https://www.highstakesdb.com/9921-be...expensive.aspx


way to go

in b4 Mike Postle announced as CEO

Amen brother

Can't understand how cutting rake from 5% to 2% could be called "more expensive". Their rewards were mostly a sham with sportsbook winners getting restricted and the exchange "cashrace" always set at levels that made the promo self-funding (rake £100 more commission than normal get £50 back was standard).

Freedom for multitablers!

well dont make it 24, make it 9 or something

I think the rewards are 5% of what they were before the buffer deal.

Maybe they increase the table cap also. The problem with the 4 table cap at regular tables is that the fish has expanded to the zoom tables as they find the regular tables too easy and that ****s my training at the zoom tables.

The idea that new Flutter leadership is going to impose that level of minutiae and direction on the poker rules and rewards program is completely out of step with reality.

This is the first thing that came to my mind; some kind of tiered premium charge for profitable gamblers, used to subsidise cringeworthy and ineffective marketing campaigns.

All supervised by our friends at the so called "ukgc" - which is inexplicably held up as some kind of gold standard on this forum.

The Commission's stated aims are "to keep crime out of gambling, to ensure that gambling is conducted fairly and openly, and to protect children and vulnerable people". (from ukgc wiki)

An apocryphal tale of the highest order, gambling is neither fair nor open in the so called united kingdom (lower case intended)

Betfair also run a sportsbook now - perhaps it's just Paddypower bets repackaged.

When you go to the Betfair site and it opens at the sportbook tab - you need to specifically click through to exchange. In the betfair poker thread there is a guy who got banned possibly for winning sportsbets and he didn't realise he wasn't betting on the exchange.

So the equivalent for Pokerstars would be you open the client and it opens at "Ultimate Texas Holdem" meaning poker against the dealer. You need to know to click on a side tab if you want to play poker against other players.

Was that recently? Betfair has had a sportsbook for 10+ years. When it first launched there were complaints that defaulting to the sportsbook diverted mug punters from the exchange, if I had to guess that would have been 2007ish though!

Sorry, but this is BS

Betfair launched his sportbook site 2012.

And if "a guy" can´t distinguish between betfair sportsbook and their exchange, I am sorry, but wut?

Sportsbook
https://prnt.sc/pgnq42

Exchange
https://prnt.sc/pgnq6y

Just bookmark https://www.betfair.com/exchange ...can´t be that hard

Also it is quite common amongst all "european bookmakers" to limit/ban winning players. Nothing new, nothing shady at all.

^ So which part of my post do you disagree with?

Stars already fixed this problem (4 tables)

It helps but big russian/semi russian affiliates already offer identtitys to pretty much any country in the world with guides how to set up VPNs etc pp

Multiple 3rd world IDs are cheap, sadly.

Those that dont want to break TOS will just play 4 stars 4 party 4 whatever and make all Sites a nitfest. This is already happening on the sites im playing on and im not even going into every suspected Bot Account being from 3rd World, since its cheaper there.

EDIT

im just saying teh tim stone was right all along, we just werent rdy back then.

I don't get what you're saying, are you talking about straight up bots or about russian grinders?

If you are talking about bots, yes that's a huge problem in general, but Stars are good at spoting bots so that's not a real problem there, idk about other sites, though I'd assume big sites are at least okay at catching bots

If you are talking about tights russian grinders, the only problem they possessed is creating huge w8ing lists while bumhunting 12-16 tables like mother****ers, now this problem is simply GONE, getting table with fish never been easier.

And, well, if you are saying that they ruining the games with their tight play style... I mean, get better, they are plenty beatable and they have a lot of leaks

No surprises in TSG Q3-2019 results. CTRL+F poker for the highlights.

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-rele...300953585.html

* Poker revenues down - jurisdictions disrupting access to TSG's poker & casino products
* Poker revenues negatively impacted by July 2019 closure of Switzerland market
* PokerStars PA becomes first internet P2P to market in that state
* Poker still viewed as a "cost-effective customer acquisition" cross-sell mechanism into casino/sports betting
* TSG revenues helped by cross-selling rates (getting less-profitable poker customers from poker into higher margin sports betting/casino products)
* Sports betting revenues growing

It will be interesting to see how the Flutter-TSG merger (parent company Google) plays out in 2020. This could clear up some regulatory/market access hurdles in certain jurisdictions if investment/time/effort is made into shoring up the quality of real money internet poker games. This doesn't really bode well for smaller online poker competitors at all imo, regardless of whether they're licensed or operate in an offshore/unregulated capacity.

I'm curious whether online poker games might eventually cross-over into the upcoming YouTube Gaming/Google Stadia infrastructure in terms of news, regulations, and entertainment.

Wait this has what to do with Google? I think that's a different "Flutter", no?

I'd say very likely.

Yes. You're correct and I wish I could take the second part of my post back now that I see my mistake.

https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-st...-idUKKBN1ZZ13G

Obviously if this merger goes ahead it will 'substantially lessen the competition'. If the CMA had a super close look at Stars buying SkyBet then surely this mega-merger needs some extreme scrutiny.

Yes, I was thinking that a condition might be that Skybet is hived off if the merger goes ahead. As that would be a bit of a fire sale, they might abandon.

That's not at all obvious. Firstly, they're going to have to define the market(s) and look at the resulting market shares of those markets at least.

I don't have any access to current UK market share figures, nor have I seen any discussed in this thread, but I'd put a rough line that the combined market share in the most-tightly-defined market - online sports betting - might be 25%? Maybe 30%? I don't know, I'm just guessing, but it's hardly going to create an 80%+ monopolist given how much bigger/more profitable Bet365 is (do you really think Bet365 is quivering in their boots over this merger? GTFO)

How would you define the market, and what combined market share do you think they'll have?

This X 1 million.