Saw the goodbye Russia thread, is it a serious concern? Most ppl seem to say no but then ppl said that before black Friday and look what happened.

no offence to any of our fellow russian ssnl grinders... but good bye russia is not a problem imo :P
however good buy canada would be not fun at all.

edit: also "good bye any country" as a precedent for other countries lawmakers is not fun

I don't know what planet these people are from saying that this isn't a bad thing or disputing that Russians make up the majority of the donk player pool these days, but this is very very bad

no guesses where he was from

What are you talking about? Any time the player pool shrinks it's a problem, especially when you're talking about a country as big as Russia.

And knowing that they are often spewing money all around after drinking their vodka.

That's because you must have a terrible understanding of how online poker works.

Spewy Russians just stacked my AK with KK+ 3 times in 372 hands

Done with poker for this month, 2nd worst month ever. Fallen short of most of my goals:

Graph:

Can't post for some reason. It looks something like this:
_____________________________$0
\ ___
\ /\ / \ /\ /\
\ / \/ \/ \/ \
\/ \
_____________________________-$550

-$320 after rakeback and bonuses. About 80 VPPs away from next $50 Stellar so saving that for next month to get a "cheat" headstart lol.

Month started badly and basically spent the whole month creeping back to even and then plummeting downwards again, hence the ECG heart rate graph above.

Experimented with some normal tables at the end of the month after getting crushed at Zoom and quite enjoyed those as identifying and abusing the fish seems much easier.

Not sure what games I plan to play next month as I want to play the softer tables but not sure if I play enough hours alongside work to make the hourly rate better. Also need to work out the reason for the bad month. I think (hope) it's variance from running into tops of ranges etc. My W$SD% managed to decrease by over 5% despite my WTSD% also decreasing so it seems like I've just had the 2nd best hand quite a lot?! Either that or I'm being more aggressive and getting more folds but then calling down too light?

Will see what next month brings. GL to everyone else still finishing up their monthly goals.

All the "/", "\" and "_" lined up to make it look more graph like when I originally typed the message. Guess I can'r do anything right this month

Wtf? How could the removal of the biggest contributor of players to the international pool not be a problem?

It would be disastrous if Russia were removed.

^^^
This, esp now they can not longer rathole on stars so will be spewing with bigger average stacks than usual

Losing the Russians would be beyond awful. Desperately hope it never happens.

(P;S small sample size thus far but it seems like Stars' ratholing fix has been GREAT for the games).

Rofl, how long have you been away from online poker?


Now, if they annex Belarus and ban online there as well that might be a fair trade off.

Nothing to panic about since it's been banned for years anyway. Like half of the other countries that don't mind to regulate in a profitable way for everyone.

ajryalls:

+1 to this.

Banning Russia now would just plain suck. I agree with what someone else mentioned, that any country getting banned is bad for business period.

I cannot believe just how great the tables are now. They have improved so much since the BIO have been set by PS and I have had to change MANY of my ss'ers labels because of it.

Catchin EV

Any country leaving is bad.

ya i worded badly cos i was tired but what i meant to ask was

1) how likely is it that russians get banned? (obv super vague question but any info of this would be appreciated)

2) what's going to happen that's different to their current situation, my understanding is the stars domain is banned on some ISP's but if they ban the client then they would be banned banned.

Oh yea i thought about it and ofc you must be right guys... Russia is a very big pool , and it is not good at all if they go offline as well as any country.
Funny how i always thought that Italy , France or the US leaving is very bad but if for example China , Russia or Romania left its not a big deal... I guess i never really gave it much thought.

Which countries in Europe are banned at p stars?

Another nice week =)

france, Italy and spain are all regulated and segregated countries. As far as countries banning pokerstars, 0, however Russia and Ukraine have got pokerstars.com on ISP blacklists. I think this situation is a lot like the one currently in Australia, government needs to say something to take a position on online gambling but in affect will either not do anything or will do very little to stop it as we all know its a cash cow if governments went down the same road to regulation as those posted above. Which kind of makes the USA a complete joke that its now almost 3 years since BF and they're no nearer to federal legislation then before BF.

Wow ... can you imagine if the English were banned .... absolutely no fish left then.

Sweet redline! What stakes? FR?