Just a quick question to the player reps, I believe some or all of you were going to do trip reports at some stage. Is this still the plan?. Interested to here about the IOM , Stars HQ and the infamous pizza of course.

Anyone else noticed that Steve ignores many of the good points / good posts on here. He only seems to answer the minor points.

Steve......................

People have spoken about taking rake as a set bbs/100 hands, which would be the same amount for all stakes, making the whole system fairer. This is transparent and everyone would know where they stood at all times regarding rake.

Care to comment on this?

Sure it does. No matter how much you spew, unless you're actively and honestly trying to lose money, it's very unlikely you can spew more than the table average (thank the whale sitting across the table dragging the average way up), so you make less under WC than you did under dealt.

It's what happened on Full Tilt, it's what people said would happen here, and it's happened... disappointment seems like a fair enough emotion, but you shouldn't be surprised.

Is Steve the guy that makes decisions on things like this? AFAIK he isn't, which means he probably can't comment and/or it's prudent for him not to. Everything he says gets picked apart here, so saying anything other than "Thank you for your input, Pokerstars values your thoughts." is probably -EV for him.

(As much as I would like an honest response, and would like this rake method.)

Really though, with the big push behind these changes being "we want to line up with what other sites do" I very highly doubt something like this (the online poker equivalent to a time charge) would be implemented.

How about this one : only charge players for the time that its their turn to act !

its always someone's turn and would speed up the games some

We've just aligned our rake such that it can be compared well with other sites. Such a move would be in the exact opposite direction.

I think one good thing to come out of all this is that it has forced some of us to really look at the game we're playing and how much we are getting raped in the pocket just to play this game. There are simply lots of other better things to do in life, that makes more money, than this BS. Basically anyone that isn't playing highstakes, if you're intelligent enough to analyze poker and also the rake situation, you should be able to make a lot more money in the long run doing something else than giving hundreds of thousands of $$$ in rake to Pokerstars.

Thank you, Pokerstars, for bringing that to my attention. Before these changes I would've just kept on playing but now I'm looking at life choices. I don't want to play some PLO, some CAP, some fullstack, as I otherwise would have, but now knowing that for CAP and PLO the rake is exorbitant/close to unbeatable and you choose to be completely silent about it. In the end it will be your loss not mine. You want to make it as painful as possible for me to go for SNE, and I will respond in kind by giving you a lot less rake than I otherwise would have.

This is a pretty good point.

Wow Steve, I have never criticized one of your comments before, but the absurdity in this spin doctoring is unreal.

The overwhelming majority of play and rake is at lower stakes and they are getting raped to death from 4bb/100 all the way up to 8bb/100.

You know perfectly well the question was in reference to reducing the lower stakes to a rake similar to the higher stakes.

So you are saying that if you reduce the rake at 2NL to 200NL to 3bb/100 it will compare poorly to other sites?

So I assume similar rb deals of 50+ are coming next week?

Seriously though, Stars never made it to where it is today by being competitive with other sites. The owner of Stars and Sr. Management managed to earn the market share that they enjoy today by doing what the other guys wouldn't or couldn't do.
During the good times Pokerstars took a much bigger benefit than any of us players combined since nearly all of us cash game players pay more in rake then we ever earned. But now it seems that Pokerstars has hit a plateau that it can't seem to climb and instead of putting the effort into recruiting new players or earning new players from other sites, Pokerstars is looking for the easy way out and that is taking money from it's most loyal customers who are the ones that ultimately made Pokerstars what it is today.

jep
just a coincidence that rake caps are a lot higher on € tables on pretty much every single limit, not like pokerstars would ever influence their system in a way that would make them more profits.

sorry steve
this is one of the most obvious cash grabs i have ever seen so please just stop defending this bull**** in the way you do, are pokerstars really expecting me to be this stupid?
you are using a flawed rounding system because it makes you money, fact.

fml, **** the other sites. Pokerstars is pretty much a monopoly and industry leader ffs. Forget about using the other sites line when it's irrelevant what they do. If you want to compare to the other sites then you should give players rakeback. If not, then you can take the opportunity to apply innovative, transparent rake as outlined earlier. But of course you won't as you just want to bleed your customers dry this year and take their money at the jeopardy of the company's future all whilst doing it in a deceptive, incomprehensible method where no-one really understands how much it costs to play on your site.

I had considered it, but there is not much I can say that would be interesting. They have a very nice office. We ate fairly nice meals but no pizza. Most of our time was sent crunching numbers and discussing issues.

However we will continue to listen to ideas to make rake more transparent and consistent, including discussing them at the next player meetings.

It is very clear from the promos (happy hours, milestone, etc.) that Stars' customer base is extremely aware of the slightest changes to their advantage.

You can see the traffic numbers spike on Poker Scout whenever there is a promo.

So why doesn't upper management realize or think that almost the entire global poker community would massively increase Stars' traffic if they gave lower stakes a reasonable rake rate?

Most of the promos you do don't compare to the influx that would be created by a reasonable rake.

Granted a large part of the promo spikes are caused because it is a limited time, but your players have clearly demonstrated they are aware of what is being offered.

I could have bet my bankroll this would have been the generic response.

We all know that in the current form, rake cannot easily be compared with other sites.

I *know* i cannot just read a rake structure and determine which site is cheaper since there are so many other factors.

Especially when many of the differences are spurious and require quite detailed knowledge about the game in the first place (ie: It really doesn't matter that stars has a $1.50 cap at 10NL and ipoker has a $2 cap) and you throw in factors like linear rake which only stars uses, so that even rake percentages cannot directly be compared.

Is 4.5% linear rake on stars, better than 5% incremental on site 'x'? What about 4.75% incremental on site 'y'?
Time to roll out the simulations!
(Because obviously every customer can run simulations on a database of hands to quickly tell)

And we haven't even touched the surface of the VIP/Rakeback situation...

Rake charged is half the equation, rakeback being the other half and pokerstars require outrageous volume to get rakeback that you can get on other sites just for signing up!

Pokerstars seem more interested in *appearing* cheaper than other sites than actually doing anything else.

This stuff is just so disheartening. I look at my rake paid and just want to puke. I run a business so poker is part time fun cash but I am getting close to just giving up on it, its not fun when the house has such an overwhelming edge at PLO micro/small stakes

Let's just close these threads and take it up the ass silently.

This. I don't play for a living but as a supplement it is maybe 20% of my income. I find NL too boring to play anymore (even though I made wayyy more money playing it than PLO) and PLO is raked to death. I am considering virtually quitting poker and focusing on my business more. And I start a ton of tables, play SH for hours, never insta break when the fish leaves, etc. I am just sick of being raked so hard. And it sucks at PLO because its HARD to move up because the bankroll requirements are higher and the variance is higher than NL. If anything I would give PLO a lower rake because of this but I know that would never happen.

Then Steve claims that the current rake deal is more 'transparent' than the rake per BB which is OBVIOUSLY THE MOST TRANSPARENT SYSTEM.

At this point I don't think Steve has any power or knowledge in the company. If I was the guy who ran stars, I would make sure that was true. Make some guy who actually doesn't know what is going on argue with the forum people and spit the company line repeatadly so it will be more believable.

Still think its funny that Stars made huge bluffs and none of the reps called, i.e. pretending to not understand stats, provide cooked data, then 'rely on you' to calculate what is going on knowing you will get a result that agrees with them while making it look like you found the result. Very clever!

Games are great! Tons of winners! Give me a ****ING BREAK! Find me all those "long term winners" at 25PLO




Reps: Whats the pecking order like it Stars? Can we talk to someone besides Steve who actually knows what is going on?

As a side note to all, whichever players attend the next player meeting absolutely have to have demonstrated a sound "number sense" in my opinion.

That is, the reps have to have an innate mathematical understanding, allowing them to quickly comprehend any data that is presented to them, as well as the possible implications of any proposed changes.

We sent number sense people. I want Bull**** detectors and hardcore negotiators. Using data Stars gives us is POINTLESS. We need to show at Stars with our own data and our own conclusions.

When I say negotiator, I mean someone that argues and doesn't make friends with his enemy. Reps got too buddy buddy. Stars was humanized and it was hard for them to 'fight' with stars. I am sure the reps are nice people, but the average online poker player might have difficulty with being the person in the room that is making statements that cause uncomfortable feelings in the room. I'll stop ragging on the reps as I feel they tried hard but just weren't equipped for the situation

I don't believe all of the reps were particularly comfortable with handling numbers.

I do agree though that the reps need to be firm in getting across what the players want.

My humble suggestion would be that realistically, reps just can't argue. They have (as far as I can tell) essentially no collateral. If people show up and say "this is not good enough, go back to the drawing board," Stars can just say, "No. This is what you get."

Look at the numbers before January and the numbers now. There's almost no difference in player volume. Pokerstars believes they can do as they like with little to no impact on their bottom line, and the evidence at hand suggests they're right.

If you could find a significant number of players who currently play at stars to agree to leave for other networks unless XX demands are met, then maybe any player reps would have a little leverage.

I know I'm being pessimistic here, but look at the turmoil around January 1 compared to what's going on now. Far fewer players are upset, but realistically, the only difference between what was announced Dec. 29 and what is in place now, is that a month has gone by to let people get distracted by whatever else.

On January 1, players sent a loud and clear message that they would quit Pokerstars if changes weren't made. Turns out most of them were bluffing, and Pokerstars called. Upper management at Pokerstars can now be certain (although I suspect they already knew) that while there may be a few outliers, online poker players as a group are all bark and no bite.

Pokerstars has bluntly shown that they cannot be forced into doing anything they don't want to do.

cool so I guess just rollover and die and take it?

I think you are wrong players are going to quit. We were waiting to see what they'd do as a result of the meeting. Now you will see some backlash.