either site is nowhere near perfect but gg having the base rb program that doesn't return even half to majority to players is way bigger issue than any stars one. Yeah you can get more with gg but that doesn't change the fact that its shady as fock.
It's what it is. I was playing on PS even with the 1% RB, because games were soft enough at the time (lot of nitty RB-regs left, and the pools improved a lot because of it), and you could easily get double digit winrates without having to worry about rakeback. There weren't really good alternatives either.
It's the same atm with GGpoker, difference is I am getting a lot more RB despite PVI than I did at Stars then, mainly due to Leaderboards. If a better option shows up, I am happy to jump ships, but current Pokerstars ain't it.
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Anyway, wanted to say thanks for your post, because you are about the first person here with actual arguments, while acknowledging issues on both ends. We might not agree, but was refreshing to read it compared to the rest.