Hello,

as a chromeplayer who sometimes gets to silver this is just a bad change.

for example you get between 240-260 VPP a month :

old new Difference
240 244 4
241 244.5 3.5
242 245 3
243 245.5 2.5
244 246 2
245 246.5 1.5
246 247 1
247 247.5 0.5
248 248 0
249 248.5 -0.5
250 249 -1
251 249.5 -1.5
252 250 -2
253 250.5 -2.5
254 251 -3
255 251.5 -3.5
256 252 -4
257 252.5 -4.5
258 253 -5
259 253.5 -5.5
260 264 4

as soon as you start a new step you are losing your extra points which you received for every 5th step (4 x 20 + 1 x 22) so at step 12 you earned 10 x 20 fpp + 2 x 22 fpp = 244 FPP

So as I see it the change is breakeven at this level until 8 points into a new level.

If you extrapolate that you can say that for every extra 10 % FPP you get you can play 20 % clear of a new step without losing money in comparison to now.

so if you get 400 FPP : you are break even up to 80% in each level.

right ?

please correct me if I'm wrong.

Pavlov's dogs still salivated when their rewards went to 0%.

SchelleXL and all,

I made an easy spreadsheet, you just have to answer how many VPPs you earned in the month to see how much FPPs you'll have in the next month.

I didn't understand what you said unfortunately. Except for:"If you extrapolate that you can say that for every extra 10 % FPP you get you can play 20 % clear of a new step without losing money in comparison to now."

Yes, you can say that.

As I said, it's simple.

Thank you for your table. But I can see that there we can calculate number of unlocked FPPs. But what about FPPs, that i really get?

P.S. As I know Silver status begins with 500VPP accumulated not with 700 as you made in a table.

After long and deep thoughted consideration and analysis of this change, I have come to the following conclusion: POO

It calculates the sum of the total: unlocked steps/fpps + the 50% mid-stage step.

I used the table that PS provided at http://www.pokerstars.uk/vip/steps

This. Welcome to Amaya world. If you want to succeed , you have to become a hardcore gambler with no life.

I cant really understand. Do i get 50% bounty of my FPP for uncomplete step? Or for all steps that was on my way to uncoplete star? So, if I can get 2500 to get Gold, but cant achive Platinum, do I lose half of my FPP on my way Gold to Platinum? Or just half of FPP of my last month step on that way?

I really suggest to you to read carefully http://www.pokerstars.uk/vip/steps

it will just chase players away to other sites as well or make them quit but then Amaya are trying to buy Bwin which really annoys me, oh were going to offer you worse and worse deals and you cant do anything because we will buy out all the competition so you have nowhere else to go.

Guess I could start playing life but then theyd probably buy the casino show up and urinate on me just for kicks.

888 buying Bwin not Amaya

I think you might be surprised. The impression I get from Unibet (and it's probably going to be true with FTP's new 'Player's Club' too) is that casual players really like short-term goals that are fairly easy to achieve, even if the rewards might seem lousy to the "serious" players that have done the maths.

I wouldn't be surprised if the number of SNE chasers goes down when they find out just how much their rakeback will be cut next year, but the Steps system might encourage many more people to reach lower levels like Chrome and SilverStar. Steps seem like a good motivator for low-volume players, and Stars is probably banking on regs sticking with them anyway.
It's still a money-grab, of course, but what isn't? Businesses can only exist and grow by extracting money from their customers, ldo.

Last I heard Amaya were trying to buy Bwin but had not confirmed they had, I guess there has been news since.

you miss something arty, I am pretty sure if a player currently makes $120,000 a year and changes stars bring in reduce his earnings to $100,000 a year most players in that category would probably stay on.

However I have spoken to a few Snes, and its not my place to say who so I won't but two of them I know Make about $65000 if changes knocked that down to $40000 not sure if they would stay.

Plus a lot of high volume players have low margins changes that significantly reduce player rewards or up the rake etc, could actually turn them into losing players.

if the marginal profitable players quit the trafffic drops further as higher winners cant get the same win rate and quit.

you also have to take into account future changes, a 5% reduction in vip program for example and to be clear if they do make reductions i see it been worse then that.

a 5% reduction would not really seem like a huge deal on the face of it. However it is a massive deal, you have to consider 5% the next year and 5% the following year.

my situation is if stars make significant changes playing the games I have trained towards, will become unfeasible because with the very large variance already reducing my win rate might make the variance to large to justify the meager returns.

I already know I can make alright money on Ipoker, so significant changes would just send me there and there are many others that would go elsewhere. I don't want to go to Ipoker I hate there software oh man do i hate there software.

However I would easier money less variance less profit potential hence why i stick with stars mostly but change the system and you change that.

Of course amaya might buy out Ipoker but it misses the point if it becomes unrealistic for me to ever be able to grind out $40000 pro rata then theres not much point me going forward with this seriously.

I like poker so probs would not quit but i usually run up rake of at least $500 a month and way things are going if unhindered thats going to get significantly more soon.

if i stop playing on serious basis that wont even pass $50.

oh yeah and also it takes at least 20 casual players to make up for one reg, in terms of rake revenue not to mention games not running if not regs to start them.

people who lose money from the game are not a bottomless pit, at best you might get a casual to silverstar if sufficiently motivated. but think it through for gold star in the uk anyway a you have to spend $500 in rake a month.

assuming 6 handed table and 50/50 split between regs and casuals and other 3 other regs make 2% post rake with 5% rake. rake been $1.

then the casuals now need to pay out there rake the regs rake and the regs win rate. I guess we could just pair each casual to one reg to make that simple they have to lose another 7% on top of there 2% rake.

so $19+1=$20.

9% of 20= $1.80.

$1.80*500=$900.

I know there are not games that are $19+1 I am just trying to make the figures simpler.

fact is few casual players can afford to dump $900 a month, regardless of incentives.

you need to attract and retain at least 20+ casuals for each reg you lose, significantly reducing the vip program will lose a lot of regs.

it would be bad for business just hope amaya see that.

I think you used the table wrong. in fact you need to get 7500 vpps to make platinumstar. it seems to me that in your table you need to make 100+500+2500+7500 (as for chrome+silver+gold+platinum). I don't have time now but I can make a deeper look at the table and formula you used and try to find out better how to do will let you know. although I haven't read last couple pages of posts so it might be already solved. will get to it tomorrow.

indeed his table is wrong because of the reason you said.

Big deal to be honest that's not harsh at all

It's kind of off topic for this thread, but the subject comes up repeatedly. Poker isn't a "guaranteed income for life" any more. Poker sites have to pay higher taxes than they used to, so rake has to go up, or rewards have to be lowered, in order for profit margins to stay the same even if the same level of traffic is maintained.
As players' edges get smaller, more and more current winners will find they have better options outside of poker. It's just a basic reality that some grinders will be "forced" out of the market, in the same way that people in other careers have to find new jobs because their industry has changed.
As Sect alluded to earlier, Stars is trying to get the balance right, such that they don't lose too much traffic, and they are in a sense guessing what is the correct rake/reward ratio that maximises their profit in a changing market. If a thousand regs get caught in the crossfire, and end up having to get "proper jobs", that's sad for them, but Pokerstars isn't a charity.
The boom is over, so if you're in poker for the money, you probably need to revise your income projections downwards, adapt or work harder to maintain the same income, or take your skills along another career path. No one likes being told they are getting a pay cut, but it's usually better than being told "You're fired".
/derail

Add to this that Stars wouldn't be unhappy to see some winning players move away. They now have their own tools to replace the rake generated by high volume players that would leave. Not sure that iPoker rooms would welcome so much those players as they are running their SBR ... to limit regs vs recs

Thanks

Every time you enter in a new level you reset the "step counter" to the level 1 for the next level, and I was considering the table making the steps linear.

I'll be working on it today.

edit:

I'll try to add a comparison table with the current VIP system.

One positive to note is that you will hit the higher multiple step at the same time you hit a 100k VPP milestone, so that works nicely.

Same with SNE, when you hit 1m you will clear your 5th 25k VPP step, although in between they won't always sync up so nicely.

FYI my FPPs have stopped increasing and I'm not seeing anything in the lobby at all with regards to the Steps yet. And nothing extra in the VIP Store or bonuses.

On a Mac, latest version of Pokerstars.uk

Every single new from Amayastars is a kick in the regs's balls.

I hope someday regs get tired and kick back. I'm a half step to move to Ipoker.

I still don't get how a step works. How do I know how much VPP I have to generate to release said VPP?

I'm currently silver, and my steps are 150 each. How do I know how many sitngoes I need to play to release them? There is no indicator on how many VPP I have to play. It can't be 150, as you have the multiplier..

hi guys I have already completed one of the steps. been active, etc.

ok its crud I am going to email stars about this you cant click the status bar and see how many you need.

when you do get enough for a step you do get the ffps.