[ ] Original idea

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...-union-294242/

He says while posting to NVG.

You overestimate the value of rake generated by a non depositing winning player.

Funny i was thinking to create a similar thread Well done sir !

I think a lot of players don't really understand how the futur is bad with the new shareholder Amaya. Amaya who produces gaming products and services including online casino, poker, sportsbook, platform, lotteries and slot machines software. It's not a secret that they will introduce soon casino games and sportsbook on PS. Now everybody will say me ''ok cool the room the most fishy is the room with casino games !''. Ok yes u are right ! But don't forget that all this room attract fish to their website to play casino games. What about PS ? Maybe in x years it will be the same. But FOR NOW the fish who play on PS they are here to play poker. So what will happen tomorrow if PS launch Casino Games ? Simple.. a part of them will spew their money/winning in blackjack, american roulette, .... The result ? Less money in the ecosystem (for the regs) and more money to PS (GG Amayastar)



I totally agree. I thinked a lot about it. First i thinked the good move was to organize a sit out on PS.com. But when u think about it, if u want to fight PS.com on their territory, u can't win. For ex. : many years ago PS.fr changed their vip program. The result from the reg .fr was to organize a massive sit out. The result from PS.fr :



an email from PS.fr

''We’re writing to inform you that the number of ring game tables you are able to sit at concurrently (your ‘table cap’) has been reduced to 1.

PokerStars is committed to facilitating the most enjoyable poker experience possible in the world’s largest poker room. As a part of this mission we have asked many players for their opinions on what could be done to improve our poker room. Many players have responded that they would like to see gameplay move faster, particularly in situations where opponents are regularly taking a long time to act on their hands.

A review of your playing data has indicated that you have been taking significantly longer to act on your hands than is normal when you are playing at more than 1 tables at a time. Your table cap has been set accordingly. We will continue to monitor your play and if you begin to act more quickly on your hands, your table cap may be increased in the future. Reviews of individual table caps are performed regularly on a monthly basis.

If you have any further questions about table caps, please don’t hesitate to contact us at "PokerStars Support" <support@pokerstars.fr>.

Thank you for choosing PokerStars, the world’s largest poker room.''



So if we can not win on their territory, where can we fight ? IMO : SOCIAL MEDIA. I can be wrong but imagine many thousand organized regs who post EVERYDAY 20 bad publicity messages on fb, youtube, poker media, ... about PS.com. Let's say 20 thousand messages every day, can be a million or more bad publicity messages in 1 months... They can not control the social media but if we are organized, smart, we can hurt them a lot and if we do it i think they will have not choice that listen us and deal with us.

They want to add casino games in the futur, ok fine, they will do it and win more money so i think it's normal to fight and ask for :

- Zoom, lower the rake
- Spin&Go, lower the rake
- More promotion for recreational player (bonus) AND the same model that Full Tilt : the possibility for recreational players to change their FPPs for cash game ticket or sng/spin&go ticket
- Change in 2016 VIP program

just some idea...

And to finish maybe some poker players can be selffish. But let's think about it, what happen if tomorrow PS add Bad Beat jackpot for CG with huge rake ? What happen if tomorrow PS add new MTT format like Spin&Go with Euromillion variance ? We are ALL in the same boat vs a company who care only about one thing, not their customers, MONEY

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...ction-1484210/

The biggest leverage that a union has is the ability to strike, for a union to have any effect on PS at all you would have to be able to convince them that you have enough people organized and willing to just simply cash out and stop playing (or move to another site) that it would dramatically effect their profits.

So while sure it would be nice, its just not gonna happen. I mean sure you could form a union, but the odds of forming a union powerful enough to actually make an impact on policy? Bad.

lmao
this thread isn't about protesting the us congress and yes stars has the people who make their entire living on that site by the balls and they know it.

i guess i shouldnt be surprised that people who specialize in one thing in life have zero common sense or understanding of how business or the real world works.

stars has no real competition, they are clearly trying to get away from the model of massively rewarding regs for playing on their site,most poker players are inherently selfish and disorganized at best and you'll never get nearly enough people to give up playing when they have bills to pay to make a dent in stars bottom line.

at least nobody is trying to promote mass sitting out at the tables this time. it was pretty funny reading about all the rubes who were shocked and outraged when stars started kicking them off of the tables and lowing their table caps. it took a real special combination of stupidity and delusion to think that would work.

A union's big leverage is not only to strike but to strike in a manner that brings a business to a screeching halt. with actual jobs this can work (especially with a huge highly organized union) because a business may not be able to function at all without their striking employees, at least not until they got lots more people hired and trained. in the meanwhile they will hemorrhage money.

in stars case amaya will be on his yatch laughing while people are struggling to pay their bills.
who do you think wins that waiting game?

I disagree with this.

A union does not necessarily need to be able to deal a deadly blow to the pokersites' economy. It merely needs to represent a strong enough voice to create criticism hard enough so that it tears on the sites revenue and reputation.

For the industri leaders it's always about weighing the pros and cons to create a balance that's optimal for the player on the sites' and the company's own wallet, both short-term and longterm.

tearing down it's reputation and revenue would deal a huge blow to stars economy.

however a bunch of mass multitabling players who make a living at poker whining because their rewards program got cut or whatever won't tear it down at all. nobody other than the maybe 500-1000 people it directly effects will give a ****.and most of those people won't take the hit of not playing losing out on their income.

stars still prints money and can easily wait them out. and maybe in the process these players realize they aren't quite as valuable as they thought.

I thought the mass sitouts did work. Someone refresh my memory, what was the outcome?

Tearing on it and tearing it down are two totally different things.

A union wouldn't be interested in tearing pokerstars down. It's main goal would be to creative an incentive for them to be more open to the voices of the high volume player themselves.

I definitely think it's possible.

USA Poker players should have just protested out the government offices when stars and every site got banned. Of course nothing was done.

Well it did work on .fr, not only did Stars reduce the rake due to it, but they also lost a significant amount of traffic to Winamax

since the entire US HAS BEEN BASICALLY ON STRIKE FOR A FEW YRARS. it hasnt done much to pokerstars.

Some respectable persons from here who represent the different formats.

As u can imagine the outcome was a failure. They banned temporarily the players. No deal no discussion. Source

In.

I am surprised no one has brought this up ye,t but the best way to affect positive change in Poker Stars is………

Become shareholders in Amaya itself. Amaya is a Public company. Instead of Investing in a Union or another poker site why not invest in Amaya it self?. Since it is a public company you would have access to all information you want. It also is a hedge play were if your profits are being cut by PokerStars they will be going to Amaya which will help the stock price.

kaboom

Remember when someone tried to organized a protest against the Venetian? lawl

In theory a players union would be awesome. The problem is it's unlikely that it would have any real backing from players.

Some generalities that I've noticed over the past 5 years of being on 2+2.

-Players are only concerned when their own game gets negatively affected and won't stand up for other players. In fact often times some take pleasure at the demise of others thinking that this be balanced by better opportunities for themselves.
-Players seek to do what's best for them in the short run with little regard for the long term future. (HUDS, Scripts etc. being good examples)
-Poker is an individualistic game and by nature many players aren't fond of the idea of banding together even if it's for the common good.

The only way something like what OP suggests could work is if many players would be willing to follow the direction of the leaders regardless of the direction/decision that the leaders decide to take.

If for example the leaders deemed it was best for the players to start playing on 888 for example to try and force Pstars to change some policies... how many of the "devoted" members would really cash out and make that change? Not many since many would still feel that Stars despite its recent changes is still a better option. Some might follow the leaders direction but the effect to Stars would be minimal without players leaving in mass.

Does the term union mean something different in Europe than in the US? In the US, a union is a collective bargaining organization with the status to negotiate collectively for employees with a company. Obviously that's not what we're talking about here.

It seems to me that what people are really referring to is organizing consumer backlash against a company. That happens all the time, like when Coke changed its formula, or some company does some stupid advertising campaign that insults one group or another. Usually people flood the company's website, social media, etc with negative feedback and threaten to boycott.

That's all good stuff, but no one needs to join a union or pay anyone dues to do that. And if there is no similar competing company offering a similar product, and customers can't live without the product, or can't afford to go a few days/weeks/months without playing on the site, and therefore are unwilling to cut their use of the product, then nothing will happen anyway.

Most poker players couldn't define "solidarity" to save theit tournament life and OP expects a union to work?

As said ^^^^^ what you want to create is a consumer advocacy group and organize a boycott.

Lots of interesting posts already I will reply to some more over the weekend when I am not so busy but I wanted to reply to this one quickly as its something I had been thinking about since I made this thread yesterday.

I agree that buying shares in Amaya could be one possible way to get them to listen to us. But my idea would be for a group to buy shares collectively as a union/collective bargaining organization/whatever else you want to call it.

No keep in mind this is just an idea and again I am not sure if this would actually work but I think its an interesting theory.

So Amaya shares are currently ~$30 if a "union" with 1000 members each bought on average 10 shares I wonder would that be enough to make Stars more likely to listen to suggestions ?

I will answer my own question and say I don't think 10000 shares worth ~$300,000 would make much of impact. But what about if the union had 5000 members and each had on average 20 shares ? Maybe a group with 100,000 shares could have a little bit of influence perhaps ?

Once again I have no idea if any of this would actually work but I find it a very interesting discussion.

im down.

Why the F**K would anyone by shares in the company they are protesting against? Especially if the company chooses a market strategy that will probably accelerate the demise of Online Poker faster than anything seen since Black Friday.

I sort of expected Amaya to not run the firm as optimal as it used to be, but I certainly didn't foresee that they would crucify themselves as soon as the buy-out happened.

I hope Scheinberg is agonized by the foolish decision he made when selling the company off to a ******ed business with ******ed business models.