So much this. It needs to be explained in similar terms to the reason the UK have just reduced Corporation Tax. It brings business in. The lower the tax (or rake) the more likely a business will have its base in the UK, or the more likely the player pool will grow and they will actually rake more over the long term.

Its all about showing how PLO being raked in the way it is reduces the player base in the present moment and kills the games quicker in the long term.

i should have mentioned I am 100% for joeri's idea and letting the very smart people itt make a good case for us (without dragging stars name through the mud)

greed is subjective, but anyone who plays ssplo will agree that what stars (and everyone else) has been doing is killing the game we love to play. it just seems that what we want (more easily beatable rake at ssplo, ability for money to flow up the foodchain) is so obviously in stars best interest unless somehow they benefit from plo completely dying off. I just hope they can be made to see how immanent that death really is.

If it's obviously in stars best interest, then please present a convincing argument to that effect. For Stars, Revenue = (Rake * Volume) . To convince Stars, you need to show that lowering rake increases volume and maximizes this equation. Unfortunately, we don't have the evidence to prove that.

Why would rake reduce Stars's player base or using your analogy why would somebody be less likely to do business with Stars if as I mentioned Stars's rake is competitive and in fact one of the lowest in the market? For this to be true, people would have to quit playing PLO all together.

Do you have any data to support the claim that SSPLO is dying and or that death is immanent? I know you mentioned that you are in favour of people with a solid background in statistical analysis providing documented proof of this, but until that has been done your statement is speculative and in no way obvious.

^ What has being the lowest in the industry got to do with it? If it was 100% higher and still the lowest in the industry that wouldn't make it good would it? How much time and money do you think people will have for PLO. Most losses will be coming from the rake let alone run bad and lack of skill, people will lose so hard and so fast to the rake that they bust all they had and more and say F this game. I mean they might not even realize it's the rake they lose to, they might think it's rigged or that they are super unlucky or that everyone is vastly better than them etc. It's a game too expensive for anyone to play regularly because of the rake, numbers will drop eventually.

I feel like you took what I said out of context. I pointed out that it was one of the lowest in the industry to demonstrate that you can't make an argument analogous to a reduction in corporate tax in the UK. Though now that I think about it you could still argue for a reduction in rake to increase the player base, analogous to a reduction in corporate tax in the UK to entice businesses to conduct more business in the UK. The incentive to do so would just be lower if it's already competitively priced.

* Lowest in industry before rakeback right? Average RB is important factor?

One of the lowest at SSPLO for sure. I think in comparison to Star's top 5 competitors it is the lowest.
I don't think you can ignore average RB as a factor. This is another number that is sort of hard to accurately track, but is relevant as at the end of the day it determines how much Stars really takes out of the games. I think CocteauTwin made a good point earlier when he said that "Stars has everyone by the balls with their VIP scheme". Essentially they are already offering people a huge cut in rake if they are willing to fully commit to their VIP scheme. In doing so they incentivise people to play on Stars exclusively which in return incentivises Stars to keep charging a higher rake.

I'm assuming the average rakeback of most SSPLO guys isn't anywhere near the top tiers in the PS VIP system. I know a lot of people who play all year at stakes no higher than 100 PLO and don't break 300k VPPs. The same person playing on other sites with a fixed Rakeback system will benefit thousands of dollars more to their overall winrate. A lot of people playing SSPLO don't even help themselves by holding out for the biggest Stars bonuses as they take so long for an average person to attain.

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I see there is interest in the thread for some number-crunching. I'll be happy to do it and to report the results here, given that I have the data. OP: would it be possible to get the data from you? I don't need the details of the hands, just the names of the players in each hand and how much each player won or lost. Of course, I'll be good with just having the HHs themselves: I promise I won't use them for anything other than data crunching for this project, and will not pass them to anyone without your permission. If I get this data from OP or someone else, I'll PM joeri and Neptune04 and we'll discuss methodology.

Very interesting thread IMO. That said, I think you guys need to validate the legitimacy of your data. In my mind Stars will react to the current approach in a few ways:-

1. They will say that datamined Hand Histories are not 100% accurate, ergo analysis has no wheels
2. To protect player(s) integrity they probably won't discuss specific individuals data
3. They will know your meeting strategy. (Discussments in public forum = unbagged cat)

To counter the above I would suggest approaching as many of the 300K+ players as you can and say, look, help us confirm how accurate this data is (compare volume, winnings, rake, rakeback, etc... its in their interest to help, etc). Try to do the same for the players in 100K-300K bracket as well, obv bigger sample. Then footnote ~accuracy% to your data.

Also, see if some of the players will agree to send email waivers to state that in the meeting you can discuss a specific player under their actual stars sn. So they are not referred to as X out Y players... which is what I presume that Stars have done in the past. This way you'll remove the power of ambiguity PS can sit on. Stars have all the cards, they have the data, they can bend it however they want to steer the meeting in their chosen direction, i.e. their profit model... that's all they care about - work around that with them to get what we need by finding glaring gaps that they can't see!!

I would also suggest trying to bring someone like Kraada on board to get the most out of the data from PT. IMO you guys should be putting a strong admin team of 4-6 together to support GUI, or whoever goes and arm them with a chitload of conclusions and visual imagery based on your methodology... to force the objective across.

Any guesses about the earliest possible date for this rakeback change to take effect, if at all?

I'm officially quitting rush 100plo until this happens.

I'm guessing 1st of January.

ive moved my business away from stars and im not coming back until they fix this ****.

Does anybody know how we could go about purchasing data for our needs? Would we have to go through Pokertableratings? Who has the greatest coverage of games on Stars? What would the cost be of obtaining such data be?
I think if hand histories are purchased, it would be wise to buy PLO 100, PLO 200, NL 100 and NL 200 hand histories for the same time period. This way we would could test various hypotheses that have been mentioned in this thread.
This amount of data might be fairly expensive for our benign intentions, so maybe we could even get one of the big datamining sites to cooperate with us on this.

edit: Also maybe we could get somebody like NoahSD on board as a consultant, seeing as he did great work on the Stoxtrader investigation.

Didn't Stars make a big thing about not being allowed to buy Hand Histories a year or two back?

Yea, I'm not sure about this too, but I think it's a grey area right? From what I can tell you can't purchase any HHs from Stars on PTR right now. You can however from other sites. I'm not sure how representative this would be for Stars though (in the sense that it might be too easy for them to dismiss). It would however be better than no data at all ^^.
I mean violating the terms and conditions of Stars in order to make a point might not be the best way to approach it.
TopPair2Pair's approach might be the only way to legitimately obtain more data from Stars (by asking individual players to voluntarily share their data). It's just a very tedious one and we are already making very little progress with the information at hand.

^^ I'm no lawyer, but I think that buying HHs for the sole purpose of doing rake-related data-crunching should be "acceptable use". As long as you're not using them to get an advantage in the games, then it seems totally legit.

El Dodo, Neptune, Joeri- I spoke with PokerStars Steve today regarding "number crunching." After signing NDAs, the players attending Stars' meetings will have access to a lot of confidential data. I think it would be very advantageous to the meetings to have one of you three go and provide some quantitative analysis of the data.

The goal of our arguments is to show that lowering rake will increase Stars' profits over either the short or longterm. To show this we need to show that lowering rake increases volume enough to offset Stars' decreased rake per hand. I have no idea what Stars' methodology is for setting their rake structure, but it's certainly in our best interest to review that methodology and see if it's flawed in the direction of high rake.

Steve also said the player representatives for the upcoming meeting are already chosen. In light of this, I think one of our reps should abdicate, or we can nominate Dodo, Neptune or Joeri for the next meeting (if you guys are willing!).

On the plus side, you get to go hang out here for a few days:

edit: Sauce's post makes what I wrote irrelevant.

Did any of the previous PLO reps have the rake structure logic explained to them? If so, a handover discussion with them has obvious benefits. (I havent rly followed past meetings or anything tbh)

If you guys want to extract the most value out of the meeting, then i would recommend trying to get the "number crunchers" NDAs signed ASAP prior to the meeting... and request the data directly from Stars at the earliest opportunity to review... like minimum 10days before meeting. They'll prob refuse this for whatever reason, however, the ball is then in their court to offer an alternative... otherwise just carry on as you are i spose.

I'll +1 the rewards system being a...problem? Hindrance? Not sure how to put it, but it needs to be discussed and thought about.

Unfortunately i can't go these days in April, thats why i didn't join the voting thread. I'm also not really a math guy nor a data handling guy.

i really want joeri to go for this metting. you are the best name to go .

+1000 please go.