Dude. Please. You are not a finance expert. If you were, you could at least see the angle they were trying to take.

Any company with amaya's market share would do the same. It's just good business. Whether it turns out to be the best move, well only time will tell. But that's being results orientated.

As for being mentally challenged, I will end this argument right now. Me and you, in an IQ test. Any wager you like, now go big or go home.

Should prob take a course in reading comprehension in advance.
I see what they're doing, I just think it's overvalueing supposed short-term vs long-term effects and as said, this is quite typical for publicly traded companies and has lots of reasons. I'm sure with your superior intelligence u'll find a couple of the endless amount of papers on this issues, proving that point.
Also Amaya has a history of shady (criminal) management and has proven to know how to ruin a poker site, I'm sure u'll figure that out as well.

But sure, u can trust managers with short-term incentives to make great long term decisions and laugh at the ppl who suffer in the process. It makes perfect sense and will make u loads of friends.

Leaving the economy? You mean failing to enter the corporation's coffers?

If poker sites actively discourage "pros,", what is the point of a fish trying to play and learn poker. Lose money learning in the hopes of . . . losing money to the poker site.

Anyone ever notice that users who claim to be on the side of recreational players are simply on the side of a poker site that makes hundreds of millions of dollars in profit?

Yeah :/

Being on the side of rec players is necessary from a reg pov anyway. Games with small edges like 25bb hypers w/ ante simply aren't profitable pre rb if they're reg only at decent stakes. Better regs don't make enough big mistakes to cover the rake.

Those top heavy rnd reward structures sure make a great thing for marketing, however recs lose as well by the cuts. This guy put it well imho:

A: "I'd rather take 9$ for a shot at huge price than 10$ flat"

B: "You always could have gotten the $10 in cash and then if you wanted to, use $1 of the $10 that you got in cash to buy a lottery ticket for a shot at a big prize. Or you know, the whole $10 or however much of the $10 you wanted to spend to buy lottery ticket(s) for shot(s) at big prize(s).

Cash is cash. You can spend it on whatever you want."

It's been said before that the hope of winning needs to be maintained, but what level of winning?

The other fundamental question seems to be, are withdrawal'ers good for the poker site? I think the answer is basically, no, as they are withdrawing money that might otherwise go to rake. The reason offered that they are good is that without them games just wouldn't run. I don't think that's true. It's not like a B&M casino where there are 7 players who don't want to play 7 handed so they need that 8th player to come in. I think that a depositor-type of player will play whatever game is available to get his fix and there will still be plenty to choose from. My view is based largely on thinking about cash games so maybe there are considerations I'm missing when it comes to tourney's, etc.

What level of profit needs to be maintained?

As to your question--SOME. Most people started depositing online (I know I did) to play poker because they saw Phil Ivey WINNING money or heard about some 19-year-old dork who dropped out of college because he was WINNING money online. If the carrot doesn't exist, what's the point?

It's good for the site and poker in general that some of the money deposited on the site ultimately goes to the players, who then withdraw said moneys. Fish (and reg fish who deposit more than they withdraw) have the misguided belief that they will, at least one day, WIN--or get other players' deposits. If it all ****ing goes to rake, then what's the point of ever depositing? IF it all goes to rake, then nobody wins except Pokerstars.

Just play Zynga. Same chance at winning, but without the expense.

Got some new stuff in Canada today. As far as I can tell it's just a new icon on the right side that says My Stars and when you click on it it's just a different way of showing the same vip store. No mention of chests but I didn't click around too much.

What is the new thing where Stars makes a sound and another players name will kind of glow and shine for a second? I noticed it the other day as well so I don't think it's totally new with todays update.

It means they've matched one of their StarsCrash cards.

There are always going to be winners. But to have a healthy poker economy you need many more loosing players for every winning player. Changing the VIP program is not going to change that. The question that needs to be asked is, do you need to reward winning players? The answer is no, not really, winning is its own reward. So as a poker company with a budget for promotional rewards having any of that money going to winning players is not money well spent. That money is much better spent on loosing players to keep them playing and depositing. This also benifits the winning players because it allows them to keep winning.

That said I still say Stars Rewards is a giant fail. Not necessarily for how it gives out the rewards but because based off of what numbers we have seen so far this is going to be an 85% reduction in rewards across the board as opposed to a redistribution between winning and loosing players.

I have a feeling we are going to get the chests maybe start of june? With the stuff they added today + article saying they are going to test in denmark / italy then roll out to other countries in the summer

side note, even though they didn't say anything about starscoins value decreasing, I am defs cashing mine in for cash before the update and probably smart for everyone else to as well just in case

" The question that needs to be asked is, do you need to reward winning players? The answer is no..."

I agree. I divide the player pool as depositors and withdrawalers. Depositors are necessary and withdrawalers aren't at all. So get rid of the things that tend to benefit withdrawalers(which itself will benefit depositors because fewer withdrawalers means depositors can play longer and will have a higher percentage of winning sessions, like if a player wins 1:4 sessions that is enough to keep him coming back but if it's only 1:9 he will stop).

So, consider what withdrawalers benefit from, 1) high volume so; flatten the progressive rewards system, 2) tracking software and huds so; make them contrary to ToS and stop providing hh's in text(to make it difficult or impossible to record hh's(these measures may reduce tracking software use to the extent that the company's which make them can't stay in business).

In my opinion I think these changes would make the game more fair and more like poker and therefore more attractive to depositors.

They could tell withdrawalers they are only allowed to play higher(and ever higher) limits.

How to reduce withdrawals without reducing deposits. Management has an obligation to ownership to find the sweat spot.

I think if 5000 withdrawalers leave stars for other sites that is good for stars and bad for other sites because they will make it ever harder to win and further beleaguer depositors at those sites.

Who are all these people playing poker - and sometimes spending real money on it - without any chance to get any money back some day ?
It's a genuine question I ask you. Of course, I have my own opinion on the matter but reading yours would be interesting I think.

There are some people winning millions playing tennis, does it mean that 99% of other tennis players in the world started to play tennis to win any money ?
Or could it be possible, in your perception of the world, that a very large portion of tennis players simply play that sport because that's something they simply enjoy, without having to make money through it ?

This analogy is absolutely awful. Please try again.

Also, he specifically mentioned depositing players which just makes it that much worse:

Yes, they deposited in the first time with the dream to win lot of money, not to deposit ad eternam. What we don't agree on here

Of course, tennis and poker are not the same, I just compared the two to help understanding a different point of view (not especially mine, btw), which seems impossible to see for some here, blinded as they are by their own interests being put in question.

What about my main question which was about the motivations of all people playing poker without any money return on it ?

They just like the game. That's why play money is so popular.

Question is why those players would be well advised to become regular depositors on real money poker sites. If the answer is "they wouldn't be" then they shouldn't be the focus of the discussion as sustainable real money poker isn't going to be built on people depositing by mistake.

Another subset of players just want to gamble. Question is why they would be be well advised to play poker rather than some 1-player game against the house where generally the house edge is lower than poker rake and they also aren't losing money to stronger players. Again, if the answer is "they wouldn't be" then they shouldn't be the focus either.

So who is well advised to play losing, real money poker? I suppose it's people who believe in the saying "If it doesn't hurt when you lose, it's no fun." adult men generally want something at stake when they play a game against other adult men. For ShowUrAce and all the others, the kiddie game is down the hall on Zynga.

OK, withdrawalers is a definite improvement on withdrawal'ers, but it's still pretty tough on the eyes, especially when you use the word every sentence.

Some guy withdraws money. Yesterday he withdrew some money. That's called making a withdrawal. That makes him a withdrawer.

I do deeply apologize and appreciate the correction.

Their motivation is fun with a card game.
They are in no way affected by stars reward system changes, so I try to find the reason to discuss about this group in here, unless u find it reasonable to discuss cyclists or truck drivers as well.

Not sure if this will blow your mind: Online Poker is actually still beatable and that's why they're in there.
Games like Beat the Clock are unbeatable and so will high stakes short-stack games or any other type be if they're raked too high (the consequence is not that ppl will generate the same amount of rake in unbeatable games but that regs are gonna notice (some directly, some later) and traffic will drop significantly). But hey, amaya gained some short-term bucks by increasing prices for their product, yolo!

Reason I play in stars :
The software
The game they have that suit me(PLO5)
The traffic

...any rewards or RB is just a bonus

And I am what they so called Rec player..

I think you are correct, sir, these play money players "just like the game", you make a very valid point.
So from that point, we can agree that not ALL poker players in the world play to make some money, ain't we ?
If we do agree, could we also imagine that amongst real money players, "some" of them (maybe a majority, maybe not) are in the same kind of motivational mood when it comes to poker, and simply enjoy to play the game without putting too much thinking into it ?

You talk about "sustainable real money poker", but have you got any data in hands to say if the old rakeback model was "sustainable" from a company-who-wants-to-grow's point of view ?
As a rational and intelligent person, don't you think that if that really was the case, they wouldn't have touched anything and simply enjoyed the money coming in pockets ?
Or do you think that they bought a company for 5 billions only for the fun of annoying some online poker pros ?

We all got our own agenda. It appears that for long years, PokerStars and poker pros agendas went in the same direction because both were happy with the situation at that moment.
Seems that Amaya's not so happy anymore and simply take another direction to be "happy" again, you would do exactly the same if that was you.

Hello everyone ...i am a italian player. Tomorrow probable will start too here the new "wonderfull" Amaya vip sistem. In italy the traffic is not so strong and the rake is higher for tax. Personnally I played average 2000 montly 100€ spin&go and i am pretty sure that in longterm their greedy move will hurt strong their profit. Cuz not all players are idiots to risk thousands of euro and stress to work for them. In short term a lot of regulars will continue to play for ego, thinking to still have EV, but slowly they will understand that who win is just who run hot, government with tax and Amaya. So they will quit at least this discipline and cashgame table fullreg. I hope in 2 months the highstakes traffic will collapse so Amaya will understand that their greedy move will create them strong damage to their image and profit.
A lot of italians players that payed a lot of thousands euro in rake think some my scenario. ... sorry everone for my bad english ...stay tuned and good luck ))

Re: Zynga

I'd guess you can play on Zynga from all sorts of countries USA / Australia etc, that can't play on Stars.
Looking at the Zynga T&Cs, you don't have to be the legal age to gamble to play there either.
Also, I guess they probably advertise across their existing huge farmville (& other games on facebook) customer base.

So that probably makes up a huge number of people, that couldn't actually deposit on Stars.
So might be a bit pointless to try and compare the two.

Honestly, if anything Zynga Poker drives customer acquisition to other games, not the other way around. I'm guessing it's a huge acquisition engine for them.

Hard as it might be to understand from a real money poker perspective, a lot of people *love* free play poker online.

How wrong you are. This is the group the new reward system is built around. This is the group that stars wants to keep happy, grow, and in turn depositing. This is the group that deposits the money that ends up in the pockets of the company and winning players.

Why would they deposit though when play money poker is available free?