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We Are Poker Players - join the protest against Amaya.

Hello, fellow hungarian players!

Firstly, I'd like to apologize for addressing you in English, but unfortunately, our team has a limited size. Also i am sorry if i am posting in a wrong forum, i couldn't understand how to contact a moderator, google-translator is still not perfect.


What happened?
18 months ago, the Amaya company took a huge loan to buy Pokerstars and is now making the players pay for it. In those 18 months, they made a series of decisions (like introducing a 2.5% fee on non-USD deposits, increasing the rake in Spin&Gos and a few others) to make the games worse for everyone. According to the statistical service Macropoker, the recent changes in the VIP system will extract around 94 million extra USD from poker per year. In its press releases, Amaya named 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 the upcoming changes in Pokerstars’ VIP system and against Amaya's policy in general. Below I will write a short version of our plan. A longer version is available at our site (including economic justification).



What will we do?
We offer a multi-step strategy. The first step is a massive international strike on January 1-7, the goal of which is to attract the attention of poker communities all over the world. This strike is supported by at least 1,400 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 another strike, 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. During 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’s initiative. As soon as we get 5,000 players, we’ll start the next and final step – a monthly strike with the 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 5,000 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.


To finish my post, I want to ask for volunteers to translate our post and, if possible, materials from the site to hungarian. Our contact e-mail is protest@wearepokerplayers.com. It is important to spread this information to as many players as possible. Thus, if you are a poker journalist, please write an article about the protest and about our site. Also, in the next post I will write a FAQ about the site and about a few common misconceptions.



In conclusion, I ask every one of you to join our site and join the first strike of January 1-7. Stopping Amaya is extremely important for the whole industry. Together we will win!

PS: I'd also like to ask for a permission to open a thread purely for registering in January Strike

And here are some of the most frequently answered questions:


Who are you exactly? Have I heard of any of you?
- Our site has its origins in 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 have joined our site, including a double-digit number of Supernovas Elite. We're also in contact with many notable players around the globe.


Well, I expect you will advertise every other site to the players: nice trick!

[*]No, we don't have an affiliate program, nor are we planning to have one.

Guys, you are too radical. Surely signing a petition or making a short 3-5 day strike will make Amaya come to their senses?

[*]No, there has already been a massive action in writing letters to Pokerstars support (they replied with a standard form), then there was a 3-day strike, during which Amaya lost between $500k and $1 mil. To that strike, they replied with a hypocritical press release stating that they didn't notice any effects from the strike. Clearly, Amaya is now cornered and won't stop at anything, and the only reasoning they understand is money. They plan to take approximately $1.8M per week with this reform; we must reduce the rake by more than this.

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 that their debt is huge and their stock price is plummeting. And winning players generate a lot of rake. Supernovas Elite and simple Supernovas generate around 30% of pure rake – almost as much as Amaya’s profits.

So, all of those numbers, they are just made up, right?

[*]No, we have an access to advanced statistical figures from the Sharkscope-like statistical service Macropoker.

Why do we have to register at your site? And the procedure is so complicated!

[*]We want to be as transparent as possible, so we ask players to verify their accounts with a screenshot; the procedure takes around 2 minutes: not much to prolong your career for a much longer time. We are also planning to make our site the center of the protest movement – a place for players from all communities, games and stakes. If we succeed, we may try to form a players union based on the protest.

I know how to make your site better. Do *your suggestion*.
- Thank you! We appreciate any feedback. Our site is still very young; it was made in very little time and is 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 don't immediately do something that you suggest.


I am already a member of another strike.

[*]Great! But consider signing on with us too. The reasons are:
1. We partner with and participate in 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 have developed special functionality to help people in finding other regs and to support them in public discussions.
3. The movement must be global but needs strong coordination to be effective.
4. An important part of opposition lies in the fields of publicity and information. We make our estimations based on data on the number of players, their PS VIP status, etc.

I am not a Supernova and clearly not a SNE, so why would I care?
- Our protest is not about rakeback. It's about the company Amaya, which wants to turn our favorite poker room into a global casino where everyone loses. If the current changes don't affect you directly, the next ones definitely will.