I dont think those rake numbers touch on the most important point and that is who gets the rake reduction ie recreational or professional, and those who play more or those who play less etc..

Damn. I have 230,000 fpps now. was planning to cash out an extra 4000 in June. Now I have to cash out 3,200 and wait. No biggies I guess. Rather like the change overall.

Hmm Lee, I still have in mind what you said a couple of months ago. You said you had never heard of TableNinja. Seriously, how did you make it so far within Pokerstars without knowing that? I suppose you have been working for Pokerstars for a long time because your 2+2 account was created in 2003.

Also, you shoudn't have mentioned that you were on vacation. We know that you can afford to go on vacation; PS makes hundreds of thousands of bucks every single day in pure profit.

Anyway, a rake decrease in the dying limit game is always welcome with open arms. PLO would have been better and 100 more expensive for you, but I keep faith that you are working on It.

Last but not least, perhaps 88% of the players paid 1/4 of a big blind less; however, my rakeback got decreased by over 30% in order to help finance your vacation.

Sorry for picking out on you, but I coudn't resist.

Can I ask for some clarification on the maths used to get these figures please?

I dont think anybody doubts that the rake paid (as in, total money taken from the tables) has decreased compared to last year with the new changes. But when we talk about 'effective rake,' which you specifically mention, we are taking about rake paid minus rakeback ie. the total amount I pay to PokerStars to play poker there. So, for example, the rate at which you considered FPP to be worth would be important in the second scenario, but would mean nothing in the first. The quote you reference from PS Steve seems to constrain itself to rake paid and NOT 'effective rake,' which leads me to believe that the numbers you posted are also not 'effective rake' either.

All players care about is 'effective rake.' If a site charges twice the rake of Stars but offers everyone 100% RB, you can trump out your 'we take less rake' argument all you want, but everyone would be playing over on that site.


Well, actually when the original announcement was made on 28th Dec, Stars only stated the second point - that 'Rake percentages and caps are being set such that we expect a small overall decrease in site rake assuming that play remains the same..' ie. There will be a 1% decrease in rake. References to the VIP club were using words such as 'balanced' or 'fair' and not 'decreased.' Feel free to go back and reread the post. It was only after most 2p2ers got up in arms about the fact that this was clearly word play and misrepresentation that a later post here on 1st Jan from Steve admitted that there would be a reduction of 1.5-2% reduction in VIP rewards.' Thus, the DiR post you quote and attempt to refute is perfectly accurate as to what happened in the sense that original posts from Stars misrepresented the truth.

Further, if I am correct (given the post you refer to and that no method information was provided, I believe I am) in assuming that your table is actually a 'reduction in rake' rather than a 'reduction in effective rake' table - then this statement that you made

is misleading and false.


Generally, I think this whole debacle raises two main issues. The first is that the rake is too high - thats obviously a big issue in its own right. But the second is that people dont like 'having the wool pulled over their eyes.' If your version of events was true - that in the first announcement Stars came fully clean with the 1% and 2% figures - there would not have been nearly as much uproar. The fact that big companies use language to paint their actions in a better light is not groundbreaking - an obvious simple example would be companies using the word 'average' and using whichever metric (mean, median or mode) suited their argument better. 'We' (meaning 2p2ers) believed Stars were above that. But the events of Dec/Jan proved otherwise and were something we would have expected of less reputable companies.

And THAT is why I have written this long post. Because I feel to quote the post you did by DiR and prevent the version of events you did cheapens the point he was making. We can argue about rake all we want, but you cant also ignore that many players who were long time Stars fan boys are now actively rooting against you and hoping another site comes along that they can give their business to.

^^ What he said. And seriously, how many scummy posts are you guys going to make in your PR campaign to mislead players about what happened?

+1 great post by Perfection.

I expect this sort of ninja'ing around with the numbers from most companies, but I always thought stars was better than this.

When you offer up charts like the one in OP it makes you look bad to anyone with a brain.

Using a chart that has no bearing on whether rake was increased or decreased to lead people to believe it was decreased is ridiculous.

We don't need charts or graphs. Just a sentence following this formula:

Effective rake was (increased/decreased) by (Percentage here).

I have a solution, im not sure how great lol but cant we increase our rakeback% via promotion of pokerstars. This would be on top of normal VIP stuff and i guess would need someone at stars to track this but if 5000 no name professional online players had the opportunity to help promote like team online but not to the same degree couldn't we get extra rakeback percentages?

Lee

First of all it is good to see Stars listening and I am pleased you have redressed the rake increase placed on 1/2 and 2/4 fixed limit holdem from January, that is fair and I'm glad you recognised it, that is appreciated.

However as a whole the rake remains way too high and especially for the micro and lower limits. A rake reduction would be offset somewhat by less vpp's/fpp's being rewarded per hand to the players.

The 6max pickup after 4 rounds is a good change that was suggested and implemented.

Great move with the fpps bonuses stars. It just = more money in the pool for all. I like those changes.

also +1 perfection

Good changes for FPPS. Thanks!

The FPP changes, the 6 max pick up, and the tweak for LHE are all positive changes. Glad to see them implimented. GJ

Thanks for the FPP changes. I'm quite happy to see the overall 60-75% FPP requirements considering I suggested more like 40-50% to offset the loss of bonus frequency for the worst WC related VPP reductions reported in the forums, along with improving on the lengthy wait times for the lowest tiered players.

This definitely exceeds that and should help bring more liquidity back to the games instead of having warehoused FPPs sitting in accounts. I think it should also maintain more satellite value for recreational players which is definitely a good thing for them -- I for one am done with converting FPPs to T$ in the Storm 235s now that I can cash in every month instead of every 2.5 months.

Good changes but I think Bronze players should be allowed to get the 25$ bonus.