I remember a couple years ago when I used to grind HU PLO at the small stakes. One day I realized how much in rake I spent (several stacks) after just a few hundred hands. With the competition getting much stronger my winrate dwindled so much that I decided to quit that game. With a small rake reduction I'd probably still play it because to me it's the most exciting game.

It's no secret that more regs than ever are dropping down stakes. The games have gotten a lot tougher and the rake has not been lowered accordingly. I'd bet my right hand that most players would still play the same games from a few years ago with the right rake reductions.

And the recs? They would sit with less winners per table. And so they'd get to play more hands before having to re-deposit. It's the obvious conclusion.

I've never understood why Stars has always been completely unwilling to consider rake reduction. To me it seems like the most obvious move to keep the ecosystem alive.

$$$ talks thats why. Ecosystem does not talk.

.

I have accepted a winrate reduction for several years. I'm winning roughly 40-50% as much as I used to even though I'm playing much better than I ever did.

Did you expect a different response?

True, rake as a share of deposits needs to be sufficient to keep the business running. I overlooked that following the general assumption the share is high.

But there is no magical number that players have some right to take, and given the games run, that share is decided by the best players willingness to sit there.

Why would rake be lowered because games got tougher?

If the players are willing to play, the rake can't be a problem. Lowering it would just be a freebie for the pros.

Self entitled poker players going to a company to tell them how they should run their business so it suites the said self entitled players.

Makes me laugh. Pokerstars should have had you escorted from the property.

Just as you should be from this POKER forum.

They were invited there,btw.

I provided the reason in the same post. It's because people (like me) quit games that they could otherwise continue to play. HU PLO would've continued to be the higher raked game of my choice even after a rake reduction.

Edit: This is what happens across the board. People keep moving from the most profitable/fun game to the next. Eventually when someone runs out of games they beat/enjoy, they quit poker entirely.

they dont care about regulars !
they hoaxed the regulars already when they invited them to the isle of man.
you thought they want to tell about splitting the cake,
they only wanted to know how u as regs think and act.

regulars are other sharks who want the money of the recreationals, so they will cut their benefits to get more and more profit, to increase the revenues to satisfy their share- and stakeholders and this until the provider will be created an real-live-casino-atmosphere,
where only losing-player will get benefits.
I guessed already in the german section in my thread this processing will be finished round about 2020.

its a stockxchange-listed-company.. a grasshopper. wake up.

the only way to get more influence in pokerstars is to buy amaya-shares !!!!!
many amayashares.
soo.. all people who have an interest to create more fair benefits for all kind of players
have to create a fonds, a investmentgroup and invest monthly capital in amaya-shares !!!

this is the way.. the only way, other real options dont exist. (amaya/stars r not the nba)

Re: redistribution of money saved from cutting SNE benefits towards recs:

So since 1.01.2016 Stars have cut nearly all VIP (freerolls) games and all of edge daily 100k freerolls which awarded real$.
Instead there are now hourly shootout freerolls which award 64 tickets to the 50ct spin&gos. each of these hourly crapshoot freerolls has an average of 20k registrations. So I guess the new strategy is:

1) give the illusion of redistributing as much as possible of the sne money while
2) artificially boosting the numbers of logged in online players so it appears as traffic has risen, all the while
3) engaging the most knowledgeable and skilled pros/players in a (futile?) debate over mostly highstakes rewards to
4) divert from the fact that poker at "poker"stars has long shifted from a game of skill to a game of shootoutcrap and spin-0-mania for the vast majority of players which are
5) stuck at the micros where there is never a real chance of moving up except for the 0.01% because the rake makes those games de facto unbeatable.

Scenario at FullTilt:
At any given day, during the time of freerolls, the entries to the freerolls make for up to 95% of online players.

Scenario at PokerStars:
At any given day, well over 75% of online players are seated at games below nl25. With a solid 5digit number seated in freerolls or playmoney games.

Any comments?

so, if 800 regs from theykillpoker would invest in average $1000 they would have $800000 in amaya-shares-fee
and if the page would be re-named in e.g. "entertaining-investmentgroup(s)" aka www.enterinvestgroup.com or www.enterinvestgroups.com
they would have a company aka venture capital firm aka investment group (incl. a fonds?)
aka asset management company and could use their shares to increase their impact on/in amaya.

and if maybe 8000 players/investors would invest $1000 in average, u would have $8mio-fee.
and if u would take in account that many (famous) players r pissed off or/and would like to invest their money in different projects/sectors (e.g. ivey), than I would bet/guess
it is a possible scenario that the number of players and persons who want to invest would exceed the 8000s

and there is nothing which amaya or stars could be worry or angry about, because it is a good news that sooo many people would like to invest as a group/company/asset management in amaya.

Excellent post. Only thing to add is the rake is intentionally set so high at the micros so that no one (or should I say money) escape to players that play high enough that withdrawing makes sense.

Question to Ike, DD and Ansky:

So now it's clear that player meetings are never going to work, what is your next course of action? Are you considering pursuing legal action? Do you have any other solutions that you think might work?

Right! what is it that makes you say that?

You are right that if you look at one single player that is winning 2BB/100 over x hands there is probability that he is a losing player. In this context though, if you take all the winning players at 2BB/100 level with 100k hands the vast majority of the players in this group are indeed winning players while a small group will be losers that made profit due to variance.

No, you did not say that and I get your point, but my post is also one big question of sort of my observations[and on hindsight is a bit ranty fair enough]
and I should have written the post without your or any quote and in hindsight, your post did not justify/deserved the content of the post I wrote I apologize for that.

But I am a man that is raised with the opinion/conviction if I don't agree or think that something is not fair or illegal even I do something about it or I walk away from it if it is not worth it IMO or I go somewhere else but I see many people talking/writing about it but not much action! at least, not any that really makes a difference so far[aldo I praise the effort].

And that is why I asked what is ps for a site is it for recs to have fun playing some poker or are they profiling themselves as a site you can make a living on also so what are they profiling themselves as? or is it a site that is whatever makes the most money now because I believe that ps started out as a site that was for the players and make money doing it but since Amaya and maybe the last year[s?] of the old owners[once they saw what enormous amount of money it made, you know money corrupts] that ideal?/ ambition? got snowed under a bit.

And I guess that there came too many sharks and not enough fish and not enough new fish came in their place and the phrase that "poker takes 10 min to learn but a lifetime to master" not really applies to on-line poker does it because if a guy is willing and able to do the work and learns the math and has the right software it is possible to not lose and make some good money and are there now too much of those people so they don't play each other because the virtually play the same and if they run bad they could lose a tidy sum of money and are they not too dependent of the rake and bonuses to make enough money.

Is online poker "solved" because there is too much info out there and have too many people learned too much to beat each other and have the people that did not given up?

This change nothing and create bad pr. Losing player at average lose 100bb in 300-400 hands he pays about 10bb in rake during this. If we eliminate rake altogether and charge for withdrawals, he will last only for about 30-40 hands more. This will not change anything.

Question for the reps who went to the meeting, some quote from twitter (I dont have the direct link to these quotes but this is the post I found them in)

What was this moment that was "By far the most tense"? - what were you discussing?

If Amaya really cared about the online poker ecosystem, they should look into a reduction of the rake burden at the low stakes. That is the single biggest positive change they could make to benefit the ecosystem. It allows winners to break through to stakes where they don't hurt novices all that much; you wouldn't need to segregate player pools etc.

But whatever, never mind; rake reduction at low stakes will never happen; especially now that it's a public traded company.

Oh well GG online pokers

The best we can hope for at this point is that Amaya runs Pokerstars into the ground to the point of not being able to comfortably service the debt load and gets bought out by another company/management team that has better business strategies and ethics.

I received some NDA violating information about this "very tense" moment. Apparently the players and Amaya both put in a compromise solution and they decided to let NLHE dictate whose proposal would go forward.

Lee Jones was secretly flown to the meeting and he demanded that Ike would have PS logos one last time, here is the last deciding hand and Ikes reaction:

Why don't you guys all brainstorm some alternative plans to pokerstars? There's plenty of things you could do instead of complaining about how unethical and horrible the Amaya group is - which they are from what I've seen thus far.

Here's an idea:
Approach some other poker sites and let them know you can bring a lot of players to their games in exchange for some initial incentives to play there, and them having to dedicate X% of this new revenue to advertising to bring more rec players into the games.

If Ansky and several of you guys actually banded together and talked to some of these owners, I guarantee you'd find a willing partner. The higher stake players might have to play down for awhile until the site builds, but do you want long or short term results here?

Eric Hollreiser Discusses Player Meeting in Regards to PokerStars VIP Changes

"Initial Data Seems To Confirm That We Made the Right Decision"

http://uk.pokernews.com/news/2016/01...e-ec-20518.htm

Don't know about anybody else but having just seen this on my twitter feed and clicked the link, it doesn't half feel like Dani et al have been well and truly used.

1. Nobody wants them.
2. They don't want to move.