Charles Hawk: Could you please write your thoughts about rakeback system changes in 2016? How it will affect the game and everyday life of middle ($30-$100) and high stakes regs?  Also please comment how do you feel about it? What are your emotions?

Ryan "RyPac13" Pachmayer: I think games such as 6 max hypers will deteriorate almost completely from a professional standpoint. I think it'll be negative for all games really, as SN and SNE rewards are truly a large factor for most professionals. I don't think nearly as many players will quit as they claim so far, I think that is an off the cuff response. I don't think most people will adjust majorly as a reaction to this change (IE, change professions), I think it's more likely that players will adjust in the buyin levels they play some and mostly in the profit they make. So I think it ends up filtering down to mid stakes especially, making the games harder/more crowded with professionals. I hope that is a wrong outlook though and the impact isn't as bad.

PokerStars says they will increase promotional money, but just about every poker room that decreases rewards says that and in my experience it has never come anywhere close to making up for it before in this industry. So I am not too hopefuly that PokerStars promotions will offset these changes. I hope I am wrong about that too.

Charles Hawk: Do you think its possible to unite the community, form their arguments why Amya should reconsider and then meet Amaya representatives for a negotiation? Do you think its possible to get better offer for 200k+ VPP earners? IF yes, to which extent beter?

Ryan "RyPac13" Pachmayer: I think it is possible and already happening behind the scenes and we may see some concessions for SNE and maybe SN players in 2016. But the changes are here to stay long term. PokerStars is more like every other place to play poker, they are now an online gambling company. These changes aren't making them worse to play compared to other rooms, it's bringing them more in line with other rooms. It's just tougher because PokerStars was basically the only POKER ROOM for years, and that's kind of what they built their reputation as, a poker room that caters to poker players and a place that not only allows professionals to profit, but encourages it. It made it a great, competitive place to play. Now it's becoming more and more like a big version of any other place to play poker.

Charles Hawk: You are in the coaching and staking business for a very long time. How these changes will affect your business?

Ryan "RyPac13" Pachmayer: I think our players are in a good position to handle this. Our program specializes in coaching players to be profitable and a big part of that is increasing their actual EV against opponents, rather than turning them into rakeback grinders. The plan is that these changes won't impact our players nearly as much as it will affect most other players.

Charles Hawk: Please write your thoughts (or ideas) how other pokerrooms could use PS rb changes into their advantages? Do you think that Pokerstars could lose more than they would gain making such drastical changes?​

Ryan "RyPac13" Pachmayer: I think any time you remove rewards, even if it's just focused on high stakes/high volume players, you will lose some % of your business. I think PokerStars is not going to lose enough to make the changes bad in the short term. I think other rooms will gain. WPN, iPoker, maybe 888, Party and Unibet can gain here some, but it won't be significant, they don't really offer lower total rewards/rake than PokerStars still.

If PokerStars really puts a lot of this money back into promoting poker to new players, then it could end up being different, and better. But again, I'm skeptical of that scenario purely because I've seen how that statement has played out over the years with so many poker rooms while cutting rewards. The poker room gets smaller, and seems to cut the rewards as a way to raise margins and limit higher volume/bigger winners from making as much money (and thus taking it off the site).