I think Stars now are run by idiots who are not interested in listening to the players , only good thing about them is the easy cash outs.

What they are doing isn't that dumb, really. They are creating a model where very good grinders cannot simply sit down at the Micros anymore and punish the weak regs/fish to make a "living." In no other sport in the world can you make a living off punishing recreational players. Roger Federer doesn't get to go to a Country Club and win the Club Championship and get paid Wimbledon prize money, you've got to beat the best or at least the ones who are striving to be or play with the best.

Micros will still be plenty beatable in the short run for those trying to build up a roll, but the swings will be massive and you'll need to get out of them and onto the low-mid stakes plus if you want the better rake and steadier earnings. (And yes the chests/slashed rakeback was a pure cash grab, Amaya is still a for profit business and will make that no. 1 priority, not saying otherwise)

If you honestly think any reg or fish gives a **** about $0.20 in rake increase when the buy-in is the same, you're nuts. The traffic is fine, you guys just know what it means for your win rates and variance playing 35 to 40 tourneys a day. And I feel that pain, I grind mostly in the $7 average range for now, but if I wanted to make a real living, I'd have no intention of staying there.

I'm not saying this is player friendly, per se, but it is actually developing a logical eco-system where players of similar skill or at least similar desire will end up battling each other. Guys like Blakkman and Walmart are still gonna be crushers cause they were already grinding limits that made sense to grind and developed their games beyond the Micros even though they both started there.

The only people this really hurts are a bunch of nitty micro grinders who play with little to no skill beyond proving they can still click fold when their eyes are bleeding after 14 hours on the 5th day in a row.

I'm not saying Stars is better with Amaya, of course I like it less, but it's also not the apocalypse you guys love to make it out to be. We've had interesting new and revamped Series' and the schedule is still the best on the market, sorry Party and 888 and even Winamax don't come close yet (if you add the three together at any one level, then you match the quantity and quality of Stars schedule). The software is still good, the cashouts are good.

Time to evolve again guys... or live with the variance and slightly reduced win rates.

What a terrible post

Says the guy who wrote a post with nearly zero content. I never said I LIKED what they were doing, in fact I implied and stated several times, I don't love it, but what they are doing isn't DUMB is all I said. People here act like they are morons, they just aren't serving the needs of the people 2+2 wants them to is all I am saying.

Discussion has become a mix of people arguing that Stars changes are bad and a mix of people explaining how profit-driven companies work.

Like no **** Stars has a duty to SH's and wants to make maximise profits. This is terribly obvious and isn't a revelation.

People complaining about the rake increases are expressing disappointment in the increased cost to playing the games. This seems like a reasonable gripe but yes, all you can do is take your action elsewhere.

Hidden out of sight rake plays bigger part than discussion implies here. I wonder how legal this really is.

****ers didn't even bother to send e-mails about it LMAO, but had no problem spamming my mail with worthless promotions.

invested in TSGI last 10 months a bit late than should have

stock and inestors are really really happy, even though hate it as a player

invested in GVC you mean ?
LOL

Negreanu, is it you?
Yeah *** regs higher rake is good for the players lol

Reading comprehension? He mostly said it's good for stars, much less that it's good for players.

Hey, someone who understood my point. I wasn't advocating the system, just explaining what seems to be the goal of it and saying it wasn't as DUMB as people have been making it out to be. Yes, Stars is saying "****" the regs at the Micros, that's for sure... I was using the tennis analogy to simply point out that all sports are like that and for poker to survive eventually it was going to have to become more tier based with people of similar tiers facing off and the good moving up and the weak moving down... I was just pointing out that Stars seems to be trying to force this to happen through rake increases and huge variance at the Micros.

I do think you're thinking way too deeply about this. They're just increasing the price where they think they can get away with it. With all the previous changes I thought they had some point and I wasn't sure whether they were just bad at running a pokersite, whether they were finding an excuse for their price increases or whether I was wrong and they were right. This change, however, directly conflicts the whole "take care of the little guy" philosophy and any credit I still gave them is now gone.

Quite possibly I am, but my point was that in some way it doesn't contradict the "help the little guy" philosophy if it actually drives the better regs to either quit or move up. In theory, anyway. And of course, it's totally possible they are simply jacking prices to leave to bleed Stars dry, but I was just pointing out it doesn't have to be in contradiction to their supposed new goal of making the games more "fun" and "winnable" for the little guys. Most people would happily pay an extra 20 cents in rake if it ultimately drove out or up the bots and heavy nit grinders. But like you said, I may totally be overthinking it.

There's some point to this, but unless a population majorly overreacts this will just find some kind of equilibrium and some players quit, others keep playing, and nobody will win more except for stars. Best case scenario the remaining winning players have the same winrate. It's not like the big 11 would have 10000 extra regs every day and make it a lot tougher for recreational players if it were rakefree. Plus, it's just simple math. The average winrate goes from -10 to -12% or whatever the rake increase is.

More regs will quit than move up because if they could move up, why wouldn't they have already done so? Prizepools drop causing more casual players to quit too. The site becomes more and more withered. Those are the effects of rake increases in the long term, nobody wins. Well, maybe party poker wins.

Valid points. Makes sense. Good chatting.

Good read.

Looks a bit to me like they're trying to squeeze as much juice as they can, and probably get nice figures to sell PokerStars away like they did with Ongame in much smaller scale earlier at near future.

Haven't checked that in a while so not sure how it looked before the rake increase but it seems that many of the gtds were met with a struggle.

please!

Any news on Scoop Schedule/Dates etc?

SCOOP dates for the people who don't want to go back through.

Schedule not released yet, though not unusual for the last few Series.

Roger Federer doesn't play against 30,000 players in a single tournament, either. Nor would be in coin flips that he could easily lose against amateurs at any moment. That's what pros face in micro-stakes. Any donk could suck out at any time and knock the pro out. That would never happen in other sports. It's such a statistical long shot for a pro to accomplish anything in a micro-stakes MTT field that it shouldn't even be an issue.

Pokerstars (and the industry in general) treats amateur recs like little kids that need to be told how to handle their money. These are consenting adults. It's almost insulting how the industry perceives amateurs. I think it scares a lot of people away from the game. This rhetoric needs to change. Pokerstars and Ignition basically tell players "you're so bad at the game you need us to change something around in an attempt to help you."

Is that a good way to treat your customers?

If I had their resources I would look for different ways to help recs. Such as having sponsored accomplish professionals make instructional vids that recs could watch for free. As opposed to being required to go to an instructional site and pay for such videos. Certainly, streaming is already in existence, but this would be additional insight into the game that you don't see from streaming because only so many pros stream. Though, certain instructional sites may be pissed about it.

That is, if you could get Negreanu out of bed to talk MTT strategy as opposed to how charging the customer more money is good for them.

You know...encourage the recs by giving them to option to learn. As opposed to discouraging them from playing at all by telling them how bad they are and how they need help by charging them more money.

Any chance you guys can add 1-2 more heads up tournies throughout the day? Really love the format and it seems to be very popular with everyone. Would love to see a few more in the $7-15 range.

Maybe even a "deep one" with 8 minute blinds or twice the starting stack.

This Split HoldEm has potential. Maybe I keep some business on Stars.