Amaya is not voluntarily taking part in sustainability but it seems they have already paid for it and whatever they have been cutting has been cutting their edge also.

Maybe it is sort of better for recs, but they just last a bit longer until they play where they dont lose, or will improve. It wont really help them, as it mostly should not, and by the way, remove casino games as they are not sustainable. All get poorer, but i suppose capitalism isnt sustainable.

Anyway, if it would be for poker and not for business, things would be better, and there is a middle way also, and the 10k rake per year isnt it, but there should be a law against such exploitation, but the regulating countries even take part in it.

Have they removed the Stellar Rewards tracking? It's gone from the cashier..

No, they didn't; the stellar reward progress is still shown in the bottom left corner of the cashier window, under the VIP level. At least that's true for the (Russian) .com client, the layout of the UK client may be different.

Alternatively, you can click on the 'i' icon near the VIP status and see how many VPPs you've earned in total this year.

Matthew, could you please confirm if these charts and figures are representative of the change?

2015 - 2016 Comparison for player starting at Bronze Step 1 (ignores nano-stakes extra VPPs and vip freerolls)


2016 Status Maintenance


2015 to 2016 Change (rough based on new player, obviously larger cuts for 2015 Supernovas and 400k+)
Bronze - 5.5% to 8.5%
Chrome - 5.5% to 12.5%
Silver - 13.4% to 17.3%
Gold - 18.3% to 20.3%
Platinum - 22.2% to 24.4%
Supernova 100 - 25.3% to 25.7%
Supernova 200 - 33.2% to 27.2%
Supernova 300 - 37.8% to 28.2%

Representative sample (hidden rows to fit in a screenshot)

where did you get these images from? did you make them yourself?

^ Yes. I put together the spreadsheet based on the StarsCoin PDF file from the website and compared it to the 2015 system.

I only tracked it out as far as the last step of 2016 Supernova. The RB% would keep making step increases every 100k vpps in the 2015 line.

Great work there !

Weren't Platinum supposed to have a 10% decrease ? From what i see on your graph, 2016 is higher than 2015 all the way through Platinum...

The chart assumes players buy the bonuses appropriate for their VIP level, many Silver/Gold/Platinum players play the 235FPP sats to achieve a much better rate (or buy tournament tickets).

The SN freerolls account for ~$800/year of equity too.

table above doesn't take into account at least 2 things:
- you need to achieve a certain amount of coins to make them into cash (i guess it's better to make calculations based on monthly rake generated in 1 year period)
- u loose coins if next step is not reached. even if u r awared of that fact and always try to be precise - u'll loose some 'cents' anyway.

it's probably not far off but there are a few inaccuracies. For instance, first time supernovas are supposed to earn 28% not 25% in both the old and new VIP system. Any idea what might have caused this 3% difference?

i think is right 28% what pokerstars say

JH1 - There are 3 potential FPP rates that you could use.
1 - Cash bonus FPP rate (worst rate)
2 - Best rate if buying tourney tickets or playing FPP satellites (.016)
3 - Average rates of players by each status. Average rates for Bronze thru Gold range from .013 to .0145.

There are two primary reasons some players will receive more and some players will receive less when comparing - Stellar Rewards and FPP redemption rate for the player.

Some examples using average redemption rate (these are based on average monthly play):
yVPP Current Rakeback Steps Rakeback

1200 12% 14%
3120 15% 14%
3600 14% 15%
5280 18% 16%
12000 18% 19%
26400 18% 20%
42000 22% 21%
84000 22% 23%

Matthew

Also, Monthly status players get a 50,000 StarsCoin bonus when achieving Supernova (this bonus gets them up to 28%).

Matthew

A more accurate comparison would be to use the best available 2015 exchange rate, especially given the multitude of ways that you could pervert the interpretation of what "average" actually means. I think it was Mark Twain who first said "Lies, damned lies, and Pokerstars' PR statistics"

Regardless, it was established a long time ago that in summary, there are insignificant "gains" for a group of players for whom the vast majority never withdraw, significant losses for all loyal customers, and very significant gains for Pokerstars (and presumably their henchmen.)

http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...rstars-vip.php

Can compare new rates to old rates pretty easily there, probably not completely up to date as that's from 2008 however.

I think it's pretty easy to see that it's just a general cut back of value across the board, but i'm not sure that equates exactly to "significant gains for pokerstars and their henchmen"

It might for sure, or if they do what they are publicly saying they are doing it could lead to a direct increase in the player pool, and opening the poker market wider.

I don't think it's a terribly unfair line they are pushing (whether you agree with it or not) if it's reasonable at all to think that by tweaking some of the rake back and reward system they can directly increase the player pool by making more money available for advertising, making their software better, and making it a more player friendly environment.

The talk about further marketing as in commercials because of cutbacks to the VIP program is an utter farce. As an example say Pstars runs 10 commercials in the UK on a channel per day. Does anyone think that due to these changes they can now afford to run 15? If 15 was more optimal they would already be running 15 as money is of no object if it's deemed a profitable venture. Small companies with little resources might not run optimally but a company the size of Amaya has plenty of funds to spend on marketing if they deem it a positive return.

As for Promo's this is where Pstars has a chance to shine next year. Are they going to add all the money taken from the VIP changes and spend it on extra promos to engage the recreational player? That question remains to be answered. The key aspect for us to remember is the bolded part. Extra means more than what they are currently doing. For Pstars to say in 2017 "hey we spent every penny of that in promotions" would be a farce as they spend that currently anyways. What I'm talking about is a true extra.

Even if they did spend every penny in true extras geared towards rec players they'd still profit as a good portion of this money would be churned into rake before it reaches withdrawing players (SNE/SN) types. Despite Pstars profiting handsomely off of this scenario... we should feel blessed if they went this route. But they won't. Look at the politician spin that we've already heard... and somehow we expect them to spend all this money on recs next year? Please.

The reality is a good portion of this money will end up directly in their pockets without offering much extra in incentives.

Every penny Stars spends on their advertising and promotions budget is expected to make them a profit by bringing new customers to the site. It's absolutely absurd to suggest that this budget is in any way affected by the amount they save by cutting the VIP programme.

thanks for the work, it looks pretty nice.

Pretty sure the charts are not accurate but the work is appreciated.
Would be nice if stars just did it and made it publicly available but that wont happen

Same thing happened on ipoker last year.Same excuse -increase liquidity by cutting rakeback from grinders to recreationals.

What really happened:
1.Grinders got 50-60% less rakeback
2.Volume dropped by 50%
3.Not much spent on advertising and not much increase in recs
4.Even the recreationals (or regs making a new account at different skin) who are supposed to get full rakeback per deal 50-60% got half .Basicly they lied about that too.

Results :
ipoker skins got little extra cash to begin with and then less cause many grinders stopped and liquidity is dropping.

Pokerstars good luck on same direction

It's different because PS has a monopoly.

It doesn't. PokerStars have a large share of a market.

But is there really somewhere better to go? People on IPoker could go to PokerStars. People at Stars go to ?

http://www.onlinepokerreport.com/187...ges-criticism/

worth reading