the german thread is awesome...u can tell that "they are mad"...

Definitely sucks if u have to pay for champagne and expensive hotels urself now in order to keep ur golddigger around 😂😂😂

to be honest, i didn't read the whole thread, so i'm not sure if i got all the details (e.g. someone was referring, that not only future bonuses were affected). so far i don't think it's an outrage, but like i said, idk all the details.

the whole economy changed over the last years, and strategy just adapts. obviously idk the numbers, so i can't tell how much money they receive, and how they split it in terms of paying back.

e.g. it would be 'fair', that if the top tier players are raking in x% of the affiliates income, they should receive roughly x% of the bonuses. as far as i understand, the vips got too much and now it will be split differently. ... if this a 'fact' or just a 'claim' from strategy - idk.

personally i think, strategy has the right to change their system and no one should be surprised. BUT .... i can understand, why a lot of ppl are upset. an affiliate isn't a normal business. if you signed up with them, it isn't like you can just walk away b/c if you keep grinding, the affiliate makes money.

This is a huge scam (probably in the 6-digits area) and certainly not "okay".

Pokerstrategy changed their T&C retroactively and contradicted official statements regarding the suit and the events - that has been made just one month ago to make this scam possible!

Since this was a management decision from Playtech (who is well known for their false RNGs and botting), they know exactly what they do and probably have the best laywers.

It has obviously nothing to do with the poker economy. Playtech saves some expenses while still earning more through the life-long affiliates, nothing special really.

the main critics are about the following:
pokerstrategy's always promoted its highest status "BlackMember" a lot. One thing u get is a made-to-measure suit when achieving the 500k Strategypoints. Another part are those BlackMember-Events.

So there are a lot of people out there who already achieved these 500k points (and "earned" there suit) but now just get nothing. Pokerstrategy got paid in the past and now refuses fulfilling their promises.
This is nothing but a clear-cut Scam (as if I take your money and don't fulfill my part of the agreement, whatever it is)

Noone is complaining about the company changing their strategy or whatever, but they can only stop offering things in the future, they can't take back "contracts" they closed in the past.


The other big point people are complaining about is the communication from the company to its community:
There are statements made by pokerstrategy-employees just a few hours before this thread started telling people that they don't have to hurry or book some kind of tailor-events to get their suit. Moreover they told in some other threads that there will be more events coming in the secoond half of the year etc which is just a ridiculous lie (or a sick failure of company communication)

Sry for my English, lot of non-everyday-words in there. I hope it's still enough that u get the points (especially the German) pokerstrategy Members are complaining about

6 digits? easy 7 digits!

Could not resist

Don't be ridiculous.
See above.

It has everything to do with the poker economy. It's regrettable that training sites, content publishers and affiliates are having to make cutbacks, and "serious grinders" are being hit hardest, but it's a simple fact that the poker economy is going through a very tough period.

After first collections of data it is pretty certain, that pokerstrategy scammed its members for claims at least worth 6 digits.

It's obvious that poker economy is going through a tough time and they have to cut services, nobody is complaining about that and everybody was kinda foreseeing those kind of events.
What everybody is outraged about is, that hundreds of members have outstanding claims they have raked for in the past and the "goods" and services they were supposed to get in return were promised to them (in case of the suit for "unlimited amount of time") in the past. Nobody expects pokerstrategy to continue their VIP program, it is only expected that they fullfill outstanding services to their members which they are not doing claiming that they can "cut services and promises whenever they want".

Additionally they do not publish a news on their website on that topic on their website but rather just inform black members in the community forum and via an email newsletter and they already deleted 100s of posts in the different forums of pokerstrategy informing other people about the developments. They are certainly oppressing information trying to avoid any further damage and trying to avoid further people to know the truth about all this. This may sound like unfounded conspiracy talk but sadly it is not.

This is obviously not the reason, they made this thread. It was a management decision to cut expenses and the forum team was told to post it this very day and thus they had to provide an explanation (which is indeed ridiculous if u may read it) to disguise this huge scam.

I decided to crosspost a brief summary of the sitaution posted by Black Member Nervermore earlier today. The following post has been censored by pokerstrategy as soon as it was crossposted from the german to the english forum so i think this illustrates the kind of atmosphere prevalent in the forums there atm. Anyway, here is what BM Nervermore had to say towards this issue:

Hi all,
I’m part of the German Pokerstrategy-Community and Black Member since 2010. I wanted to share some thoughts with regards to the topic at hand. I can only speak for myself but I understand that my feelings are widely shared among members of the German community.
First of all, it is within Pokerstrategy’s rights to change the conditions of the Black Member status and its benefits (suit, event-tickets, travel-tokens) as of now. This is to a certain degree understandable given the changes to the poker-ecology, although there are good reasons to doubt that this is a good business-decision and that the situation is as bad as they want us to believe. Nevertheless, there is nothing legally or morally wrong with changing the conditions from now on.
Secondly, and this is the major issue, Pokerstrategy is also changing the conditions retroactively with regards to (at least) hundreds of benefits that have been earned in the past. This applies to all suits, event-tickets and travel-tokens that have been earned but not redeemed prior to the announcement. I quote the German representative of ps.com HannesZ: “[due to changes to the poker-ecology] it is not possible for us offer an event for all currently held tickets and neither is it possible that every Black Member receives his/her suit”. As you probably know they offer a 100k raffle as compensation. There are, however, well over 1000 Black Member across all communities and many have multiple claims (suit, tickets, tokens) valued around 500$ each. We can only guess, of course, but even conservative estimates suggest that ps.com is effectively scamming us for a total amount in the six-digit range. Crucially, the argument that this is a necessary concession due changes in the poker-ecology is fundamentally flawed. Those benefits were earned under the old conditions, Pokerstrategy continued to advertise with them and it is their obligation to make sure that their model is economically viable, meaning they should have made accruals in order to be able to pay for those claims in the future. The fact that they apparently didn’t do so but instead allowed for hundreds of further claims to be earned is their mistake which they expect us to pay for. The German community is determined to not let them get away with that.
Furthermore, representatives of ps.com have made certain promises in the past few months which are now clearly broken. One member explicitly asked whether the claim to the Black Member suit will expire at any time and the answer was that it doesn’t. Moreover, the offer was made to claim the suit independently of attending an event. Now that all available events are booked, this offer has been retracted. Finally, it was promised that a second wave of events for 2015 would be announced in February/March – this has now been retracted as well. Pokerstrategy has not provided any constructive answer with regards to all those issues, I’ll quote the last statement by HannesZ because it is particularly revealing: “We can at any time change or cancel events from one day to another. How, when, where, why, for how many SPs, etc events are organised are at any time subject to our discretion. This and also the suit have not been contractually-guaranteed to you. It is therefore at any time and without any deadline possible for us to discontinue these benefits from one day to another.” There is, of course, more to say about this but I’ll leave it at that for now. If you want to discuss this issue with the German community feel free to post [in the respective thread*]

*added by poster

thats so awesom!!!

If you play on ipoker through pokerstrategy, even if you changed skins so that you aren't affiliated to PS anymore, they still get your rake. It's actually kind of a brilliant move.

It's also unlikely a mass exit of pokerstars players will happen either because rewards change.

Not really the best idea to piss off a community you purchased a year ago for 21 million but it probably gets them out of the red a lot quicker.

Furthermore, after the original discussion thread in the english forum got closed I decided to open a new thread to make sure that the english community of Pokerstrategy has still a chance to discuss these recent changes. (See screenshot)

The whole thread was removed within minutes...i think it is outrageous how pokerstrategy is censoring criticism towards their policies as well as open discussion about their fragile poker ecology argument. They are liars, scammers and cheats...and I am saying this as a member who has over 5k posts in the german forums, is a pokerstrategy member for over 9 years now and was always a loyal defender of the site as long as it was legit to be one. I am not directly affected by the Black Member changes but i think that it is completely inappropriate how this company developed in recent years and is currently treating valued customers. My decision was not taken lightly but i decided to stop playing tracked, move all my community activities elsewhere and I advise everyone to stay away from them as well...Furthermore I belive that this kind of behaviour harms poker and affilaite businesses in general and sites should consinder ending their partnership with this playtech company...



R.I.P. Pokerstrategy...

i raked ****ing 7 years for that site.
i loved pokerstrategy...in some days it changed to pure hate.
hope they burn ipokerstrategy down.

I am wondering if there is any way to get pokerstrategy to untrack an account? After discovering their true nature I don't want to be no part of their business anymore. Can I get out of this contract somehow and have them untrack my stars account? I would rather let stars have that % of my rake also.

Not possible already tried that.

is there already a skype channel to maybe organize a class-action lawsuit?

Tis is fairly good tbf 😂😂😂

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KBiyf0aG57g

this is so good. sums it up nicely

thx for updates ... i guess if you and others keep posting itt, some news outlets will cover the story

Fixed screenshot

They always gave off money grabbing whore vibe with their fake niceness. Not surprising at all that they **** people over when money begins getting tight.

Hi all -

I´m posting here on behalf of PokerStrategy.com.

We have indeed made a big mistake with the solution towards the Black Member suits, where the number of options to have the suit tailored was too low. We have already prepared a solution and apologized to all affected PokerStrategy.com members.

How we approached this and the related communication was a mistake for which we are very sorry. We cannot compensate for the disappointment related to the original error and related drop in confidence towards us.

We can only apologize and prepare a solution. That is already in progress.

Kind regards and apologies!