theres like 0 chance russia leaving the poker economy is bad for the poker economy. Yes there are russian fish but its a lower %. Also I would once again point out that russia not the west disallowed recreational russian poker players from depositing two weeks before this ban which is why stars did such a thing in the first place. So there was literraly no russian rec players the last two weeks so im sure this ban is gonna tank the poker economy.

all western euro regs licking their fingers in this witch-hunt on russian regs here, trying to get rid of the russian crushers under the cover of political reasons. i cant argue against it much, but its still kinda funny

I read it all and I am sharing with friends. Thank you very much for your post! Good luck and keep searching. I am positive that there are some clubs outthere that you can still make a living playing poker. We have to adapt. As poker players that``````´ s our fate. Many people from all over the world had to change residence or play in cripto based poker rooms. There are still many ways to play poker. Best of lucks!

The reason I mentioned the PLO-NL comparison, is because I can see why having nitty BE-ish regs at NL are not great for the game.
But at PLO, while it's not exciting when the avg. VPIP in the Zoom Pool is 19-20%, you have still plenty of room to exploit nittier players pre- and postflop. Some nitty regs for instance do make massive POF blunders because of their unbalanced range, that make it still reasonably profitable to play vs them. Or you simply print from B/CO, because they overfold and don't 3bet aggro enough from the blinds...etc

At the same time when recreational players see, that there is only 30-40 players playing in the pool compared to say 60-70 at a busier time of the day, they might be less inclined to jump into it, because they might assume the games are more reg-ish in general.

Just right now, I finished up a 2 hour session at PLO100, and the player count in the pool avg-ed around 50, which is rather low for a Friday evening. And the tables weren't exactly great either.

___
I am considering moving some funds into GG in the near future, but it's mainly because stars PLO MTT-s are rather trash if it's not a weekend, and the structures are better on GG. Now that PS offers reasonable rakeback and the traffic is good most days, there is not as much incentive to switch sites otherwise. Especially that the rake is higher at GG as far as I know.

Yeah, most who did not live of rakeback in the old PS VIP system also were less concerned about the mass exodus of regs at PS because of softer games. And while it was indeed better for general game quality, that we got rid of some of the nitty regs, it eventually meant that a lot of CG formats died out, simply because there weren't any1 to open tables.

Nowadays you rarely see PLO500 running for instance, and most of the regs from that stakes who stayed at the site moved down to PLO200, making that pool more competitive than it was. Same with some of the 200 regs moving to PLO100 and so on.

Removing Russia from the player pool simply means, that peak times get shorter and worse at the site once again.

Nothing says cringe like old forum regulars getting together to cry about Russia on a forum that will literally do nothing other than virtue signal to other old forum regulars and possibly help ban the superior players in Russia, I mean i'd be mad too if I was like 99% of the 2+2 accounts created before 2019 that havent won a session since 2013

you make money from deposits tho

Foreign currency exchange is banned in Russia and Russian citizens are only allowed to withdraw a small amount in foreign currencies.

How exactly would a legitimate dollar denominated poker site operate under such circumstances? How would e-wallets operate?

I am not sure what is most cringy, Russians blaming the rest of the world for not being able to play poker or the rest of the world virtue signaling through blatant racism towards innocent civilians and asking them to overthrow a dictator known for murdering his opposition.

Russian regs took money away from poker economy, they made the games worse

Too bad PS didn't ban Belarus yet

You guys are putin a stop to Russian online poker.

How would you characterize discrimination based on a group of individuals nationality?

If believeing that using the suffering of the Ukranian people to further your own online poker agenda because your 200NL full-ring games are too though with a bunch of russians in them is enlighetenment, you can call me the Buddah.

Too be fair, I thought I was posting in the nopokerinrussia-thread.

I hope this thread better reflects the sentiment of the poker community when it isn't just a hundred new accounts spamming a hashtag.

Spare me the social science studies.

There might also be a misunderstanding about who is banned from playing on PokerStars. Maybe because OP is talking about "Russian players" while the linked Tweet clearly talks about "operations in Russia".

I have a couple Russian friends who live in Berlin and they can all still play on Stars.

This.

Think it's kinda hilarious that a lot of people think it's just russians who look up gtowiz etc and/or cheat.


Think it was maybe true in the days of pre-solver most of the bots/rta was russian etc, but think now it's just pretty much anywhere given how easy it is to make solutions yourself.

Last few cases I heard of who are cheating + got banned at midstakes or higher were not eastern European location.

As stated above Stars probably could not keep operating in the russian market even if they wanted to. Sanctions simply dont allow it.
Yet you are talking about virtue signaling and cancel culture. These sanctions are meant to stop a war that could potentially develop into World War 3.
Sanctions are the only deescalation method besides anything military related. Would you prefer that?

I am very glad to see some reasonable comments in this thread, the other one seemed to be overwhelmingly favoring this idea of "banning russians".

As I pointed out before and as pointed out above as well, where were mastercard, visa, Pokerstars etc when our western world governments marched into other countries? "Our wars are good wars because we bring democracy" is not an argument here, Putin uses the same rhetoric that was used against Saddam, where they portrait him as "the new Hitler" and of course let's not forget used a flat out lie as pretext for war. Now Putin wants to "denazifi Ukraine", all governments always use propaganda to bring the own citizens on board with their war plans. War is a crime against humanity, simple as that. Any war has to be condemned.

Also funny here seeing someone commenting that "some russians playing micros instead of protesting against their government" when there is plenty you should be on the street for in any of the western nations....Always easier to find the mistakes in others instead of looking at yourself

Comparing some comedian to being cancelled for a telling a tasteless joke, to what Russia is doing now is at best ridiculous.

Every single one of you who in any ****ing way compares this to Iraq/Afghanistan/any other western war needs to really really deeply think about his values.

Privileged ****ing *******s.

Human rights matter dipshits. Putin conscripting 18 year olds in order to prevent Ukraine from turning west and embracing human rights and liberal democracy is ****ing different than Bushie boy lying and sending professional soldiers to kill a ****ing dictator.

I'm against Iraq war, west has done plenty of atrocities to be ashamed about but it's not the ****ing same

I'll just put it down to the fact you live in America that you seem to have little clue about not only what Putin's doing to a sovereign European country but the huge implications this has on world peace and democracy.

In no way can the Iraq invasion to remove a dictator that murdeted hundreds of thousands of his own people and committed multiple war crimes be compared to what Putin is doing.

If Putin goes chemical NATO will intervene and rightly so. This tyrant is out of control.


The only way Putin backs down is to be defeated by NATO or things get too bad in the Russian economy for him to continue. Maybe the Russian people actually stand up to him you never know.
Good decision by Stars and PP to ban Russian players and aline themselves with the sentiment of the of Europe governments 👍
Belarusian players will be following suit.

pure ignorance. Why would you even think i live in america? lol

legitimate question, morons live everywhere.

It's just that your particular brand of stupid is generally prevalent amongst specifically US far left wing circles. The far right idiots take a different approach to the situation ("Putin is defending our european values vs woke mob EU/ukraine") and everyone else can see the ****ing nuance.

For europeans this issue is real enough that even generally silent moderates (such as myself) speak up. Far left/far right nutjobs largely just stfu as far as I can tell.

Was tongue in cheek really.


I'm guessing the fact that you only chose to respond to that part you've finally realised how utterly wrong your posts are though.��

Do you realize how convenient it would be for NATO to present evidence of Russia allegedly using US biolabs agaist Ukrainians? The exact same pattern as with Syria and there is suckers who will actually fall for that. smh

If you are so willing to die for some corrupt government that uses civilians as human shields in order to gain sympathy from the world, you are welcome to join the Ukrainian army. I really hope things work out for you and you get the Darwin award for your efforts. Just don't drag the whole world into a nuclear war.

The fact of the matter is you don't have any thoughts of your own on this matter. You are just repeating whatever the talking heads on TV are putting in your head.
"Experts say we have a moral obligation to go to war with Russia" CNN, brought to you by Lockheed Martin