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Thanks to its recent acquisition of daily fantasy sports site Victiv (recently rebranded as StarsDraft), PokerStars has once again established a presence on US soil.

Parent company Amaya Gaming will be adopting a conservative approach to its latest vertical, one that relies more on brand recognition and leveraging its extensive database than it does spending otherworldly sums on marketing campaigns, ala FanDuel and DraftKings.

While this strategy will provide Amaya with a smoother path to profitability, it also caps the foothold the company will gain in the US in 2015.



Read more: Amaya Will Leverage StarsDraft To Help The PokerStars Brand, No Matter How Small That Presence Is

PokerStars has returned to the United States, and players from most areas of the country are free to play for real money.

There’s just one catch: you won’t actually be able to play any poker, because the return has come in the form of daily fantasy sports.

Amaya has officially launched StarsDraft, the PokerStars-branded daily fantasy sports (DFS) site that was created through the rebranding of a site formerly known as Victiv.

StartsDraft launched on Friday with a small but standard selection of DFS games to choose from, covering the four major American sports as well as professional golf contests.

An analyst who closely follows Amaya, parent company of PokerStars, believes that “a NJ license could be a major catalyst” for the company “in the next 20 days.”

That’s per Chad Benyon of Macquarie Research.

Benyon made the comment in a note that followed meetings with key executives from Amaya and Rational, including Amaya CEO David Baazov and Interim Rational Group CEO Michael Hazel.

The timeline suggested by Benyon falls at the very limit of the timeline for approval forecasted by Baazov back in March.


Read more: Analyst: PokerStars NJ Progress By End Of Month

PokerStars seems to be back In business.

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good luck

PokerStars is finally returning to America. It took striking a deal with the Department of Justice that included a $731 million payment, the Wall Street fueled sale of the company and its Full Tilt properties for $4.9 billion, and a regulatory journey that dragged on for years. But the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement has finally given the green light for Amaya to offer Internet gambling in the state under the PokerStars and Full Tilt brands.

Shares of Amaya soared by 14% on Thursday and for good reason. The news is huge for Montreal-based Amaya and its young CEO, David Baazov, who purchased PokerStars, the world’s biggest online poker company, last year.




Read more: Forbes Welcome

That's really about time.

Amaya-owned online poker brand PokerStars has announced that it is to make a series of major changes to its VIP programme, promotional campaigns, policies and various other features in an effort to enhance player experience.

As of January 1, 2016, the brand will introduce a ‘VIP Steps’ programme and alter the Frequent Player Points (FPP) system to feature a new currency in ‘StarsCoin’, which will operate under a constant value rather than a variable one.

‘VIP Club’ rewards will be capped at 30%, while customers at the ‘PlatinumStar’ level will see a 10% drop in overall rewards, although ‘BronzeStar’ and ‘GoldStar’ players will continue to receive rewards similar to those at the current level.

Players that achieve ‘Supernova Elite’ status will have access to more rewards, with these being capped at 45% for 2016.

In addition, there will no longer be limits for VIP Player Points (VPP) for pot-limit and no-limit games with blinds of $5/$10 or higher, eight-game with limits of $10/$20 or higher, and other limit games that feature blinds of $10/$15 or higher.

Eric Hollreiser, vice-president of corporate communications at Amaya, said: “PokerStars today unveiled a comprehensive plan to enhance the playing experience and to re-emphasise the fun and social aspects of online poker while attracting and retaining more players to the game.

“Poker is a fun game that we love and our responsibility is to make sure that every player at PokerStars – advanced, recreational, or new – can enjoy this game as much as we do.”

The move comes after PokerStars recently unveiled changes to its policies for third-party software, with many of these tools now being banned.

PokerStars has also revealed plans to increase marketing activity surrounding its partnerships with professional footballers Cristiano Ronaldo and Neymar Jr.

“Today, we want to make clear that the line will be drawn to preserve poker as a battle of wits and a test of heart,” Hollreiser added.

“This will only have a direct effect on a small proportion of players and builds upon our responsibility to provide a level playing field for all players.”



PokerStars unveils sweeping changes to online poker platform | iGaming Business

That's really about time.


It's never too late!

Poker pro Phil Ivey dropped $417,602 over the past week playing under his “RaiseOnce” screen name on PokerStars. The 10-time World Series of Poker bracelet winner logged 6,100 hands during the week, according to tracking data from HighstakesDB.

Other big losers on the week include Viktor “Isildur1” Blom (-$282,040), “ClockWyze” (-$134,579) and Ilari “Ilari FIN” Sahamies (-$104,440). Blom is still up a strong $2.14 million on 2015.

The biggest winners on the week were “Crazy Elior” ($346,429), Ben “Ben86” Tollerene ($166,108), “BERRI SWEET” ($154,714), “CrownUpGuy” ($132,546) and “Colisea” ($122,436).

Patrik “Fake Love888” Antonius ($82,481), Ben “Sauce123” Sulsky ($66,206), Dan “w00ki3z” Cates ($52,130) and Ronny “1-ronnyr3” Kaiser ($50,744) all had winning weeks as well.

One of the largest hands during the week was a $158,000 pot at $200-$400 pot-limit Omaha. The hand was played Monday between Ivey, BERRI SWEET and PokerStars account “fjutekk”.

BERRI SWEET started the action by raising to $1,700. Kaiser folded on the button and fjutekk three-bet to $5,900 from the small blind. Ivey called from the big blind, and BERRI SWEET four-bet to $23,000. Both fjutekk and Ivey called, despite not having much behind.


Read more: Online Poker: Phil Ivey Drops $417,000

Is it pocket money or what😟

On December 1, high stakes players on PokerStars initiated a three-day strike to protest upcoming cutbacks to the operator’s VIP program.

Although most previous efforts to boycott online poker sites have largely fallen flat, so far, the latest organized walkout (spearheaded in part by pro Dani Stern) is having a notable impact on portions of the PokerStars lobby.

Not that anyone looking exclusively at PokerStars’ top-line traffic numbers would know it, as the first day of the strike had the unfortunate occurrence of coinciding with the site’s latest Milestone Hands giveaway — far and away PokerStars’ most popular promotion.
Total traffic numbers don’t tell full story

According to data provided by PokerScout-com, liquidity on PokerStars peaked at over 37,500 players yesterday, representing a 65% increase over the week prior.

Staggering peak liquidity jumps are hardly uncommon during Milestone Hand promotions, as players tend to flood the microstakes tables in the minutes leading up to the next milestone.

If anything, relative to previous Milestone Hands, the traffic impact of the latest promo was rather muted, especially considering that yesterday marked the first day of PokerStars’ much anticipated Christmas Calendar.


Read more: Success of PokerStars Strike Masked By Promotion

The ongoing battle between online poker sites to police the games they offer in accordance with their own TOS’s (Terms of Service), and the continuing attempt by a minority of unscrupulous players to gain an edge by violating those very same rules may have recently taken an interesting turn involving possible video monitoring … if an e-mail as published recent on the topic is as genuine as it appears.

The site in question in the latest furor is again the world’s market leader, PokerStars, which due to its very dominance suffers from more of this attempted rules skirting than any other site. From the possible use of illegal software programs that assist in making decisions to various forms of team play, a lot of it is supposed to be forbidden. However, since enforcement against cheaters necessarily involves reasonable proof, it can be hard for the sites, such as Stars, to obtain that very information.

A post made on the 2+2 poker forums in a sub-forum dedicated to high-stakes cash-game grinders indicates that some sort of movement is afoot, with PokerStars and its owner, Amaya Group, seeking to root out some of this suspected illicit behavior. Forum mod Nick Frame (“toocuriosso1”) reported the context of a letter that he claims has been sent to several high-stakes regulars on the site, which reads in part:


......... The PokerStars Hunt for Online Cheaters Continues -

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Team: ixgames

Try them they are OK...

End of year figures from Italian regulator AAMS show that PokerStars has already picked up a 2.58% share of the online casino market in Italy.

The market share is better than it looks, since PokerStars didn’t enter the market until May 2015, and then it only offered Blackjack and Roulette.

Over the following months the offer gradually expanded, but the product can expect to grow throughout the year.

Business will always be business, I was never impressed by pokerstars but obviously I'm in minority.

The industry needs more big poker operators and not a few that keeps expanding.

I never liked Pokerstars dont no why. I still know some friends are playing there.

Well done Pokerstars!!

That's great news for me i love to play blackjack there.