Strike Against the Pokerstars 2016 Changes 1st - 3rd December

There will be a strike on December 1st to 3rd abandoning all games at Pokerstars during this period. It would be much appreciated if you joined the strike by signing up here with your username and stake/games you play in. We will all be making cashouts simultaneously so do this with an amount that your comfortable with. So far over a thousand players has agreed to join the strike.

What Is The Strike About?

My last post here described the changes that were announced for Pokerstars in 2016. In summary these are;

• Supernova Elite to be phased out and gone by 2017 
• Concierge service, Super Quarterly Freeroll, Steller Awards and Milestone Credits all removed. 
• StarCoins to be introduced in place of FPPs. All FPPs will be automatically converted into StarCoins with a 25% decrease in value. 
• Supernova Elite rakeback capped at 45% from 60%, Supernova capped at 30% from 40%, PlatinumStar reduced by 10% 
• ChromeStar laughably increased by 10%, which is 30 cents a month 
• Earning VPPs abolished in cash games with blinds of 5/10 (1000NL) 

The main ones are that Supernova Elites have their rakeback capped at 45% when it is advertised otherwise. Supernova Elite is a 2 year reward status, and to announce changes for it to be changed next year instead of 2 years later is unacceptable. Verging on fraud, as they have advertised on their site what it is.

High stakes cash games without VPPs is essentially killing off those games, and making all those players move down in stakes of which VPPs would be rewarded. This in turn makes those lower staked games harder, more crowded and full of regulars, better players and then have others move to lower stakes as well.

Amaya wants CasinoStars, not Pokerstars

Pokerstars has always been known for its great support and communication with its players. But since Amaya's acquisition for an unprecedented overpriced $4.9 billion this reputation has disappeared quite quickly.

And as another side note of which I will be blogging about soon, this buying out of Pokerstars is an offer Mark Scheinberg cannot refuse, and typical of capitalist culture where big eats small, taking over with no idea how things work with no experience in the field, and throws money at it hoping that more will be made. If not, it fails, doesn't matter. Shareholders and profits over workers! Long term sustainability? What is that?

Anyways, as I said communication used to be amazing with Pokerstars. They even had two plus two meet ups with Poker players and would invite them to their headquarters in Isle of Man! Ah, how times have changed...

Since last year, changes has happened where there are no formal announcements (increase in currency exchange transactions which happened overnight as an example), no communication or feedback, and pretty much posts on two plus two forums filled with corperate jibberish language.

It really does seem to me that Amaya is thinking that Pokerstars should be a betting site instead of a poker site. If anything it incorporates the idea that real life Casinos do, get the recreational poker players in, and after a while they will go wander about and lose some money at blackjack or roulette.

This is interesting because it is backwards from other betting sites where they have started as that, and then added poker in on the side. Maybe this is the dream that Amaya is looking for?




Online Poker the Video Game

With the signings of JCarver and Jamie Staples, I was quite hopeful that this was the direction that they would go in.

Twitch has really shown the world that you shouldn't underestimate what people will want to watch.The idea of watching other people play video games live was laughable, and now this has exploded to becoming one of the top visited sites.

One of the biggest draws to watching someone else play games, is because you might also play that game too, and be interested in learning or seeing how that streamer fairs in the same situations that you might too.

Someone might also just enjoy watching a streamer because he's a good entertainer, there's something interesting about him/her. You might also want to watch a stream to check out the game itself, maybe it is a new release and watching would help you decide if you would like to buy it or not.

Whatever the reason, Twitch really helped developers into promoting games, which helped get more people interested in it. Esports became more popular, and competitions started getting streamed too, some getting over 100k viewers watching.

Now some new games have integrated the ability to watch your favourite player play live within the client. PS4 and XBox One has streaming options as a standard now, allowing any gamer to broadcast themselves playing.

All this increase in the cycle of promotion in the gaming scene makes me think that there is no reason why online poker cannot be the same too. It wouldn't be a 2nd boom which players are hoping for, but more of a slow steady increase in new players to the pool.

Some ideas that would support this direction;

• Having a friends list.
• Then an instant messaging service with those friends whilst your online.
• Advertising when a Pokerstars Pro is streaming.
• More customisation integration, "skins" as its called in the gaming world. Use StarCoins to buy cool new themes or card backs etc. Make it more fun. 
• Could have daily tasks and milestone achievements for StarCoins. More trophy style stuff like the 1M VPP badge which is added to your avatar.
• Widgets like in Full Tilt are pretty good.
• Bring back leaderboards! 
• Durr Challenge style stuff that the Pro's do. There's nothing like good self promotion when people talk about a competition.
• High stakes tables highlighted and featured in the front page or something. Railbirds are wanted in my version!
• It would be cool if WSOP was streamed live on twitch and advertised on Pokerstars.

Debunking

Will this make any difference?
We are not sure. But we should try something and see what happens. These days capitalistic ideology is very much against strikes because they effect the profits which they call disruption. It is the true democratic way of trying to open up a conversation.

How much do I cash out?
Anything comfortable. Doesn't have to be your whole bankroll. The point is to give Pokerstars an unprecedented amount of transactions to deal with on Dec 1st - 3rd.

I am a recreational player. This wont effect me.
This will effect you. The lower staked games will be harder and more reg filled. The lower stakes will not have as many casual players like yourself there anymore. You will not get as many rewards like before. Most casuals will lose quicker and probably move down even more. The cycle continues...

If the worse regs lose and quit then there will be more space for recreationals.
The regs that have a lower winrate will move down stakes and then the lower stakes will be harder. It will increase regs at lower stakes and recreationals will lose faster at lower stakes.


This is Capitalism. Deal with it.
Whilst this is true that Amaya is a company where it will take steps to doing whatever they want if they think it will serve their shareholders and increase profits, there is no excuse for not listening to their customers and doing any market research whatsoever. This is a typical case where a company/new manager gets put in with no experience in the field, dictates changes and expects everything to be ok.

Also, no company in their right mind would see number of current subscriptions (the regs), new sign ups (the new players) go down (traffic) over the years... and then think, man we really need to take away the perks of the current subscribers, and also make subscriptions even more expensive! The most logical thing would be to make subscriptions cheaper, ie Lower The Rake for the love of God!

Critics of the strike keep saying that Amaya has probably done statistical analysis of the numbers etc etc. Really it looks like they are literally trying to everything they can to not decrease the rake.

Anyways, I'll leave you with this inspirational video by filmmaker Casey Neistat. I've been really addicted to his youtube channel recently!

The Longest Spin and Go Ever?

The Death of Poker Blogs

Since my one year hiatus from blogging, I had decided to make a conscious effort to start again. It has been quite sad to see my bloglist look like this;

Note: Not my bloglist lol. I cleared mine out a while ago...

It seems that a lot of poker blogs have died out, my theories being that;

1. They cant be arsed.
2. They don't play poker anymore or are losing and don't want to blog.
3. They, like me thought about doing it and literally procrastinated forever?
4. There's no topics to blog about that are positive. Poker has been taking a battering over the last few years since Black Friday (The overnight no-warning banning of Online Poker in USA), so that makes people not want to blog if its always going to be negative posts.

My goal was to do one post a week, not too difficult right? Well, the problem with me is once I do one I feel I have to do it right. Being too much of a perfectionist means that I have to write stuff I'm interested in, in a way which is understandable to all. I end up making sure I have everything in there, then it ends up being stupidly long, then that makes my newer posts have to be comparatively as good, creating a weird unnecessary cycle of competition in my mind.

There are a lot of positives to doing a blog. You have a pretty cool diary of stuff to look back on, I read back on my past blogs and its interesting to see what I was thinking at the time etc. It can also be quite therapeutic in that you can get your ideas out there instead of bottling it up.

 

Some P-YAN Bloggin' Tips;

DON'T Post Mass Hand Histories - Too many times I've seen poker players post up mass text of hand histories and talk in great depth in poker jargon, but hey, if that's your thing and your only targeting that type of audience then fine, but most casuals have no idea what your talking about.

DON'T Complain Continuously at Bad Beats - No one likes a Negative Nancy. Well, at the very least have a balance for your complaining with some celebrating! Most people remember the bad beats but never really the times when they get lucky to win.

DO Use Paragraphing - For the love of God please don't put all your stuff in one massive block of text. Space that stuff out. You don't talk in one massive sentence do you?

DO Add Pictures/Media - Make it look pretty! Add some YouTube vids too if you want. Poker graphs are probably the most common.

DO Talk About Other Stuff - You have other things on your mind apart from Poker surely?

Most of these things seem to be pretty common sense but I cant tell you the number of times I've seen some pretty bad blogging. Anyways, I hope some of you guys do some good postin's, I kinda wanna revive my bloglist so if you have one I'll be happy to add it, just gimmie a message or leave a comment below.

The Longest Spin and Go Ever?

A very strange thing happened to me the other day. 2 of my Spin and Go's was stuck at the first blind level. Since I 4 table, I didn't really notice til like 15 mins in! Normally each blind level lasts 3 minutes.

The fact that it was a 6x drove me nuts. I'm pretty sure I lost concentration in my other games at the time. One of the things I hate about live poker was the fact that it was so sloooooooow. That's why I like online, its faster and you can play multiple games. But there's nothing in comparison to that then a game where the blind levels never rise, and your playing heads up for 6 times the normal prize. Oh, 187 hands of pure bliss...

What is even worse is that I was two cards away from winning. My opponent started tilting which is what I was waiting for and started overjamming. Just needed that A9 to hold vs QJ but it didn't and then we were back to slowville :(

The chat was quite funny. Quite nice to talk to someone actually these days as the games are so quick its not that common;

puyan said, "is it me or are the blinds not moving up O_o"

puyan said, "been on this blind level for 27 min!"

puyan said, "blinds are not moving up!"

puyan said, "LOL"

Sjostyy said, "help?"

puyan said, "how long can u stay :D"

Sjostyy said, "long hahahah"

puyan said, "dammit"

puyan said, "me too"

puyan said, "haha"

puyan said, "we r going to be here for hours"

Sjostyy said, "we can get help?"

*puyan said, "i tried :(" 

Sjostyy said, "we can do split pot"

puyan said, "i would"

Sjostyy said, "i don t now how"

puyan said, ":("

Sjostyy said, "than we need help"

puyan said, "LOL"

puyan said, "i let u win the other one, u let me win this one ok? :D"

Sjostyy said, "hahahahahah"

puyan said, ";)"

*At the time I had pressed the button for the Chat Moderator, fully knowing that they only dealt with Chat related problems and was hoping that he would pass on the problem to someone else. He turned up, I explained what was happening, he said he only dealt with chat problems and promptly disappeared. #NotMyProblem

Anyways, GG. Well played, Ms (or Mr in disguise?) "Sjostyy"!

However, after emailing Stars I did get a refund for those two games. I argued that they were advertised at 3 minute blinds, and due to their software bugging this didn't happen, so essentially it was fraud. #Freeroll

I don't know if this is the longest game ever but it must be right? I've had a few games reach the t150 level as my highest, which is 12th blind level which is 36 mins? There would be arguments that this wouldn't count as it was bugged, but seems like a fun thought anyways?