That's what I said in my email to Stars and they thought I was wishing them well.

it's always their excuse. And every time, recs get either lose a little less than us, earn the same they used to or win 1$ a week more

i played mtts for about 14 hours straight then 15 spins for another 5 hours and i have $11 in stars coins? These chests are rather dull.

Also, i noticed during the last VIP update one of the last stars communications about the status bar filling up was to simplify things. this chest thing is more confusing then ever, so whatever plan you had about making it easier for the customers to understand has obviously been thrown out the window.

I mean i couldn't find a button to click to see what each chest means etc.

Amaya/Stars want the chests to be confusing and difficult to understand. That way its harder to see how they are screwing their loyal (former loyal) customers.

If you go to a restaurant and pay £25 for a steak on a Tuesday then find the price has gone up to £40 by Friday, the customer has every right to talk to management about the price rise. The customer can say look, as good as the steak was, I'm not paying £40 for it - can you not lower the price ? If they say no, then we go to a new restaurant and they miss out on a customer.

Customers should never roll over and just accept price increases (which effectively is what the revised pokerstars system is) - they should at least let their voices be heard. No one got anywhere by being mice who just accepted everything that is thrown at them.

You're overestimating the share and representativeness of 2p2ers' voice in the chorus of all Stars customers' voices. The reason why 2p2ers have a say in smaller companies like Party and Unibet is that the companies have employed prominent 2p2ers as executives (Patrick Leonard aka OurSurveySays and, until very recently, Andrew West aka Sciolist) who're influenced by their network of 2p2 friends. These boards will certainly have a say in RunItOnce Poker too.

I think they heard our voices (if they're somewhat decent at crm, if not it doesn't really matter), they just don't care. So only option really is to vote with your feet and move to party (attractive rb%!) etc.
Time will tell if the dropout of regs can be covered by new customers. If not, they'll at least think of adjusting the reward system.

Indeed, the efficiency of the new system will depend not only on how much it deters for-profit players but also on how it retains both new and existing fun players.

To this end, I'm really disappointed too by the blandness of the chest opening procedure.

Yeh all the people thinking it's about weeding out the "bad for the game regs" are deluded . It's about paying no rakeback to anyone - and wrapping it up in a confusing chest system so it might take a recreational player a while to realise they are essentially getting nothing but they have the carrot of reaching the next level to get bigger and better chests which still won't actually contain anything worth having unless you get the miracle big prize

Just opened my last coffin and cashed out my roll and brought it to party poker. Hope more do the same.

only hope is gandolf

As your typical rec who desposit to play a few games between job and kids, I think it's bad as well. Since I have very little time to play, I enjoy fast games - zoom, spins, etc. (beat the clock is dull, tho). But the randomization of everthing - multiple promos, spins prizes, card match, the deal, now chests - baffles me.

It's supposed to create excitment, but instead, you always get that « you didn't win this time » feeling. It's worse with chest, since I don't even understand what prize would be a fair prize, so every time I open one, it's a little deception. If I wanted a shot to a big prize, I'd buy a lottery ticket. I actually buy these too, and I don't win either, but at least it didn't cost me time or effort.

So yeah, I think it's over. I just opened Party poker, and the player pool good for a monday in the summer. I didn't like their mission system, but now I just despise chests.

Spot on. Stars had many ways to make an exciting time-limited SNG but chose to roll out a plain Zoom cash game (with minor differences). Even 888 has managed to make a better time-limited flagship SNG (Blast) and beat Stars to it by 4-5 months, iirc, at the same time rolling out the BreakFAST! MTTs that were very similar to what would be Beat The Clock, just better due to auto-all-ins at the end instead of a dull chip chop.

Perhaps Stars' creative team wasn't even planning to turn timebomb MTTs into permanently available SNGs, then its business intelligence learned that 888 was designing what would be Blast, and that Party was creating what would be SNG Hero (not the 3-man 'Special Vanilla Drying Paint Edition' that's now at the $3, $50, $100 stakes, but the original 4-man bounty), but it was way too late for Stars and some of their recs must have flocked to 888/Party.

After that, Microgaming's management didn't need much fantasy to come out with the timed HUSNGs - they just cut their usual HUSNGs short and, at the 10-minute mark, put auto-all-ins in place that had already been used in Blast, let alone such ancient tourneys as Stars' all-in shootouts and Microgaming's very own Flips (formerly known as Carnage).

I suspect this exact post has been posted multiple times, but I just want to add to the volume of people are disgusted by this change.

Just paid $2.80 to open my first chest for a value of 7 cents. It's looking like a 85% rake back reduction for the majority of players.

You are completely correct, this tired Amaya line about protecting the 'recs' is just that, an increasingly transparent lie.

People have to understand, Amaya is closer to ub than it is to pokerstars. All the factors that made Pokerstars elite have eroded, but complaining about it, yet continuing to give them your business only allows them to justify further cuts.

I think a great deal of the anger exhibited on this thread is less to do with Amaya's pathetic lack of any transparency with regards to the rakeback [virtual] elimination, and more to do with watching the slow death of the only online site that most of us ever had complete trust in.

The red spade is dead.

I never understand this logic. If regs leave, some recs are going to become winners. Not all recs are equally bad + poker by default has winners and losers. All recs can't be losing to each other. Someone has to be winning. Then maybe, some of the newly winning recs will decide to take advantage of their newly found edge and play more. Then they ll become reggy and the cycle will repeat.

you are missing something here... , there is a point were rake is too high almost no one is able to beat the rake so everyone is losing in the long term and the only winner is the house and stars is slowing trying to get as near as posible to that point.

Yup. By 'regs', I meant those who both play and study regularly. If they quit, the best of recs will start having positive chip EVs, but not far not all of them will start studying seriously, and those who don't study will be still marginally losing because of the high rake.

Of course you are right i have thought this was the end goal for 2 years. I have made my peace with this line of action. Its what is going to happen regardless of the 1000s of posts people make so i would advise people to adjust to this new reality asap.

How can you not comprehend this? FFS this is why Amaya stars bends the player pool over repeatedly. Alot of people simply don't understand how rake works and are too ignorant/stupid to get informed.

i made up a simple formula for those who don't understand:

more rake = more rake

It's hilarious though. I cant fathom how these people can consider themselves "regs" when they can't even grasp how winrates work. It baffles me beyond belief. Maybe Amaya is onto something here.

played there since 2007 and i left 3 years ago, although i can play on stars anytime i want, to play 2/5 and 5/10 live. never been richer or happier than i am now due to the relative stress free nature of live poker, its just e z to print or at least grind variance free.

amaya is cancer and so is pokerstars. ill never return.

The original point I responded to was the the site doesn't care if regs leave, because then only losing players would remain and the site would eat their rake.

But as we agreed, that's not true. Some new winners will emerge, probably a smaller proportion than before, but some would.

If you add the fact that the site's turnover has dropped because regs have stopped playing, each cent in increased rake doesn't equal a cent in increased profits. In other words, the site is hurt by losing regs and they should care.

You could argue that it's still profitable for them to increase the rake, but at some point, you raise the rake enough and it's becoming dicey for them. Also, by losing volume putting regs, they are hurting one of their major brand selling points which is "come and play at the site where you can always play a game".

This is illustrated by jdawg's example and hyper sngs. If enough regs quit playing huper sngs, the site doesn't keep raking losing players. It stops raking period. In other words, that's a money losing proposition.

The micros aren't going to die without regs - there are plenty of recs willing to spend $1-5 out of their pocket money, and there many high-variance tourney formats where that small BI can be turned into a huge prize. To this end, cash games will likely be turned into jackpot chases (royal flush, bad beat, etc.) in blind lobbies (Easy Seat) reducing bumhunting.