Lol, dont think I have ever posted this much in one day before.

Count me in on the strike. I am a winning LHE FR reg and games were tough enough before, now you are selling me a 20% RB decrease as "listening to the players"?

Give us FR (LHE) guys a multiplier of 7x and we can talk about the move to WC, without that we will (rightfully) feel screwed and WE WILL make our voices heard (may it be futile to do so or not..).

Also, your managment wont see the mass exodus right away, a lot of us grinders will move sites but still keep SN on Stars to be on the safe side (I will anyways, then I will switch over to PLO and will say goodbye to Stars alltogether); my point is that a lot of ppl will play the MINIMUM on Stars in order to keep their statuses and COME May/June we WILL Switch.

I thought the same so wtf??? I'm joining the sit out.

I honestly hope stars realise they can turn this around and while they may be hurting their bottom line responding to the players arguments in a satisfactory manner can make them undisuputable heroes and a respect which cannot be bought.

It would be very hard for any company (including ftp2) to enter into competition with them.

I really hope they are considering that.

this whole situation will cost them

PokerStars: lol we can totally get away with ripping you off so here's how we plan to do it.
PokerStars: lol jk! we're going to rip you off even harder.

would be quite interesting to see how much money is actually being shoveled around through rackeback system. or how low the rake would be without rakeback ..2.5%, 3%? can't help it, smells like fraud to me.

where is the fraud exactly?

How many more people do we need to show up to +1 our compromise? Surely we have more than enough support for a fair deal here considering everyone's given in on the Dealt to WC switch which is a huge boon for your bottom line. Even if you gave us the deal we're asking for, you've pushed the WC method through making more than you have in the past and converted an entrenched part of regs' profit into a much more fluid variable that is far easier for you to incrementally take away in the future instead of just going for the jugular right now.

How many more people do we need to outweigh these mystery players advocating the wholesale bonfire of their own dollars for whom you snap change the entire basis of your rake structure that you were indecisive about for so long?

We're asking. Are you still listening?

Joining sit out

I rarely do this, but +1. Great post

http://twitter.com/#!/***********STAR follow and retweet

There are a few issues that I would like to comment on further.

Much good faith effort was put into designing rake changes, with the intention of improving the rake balance. This would have resulted in decreases in rake, both overall and for most individual players. These rake changes were designed as a whole, not as three separate changes. While we expected some people to be happy and others to be disappointed by the changes, we didn't expect the extreme negative reaction to this overall decrease. There was no ploy to introduce and then cancel the changes.

The response of many players to the announcement was not to ask for an explanation, but instead to plan a strike based around incorrect conclusions about the rake changes. After seeing players' unexpected negative reactions, we felt the right thing to do was to cancel the changes. We will still engage in dialog with players over the coming days about the rake change, including explaining the impact more thoroughly.

We are proud to offer the lowest overall rake of any major online poker site and a comprehensive, transparent VIP Club that rewards all real money players. We look forward to further discussions with the community about the change to the weighted contributed method, which will not be reversed to the dealt method. Contrary to some posts, this method does provide a benefit to a large number of players.
We will discuss potential rake and VIP adjustments with the community in the coming months. This will take some time. In the meantime, constructive discussion about these topics will be helpful.

We will also be happy to host a few representatives from the poker community on the Isle of Man to review numbers in much more depth, provided that they agree to sign appropriate non-disclosure agreements regarding sensitive data.

translated that for you

Steve,

I assume you are saying that the only change is to WC from dealt. If so, this is very good news.

thanks for reposting but....

PS Steve, the bolded bit. its problem.

can you give a real reason as to why you will not listen to the players about WC?

Steve, the strike is about WC not the rake changes. I hope management realizes that. You just tried to ninja raise the rake thinking no one would notice. We aren't stupid bro.

People are willing to let WC go. But not without other concessions.

I really appreciate you update on the matter!
The way your post reads is a bit confusing though.

Yes, you do have the lowest rake of all sites
But in order to achive a decent RB you have to play a decent ammount on Stars (not complaing, but thats the way it is), so dont give us that puppy eyed look

Also, I do believe you that the rake-changes were meant to compensate for the switch to WC, BUT are you telling me now that because I complained to much I will only get to experience the bad sides of the planned changes?

The way your post reads right now is that you planned 2 major changes (switch to WC and a slight Rake reduction);
Now we have complained about beeing treated unfairly, you take back the rake reduction and tell us that this is what we wanted?

Steve, I know you have a tough job, your are the bearer of news for 2+2, and most news will be inherently considered bad and thus you will be the target for much warranted and unwarranted anger, but treating us like naughty children (OK, you complained about one thing, now we will take the other one away as well) wont help your employers cause!

I really am confident that Stars, given your record, does have the players in mind as well as their bottom line.

BUT telling us that we as a community are the reason that we are only getting the bad sides of the deal (WC) instead of some compensation (rake reduction) because we complained to much doesn't compute.

Your second announcement (scrape all changes, except WC), while not improving a worsened situation, at least gave us hope that you listen to us.

You coming in here now and basically telling us that its our own fault for complainig to much might not be an entirely accurate perception of mine, but with your latest post it surely reads that way!

Everybody attacking Stars needs to chill out and offer a reasonable solution.

IMO the biggest problem is the rake cap.

You cannot create any sense of equality when something is so far out of balance.

50NL has the same cap as 10,000NL.

It is such an obvious flaw.

Fix the incremental rake cap and many other things will be easier to resolve.

Current rake cap structure:



Better incremental structure:

.01-.02, .02-.05 .50 cap
.05-.10, .10-.25 1.00 cap
.25-.50, .50-1 1.50 cap
1-2 2.00 cap
2-4 2.50 cap
3-6, 5-10 3.00 cap

The lower stakes can't survive at the current rake cap structure.

If you don't want to lower the rake cap then you need higher VPPs for the lower limits to at least reward the high volume regulars and allow them to make a profit.

When you left us all of three days to see what the changes were before they were implemented is there any wonder that there were some knee-jerk reactions? Don't try and pin this on people being unreasonable. The whole problem with this stems from your company's handling of the situation. You had months to engage in a dialogue with people, why wait until now? Sorry Steve, but it is pathetic. For what it is worth I am supportive of the move from dealt to contributed, but you have to adjust the VIP Programme as well to ensure that Stars isn't the main beneficiary. Stars need to do better here.

Ofcourse

If a sng player pays exactly the same rake as a cash player why should he recieve less because the formats are slightly different?

also, higher buyin hypers please!

gl with the protest guys, i think the demands are reasonable.

well said

Just like the 10th anniversary promo We know what to expect down the road.... Garbage - Deal with this now or cancel WC changes as you did the rake reduction. WC has to GO.

or

lower vip status requirements by 20% .. wait you said you guys will make changes down the road? gtfo lieng scum. Your telling us "TAKE IT OR LEAVE IT". Well bye bye

Still waiting for comments on the euro multiplier

gee who would think good players playing 12-24x times the tables fish are playing would make games tough in the long run?

most of you guys sound like spoiled brats crying at 26 years old that your parents finally cut off your allowance.

What about 2% rake across the board...??

i mean surely the 10k NL and up will cover any money lost @ the mass tabled lower stakes (100k pot gives 2k rake) would cover any rake lost versus that lost at lower stake tables (currently capped @$2)?? thats 1 thousand 25NL cap max pots!!

and keep it dealt too... you might even make more this way from all high tables!!

just a thought... (i dont know how many hands at diff levels so im going on a tangent)