Originally posted by me on 11/11/2015 and moved to a "crazees" thread by the mods.
(Please note that this is satire, and google satire before flaming)

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Posted on 11/11/15 by SageDonkey

The events below may or may not of ever happened and any similarity between
the characters below or their role in life and the universe generally, is purely
a work of satire and is up to the reader to digest and interpret in any way they see fit.

Scenes from Am I err in the poker industry, eh? HQ,

…......somewhere where there are a lot of pine trees, too many blueberries and not enough comedians.

Present at the meeting.

Jean-Luc (Chairman of the bored) (you would be, believe me if you lived there)

Jeanne (Director of Card Operations)
Jeanie (Head of New Player Procurement)
Justin (No, not Beiber or Trudeau) (but the Head of Finance)
Scotty (Head of Gaming Operations)
Zac (Chief of Customer Relations)
Ethan (Head of Apocalyptic and Gamblification operations)


Jean-Luc: We are gathered here today to discuss the proposed strike by a number of pieces of data in our database. My concern is that revenues may head Sooth if enough of the datas are serious and not just a bunch of Biebers having an adolescent moment. What are your thoughts Zac?

Zac: Well Jean-Luc, the main issue is that we would like to engage them in what they perceive to be a meaningful dialogue but at the same time send them to The Yukon and make them chop logs for us at a reduced rate of pay. So this is going to be a tricky one for us to pull off without them smelling a rat and engaging in a full scale revolt.

Ethan: I have a solution to this. We'll pay them a little bit more for chopping the logs but we'll spray the logs with an invisible odourless chemical that when they come into contact with it causes them to spend most of their earnings in the on site vice parlours that we have in the logging locations. It's a near certainty that that they'll walk in at 3 o'clock in the morning and spend most of their money there, particularly after a long day of chopping logs for very little money. It's a release for the datas, especially the ones on low pay. They'll thank us for it in the long run, trust me.

Scotty: But the gaming software cann'eet handle that amount of data traffic. It will blow the boosters.

Justin: We'll just borrow more money to increase the gaming capacity, a rights issue for another coupla hunnard million dollars should get through the markets real easy.

Jean-Luc: Make it so.

Jeanne: So when are we going to increase the log chopping rates? Should we announce it immediately?

Jeanie: No, no, we'll let them lay their chain saws down for 3 days and then announce higher logging rates after that so they think they have won a great victory. Little do they know that we are laughing our hockey skates off at them now, during the strike, and afterwards.

Zac: Should we punish the strikers Jean-Luc for daring to cross Lacrosse sticks with the mighty Am I err in the poker industry, eh?...... eh?

Jean-Luc: There is absolutely no need to Zac at this stage, as for 23% of them, having to live and grind in Vancouver is punishment enough.

Jeanie: But what about the Russians, they are really pissed, and I am not talking about Vodka, (because I speak North American English). Apparently they would rather die starving and freezing clasping the Russian flag to their breast than lose the one in a gazillion chance of turning 1 FPP into an EPT Main Event entry.

Justin: How about giving them Alaska back?

Jeanie: That's not actually ours to give.

Justin: Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaahttttttttttt.

Zac: There is a simple solution to the Russian problem that will sort
it oot for good. We will give them three things that they do not have.

Lacy Underwear, Persil Washing Powder and free tickets to a John McCain speaking tour.

Jean-Luc: Jeanie, how are the latest numbers for new player account sign ups looking.

Jeanie: They are aboot in line with expectations and we have some great new initiatives lined up.

We have a new Twitch scheme that rewards players who are prepared to strap cameras to their bodies 24/7 so that the life of a poker pro is properly recorded and streamed for up and coming loggers to aspire to.

Jean-Luc: No $hit!

Jeanie: Yes $hit, and pi$$ and anything else they do during their day. We already have 5 pros signed up and they are all fully aware that if they take the body cams off they will incur extreme fines (and electric shocks) and that they have to play a minimum of 16 hours per day and engage in inane chat with randoms and humour them.

And as you know Jean-Luc we have sacked most of the pros who've played for years and whom have a lot of respect in the wider poker world and have replaced them with pros who will get us new player sign ups.

We're about to sign up Indonesia's number one on line player, a tennis champion from Ethiopia and the winner of Liberia's version of Big Brother because they are cheap to sign up but they're household names in their own countries and we feel that these poor countries with large populations have just as much right as anyone else to participate in a worse than zero sum game and to then have an easy gateway into virtual roulette. They will thank us for it afterwards.

Jean-Luc: Jeanne, are there any new ideas on the card game development front?

Jeanne: There sure are. We are shortly going to roll out a brand new feature called “Get Me Out Of It”

It's a very simple idea indeed, but it does come with a very strict qualification criteria for players.

This is how it works and I'm sure the players will love it. They will thank us for it afterwards.

We all know that no-one likes having a losing day, it's just a bad way to go to bed at night, so we want to make sure that there are far less players having a losing day than ever before, it will be a real revolution in poker.

This is how it works: Every player has a “Get Me Out Of It” icon in the top right hand corner of the table, and every player applies a “Get Me Out Of It” loss amount to the settings on their account. This is the amount they have to lose for them to be able to use the “Get Me Out Of It” Button.

As soon as losses for the day reach this amount, let's call it $500 for example, the player can hit the “Get Me Out Of It" Button.

Then lots of flashing lights come up on their screen, the theme from the movie The Great Escape is played and the player lands on a 10 handed table with other players who are also down $500 dollars on the day. When a player clicks the Get Me Out Of It button it costs them just $75 dollars to try to “Get Me Out Of It”.

So there is $750 on the table and each player is dealt one card face up. In order of high card, the highest card wins $575, we take $25 and the other $150 dollars goes into the Jackpot Bonanza fund.

So the brilliant thing is that players will love this, they are probably playing badly anyway, on tilt, maybe the games are dying too so there is no way out, so what the hell another $75 to Get Me Out Of It.

And the Jackpot, well Wow! With those $150 chunks adding up together it means that one in so many times everyone on the Get Me Out Of It Table wins $575 and very occasionally someone wins the Jackpot of $25,000.

Jean-Luc: Absolute genius Jeanne. We'll roll it out on December 1st, the first day of the strike Scotty.

Scotty : But the gaming software cann'eet handle that amount of data traffic. It will blow the boosters.

Jean-Luc: Scotteeee, SCOTTEEEE.....

There was never going to be a negotiation here. No matter what Stern, Ike, DN had to say or how much they came prepared to discuss things nothing was going to change. PS wanted to sell their lies by showing data. It was their naive hope that these well respected pros would come back and tell the poker community that Amaya was doing what they had to do to save the ecosystem. Seems pretty obnoxious to me and a waste of these 3 guys time. I hate liars and Amaya is turning out to be just that. You want to save the "ecosystem", fine. Taking a bigger cut of the money and keeping it for yourself doesn't help poker. Hiding behind some opaque promise to have "awesome" give back promos that you can't be held accountable for doesn't cut it. This is a poorly run company and the stock price is evidence of that. They have alienated their customers and have disappointed Wall Street. Who's left? Just take your millions and trash your Brand Baazov. Well played.

We did not discuss HU games.

This is interesting. Just what are their obligations in this regard, and how does this refusal manifest itself?
I know that after the prepared statements on the call, Baazov says something like 'press 1 to jump in the queue to ask questions' or something like that.

What happens then? Does an operator decide who to allow onto the call? Do you have to tell him/her what your Q is going to be before they let you on the call? Why do you think you guys aren't ever being allowed to ask a Q?

Isn't it a bit fanciful to assume unproven strategies could not only stop but forcefully reverse a 17% compounded annual shrinkage in the poker market since 2010?

So their strategy is basically elimination of cash games, their core business?


A string of amateurish gaffes that betray poor understanding of the core businesses fundamentals.


Where does spin n go traffic currently sit, how much has spin n go volume increased yoy and what is the average stake played? If you can't or don't feel like answering, in what document could I find those numbers?

Did they even make money in Q3 2015? Because it looks like the profits were only attributable to the sale of a subsidiary.

If you mean on a personal level, most of the employees there seemed upset at the way the events played out. When we pressed the issue and used pretty strong language, there was no real objection from their side. They seemed to acknowledge that they ****ed up.

I have no regrets about attending the meeting. I am happy to have talked to some Amaya and Stars people face to face and would be open to doing it again at some point.

These are excellent points that simply aren't on the radar screen for most of the regs in these threads. It really is all about the ecosystem.

And still you don't get the message. LC posts are for LC threads.

They don't have any obligations. It's not uncommon for companies to not take questions from analysts who have been critical or contrarian. It's their show.

The refusal manifests itself in the call ending without you being allowed to ask your question.

I think only half of this was addressed to me, but

- AYA does not release comprehensive KPIs regarding Spins. They've released some broad numbers at various points. Some third-party sites do track Spins. Off the top of my head I'd say that Spins have already peaked volume-wise; the introduction of more buy-in tiers gave them room to grow revenue-wise but I think that's petering out as well.

- The "did they make money" question is a complicated one with the debt, but in a vacuum, poker was definitely profitable in the quarter.

I'm not unsure about. It's just a silly way to present revenue growth for a product. It unnecessarily obfuscates quarter-to-quarter comparisons and it attempts to make the product appear more impressive than it is (the "% of total revenue" growth for casino was > the "absolute growth of casino revenue from 2Q to 3Q" iirc).

1) I wish it were possible to get briefed on the data before actually seeing it. If we had more time to prepare and analyze the data we could have performed better at the meeting. Unfortunately due to the nature of the data and the sensitivity of it, I don't think that would be possible for any future meeting.

2) I am not certain that they knowingly presented biased data. Someone who is not a professional poker player might not realize that a selection of the biggest win rates over a year, is not a sample of the biggest true win rates. I definitely don't think that they made up any of the data.

4) We discussed bots, and they seemed to want to emphasize that they take the threat very seriously.

5) Yes

1) We told them some of the topics we wanted to discuss, but were not given any of the data ahead of time. I am fairly certain we would not have been allowed to see the private data ahead of time.

2) We were able to request more data on certain subjects, and they were usually able to look it up and find the info.

3) It's kind of hard to answer this question without getting into details, but we didn't catch them in a lie or anything like that, if that is what you are getting at.

Yes, Ike and I went to a meeting last January specifically to address seating scripts and general predatory behavior of pros. The mandate of that meeting, from both sides, was to curb those things in an effective way. Many high and medium stakes pros have begged Stars to reduce micro stakes rake at PLO. Many pros have been begging for scripts to be banned for years.

Your perception of the purely self interested pro does not align with my experience in the online poker world in the last 10 years.

Thanks. Which sites? I did an extended google search the other day but came up with mostly articles. Does anything on par with pokerscout exist for spins?

Not funny how hard big salmon gets crushed by OPR.

Ohhwait, nvmd. Its actually quite funny

Forgive me if this was answered----I thought I got to most of the relevant posts-

Clearly you guys could not have had access to the proprietary data in advance, so holding you accountable for knowing how to attack that data is unfair.

However, now that you have in fact seen the data, and now that Amaya's outlook was presented to you, with knowledge of this data, I wonder if you have any ideas on how Amaya can make things "better", whatever that means.

If you could gain audience with them again, now, after having had a chance to digest the information, do you think you could make some recommendations that make sense from a business perspective that they have overlooked?

Many have spoken about Amaya's intentions behind this meeting. Many many very smart people have invited competitors, customers, astute complainers etc, to meetings, in the hope that a new unconsidered analysis could help them solve problems.

If you are able to put together something concrete, or at least conceptual, based on what you saw, and re-approached Stars with some fresh ideas, given the new data you have seen, they might be very willing to implement it, or at least consider it?

In any case, I think all dialogue is good dialogue, so kudos for taking the lead on this.

Really appreciative of DD, Ike and especially Ansky's efforts here

It just sad that Amayastars is a greedy dictatorship now

Ive moved on gg Stars

Amaya have demonstrated absolutely no desire to engage in conversation with experienced players, in possession of potentially invaluable input, in order to facilitate in identifying possible solutions to the "unsustainable ecosystem" and there is zero evidence to suggest they are about to start now, from what I can see.

Here is what they should do IMO.

1. Dramatically reduce the rake cap at 6m or 9m tables with 2-4 players. Similar to Ansky's proposal but they can get this done a lot faster (in terms of technical implementation) than some other method. They may argue that this is bad or inconsistent somehow for HU-cash tables but those games are basically done at this point, and bad for the site operator anyways.

2. (Unlikely they'll do it but worth mentioning) Weakly honor their commitment that SN/SNE is a two year program and give bonus rakeback % to anyone who continues their SN/SNE. If you got SN/SNE in both 2015 and 2016, you will get a bonus payout. This will be done on the side and you must email vipclub@pokerstars.com to receive the bonus. This is still worse than what players would have gotten but it's throwing a bone saying that they care about their players, and it won't even cost very much.

Tell this to Baazov,Amaya CEO,cause these are HIS words,not mine.
I am just trying to show fellow players how they are called by them.

“My goal is that all of our gaming revenue is sub–50% of the company’s revenue. We are a consumer–tech–focused company. We didn’t buy Rational (PokerStars’ parent company) because of gambling; we wanted it badly because it had 89 million consumers. I wouldn’t call them players or gamblers–they are consumers.”

So let me get this straight. Baazov misused a word and made himself look ignorant, so you run around FYPing to annoy every poster who uses the correct word, making yourself look ignorant, because ... uhhhh, ... somehow they'll think you've got some deep point that has no relationship to anything in your one-word post?



It's not happening that way. You're just making yourself look like a bozo.

What a waste of time this whole thing has been.

Like one of the other posters said , poker stars has a monopoly so they can do whatever they want with their customers. Just like when the government puts up the taxes, there is nothing you can do, you just accept it. Kick and scream all you want. You can't mess with a monopoly.

Get over it. What's done is done. Go find another occupation.

All the bananas here saying good job are a joke. The whole meeting was a joke and you guys shouldn't have attended at all.

I just logged into poker stars and try had 150,000 players online. What's the next site got...5000? That's ur problem right there.

The simple solution is a competitor needs to step up to the plate but because online poker is such a grey area who would want to invest!

150,000 players online. Are they all real money players?

Whether they are playing or railing no other site is even close to that

He hasn't misused it,he means what he said.
If this has no relevance to you whatsoever,that is not my fault.

Almost every one of their actions,statements,interviews SCREAM that they do not care about their players/customers.This is the point i am trying to make.
It really seems that from the point of the takeover we are just consumers to them.A ****ing number,a statistical data.

If this feels like rude and ignorant to you then you have it absolutely right.
This is an open forum,and this is my opinon based on everything that has happened.If you think I am "bozo" feel free to use the ignore feature,but do not try to berate me any more,cause I am not your enemy.THEY are.