hi manca,
I'm one of the freelancing hand judges. I posted a lot back in 2013 and believe me, PS paid me a lot of money to do so (>10k posts in 2013). I had no say in the decision to change the old system but I think it makes perfect sense to me. Basically PS decided that it was not financially viable to continue with the old system.
Silver is $10/month right? This is the amount of money that it costs PS to pay one of the judges to evaluate 5 hands. Ultimately PS is a profit-driven business and it should be clear by now that this is not profitable at all.
To be honest I don't know why more people weren't using the hand evaluation services (because they were just super insanely good value for money, even if you were buying a subscription to the silver or gold statuses). It was like free private coaching at a dirt cheap price
PS is looking towards diverting its resources towards benefiting the maximum number of people (hand history highlights or videos) as opposed to hand evaluations, where the number of people who benefit from such services will be maximized. Most hand evaluation threads only had 1 main person benefiting (the poster) and maybe a few other guys who read other people's threads. Assuming that Pokerstrategy only has X$ to spend on improving its curriculum and education offerings, I think their decision is very logical and reasonable.
Cheers,
Galvin
We will discuss about this.
