Price of stuff goes up. Folk moan when it does

the thing is, it doesnt have to. there is a tipping point whereby they will make people's ability to win at the games impossible. at that point you will lose the long term regs and the biggest rake generators for the site. it is possible they have just done this for hyper turbos. 

they can also grow their profits by increasing traffic to the site, they dont have to do it by continually raising rake. 

this is what happens when there is no significant competition to a site. this would never have happened when full tilt was in its heyday. 

The MTT end didn't really get hit too hard here from what I've read, but the Hyper guys are lit right up about these changes. I've been following the thread, and it's chaos. I'm mixed on it, because I can understand why Amaya is doing this from the business end, but no one ever wants to pay more rake.

The side note though, is this might acutally burn off a lot of the very marginal ROI guys that clog up a lot of the seats, the so called "regs". They will no longer be able to turn profit off their micro margins, which means they won't play anymore. While this will likely reduce traffic, it will be nice to be able to play certain game selections and not be always playing the same 4 regs - a situation where I know I'll be losing long term, so I just avoid. 

There could also be a lot of other reasons, such as increased cost of operating; They will have to share profits with charities/tribes/gov'ts now that everything is becoming regulated. Amaya now has a huge debt, and isn't going to want to burden the loss of profit, so they will pass that onto the customer. It's how business works.

At the end of the day, they are really minor increases, and they won't effect the majority of the poker playing population to a very noticeable degree. The players who get it really bad, are the break even rake back grinders and the high volume guys. 

I'm assuming by now most of us have seen the PokerStars announcement, if not, here it is:

.....s-1485512/

Initially I thought this would only affect the SNE's and the big regs (Increase in cash rake, potentially removing SNE in the future, changes to VIP program etc) but as I've read more I've realised that players like me (low-mid stake players, not sure if I'd call myself a reg, but certainly a frequent player) are going to be hit more too. The stand out 'surprises' for me being having to play rake on every rebuy and add-on because I live in a regulated area, and paying rake on bounties in KO tourneys. As I delve deeper into the changes I'm finding more and more that may effect me at some stage (I hadn't even noticed guarentees had been cut).

What are peoples feelings on this? I don't want it to become a flame post of a F Stars thread like the 2+2 one has become (although in all the flame there is some sensible discussion). The bulk of my volume is on Stars and FTP, and the alternatives for me (Party and 888) don't offer the selection of tourneys, prize pool or player pool to make me want to withdraw my rolls from the Amaya sites and put them on these other sites, so while I'm not happy with the changes, I feel like I have to just put up with them, get on with life and accept that a $3r will not cost me minimum $9.90 rather than $9.30 (small margins for me, but what about the guys playing the $100r where $309 is becoming $327) even though a player in Brazil or Costa Rica is paying the old rate.

I'm sure there are a number of pro's/regs who have crunched the numbers and have given it a lot more thought than I have so far, so I'd be really interested in your take on whats going on. 

Looking forward to some sensible debate/discussion on this one,

Al - Pikey2003/pwnd_by_7-2