Exactly

But even further, a year from now. People will go bananas over stars cutting RB from 5% to 1%.

Talking about how sweet the chests were when they were first released.

Year later RB is actually reversed. Its -15%. Stars will actually send you a bill once a month, from the rake you "owe" them.

Still, regs wont leave

An easier way to accomplish the same effect would be to increase the rake and start giving more rewards to net depositors.

Amaya isn't in the bidniz of logic bro

Poker Stars runs so smoothly .
10 yrs of player input has helped create a great poker site .
Stop playing for a few months and you will get a reload bonus offer.
MAYBE.

I strongly consider software like HUDs and Sharky, tableninja etc. an angle because it involves elements not related to the core of poker skill: to handle your opponents with your own brain power. For me it's like a bicycle race where half of players use diesel engines to push pedals faster. I guess we differ on that. And I won't even mention stables and other mechanism which are just exterminating the fish at a worryingly fast rate.

As for Amaya, they didn't increase rake, they are cutting down rakeback. Like every other business decision they make they will reap the rewards or count the losses in the end. You are not in any business relationship with Amaya, you are one of their many million customers, so you can just vote with your wallet and leave. Trust me, every decision a business owner makes is more risky to him then to his customers.

I live in an average economy, I think in its strength is even closer to Sweden then to Belarus and to young people in my country poker can be an excellent source of income which is so lovely. I mentioned my friend as a motivation (it's around 5k$ monthly, no taxes paid) because here I see such a depressing mentality- 80% of people that post here are so entitled and cynical and whiny, having no idea how real world functions. Poker will be profitable as long as humans play other humans. It seems that one ***** pokerclient is the whole thing their career is based on, no wonder you feel like rats on a sinking ship.

I agree that playing poker without rake would be THE best idea for all poker players, but I wonder who would provide this free for you. You know what, why don't you make a poker client for scratch and then invite me and others to play there and make a living, of course make it rake free. I can thank you with a postcard from Hawaii.
You should grow out of your socialist fantasies of freebies which "greedy" business owners deny you the right to use.

Party poker is offering 40+ % of rakeback, they award high volume, they allow HUDs (they don't but they do so what are you waiting for?!

Anyone having problems with these since the server restart?

Cutting down rakeback = rake increase. They are literally the same thing.

No they are really not. However it is easy to see it this way if you are blinded by a sense of entitlement.

A poker site publishes the cost of using their services, it's called rake. Some sites choose to spend some of the money they take in to attract and retain customers. That can take the form advertising, new player/reload bonuses, targeted promotions, loyalty programs, vip programs, or if it's tied directly to the amount of rake paid then it's known as rakeback. However the site chooses to spend this money and how much it chooses to spend is a calculated business decision. The measurement of wether this is a good business decision or a bad one is if incremental revenue realized is greater than the dollars spent on the program.

If your sole reason for playing on PokerStars was the amount of direct rakeback you recieved then the decision you have to make is quite clear. PokerStars has made a business decision that spending their promotion/player retention budget on direct rakeback is no longer a good investment of that money. If direct rakeback is just one of many factors you use to evaluate a poker site then the decision to continue playing or not is more complicated.

If you are one of those players for whom direct rakeback is the only or at least the main reason to play, then you also should be considering the direct and indirect messaging that PokerStars has been sending out. That message is pretty clear, they see this type of customer as being detremental to their buisness. Again if this describes you then this should make your decision pretty easy.

PokerStars has made a buisness decision that is based on the belief that the majority of their customers fall into the category that sees direct rakeback is only one of several factors in their playing decision. That the elimination of direct rakeback can be offset by other factors such as quality of software, size of player base, game selection offered and other promotions and rewards offered that are not directly tied to rake paid.

I have made this point before but when the Scheinberg's originally set up PokerStars they made the buisness decision to not rely on the direct rakeback model that every other site was using. Under the Scheinberg's reign PokerStars messaging was, "We do not offer rakeback, we reward our players through our VIP Program." For a significant time cash rewards were not even an option in the VIP Store. So an argument could be made that Amaya is actually returning back to the Scheinberg's original vision. Of course the fatal flaw in this argument is that at the same time they have combined this change with a massive reduction in the amount of rewards paid out.

This seems like a pointless arguement.

Rake - Rakeback = Actual Rake.

Rakeback is a loyalty program. If you generate x amount of rake, you will be give some of that rake back. It doesn't matter if a company decides to give it another name (i.e. 'rewards') or if they obfuscate the process, it's still the same thing.
Obviously if they reduce the rakeback (which they have, across the board for all players), the 'actual rake' is higher than it was before. A rake increase.

100% of people making the above post are just pulling figures out of their arse.

Some days ago I said that I moved to Party and that I was happy about it. Well, I have an update to make. I moved back to PS and I'm miserable.

Why move back?

Read the Party Poker thread and the reason becomes obvious.

Well, first of all, there was way less fish playing. The nl25 zoom tables were pretty much reg infested. And this was, for me, pretty much what sealed the deal as far as moving back to stars is concerned.

Second, I strongly dislike some features of the software. It really tilts me that I can't see what hand a player had at show down in the re-player. There's just some little things about the software that constantly make me tilt and I'm unable to play my A-game.
Which brings me to my third point.

I'm still only an nl25 player and I'm still in the process of learning the game. Whenever some one is thrown into a new environment, they need to make adaptations. For experienced players these adaptations may occur in a matter of days, even instantly for some. But for an inexperienced player it takes a longer time. I can lose an entire month wondering why I went from a 2bb/100 winrate to a -2bb/100 winrate. Whereas if I stay on pokerstars, I won't have to wonder about anything. I'm aware of my leaks and I'm free to take the necessary steps in order to fix them.

You're on your way to being a good reg, all the guys talking about party are BAD regs. ive played anywhere from 25 to 200nl this last year(not fulltime anymore, so i just jump around limits depending on my intoxication level as i still want to retain my good winrate)
25nl on party isnt harder than z200 on stars, but it has WAY less fish than it.
z25 to z100 on stars is a complete joke, 2-3 fish per table most of the time.

If they keep going with the rakeback, im ok as long as it keeps becoming like bovada(ie: hyperfishy) There's still too many breakeven/barely losing regs that lower our winrates by trying to play like sauce to fully enjoy the current softness with no rakeback.

The mucked card display provided by a HUD solves the problem, there's no need to open the replayer. Most of the rest of the problems are solved by PartyCaption, though I agree that the experience of playing at 888 with 888Caption is much smoother (close to Stars) than the one of playing at Party with PartyCaption.

As I expected, some of those regs who haven't played much outside Stars are having problems with other poker clients, but as someone who's played mainly outside Stars in my career, I attest that it's possible to get used to the quirks of non-Stars clients. What matters is the game lineup quality, not the software one, though I don't like the game quality at Party either (judging by Sit & Go Hero, not cash games that I'm not playing).

Your claim would be true only in a situation where you would get rakeback instantly after you finish a hand/SNG/tourney. Otherwise, as long there are requirements, be it volume, type of game played, time span, that basically means that not all rakeback is "used" by poker players.

Imagine I want to play only one big MTT and I am looking for a site to play it on.
You on the other hand are a top MTT grinder.
Let's for the sake of an argument say Stars MTT has a buyin of 1100$ with 100$ being rake. So the rake is 10%. Now let's say Stars offers 90% rakeback. That means you will get 90 dollars of this 100$ rake back. But, there is a catch: you have to rake a total of 5000$ to activate the rake. You do that, you get 90% of your rake back and I, as I decided to take one shot only on Pokerstars, don't receive any dollars back.

Now, Stars decides to reduce the rakeback to 10%. According to you the rake is increased because you state that decreased rakeback equals increased rake.
So does my buyin stay at 1100$ or is it increased because of the rakeback reduction?

As for how the rakeback cut affects the decision to grind some specific site, Flying Player explained it excellently, no need to add anything to it.

well, here is an insight, if u don't play poker your eff. rake equal 0. it's the real business talk.


(unfortunately, i dont have a 5k/month earning poker friend to justify my shilling)

Well I did say in my post, rakeback is a loyalty program.

I think we both know you are just nitpicking here.
I make the assumption that people wanting to know about their effective rake actually play online poker.
If, as in your example, you only play one tournament in a year, would it be accurate to say you play online poker? I think it might be more accurate to say you played online poker once.

Even in your specific theoretical example, you would only need to play 4 more tourneys that year to qualify. Given your high buy-in type and infrequent play, I'd assume you are a live pro, who no doubt uses correct bankroll management, so playing 4 more tourneys that year should be easy enough, if you desire the rewards of that theoretical loyalty program.

Yeah, if you really want to nitpick, they are different words/terms . In reality though, people only have to generate about $1 to $2 in rake, to get rakeback. So really, for all intents and purposes, I think what I said does hold true for anyone who plays real money online poker.
If however, you are a very low volume player, and you generate less than $1 to $2 rake in 3 months, then yes you should think of it differently, because then you wouldn't qualify for the current chest rakeback system. So in that specific case, we can agree, for those specific people, rake is rake, and rakeback doesn't exist for them. But... even for them it would be very useful to use the equation I said (rake-rakeback = actual rake) so that they can compare what they got with the previous system (some starcoins) to the new chest system (no starcoins) and realise that they also have been screwed over, like everyone else.

As for what Flying Player said, I'm actually not quite sure what point he is trying to make. He compares the current chest system, to what Pokerstars was doing 11 years ago. What was the rake percentage back then, do you know? I don't I had a quick look online to try and find out. I discovered some player managed to buy a porsche with their reward points (fpp), I doubt anyone could do that now. lol
What is the point of comparing them - are you saying you think it's better now than it was in 2006?

They can decrease rakeback but not by that much and also not in the way they did it. Poker attracts many people because they think that with hard work you can make money of it someday. And cutting the rakeback from 35% for a solid winning player to 5% is BS. There is other ways to stop mass grinding.

Also why would you make a rakeback system that is random. I understand its nice for a rec to get the rewards more often i am fine with that but why make it random. Nobody can control if they are giving out the rewards properly. I lowers the transparency and almost screams its a scam. I can almost bet that the lowest reward for the chests is being credited more than it should.

Doesn't IoM GSC require audits of the reward RNG? (I mean the publicly advertised part of rewards, not the personalised reload bonuses that aren't guaranteed.)

It's strange that there are those who believe in the fairness of the card distribution but don't believe in the fairness of the public reward distribution when the latter is much less significant than the former.

6800 points to clear a cheast. Will it be over 100 coin or not?

Is now better than 2006? Not a f'n chance.

The point I was making is the idea that PokerStars has increased rake by changing their loyalty program only comes from a sense of misplaced entitlement. There are also many that think Amaya is the devil and the Scheinberg's were god like. While I would agree the Scheinberg's gave much more back to players than Amaya does there is one major commonality between Amaya of today and the Scheinberg's original vision and that is rewarding players with direct cashback was not a good investment of the player acquisition and retention budget.

Back in 2006 if you were a grinder putting in SNE (not sure that was even a thing yet) volume you could buy a Porsche with your FPP's. What you could not do is directly turn those FPP's into $80 000. Those Porsche's were a marketing bonanza for PokerStars. That was a reward that could inspire others to put in the work to grind higher and higher stakes. Get better, make money to play higher, and in the process you get a Porsche as well. The picture of some troglodyte sitting in their mother's basement grinding out breakeven poker to make their $80 000 in rakeback just does not translate into an inspiring marketing message. Also those players that earned those Porsche's or who bought trip packages to the PCA or Barcelona felt great about PokerStars and those good feelings would be recaptured over and over again when they drove that car or relived the memories of that trip. That is what builds loyalty. Handing someone money just does not have the same effects. Money can be a good short term motivator but it is a poor long term motivator. It also can more easily lead to a sense of entitlement rather than loyalty.

The new program has the potential to be a successful loyalty/reward program. It will be a failure because it has been linked with a massive cost cutting exercise.

Lol what?^

Cold hard cash has always more attractive than getting Porsche ofnthe equivalent amount wtf are you talking about?

i dont want to hijack your flamewar, but how exactly does downgrading chests work? didnt find anything in ps faq, only that status resets after 3 month inactivity