this makes this format unbeatable.

and lot of HU players (hyper+cashgame) will see a serious cut...

for years player reps fight in meeting for rake decrease.
now increase all over the place + reducing rewards

casinogames, cashout fee, spin&go crapshot HAHA

hopefully players switch to smaller sites. they deserve it, never understood why everyone is so in love with stars
i always knew they are scammers and give a **** about the players

I have a few updates for you on these announcements.

The rake changes to rebuys and hyper turbo single table satellites that were announced to be implemented on January 1st are delayed. I will post again with more detail next week.

Details are now available for VIP rewards reductions due to gaming duty for UK and Bulgaria. There will be no changes to Stellar Rewards or Milestone Cash Credits. The only changes will be to the VPP multipliers. These VPP multiplier reductions are part of our policy of passing on half of taxation costs to our customers while absorbing the other half ourselves.

This is a change in plans for Bulgaria. We had originally implemented a smaller VPP multiplier reduction and announced future reductions to milestone and stellar values. We have instead decided to keep the Stellar and Milestone rewards the same while reducing the VPP multiplier further to keep the change simpler.

These are the new numbers, which will come into effect sometime tomorrow:



Other countries subject to gaming duty or VAT that do not have separate clients, such as Germany, will still receive reduced VIP rewards as previously announced. The reduction will come in the form of VPP multiplier reductions. These reductions will be implemented sometime in Q1. I will have more information on the specific countries and associated VPP reductions next week.

Other than VPP multiplier reductions for specific countries to help pass on half of the tax, we will not be enacting in 2015 any changes that are VIP reward reductions. This explicitly includes commitment that we will not be making any widespread revaluation of FPP points or cash bonus price changes, though we do of course reserve the right to change VIP Store pricing on individual merchandise as we always have.

Have a great New Year’s Eve!

Thank you for that commitment and the forward clarity it provides.

They should be delayed forever.

You too!

Does that mean PokerStars has to pay the taxes for German customers in Germany as of January 1st despite having the Maltese EU license? By the way, many thanks to our European politicians for screwing up yet another opportunity to act reasonably.

I know PR is PR but I love how this sounds like PS are doing players a favour, the tax is on them, we are helping them out by taking half the hit.

does this mean that the plan to introduce rake on rebuys and addons has been shelved? If so, excellent. If not, we're going to need an explanation..

Are these changes final?
How is it fair that PokerStars.uk and .bg have to play 10% more to reach the same milestone as the rest of the world?
A much fairer adjustment would be to change the FPP multipliers.

Given their reluctance to announce it I was expecting much worse! No idea why they didn't announce it months ago... they released the UK client with the 5x multiplier accidentally included so they obviously knew what they were going to do. All they've done is get free bad PR (it does seem to be the Amaya way), as the new year got closer it seemed like the changes must be truly awful if they were delaying the announcement so much.

So right now there won't be any changes for German players? We will receive FPP as usual until we get our own PokerStars.ger client right?

My reading is they're going to screw you sometime in Q1 but that doesn't necessarily mean it will come with a separate client.

Fair? Not sure how you judge that but we can see quite easily that a 10% cut in the VIP scheme is way short of half the tax hit that has been imposed. Business taxes are pretty much bound to flow down to the consumer but so far the hit is well short of half that tax bill.

This mean that Amaya/Stars are facing significant margin erosion from some pretty big markets (Germany/UK).

For the UK the way that personal tax on winnings is zero is at least some help with this smallish but significant hit. I am not sure there are many ways that taxes are levied that get a universal endorsement as "fair".

To be fair, I think they did announce it months ago, it wasn't any secret that they were passing on half the tax.

It's amusing though that they portray themselves as taking half the hit as a concession by them. The tax is on their profit, not ours, so it is very much their tax which they are using players to soften the blow.

Times are tough for them of course being the only player in a 'license to print money' market.

I don't blame them really - I want to make as much profit as possible so why shouldn't they?

Whats the reason for that? Germany is not regulated and probably will not be in the next few years so imo there are no gaming duty or VATs to be paid. ???

@PokerStars Steve
Does your money greed have any limits?

I don't get it either.

If anything, poker is still considered gambling in germany and tax free.

The only exception is if you are a "pro" - and guess what, that definition is more than vague.
Only a hand full of tournament players have been charged with taxes here so far.

Change in EU tax laws as of January 1st. Link to German article.

Thanks, that is making sense now.

I guess this doesn't up our chances on having france, italy & co in a global pool again no?

Seriously, your solution to making more money should be bringing more people to game; rather then making it impossible for barely break even regulars to win. You want those players to win, not have to find a full time job. They are where the majority of your rake is actually coming from because they do the majority of the game for very little actual reward and are still not progressed to the top levels of understanding for the game.

1) Invest roughly 20 to 30% of the players funds in low risk stocks. (Im totally cool with this in LUE of rake increases) the funds wont ever go below that in the near future and if it does you can easily remove the investments months in advance of getting to that level. It effects the average regular little to non, (other then giving them something different to bitch about). Do the math on just how much money thats actually worth. Almost certainly this is more money alone then your rake increases will generate you.

2) Remove 80% of your pros, you really do not need them, and in general, change your raking / and payment structure for some of them. For example, give them the choice between getting paid, or paying almost no rake. (give them supernova status for free perhaps). Choose the ones that are grateful to be in the spotlight, rather then the ones that gouge your pockets.

3) Reduce the FPP multiplier by roughly 3.5% across all of your players gold+ players. The difference for most players will be less then 10 dollars at the end of the month in bonuses, to which they wont care, but across your entire user base your making an extra million or two for sure.

4) With your reduction in stable pros, focus on spending that money towards advertisements in casinos around the world to bring new players to the game which is a win for everyone involved. Sponsor more tournaments, rather then just the big ones. Perhaps start a brick and mortar leader board like you currently have for online play. (Yes I am asking you to slightly re-invent the GPI.. u have a valuable brand to do this with).

5) Implement these casino games that you are doing anyway as it is; it will remove money from the poker economy, but at the same time I think it actually might help the poker economy more then hurt it because your bringing the degens from the casinos of the world into poker instead, so perhaps your actually increasing the poker economy while doing so.

6) As far as your strategy for working with casinos around the world, inpliment a free 20 dollars, (the same thing you are already offering on the web to web signups).. except do it based on a code that is region specific that when entered you end up paying the casino a few bucks for the signup, and give them perhaps a small profit share out of players rake proceeds that are generated based on that signup code.. this will be lucrative for everyone and will end up making the poker community, yourself, your stock holders, and the casinos your working with all happier.

Market Better, Gouge Less. Brain Storm More.

I think you've missed my point. With the reduction of the VPP multiplier to 5 it means that every supernova now has to effectively get 110k VPP to retain supernova. Every supernova elite now has to get 1.1m VPP to retain it.

If they need to impose a 10% tax on UK players they should make FPPS/stellar rewards/milestones 10% less.

They've basically just placed a 10% time tax on high volume players as well.

With every high volume U.K player now playing 10% more they will more than make up for the whole tax. They actually get 4.5% more money than if there was no 15% tax at all.

A fair way to pass on the tax to U.K players would be to keep the multiplier at 5.5 and reduce the value of the stellar/milestone/FPP bonuses by 10% and make other physical items in the store cost 10% more.

Omg, that's it.

Just reward players of your casino with tournament tickets (and equivalent stuff for cash games) to let em bring money into the poker pool.

Rake free rebuys again. Very nice to hear that.

Some random guy making his 1st post on 2p2 with a list... Im sure stars management will be all over this post

out of curiosity did anyone win $1m in the december spin and go specials? i thought they would have been all over it with advertising if someone did or would have announced it when it was running but have not seen anything in the client and the promotion has now finished

Not yet but teh promo will run as long until somebody does

Got to think with all the ads they are running on TV, somehow nobody will win for a few weeks at least