Pokerstars has become the most expensive pokersite on the market due to absurd promotion reductions and rake increases and people will still defend it. I'm happy for the change, makes my decision for not playing even easier.

^
no chests on party tho, just some stupid weekly rake back of 20%++, where is the fun and thrill in that
^this

True they are the most expensive but many feel they offer the best product and their customers make it not so expensive due to their poor play.

I moved 95 percent of my play off the site when they raked rebuys. I'm glad I did even though it cost me money. Most on here will only leave Stars when it makes them money.

Stars feels this will make them more money so the majority on here are hypocrites for crying foul.

The biggest advantage Stars still has is that it offers enough games around the clock. Didnt check Party in recent weeks but on 888 if you want to grind a few games in the micros you have to least wait till 1/2pm CET in the afternoon.
Competitors still have problems to meet their modest gtds in the micros/smallstakes showing that the playerbase isnt large enough. It doesnt help if only the regs are moving and the recreationals staying behind and I assume most people posting here are regs. (I took most of my money off Stars weeks ago).

I also think that micros are just not very appealing for pokersites anymore. Nowadays for every rec you probably have one guy building a roll seriously or a guy making a living from it. The micros dont seem to be the feeder for higher stakes anymore. Changing the payout structure didnt help either. Sure recs have a bigger chance of making some money but the money payed out on the FT decreases and therefore the likelihood of enough players binking big enough so that few of them invest that money in bigger buyins. The possibility of recs escaping the regs even on the lowest stakes decreased massively in recent years/month. I would almost think that sites should consider beginner only tables for the micros(Mtts, Sngs, CG) and force everyone else to move up or quit the game.

Starbucks and Ikea have their prices listed for all customers to see though.

This is only very slightly true and I'm getting a little annoyed by the misconception.

AMAYA is a locust company! They buy companies in financial distress with the sole purpose to drain them for profits, liquidate the assets and then sell the skeleton.

Don't believe me? They've done it before. Anyone remember OnGame?

Amaya bought OnGame in 2012 for an incredibly low amount. The games immediately went to **** and they increased fees and rake.

2 years later, Amaya sells OnGame to NYX for an undisclosed amount. The poker site is just a hollow shell of itself by now, Amaya books a hefty profit.

2 years after that, OnGame closes its doors.


David Baazov did this for years before that. Amaya as a company is specifically designed to operate that way.

When Scheinberg got into legal troubles, Baazov couldn't believe this opportunity. He begged a lot of rich people for investments to stem this hefty investment and used OnGame as an argument, a trial run of sorts.

Amaya is draining PokerStars for profits, and it'll take a little longer than OnGame because it's much, much bigger. But PokerStars will die, by design. The question is just whether the initial investors' ROI will be positive or not. David Baazov will see the results from prison.


They are not a legitimate business trying to increase their longterm profitability. They're selling the treasures and assets before the ship they've deliberately shot holes into sinks.

this comparison does not make sense as PS fees are already a percentage so raising from 10% up is just a profit boost, unless we hear of some new product/innovation/etc. but none of that,

I think 11% rake is too conservative. They'll do something like 15.

Imagine if Party decrease rake by the same amount for a trial period, for example a month. Hook all the players in and even when it returns to 10% they'd be happier than on stars.

Stars are handing Party magic chances for PR gold on a plate.

mkay then

Amaya just wants to kill poker, that's all. They want to force us to play casino. Since they bought pokerstars, the things are going worse and worse.

Didn't know PokerNews are sly ****s as well.

NL 2-7 PKO is actually a really good idea imo - i barely play any NLH online mtts so maybe i dont have PKO fatigue, but i was also thinking last night that PLO is another format pretty nicely suited to PKO - one of the main structural problems with PLO mtts is that ICM and PLO pf equities are a match made in hell, and it seems like bounties go some way towards alleviating that issue?

SCOOP suggestions

-on subject of mtt formats, HUPLO total KO and NLO WTB fromm prev COOPs really didnt work (the first required strategic adjustments that were fun to figure out and experiment with for like half an hour and was then just annoying, the second was just ridiculous). if you want to try something out, why not give PLO w/antes a shot? on subject of a format that did work (at least imo) 3-max (poss zoom) from one of last yrs COOPs was a bunch of fun.

-seems like most yrs first schedule draft deletes NL 2-7 and then it eventually gets put in after feedback, this time around maybe just skip that stage and have it in from the start?

-no idea if possible to code, but big bet mix would be awesome.

-facility to play to the $ (at least like an extra lvl) on d1s if its within a certain range (like if less than x% of remaining players at scheduled EOD need to bust). also, keep the length of d1s under control in general (HR series has imo done some amount better there, shooting for somewhere around the 7hr mark, plenty long enough).

-for non NL events with smaller number of mtts on regular weekly schedule, run them around those weekly events. ie, for PLO, weekly 500s run tues/thurs/sun, so should be some amount of bias towards those days when scheduling PLO COOP events.

Lol at that being the headline...

Most of the regs are already mixing in PartyPoker.
The problem is that Pokerstars has a userbase of like 70? million players(Party has like what 10-20million?!). Most of them recreational players. These players wont notice the rake change or they dont care when they wanna play the BountyBuilder 11$. Neither they would change the site.

Party has to up their advertising to get these players. Software and Mtt schedule looks pretty good now.

seriously any regular play these time tourneys, the number is very small I believe

It's the basic of good marketing strategy. When you show pile of **** to players, you better have a nice sugar topping at the top of it (no matter how irrelevant). Then always just bring up the "good change" and just mention the real deal on a sidenote while keeping just enough transparency on the change.

Beyond parody.

Would fail quality control at North Korea state news.

What are you trying to show? Being able to automatically sign up for "future leaderboards" has always been there for as long as i can remember

never seen it though. thought it meant something

Push the fast friday 109$ early edition to 06:10 ET, so people can reg after break. That tornament always get cancelled with 15~17 players, 18players min is too much for 06am et

Are there leaderboards worth participating in tho?

Is this also for SCOOP etc? If so would have been ridic cuz I ve never seen this option

New rake: 12-12.5% for mtts below $22, 5-5.9% for time tourneys

Mtts for the next week have been deployed in the lobby

Uh, that's bad. 9,8+1,2, 14,7+1,8 and 3,92+0,48 for Omanias for instance. Wouldn't be so bad with some rb but with about 0% rakeback it is.

Fk you stars