The following changes will be implemented for PokerStars.com and shared liquidity sites in the near future. Implementation dates are included for each change and full tables detailing the changes are provided at the end of the post.

Battle of the Planets
The week ending Saturday, November 1st will be the final week of the Battle of the Planets promotion. Prizes will be paid out this week as per normal.

Rake Changes Effective November 3, 2014
Rake will increase for all stakes of heads-up hyper turbo Sit & Go tournaments.

Tournament fees for all forms of knockout tournaments, including both scheduled and Sit & Go tournaments, will now be equivalent to tournament fees charged for similar non-knockout tournaments. This is a change for all forms of knockout tournaments except for progressive super knockout tournaments for which tournament fees will not change.

Hyper-turbo scheduled tournament fees will increase from 2% to approximately half of the fees charged for other scheduled tournaments at same or similar buy-in levels.

The cap for ring game rake for hands dealt at PL/NL games to exactly two players will increase to $2 for stakes $25/$50 and higher and $1 for all other stakes.

The cap for ring game rake for PL/NL games at $25/$50 and higher stakes with 5+ players dealt in will increase from $3 to $5.

Spin & Go rake will be increased at stakes $3 and above. Details are in the table at the end of the post. Note that the ‘Rake’ row in the table refers to the % of prize pool withheld for rake, as is consistent with our current communication on our website and communication of pricing by competitors about similar products.


Rakes Changes Effective January 1, 2015
Hyper-turbo satellite Sit & Go fees will be increased at stakes below $2,000 from 2% to an amount equivalent to roughly 75% of the fees charged for cash prize hyper-turbo Sit & Go tournaments of the same buy-in. A table at the end of this post includes sample fees for a wide range of buy-ins.

New tournament fees will apply in rebuy tournaments for players whose play is subject to significant local taxes in the form of gaming duty and/or VAT. For such players, tournament fees equivalent to those charged for initial buy-ins will be charged for rebuys and add-ons. We will soon provide a full list of sites/countries affected on January 1, but as examples, PokerStars.be, PokerStars.dk, PokerStars.uk, and PokerStars.bg will qualify due to gaming duty and players from Germany will qualify due to VAT.

Spin & Go Prize Changes Effective November 3, 2014
Spin & Go prize distribution will change to offer top prizes of 3000x the buy-in at each pool, increased from 1000x. Full details of the new distributions are available in the table at the bottom of this post.


Details and Examples of Changes

Sit & Go



Spin & Go



Scheduled MTT


The above are examples; similar changes will apply at all stakes.

NL/PL Ring Games

omg another update from pokerstars and i was genuinely shocked to find that the changes are bad btw your changes now have made my poker aspirations literally impossible and i show statistically significant data to back that up.

I dont mean probably I mean literally Im finally done on pokerstars goodbye.

Are you ****in kiddin me? Firstly you are cutting traffic by 30-40% @ 60+ ht hus with introducing spin`n`gos and now you are increasing rake LOL That can`t be serious. Thank you Amaya- every day brings worse news. Don`t forget to add higher spin`n`gos and casino in January woooho.

$5 rake cap for cash games??? Glad I don't have a Stars account, and now I sure as hell ain't ever getting one either.

increasing the rake for SSNL HU action is not good.

~13.75bb/100 rake and you are going to increase that. This will not generate action. I guess there really isn't much reg+reg action and you think discouraging the little that is left will be made up by the more you take from reg on rec action?

Well, some of the suggestions about lowering the rake when players are playing multiple tables vs each other really needs to be implemented.

Lol that one is cool too.

It's good to know amaya isn't trying to trick anyone into thinking they're the geniuses that made pokerstars the largest site in the world. It's quite obvious they're the morons that are going to tank the most profitable site in the name of profit. GG in the next 3 years, Stars won't be #1.

stars are you serious? you will kill all games expect spins with these mooves. :S

well *** done

you cant be serious,

Cashout as soon as possible!
This will end up very badly

this has to be a joke right?

ur making more money then ever with the divisions/cartels but yet you increase rake... bravo amaya

I am in the process of writing a long email to pokerstars with maths showing that it will now be mathmaticly impossible for anyone but SNEs to make a profit after rake back for the games im targeting at any stakes above $5 and that most of the SNES will now be turned into losing to the rake even after rake back for these games.

and that I am now gone from pokerstars. I am serious with this statement and currently preparing a spreadsheet and email to send to pokerstars regarding this and am happy to provide this information once i have completed preparing it to anyone that wants to challenge me on that point.

the behavior of poker stars now goes beyond all rational sense. when peoples behavior seems so irrational there is only two realistic logical conclusions that can be drawn.

1. they are totally incompetent. this is true the minority of the time note that.
2. there agenda is different to what you postulate and actually makes sense from there stand point.

thus i no longer believe that the pokerstars actually are trying to make profit but rather there new owners are trying to kill online poker this may sound absurd but seriously do not be surprised if Sheldon Alderson is involved somewhere.

Hacked?

there is no way this is going to be good for them. I am legitimately worried about long-term profitability of online poker with the changes they are making. I really don't understand.

can someone post what the ROIs are in HU hypers?

Estimated ROI vs rec?

ROI vs reg?

Excellent news for those of us who can't play on Pokerstars. Hope this helps somebody else build their market.

gg stars, it was fun

Should be fun to listen to the stars fanboys take on this latest disgraceful action. Last one out turn the lights off please.

**** off

accelerating my transition out of poker i would have to imagine.

battling for lobbies is going to be so ****ed now.

Wow. If this is true, then Amaya are serious about jeopardising their monopoly. Wow. Terrible. This is awful for your long-term traffic for everything except non hyper MTTs pretty much and as MTTs are such a small % of Stars overall rake this has to be a terrible move assuming a competitor can start siphoning off players (which will eventually happen)

PokerStars, don't expect a warm reception in California.

So what players are uneffected by this then?


It seems like only MTT players and mtt-sng thus 180 man and 18 and 45 man players and fifty/50 players are the only ones unaffected by this?

F U AMAYA, so guys, who can help me make a new site? i gonna pay the beers in the first meeting!