Very good point raidalot

4) Eliminate breakeven rakeback grinders

Any of the 4 (or more) is a pure business decision. They may implement one or all of the above. It's their company.

Is this not putting PokerStars in the same position that lead to all their apologies for a "communication error"?

If PokerStars knows now that it will change for 2017, they should communicate that.
If PokerStars knows now that it will not change for 2017, they should communicate that.
If PokerStars are uncertain and will not know until later in the year... well, here we go again.

An obvious solution is to commit to the implicit promise being made in the marketing instrument or don't use it. Anything else is deceptive. At least put the caveat in the bullet point.

• Once you reach Supernova status, you enjoy the benefits for the remainder of the current year and retain Supernova status for the entirety of the following year! (Following year benefits are subject to change.)

This.

This is simply inaccurate statement in my opinion.

Or elaborate. Answer simple questions - HOW?

1) How ridding of seating scripts help rec player? In world of seating scripts rec player plays with 5 regs with scripts, in the world without - with just 5 regs. What is the difference?

2) How ridding of huds helps rec player? Please provide figures. Like now average winrate of rec player -30bb. What it would be if we eliminate hm/huds altogether? Provide some thoughts why.

3) Lowering table caps will help but it has to be something crazy like 2 table max. Number that will allow 90% of rec players play as they play.

Well that would hit reg pockets waaaay harder than any rake increase. But may be not? May be game quality will increase? But if this is right thing to do, it would not increase enough.

While i agree w most wat you write rgd those subjects i disagree here.

1. Would make absolutely zero difference. Nil. But feel free to explain why.

2. Wouldnt make much difference

3. Would in fact MAKE A HUGE DIFFERENCE

Hi Matthew,

Actually, the webpage says this: (I've marked the important parts)



I'm not really sure how that can be interpreted differently from "if the benefits you received from SN in 2016 can be described as ABC, you will also enjoy those benefits (ABC) in 2017, as long as you are SN.

Either change as language so that it's clear that SN can potentially mean absolutely nothing in 2017. Or don't and honor the same benefits next year. Either is fine. But given your post, what's on there now is very deceptive, and pisses people off.

, i wonder how matthew is gona spin this

Appreciate your input as always.

There is one GIANT problem w lawyering up:

Permanent account closure. So let's sue them and expect you in fact win. In order for tis to be +EV you have either

a) be done w onlinepoker for good
b) be done w stars for good
c) win your case for x$ where x=> wat you wouldve made on stars until your career end.

Given all that even if an SNE would want to sue Stars over tis 99% just cant

Ps: and make no mistake your account will be closed faster than an american slut at a springbreak pool party...

Exactly.This is a clear case of a deliberate delusion.
After all of those things that have happened.
They really seem to have no boundaries...

Amaya November 2016 Press Release:

"PokerStars is pleased to announce a new VIP Rewards Level to recognize our most loyal players. Beginning in 2017, Brown Dwarf status will be introduced, having the same playing requirements previously required to achieve Supernova Elite. Points may not be accumulated towards Brown Dwarf status prior to January 1, 2017. Existing SuperNova Elite players will of course retain their prestigious title through 2017, but all tangible rewards previously associated with such status will be replaced in their entirety by one (1) Ronaldo T-shirt (currently out of stock)."

Are you beginning to see the problem, Matthew?

Great post. It is extremely sad how far Amaya and PokerStars ethics have fallen now compared to the Scheinberg era. These are not people I trust with my money or to act in a fair, ethical manner.

usually american sluts in this situation open up very very quickly sometimes for different partners.

"Once you reach Supernova you can enjoy its benefits until the end of the following year"

but "its benefits" can change anytime

its bull****, lame and uunethical

but its not wrong

The original poster didn't include the full text of the page which says,
'Supernova rewards shown are for the current year only and are subject to change in following years.' I thought this statement is pretty clear, however, there are some fair points made in this thread so we'll modify the text further to remove any uncertainty, including removing the sentence 'Once you reach Supernova you can enjoy its benefits until the end of the following year.'

tx, Matthew

"Four legs good, two legs better"

Let me preface this by saying I don't necessarily endorse implementing what I wrote above, but I do think it would help the "ecosystem" if Stars actually wanted to do that. The reality is they don't give a damn about the "poker ecosystem" as any new variants further syphons players from poker to these new "verticals" which hurt the poker ecosystem.

1) Scripts- As you wrote, scripts make it so that 5 regs will join a table a rec starts 100% of the time instantly. Without scripts there's a chance that another rec could join the table.

2) Hud removal would mean that regs would either have to cut back on tables so they can focus on who is who... or their winrates would drop. With lowered winrates rec players would last longer.

3) Table caps would mean that there is a greater chance that 2 or more recs would wind up playing on the same table. Which is good for them.

My point was that Stars doesn't give a crap about the "ecosystem". They want people playing 24 tables. They just don't want to pay the benefits. That money goes straight into their pockets.
If they got rid of HUDS people would play less tables.
If they got rid of HUDS people would play less tables.

Scripts are a little different... they figure they can get rid of these and regs will keep playing the same amount of tables.
They will likely reduce the info that Huds can provide and not have people cut back on tables and in this regard I think they are right.
(last 2 points are just what I think the end result will be and it's what Pstars is banking on).

"ecosystem" in the Amaya dictionary means revenue.

Sect7G,

HUDs has nothing to do with what you're saying. Completely nothing.
Why not limit the tables then? Just limit the tables, let the HUDs on for people that have HUDs (you only could see stats of regulars and recreationals that also have HUD) and ban scripts or any other software of that type.

Fish will lose at the same PACE with HUDs. Huds are useful for reg battles and they introduce an ELEMENT OF STRATEGY, that ressembles to live poker where you know the type of player you're playing.. it's not about playing the cards is the players!

versus fish, I don't care if they have stats display or not i couldn't care less.

Just limit table numbers ffs. Cap of 9 tables...

I've been thinking about how to answer your question and I think it's best to do it through a hypothetical example.

DISCLAIMER: I do not know advanced statistics or data analysis methods. The kind of stuff we are dealing with is complex and proper analysis goes beyond my understanding - so don't ask me what I think the proper way to analyse the result end of things is, because I don't know.

Having said that, the knowledge that I have is still considerable and I can identify when things are off, even if I do not know how to fix what is off (it will be more clear what I'm talking about after you read my whole post).

------------

One of the most important things with regards to rake changes (or cutting VIP rewards, which is the same thing) is determining how much PS makes from running certain games, and how much the winners win (take out) of these games. This is particularly important in high stakes games, because high stakes games need to be beatable in order to run. The argument that games will still run even if there are no long-term winners does not apply to high stakes. One of the reasons is centered around liquidity: you can't find enough net depositors to fill a 25/50 table or make a 1k SNG go off. And even if you did, what would happen if you forced an all-rec table is that some of the had-been recs are now winners.

Figuring out if a game is beatable, by whom, and for how much is hard, especially when the only thing you have access to is results.

But let's take a look from the other end of things through and example.


Suppose you are dealing with a 1kNL ecosystem.

From this ecosystem, you pick a subset of players which consists of 100 regs of equal skill. For simplicity, assume the games are rake free to begin with.

These regulars all have an expected winrate of 1bb/100. Their standard deviation is 100bb/100.

They all go ahead and play 500k hands of 5/10 each.

Naturally, the following happens:
- On average, they win $50k each
- About 1 in 4 are down money
- About 1 in 4 are up over 100k

Now, if you're dealing only with the result end of things, things kind of get messy, because the results will lead to some funky conclusions, namely:

1. The top 15% of players are crushing pretty hard, making a whopping 2.4bb/100 or more.
2. We see that the winrate of the winners is substantially above 1bb/100.
3. If you increase the rake by 1bb/100*, the top 50% of players are still going to be profitable.

*this increase of 1bb/100 roughly corresponds to cutting all VIP rewards for a high volume 5/10 player


I don't know enough to be able to say what the proper statistical methods are in order to avoid these types of biases. But I do know that all three conclusions are absolute bogus. Clearly, there is a systematic bias that ignores players that happened to lose despite being profitable, and overestimates the profitability of winners. Depending on what % of the "top regs" from this sample you wanted to look at, you could easily overestimate how much this game is beatable for by well over 100%.

Worst of all, in my hypothetical example we were dealing with pretty huge 500k hand samples. If you are dealing with a game that does not run very often - say 50/100 the errors would be huge. If you assume that there are a dozen regulars who play 50k hands of 50/100 per year and they all have a 2.5bb/100 winrate, it would be an unlikely result if at least one of them did not post a winrate that's about 3x higher than that. It's kind of disastrous to then conclude from this that "winners are winning at too high of a rate."


Monorail + everyone else, does that help answer your question?

The elephant in the room is the Russian regulator. He's going to have a bigger effect on the ecosystem than anyone this year.

Thanks for putting in the time to write that out. Let me see if I understand what you're saying vis a vis the kinds of mistakes you believe the Stars reps were making when they met with you:

Are you essentially saying that they looked at the winrates of, say, the top 2% of winnings players from 2015 -- let's say for the sake of argument that their 2015 winrate was 4 BB/100...probably unsustainable at HSNL, but remember of course that they were specifically selected because they were the biggest winners in a calendar year -- and used reasoning such as "well, these guys shouldn't mind if we cut their rewards that will reduce their effective winrate by 1 BB/100...after all, they'll still be winning 3BB/100, amirite?" And by employing that reasoning, you're saying that they're essentially overlooking the fact that the average long-term winrate of the top echelon of players may (hypothetically again) be closer to 1.5 BB/100. So that they're simply applying a pretty egregious statistical sampling bias, oblivious to the fact that the 1 BB/100 haircut (using my hypothetical-but-probably-not-too-far-off numbers above) is really making the game nearly unbeatable in the long term. Have I appropriately characterized what you're suggesting?

I'm just trying to get a better handle on just how Amaya is going about trying to "save" their online poker ecosystem. I'd like to think that they're approaching it in a more educated fashion than "hm, these sharks have been living high on the hog for quite a while now, let's claw some of that back."

My challenge to Amaya is straight-forward: all you need to do is convince me that the haircut you're taking from winning regs is truly for the good of the overall ecology, and not just a way to squeeze as much rake as you can out of the games for yourselves. You won't find me making AMAYASOGREEDY posts because I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that the equilibrium is delicate, and getting it right will require some trial and error. Which is why I keep coming back to the question of whether you guys got the sense that their PROCESS was sound and in good faith. Are they modeling this stuff out? Are they showing you hard data points, and explaining how they came about to their conclusions about what effects certain changes would have? Or are they just getting a bunch of guys of average intelligence in a room, and bouncing rational-sounding ideas off each other, going with one that sounds plausible, and then going in search of data that backs up that course of action, oblivious to how unscientifically it was derived? If you tell me it's the former (careful modeling + stats to derive a reasonable strategy), I'm willing to take them at their word and see how this plays out. But some of the soundbites from the 3 of yours' answers are disconcerting in that they suggest it was more the latter: a completely backwards method of deciding unscientifically on a course of action > then going in search of confirming #'s.

Easy solution.

Provide casual tables (as Party does) for those who want them. Multi-tablers can still 24 table if they want to. No need to ban HUDs.

That keeps everyone happy.

Sounds like a pretty decent compromise.

No it doesn't. All this does is protect recreational players at the expense of winning players which will make Stars more money by having recs fight each other where Stars gets a higher percentage of their deposit all the while making the other tables that much tougher which means regs would have to play more hands vs. each other for the best of them to make the same $ they made before. More hands equals more rake.

But you will get your wish as this is exactly what their new initiative is going to do.

Hello,

I am not planning to take take part in the discussions in this thread, mainly because it is a place for the players to discuss the meetings among yourself. So if I don't reply to questions, please don't take it as an insult.

However, what is quoted here is a clear misunderstanding. In the numbers that DD is referring to, we looked at the results of ALL players who had played a specific game in 2015. So not only is the sample representative, it also covers a long time-period (12 months, in this case).

From this data, we look at how the money lost by the losers in the game is distributed on rake, rewards and winning players. The result (Rake - Rewards) / Player Winnings, us a useful metric for seeing how rake sensitive a game is, and also to get an idea about how dependent the players are on rewards to earn a living in this game.

It can obviously be discussed whether or not this method is suitable to evaluate the state of a game, but there was definitely no cherry-picking of a sample to make the numbers support our point of view.

Thanks,
Baard

It will protect the new players/depositors which is what everyone wants is it not?

There will still be plenty of recs who want to multi-table.

It doesn't force people to do anything. It just provides an option.