[Kibby]

I just made my way through this whole thread. There's a bunch of good stuff in here and its given me a couple suggestions / comments.

1) None of us has any clue how to make these calculations as to whether it will be more or less profitable for pokerstars to lower the rake. Not a single argument in here comes close. I also doubt Pokerstars could make an accurate prediction. Supply, demand and pricing with that number of replacement products and competitors makes for a ridiculously hard problem. I have thoughts on how to attack the problem but that's for another thread and we don't have the data necessary anyways.

2) I don't see how a boycott would be effective at all. First off, while there are a large number of high volume players that could leave, the number of people who would take advantage of their absence is likely to offset the effectiveness of a boycott. I, for one, would love to see you guys away from my tables at the 60s. It would be like Xmas.

3) The best idea seems to be asking for a promo for sngs. This would do a few things for Pokerstars that we can likely predict:

a) Test the model of lowering rake.
b) Introduce fish to more games. The more games they get exposed to and like, the more likely they are to keep playing poker in some capacity.
c) Advertise the site and encourage people to come back from sites like Full Tilt.

For this reason, I think it would behoove us to ask for a sng week where the rake is cut in half (or fashioned in a proportional way to buying) instead of a permanent cut. I'm sure they would make up a portion (who knows how much) of that by increased volume and its low risk for them as its advertised as temporary so they won't set expectations incorrectly. Pokerstars is also much more likely to do this from client demand than they are cutting the rates. It would also give them something to talk about in their meetings on the subject where now they just have pissy emails.

Thoughts?