Hello, fellow players!
What happened?
18 months ago Company Amaya took a huge loan to buy Pokerstars and now makes players pay for it. In those 18 months they made a series of decisions (like introducing 2,5% fee on non-USD deposits or increasing rake in Spin&Gos or few more) to make games worse for everyone. According to the statistical service Macropoker, recent change in VIP-System will extract around 94 million USD from poker per year. In its press releases, Amaya names caring for the game’s ecology as the reason behind these changes, but it’s not clear how extracting money helps it.
I represent wearepokerplayers.com . Our site is dedicated to the protest of poker players against upcoming changes in pokerstars VIP system and against Amaya's (Pokerstars's owners) policy in general. Below I will write a short version of our plan. Longer version is available at our site(including economical justification).
What will we do?
We offer a few-steps strategy. First step in massive international strike on January 1-7, the goal of this step is to attract attention of the poker communities all over the world. This strike is supported by at least 1400 players at Tiltbook and also by various high-stakes players like Dani “Ansky” Stern, Daniel “Oxota” Dvoress, Andreas “Skjervoy” Torbergsen etc
Step 2. We’re staging a strike probably on Feb 2-11, also for a week or 10 days. The most likely dates are Feb 2-11. At this stage, our goal is to reach 4,000–5,000 participants. In fact, this strike repeats the previous one. We are also hoping for your support. At this stage, we’ll begin to advertize step 3 extremely actively and convince people to take part in our next strike.
Step 3. This is our site initiative. As soon as we get 5,000 players, we’ll start the next and final step – monthly strike with possibility of extension. The number of 5,000 players comes from our analysis of statistical data. 5,000 active players, including at least 2,500 Supernovas+, generate no less than 15% of pure rake (rake minus rakeback). If we decrease rake by 15%, we cut Amaya's EBITDA by half thus increasing their debt/EBITDA ratio from a heavy 6.6 to a critical number of at least 10. We really hope to reach 5000 players before step 2, the earlier we make a crucial strike – the better.
We demand:
We demand that every game-related change be approved by an online players council. Members of the council will be elected on our site and will represent different stakes and communities. Recent changes regarding the VIP system have to be cancelled as they weren't approved by the players.
In conclusion, I ask every one of you to join our site and join the first strike of January 1-7. If you are a poker journalist, please write an article about the protest and about our site. it is important to spread this information for as many players as possible. Also, in the next post I will write a FAQ about the site and about a few common misconceptions. Stopping Amaya is extremely important for the whole industry. Together we will win!
And here are some of the most frequently answered questions:
Who are you exactly? Have a heard of any of you?
- Our site came from the russian poker community and our team consists of poker players and businessman. Although you've probably never heard of us before, our reputation back home is very good and more than 400 players from our community joined our site including double-digit number of Supernovas Elite. Also we're in contact with many notable players around the globe.
Well, I expect you will advertise every other site for the players, nice trick!
- No, we don't have an affiliate program nor planning to have one.
Guys, you are too radical. Surely signing a petition or making a short 3-5 days strike will make Amaya come to the senses?
- No, there already have been a massive action in writing letters to Pokerstars support (they replied with the standart form), then there were a 3-days strike, at which Amaya lost between 500k and 1mil, to that strike they replied with hypocritical press release stating that they didn't notice any effect on the strike. Clearly, Amaya is now cornered and won't stop at anything, and the only reason they understand is money. They plan to take approximately 1,8M per week with this reform, we must reduce rake by more.
Everyone knows that rake doesn't matter for the poker rooms, only the difference between deposits and cashouts.
-Nope, Amaya has fixed expenses and they are pretty big. They need as much rake as they can get especially now when their debt is huge and their stock price is plummeting. And winning players make a lot of rake. Supernovas Elite and simple Supernovas generate around 30% of pure rake – almost as much as Amaya profits.
So, all of those numbers, they are just made up, right?
- No, we have an access to the advanced statistical figures by the sharkscope-like statistical service Macropoker.
Why do we have to register at your site? And procedure is so complicated!
- We want to be as transparent as possible so we ask players to verify their account with the screenshot so procedure takes around 2 minutes. Not much to prolong your career for much longer time. Also we are planning to make our site the center of the protest movement place for players from all communities games and stakes. If we succeed we may try to form a players union based in the protest.
I know how to make your site better. You do * your suggestion* .
- Thank you! We appreciate any feedback, our site is still very young, it was made in very little time and not perfect yet. We have a huge improvements list and some of them take a lot of time to implement, so don't get mad if we didn't do something you suggest immediately.
I am already the member of another strike.
- Great! But anyway consider signing in with us too. The reasons are:
1. We partner with other actions. We're allied with Tiltbook and 2+2 and if you know any other protesting group - please ask them to contact us or let us contact them.
2. We developed a special functionality to help people in finding other regs and to support you in public discussions
3. The movement must be global but needs strong coordination to be effective.
4. The important part of opposition lays in a field of publicity and information. We do our estimations basing on the data on the number of players, their VIP PS status etc
I am not a Supernova and clearly not a SNE, why would I care?
- Our protest is not about rakeback, it's about company Amaya who wants to turn our favorite poker room into a global casino where everyone loses. If current change doesn't affect you directly next one definetely will.