the last half is the hardest half

I have a question about the levels. In the previous VIP program,: "Once you reach a VIP level, you instantly receive all the benefits that level has to offer for the remainder of the month AND the month following it."

So for example, so I accrue 700 VPPs in August. Does that mean that the first 100 VPPs get converted to FPPs at 1.0x and the remaining 600 get converted at 1.5x?

In the VIP Steps system, how does this work? If I accrue 700 VPPs in August, does this mean that the first 100 get converted to FPPs at the Bronze level, the next 500 get converted at the Chrome level, and the remaining 100 get converted at the Silver level? This implies that it requires 700 VPPs to reach the Silver level (much higher than the 500 required before!)

First 500 VPPs multiply by 1.0 (chromestar doesn't multiply by 1.5 and never did afaik, next x VPPs multiply by 1.5 to FPPs (unless you reach Gold). the following month, as you already are a Silverstar, all your VPPs (unless you reach Gold+) will be multiplied by 1.5 to FPPs.

if I'm getting it right, the last paragraph you wrote is not the concern of these changes. the VPPs needed to reach statuses shouldn't change, or well, not that I'd read of that anywhere.

I gave up on my spreadsheet, because it have a lot of rules for if else's loops for Excel. I thought building a little program, but I have to recall all my programming knowledge. That will take some time if I work on this calculator...

Step by step, oh, baby, gonna get to you, girl - New Kids on the Block

Human psychology 101

I think one thing people keep missing in these discussions, is casual players can only afford to lose so much.

to achieve gold star for example in the UK one would need to spend $500 a month on rake.

if your a losing player your not just paying for your losing money at a rate which would allow other players to profit after rake so if they played heads up sngs for example by the time they achieved gold star they are at least $1000 down.

Most casual players will play a few $10 games a week or something and lose slowly it does not matter what incentives you put out there, Most players will only become regulars if they can at the very least beat the standard.

its not just a money thing either its also a time thing a casual player is unlikely to spend 20+ hours a week playing.

most will play an hour or two a week or something like that.

if they lose $10 a week and a large amount of that is lost to the game not the rake then that $10 has just paid the rake for the other regs and keeps the money coming.

Stars in theory would get more out of the casuals if the regs all quit, but it would take much much longer. and turned into an annual ongoing basis theyd be losing.

I know what I mean I probably suck at explaining it.

Can anyone who's opted in confirm that they have a PT4 zoom HUD working?

Yep, working for me (but only after updating to latest version of PT4).

No, zoom HUD stopped working with the update. Sent pokertracker my log files yesterday and waiting for a reply.

Cheers. I've updated but still not working at 100z so must be something my end.

You were correct two years ago. You are not anymore. Poker players keep thinking poker. Rooms think gaming today.

A year ago, Pokerstars was getting revenues (rake) of an average of $122 per real money customer per quarter. In Quarter 2 in 2015, it had risen to $132 per player per quarter.

It's somewhat miraculous in a "declining industry", but Stars is apparently gaining new customers, and squeezing more out of them than before. The money pit might not be 'bottomless', but it's pretty deep.

The above doesn't necessarily mean new customers unless there is a stat to prove that. Just means that they are taking more in or have cut costs enough to increase profitability.

Does anybody have a link to what the real %'s are for each of the vip level? I keep searching the web and the forum but can only find what the pokerstars has on their website which is never accurate.

thanks

I wouldn't take any stat that's produced by a company that had its stock double 2 weeks prior to buying Stars seriously.

I mean stats can show whatever the holder wants. Does that mean that per new customer? Rebuyer? Current customer?

The stat you quoted doesn't make sense exactly... The first paragraph seems to indicate an average per customer yet the second indicates a new customer.

Thanks for all the feedback and input. I’ll try and address some of the questions, clarify some points, and try and add a little more perspective on VIP Steps.

- VIP STEPS will be rolled out to all players in the UK on October 1st and to all players in all countries on January 1st, 2016. Note that the best-testing and rollout in UK is for us to receive feedback on the VIP Step mechanic so that we can make changes and improvements between now and January 1st.
- In 2015, all players in the UK will earn more FPPs under VIP Steps than they would have otherwise. To be more specific, every 5th Step this year rewards 10% more FPPs for ChromeStar+ VIPs, and rewards 20% more FPPs for BronzeStar VIPs. Next year the 5th Step will still be larger, but we do not know the exact values at this time.
- VIP Steps are designed to be completed within a few sessions for most players, especially at the lower statuses. For BronzeStar VIPs, each Step currently requires 5 VPPs. For ChromeStar, 25 VPPs, etcetera. Supernova Steps require 5,000 VPPs and Supernova Elite require 25,000 VPPs.
- There are 20 BronzeStar Steps, 25 ChromeStar, 25 SilverStars, 30 GoldStar, 110 PlatinumStar, and 200 Supernova Steps.
- Bronze players start on Bronze Step 1. When they’ve completed 20 Steps, they will be on ChromeStar Step 5. When they reach 500 mVPP, they will be on SilverStar Step 6. A player who begins the month as SilverStar will be on SilverStar Step 1. Once they complete 25 Steps they will be on GoldStar Step 11. Supernovas will start out in January on Supernova Step 1.
- Note that all of the above VPP requirements are based on the UK rollout. We may make changes to the Step VPP requirements for rollout on January 1st.

The primary motivation behind VIP Steps is to increase visibility and engagement with the VIP Club. There are two primary indicators that tell us that players are not as engaged with the VIP Club as we would like them to be:
- A high number of players indicate in player surveys a lack of understanding about the VIP Club. For example, in a recent survey only 31% of Bronze and Chrome players indicated that they earn FPPs for real money play.
- Every month a high number of players fall just short of achieving or maintaining a status. For example, in a recent month, we had 20,000 players earn between 90 and 100 VPPs, over 10,000 players earned between 450 and 500 VPPs, 1,000 earned between 2,400 and 2,500 VPPs, and over 600 between 7,000 and 7,500 VPPs. An important feature of VIP Steps are notifications and alerts to tell players when they are close to maintaining or achieving a new status and how much time is remaining to complete their Steps.

With VIP Steps, we believe that more players will be engaged with VIP Club by giving them a means to accomplish a goal that most players at lower statuses can complete within a session or two as well as giving them the information needed to achieve monthly statuses.

There has been a lot of discussion concerning the 50% penalty for incomplete Steps at the end of the month for BronzeStar thru PlatinumStar statuses and at the end of the year for Supernova and Supernova Elite statuses.

First some clarifications on exactly how it will work:
- In 2015, players in the UK will receive no penalty for an incomplete Step.
- Beginning January 1st, SN and SNE will receive 50% of the value of an incomplete Step only at the end of the year, not every month. This is similar to the year-end targets of Stellar and Milestone rewards.
- Beginning January 1st, BronzeStar thru PlatinumStar players will receive 50% of the value of an incomplete Step at the end of the month.
- Some examples:
o A BronzeStar player finishes on Step 6 with 28 monthly VPPs. Step 6 requires 5 VPPs to complete and rewards 5 FPPs. This player has completed 3 of the 5 VPPs required. The prorated value is 3 FPPs (3/5*5) and he earns 50% of the prorated value, or 1.5 FPPs. In total for the month the player receives 27.5 FPPs.
o A SilverStar player finishes the month on Step 10 with 999 VPPs, 1 VPP short of completing SilverStar Step 10. The player has completed 9 SilverStar Steps receiving 1365 FPPs. For the 10th Step, this player would receive 99/100 * 165 * 50% = 81.675 FPPs so the 50% penalty is 81.675 FPPs. In total on the month, he receives 1,446.675 FPPs.
o A Supernova player finishes 2016 on Step 90 with 4,999 VPPs towards completing a Step with a 19,250 FPP reward. In this worst case, a player would lose out on 9,623 FPPs.
o For the UK this year, a GoldStar player who earns 2,500 VPPs would receive 5,100 VPPs as compared to 5,000 with the current system with FPP multiplier of 2 (a 2% increase as some players have posted in this thread).
- All players will receive a warning nudge at the end of the month to notify them how much time is remaining to complete the current Step and explains that only 50% of the value will be rewarded for incomplete Steps. Similar to Stellar and Milestone Rewards , we expect some players to stop playing once they complete a Step near the end of the month and that some players will continue to play more to try and complete their next step.

Many in this thread indicate that this mechanism is purely a means to save on expenses. I understand this sentiment and I understand that players want to know how much their rewards will be. However, there is a difference between the mechanism in how we distribute rewards and the actual rewards themselves. Having an end date for the progress bar is an important component to engage players by giving them a goal. As we finalize VIP rewards for 2016, we will be incorporating the value of each Step, the increase in value of every 5th Step, along with the 50% penalty for the last Step to achieve the rakeback percentages that we want to target for each Status.

Having said this, we are still working through our VIP Club rewards for 2016. As some have indicated in this thread, we have previously announced that we plan on making significant changes to VIP Club rewards in 2016. This remains true and we are continuing to evaluate the details of the changes which we hope to be able to announce in October.

Thanks,

Matthew
Head of VIP Club

The quarterly report claimed an increase in unique visitors and deposits. Whether we believe the report is another thing, as the numbers were pretty dazzling.

"9% increase in real money customer registrations" in Q2 2015 compared to Q2 2014.

Source: http://www.amaya.com/wp-content/uplo...r-Website1.pdf on the 7th page.

It still seems complex to me.
Any idea how much value I will lose/gain as someone who wants to reach Supernova in order to buy cash bonuses? Let that be the lowest tier supernova.

Thanks for your reply, Matthew.
Not that it's my problem, but in some chart of VIP steps which I recently opened, I only see 80 steps for Supernova Elite players. does this mean that after 2M VPPs you don't plan to award them with FPPs or is it just a lack of lines in the table which I've got? you also didn't mention number of steps for SNE players, which also makes me think a little that this might be true

for everyone, I'm trying to make a .xls file which counts FPPs based on current system and the announced future one but I'm stuck now, might take a while.

I'm almost happy to not be able to play on Stars anymore. My head would explode from Mathew's post.

Duklaak - iFor the UK launch, we have Steps built in up to 4M VPPs. They essentially are endless and we'll have more for January launch, but we don't expect anyone from UK to exceed the 4M. If so, we'll add more Steps.

Fishtanks - if you are in the UK, you will not lose any value this year (actually you will gain up to 2% more depending on what Steps are start and end at). In terms of next year, we'll know details in October.

Matthew

Makes a lot of sense.

I don't really feel like rooting about in the settings - is there a way to return to stellar awards, rather than steps being visible in the lobby?

okay, this specific player would lose 9,623 FPPs in this last step, but compared to the old (still active) VPP/FPP system they're still earning more (as every 5th step grants them with extra FPPs) so for 17 "bonus" steps they've successfully achieved they're getting 17*1750 extra FPPs which in total makes them get over 20k more FPPs than they'd get in 2015 anyway.

I think this is what you should point out, Matt, when talking to those, who are complaining that they'll get less would be worse if it happened to them at 25th step (-2.6k fpps compared to 2015) but with more and more steps they're getting it better and better and basically once they reachieve Supernova they are almost freerolling for FPPs here.

Thanks for the feedback Matthew.

Changing all the system in a win-win situation is great for players and for the company. But really, you (Pokerstars) needs to improve your communication with us.

== off-topic addressed to Matthew, relevant though ==

As other players said and follow the history of this poker room more accurately than me, when Pokerstars make some change (or planning to) is followed by a wave of negative comments, to be "solved" in a feedbacks like yours.

This particular situation wouldn't be so tragic if you had written what I highlighted in your post. "So, my 1 million will turn just to 500.000?" "These numbers are changing as your rewards will be changed too" it's different than "Oh yeah! You'll lose, but it's not like that, it's part of our reward system!".

Maybe Pokerstars have a PR team, make them work. It's very easy to us users to talk negatively, the test didn't even started when Dylan made the announcement! At Pokernews, for example, they quoted me in an article in August 31st as a very negative response to the future implementation.

So in a short term could mean anything, but in the long run you can see some results. After the implementation in 2016 I strongly suggest for you to post (and make the PR team work with poker news sites) positive results from the players view (yes, it's more engaging and you have an increasing traffic).