You see, our difference is that you are looking at poker as a competition, while I am looking at it as a job. My goal is to make money. I don't care if somebody else makes more. It's not my money that they are taking. Of course, if the poker room took some of my balance and paid it to someone else because they play more, I would object. This would be closer to your marathon comparison.

I think a few posters are letting bitterness towards pros cloud their judgement. There are plenty of things Stars could do to improve game quality but instead they have increased the rake multiple times over the last two years. These changes are not good for any players.

But my comment was about the integrity of the competition. I understand rewarding high volume customers.

A poker provider charging different players different rake by giving different amounts of "rakeback" based on volume is exactly rewarding high volume customers and has nothing to do with the integrity of the poker play.


I edited my post to which you responded to add an analogy using your marathon example. I am not sure whether you saw it. It is below.




Or to make it more like your example:

You enter your first marathon. Other participants enter the same marathon, including this one particular participant (your "Opponent").

You and your Opponent each have a chance to win prize money in accordance with a prize structure determined by the marathon organizers ($x for first, $y for second, etc. - I believe prize money for large marathons is usually contributed by sponsors).

The marathon organizers charge the participants an entrance fee to cover their expenses and make themselves some profit. The marathon organizers have also organized other marathons and have a rule that if a participant enters more than five of their marathons in any two consecutive calendar years, then in the sixth and every additional marathon, such participant gets a 20% discount on the entrance fee.

As stated earlier, this is your first marathon, so the marathon organizers charge you 100% of the regular entrance fee.

Your Opponent has previously entered five marathons within the last two calendar years. Therefore, since this is the sixth marathon he has entered over the past two calendar years, the marathon organizers charge him 80% of the regular entrance fee.

It's perfectly fine.

And the end result of this is that one guy fails and the other succeeds based on something other than skill so I think it's fundamentally unfair, like life. I could be wrong.

Regarding your analogy of my marathon example:

My marathon example was to illustrate that gaining an advantage from those running the competition based on past volume of participation corrupted the integrity of the competition. I understand objections to this as there is no advantage given in the game itself but an overall advantage by making it cheaper for one to play and so your analogy is a good one.

However I think the analogy fails as it is only about a few events per year so it's hard for us to see any significance to the lower entry fee while in poker, with hundred's of thousand's of hands played it's more apparent that the cost of playing can be(and has been) determinative in the long term results.

Consider a timed rake and only one player can survive. You are a slightly better player but have to pay twice the rake of your opponent so he ends up winning. This might be far fetched but is it really just fine?

Just had a look at Amaya Financials, three months to March 2017 revenue is up $28.8 million compared with March 2016. Profits are up $10.2 million (operating costs are down $11 million)

Just $2 million of that is poker revenue, they are doing what they set out to do, im not sure if its been explored but net depositors and recreational gamblers are far more likely to gamble across the sportsbook and casino games than a withdrawing poker player.

Making the games better for recreationals in poker will have the knock on effect of increasing the amount of gambling across the three arms and will mitigate the losses in rake from withdrawing players. It will be interesting to see revenue in the next 2 quarters as to whether Amaya as a whole is making more than previously (i suspect it might).

Remeber guys amaya is not just poker stars, if they lose $80 million in rake revenue and make $100 million in sportsbook and casino then they will im sure be very happy. It just sucks for all of us.

As a further note i find it interesting that three months to March 2016 pokerstars lost $17,601,000 in foreign exchange and this has come down dramatically. This seems like an extreme gesture of goodwill to sustain these losses so as to not charge withdrawl fees (this has change dramatially in 2017)

Marketing budget has only come down 6%

Sorry if this has been covered havent read this thread as am past caring how amaya **** us now just know its inevitable until every game on the site is -ev.

Should we cash in our coins before this change i guess they will lose value somehow know how amaya love doing that.

amaya have increased rake and lowered rakeback, they have never however just changed the value of points. FPP going to starcoin may have had an effect not sure.

I think youre thinking of party poker

It seems pretty dumb to me to save up points on any site, unless you're saving up for a particular reason such as you get a better rate for converting a bigger chunk of points (which isn't the case on Stars). I doubt that the site has any legal obligation to honour the value of points, and can, at any time, decide to reduce the value of them, remove the option to offer cash rebates, or even do away with them altogether.

What are you talking about, sir ?
It has been proven many times ITT that 2p2ers represent about 97% of Stars customers and 99% of 2p2ers said that Stars will go bankrupt within a year max, so that must be true, it's obvious.
All your blabla about profits increasing etc is only shareholder-BS, true smart persons know that "Amaya is f**kin evil and will die soon because they hate us, poker players"

When you go to grocery, don't you like it when merchant send you back 30% of what you spent directly in your bank account at the end of month ?
Because I mean, which person sane in his mind would spend any amount of money on anything without having some money spent back to them ?
I also never encountered anyone who would spend money to go see a movie without making sure that 20% of what they spent total is given back to them when they quit the theater.
Every business in this world gives at least 20% cashback to their customers, so if Amaya stops doing it after more than 10 years offering it, world should stop rotate and poker players of all nations should all stand up together against that incredible unfairness.

Also, it has been proven ITT that Stars was bought by Mason and reptilian friends of Sheldon Adelson in order to troll the pro poker players and make them mad, just for the lulz of it.

#WEAREPOKERCONSPIRACY

Tldr but does someone know how will change precisely the rakeback of a SN from now? Thanks

It might be a problem if you don't include the ability to play a huge volume of winning poker as a poker skill. It is not clear why this wouldn't be a skill.

Game selection has always been important to poker, isn't it up to you to find a site that better rewards the volume you put in? Or to learn how to put in more volume?

These changes have been sold to investors as a way to return online poker to long-term sustainable growth. If you listened to the Q1 conf call, you would have heard Rafi talk for about ten minutes about how they are a poker first company and that still drives their decisions.

So, if you lost $80 million in revenue from poker, investors would certainly have questions. Their plan is in the mid-term grow both poker and casino verticals (sports is another matter).

Meanwhile in the real world where Amaya is under investigation for white collar crime.

Of course they are going to tell people they should expect poker revenues to increase above and beyond what they are seeing this year.

Objectively, removing bonuses of various types will just lead to a quicker burn through the deposits (so higher reported rake revenue) until people adjust by moving to other sites or reducing play. They are doing this to get a short term bounce in the figures to get them over their cash crunch.

Lol.

Then why are they are in decline when the sites which are actually spending money to get people to play are growing?

This is the trouble with experts of all kinds. If (as the client) you aren't qualified to take the decision/do the job yourself, then you certainly aren't qualified to hire the person to do it for you.

Also, do these experts post on 2p2? Seems pretty strange that someone would be an expert on the poker business but not interested in this site.

They devalued points when they changed the name from FPP to StarsCoin, not sure why you think that doesn't count? They lost ~20% of their value overnight.

That's not the full or accurate picture:

a) it didn't happen "overnight" but rather, after a prolonged period of notice

b) PokerStars gave out additional StarsCoin at the time of transition, so that while some players' value was reduced, others (most notably, low volume players) actually increased. Bronze/Chrome/Silver players generally were better off; Gold players stayed around the same, Platinum and Supernova players were generally worse off (but those players could convert their FPPs to cash to avoid any loss).

A reasonable article showcasing the full picture is online here: https://www.onlinepokerreport.com/19...sion-analysis/

The lowest tiers being "better off" amounted to (literal) cents, it's nice as PR but meaningless in reality. Anyone playing decent volume got their FPP's converted to StarsCoin at a rate of 1.2, they were previously worth 1.6.

Lots of silver/gold players also used their FPP's to buy in to hyper sats for a similar/better redemption rate to SN - this route was removed too. Pretty sure tournament tickets were also close to the 1.6 rate for all VIP levels.

The posted I quoted said that Stars had never reduced the value of points, I was providing an example of when that exact situation happened.

Wow. I didn't deposit since 1999 . Goodbye rakeback.....

There are so many legitimate criticisms of Amaya there is no need to perpetrate falsehoods. Amaya is not under investigation in the real world. Amaya's former and now long since deposed CEO and a small group of family members and close associates were/are under investigation. An investigation that at least publicly seems to have run out of steam. The company has done everything possible to disassociate itself with the potentially guilty party including ensuring that he can never again regain control. The company and its current management may be incompetent but there is no basis to suggest they are criminal.

It's speculated that Baazov still has a lot of influence within Amaya.

Considering the current management, after Baazov's most recent bozzo takeover attempt, went so far as restructuring the debt to create a poision pill to prevent any future Baazov takeover attempts, I would suggest actual objective evidence would carry more weight than unfounded speculation. Further backed up by the fact Baazov divesting of at least a third of his stock. Amaya is still a publicly traded company, the current management and the institutional investors that now make up the largest holders of stock and debt want nothing more to do with Baazov the clown.

it`s the huds and tracking software that got poker at the level it is right now. without them we would`ve been way back theory wise

pretty much what solvers did once they appeared - expanded even more the theory depth

poker is evolving and so should we

FYP

Indeed. I believe Stars is dropping the Amaya name and is moving out of Montreal (to a new HQ in Toronto). The new management evidently wants nothing to do with that tosser.

This needs more attention. We are about to get fkd big time. It's time to go.