Thanks Guys and Stars - big rake drop in micros where I play.

Surely the rake decreases affect plo8 too?

very nice result, ty guys and ty stars. lets hope communication players <--> stars gets better in the process. actually everyone here wants stars to succeed :-)

So I retain SNE by getting 50k vpps in 10 months, finishing on just over 500k for the year. I miss the 50k target in January 2013. Have I now lost SNE?

All rake calculations and simulations performed took in to account the correct distribution of how many players are at the tables. So if 20% (made up number) of play is at 5-handed, this will be reflected in the numbers we analyzed.

Additionally, we looked at data that broke things down in to # of players at table.

These issues were not overlooked or ignored.

The figures quoted in the report include analysis for all cash variants of hold'em and omaha.

Great work guys. This was my favourite part:

making this a first step rather than a one-off. Nice!

I'm unclear whether we are still waiting on different rake structures for PLO, split pot games etc.?

Edite: answered above. Well that sucks a bit, particularly for split pot players.

Getting concessions from a company as large as Pokerstars is a worthy accomplishment. Sometimes hard work pays off, thanks to everyone.
I'm greatly impressed with the lowering of the micro rake. I think this will have the greatest impact on the health of poker at all limits.

There are issues to split pot games that deserve more attention especially at the lower stakes. When you split a pot heads up you will lose more than the blinds to the rake if you are playing at the lower levels. This should be addressed because split pots are rare in most games and very common in H/L.

thx again guys for all the time and effort you guys invested into this.

It seems to me that stars favours Fullring over 6max.

Not just in terms of 6x Vpp/$ vs 5x.

The changes in rake caps for short handed play hit 6max way harder than Full Ring.


All things being equal do all these changes really work out as a 2% rake reduction for NL 200 6max?

Stud.

Could you test Zoom? Or is this theme in your NDA?

Ah, thanks a lot.

On top of that
4. less players will make SN
5. players will hit less milestones
6. players will hit less stellar rewards


Has all of that been taken into account?
I'd bet all these changes decrease overall rakeback by at least 20%,
meaning Stars' revenue from cash games increases at least by 6%, not 1.5%.
Ofc Stars doesn't disclose their numbers publicly, cause fellow statistic nerds would easily find the 1.5% figure to be complete bs and the true number to be much higher.

Interesting.

I assume the rake is going to be taken down to the penny as opposed to incrementally?

I guess what is needed now is for players to put in some volume and start reporting new bb/100 rake figures. I am cautiously optimistic. If things actually are as they intuitively seem they should be then this is quite reasonable news, but after analyzing the true impact of weighted contributed on other sites - I've stopped trusting my intuition when it comes to rake issues.

Good job to the reps, from the posts made so far it seems you all worked to do a very thorough job.

Cap changes at the micro's (10NL and below) are offcourse completely useless as the cap is still not reached when 2 100bb stacks go in ($0.9 rake with the new 4,5% rake% at NL10)... On 2NL it looks even more spectacular (from $2 cap to $0,3 cap!) but lol, it's worse, because even when you have 2 200bb stacks going all in, you still don't reach that cap ($0,28 with new 3,5% rake). So I wonder why they even bothered to put those changes in there... it just feels like they can say that their cap is the lowest in the industry without it meaning anything. If anything, I would say it's misleading again and I don't get why Pokerstars has to do that. It's even hilarious that on NL10 the cap for 5-9 players is $0,5 higher than the previous level in case they miss some rake when 2 > 110bb stacks go in? $0.75 cap on NL10 for 5-9 players would have actually changed something. If you compare this to NL200 for example, everything > 15bb's they put in the pot is rake free.

Not complaining though. from NL2 -> NL10 a 30% - 10% rake decrease should breath some new life in the pokereconomy...

So for new Supernovas they have to still make 100k VPPs right?

and also lol at saying "buy i won't get SNE!!" I mean, rake is being reducted, you will make less VPPs/FPPs but your winrate should increase so more money will come from winnings and not fpproing

very nice work, appreciate it a lot also for Stars to give up some revenue to give players what they want is a true sign of a great company.

This also goes against their stated no wanting to favour a game.

Would be good if 6max players could get some kind of bonus too. At least SNG players have BOP.

Nice work.

Yes.

This is going to get in to a circular argument here and it will be tough to really add anything else to the discussion.

All I can really say is i would have guessed figures like you did, but after spending a lot of time looking at confidential data, I agreed with this ~1.5% figure. It is not intuitive. There's little else we can really add to this discussion, although again I think some players will write their own trip reports that will go in to the processes in more detail.


For individual games specifically, we are waiting to report this data.

As an aside to all: One important point to stress is that individuals will see differing rake changes depending on how many people you play against. Your distribution of 3-handed, 4-handed etc will be different to what PokerStars deals. It is also intuitive to think that professional players as a whole may slightly differ to exactly the distribution PS deals. The changes do include a shift, increases at 5-handed, decreases at 6-handed, as a result of the change. In fixed limit, it was a big increase at 3-handed. These issues were taken in to account in terms of 'punishing' certain scenarios, however the driving consideration was the overall rake reduction based on the distribution of how many players are at the tables.

Hi Hood

Do we have the specific breakdown for limit holdem changes for all the limits?

Many Thanks

Sorry I did not understand. Will omaha have same rake as reported or you will post omaha rake later ? Thank you and sorry for asking again.

Great work, guys!
I admit what we got surpassed my expectations and I am happy.
Thanks guys, thanks Stars!

Yeah, on 2nd thoughts I guess as a non table starting 6max bum hunter the changes actually slightly benefit me. My tables are always 6 handed until the fish busts and then its say 3 hands on avg. where rake is a bit higher until the table collapses.

This.
It looks like it has been ignored.