The drop in traffic of cash games on PokerStars

[Pharaoh39]

Other countries getting banned helped the numbers to drop as well.

 

[concoman710]

I think stars is killing the poker ecosystem at the highest level. It doesn't hurt recreational players as much and the ones it really hurts are the players trying to make a living playing the game.

With the game getting harder and harder and the leading site taking more money, the barrier for entry is much greater.

 

[longeros]

The first major change was the rakeback amounts. That pushed a lot of players to other sites like FT

 

[Luvulongtime99]

Well anytime you take away rake back and hike up the rake the cash game players will go else where. I am a true believer that PS is trying to go 100% rec players with all the crack poker games they created that isnt't really even poker. One last note I aloo think many cash game players have went to MTT because the player pool is much softer.

 

[JohnnyX]

can you elaborate about negative news from Russia? A giant percentage of players at the tables are from Russia. If they're gone, the place's gonna be empty.

As for the traffic, it's bad, the volume is less than half from 2014 in cash games (I saw the lobby numbers for zoom games in a training video, now it's less than half of that).

Having recently moved up from NL2, the rake is horrendous. It will take a whole lot of time playing your A-game to build a bankroll to move up. I am already at NL25 as of right now and I can't wait to go higher, but that's where the place starts looking a bit too dry.