A quick question for Hood, on Steves chart it is showing rake increases for 1/2 and 2/4 fixed holdem, does this take into account your actions in these limits?

If your game of choice already had very strong players making less than 1bb/100 and the vast majority losing, and then they announced that they were decreasing the rake at other stakes/games by increasing the rake at yours, and also slashing your rewards at the same time.... would you continue to play there?

It's not an issue of them owing me anything. It's an issue of, "oh, well, I guess if you're going to raise your rake and lower your rewards, other poker sites now have such better deals that I can't ignore it anymore."

I'd prefer to see caps that actually get hit on all in pots just like at MSNL CAP.
I personally think a cap of 1bb or $3 (whichever is less) for SSNL and MSNL cap games would make the lower limits viable.

You just can't rake a game for over 6bb/100 when the absolute top players have a rakefree winrate of roughly 8bb/100. For the best players in low limit cap rake takes more than 75% of their winnings, for most above-average players its 100%.

Ideally i'd like to see pokerstars give a flat bb/100 rake mechanism a chance.
Try it out on CAP games and see what response it gets.
Unfortunately they seem to be having none of it and as JH1's post shows, its virtually impossible to truly compare site rake anyway.

#1 Your words seem to prove that reps are worthless and that we would be better dealing with PS as a total 2+2 community.

#2 I think they owe us a total scraping and retooling of their VIP program. PS wants to use the "industry standard" line for some of the changes they made. Looking at the INDUSTRY, it is clear PS now has one of the worst VIP programs. I want some serious improvements to the VIP program.

#3 Without busting some NDA, one of the things I've heard so far that was off the table was a multiplier increase VIP improvement. D'oh.

I mostly just want to see separate rake structure for different types of games.

Heh, thank you for not doing that.

In case you're not used to this forum, it's nicknamed "The Zoo" for a reason. More leeway is given in this forum than many, although not as much as some OT forums. While I think the tone of a number of posters towards the reps could be better, I haven't seen anything that has been truly over the line; I'm assuming they haven't either since I don't believe they've reported much in the way of posts. If you see anything abusive, or a poster that is determined to derail the thread, by all means report it - never assume a mod has read every post, or that even if they have, that they've been following the thread closely enough to notice someone derailing by harping on the same point again and again. That's something that could go unnoticed by a mod who only pops in once and a while, even if they've read every post.

If this is not some kind of level I think I'm starting to like you, krmont.

Go look at the micro sections of this site. The micros don't stop at NL5.

Go look at how pretty much any pokersites make the distinction. They don't stop at NL5 either.

The truth is that the very low micros got decreased rake. The mid micros got about nothing and the high micros got a raise.

Thanks for the breakdowns Steve, much appreciated.

For 0.25/0.50 NLHE FR you posted 5.87% decrease. So in order for me to compare my rake structure by site chart I posted earlier where I'm finding it difficult to compare True vs Incremental sites could I do the following:

Take the old NLHE FR for 50NL rake structure of 5% Incremental with $3 cap for 6-9 players and simply subtract 5.87%? This would result in

4.5% True Rake + $2.50 cap
= (5% Inc. + $3)(0.9413)
= 4.7065% Inc. + $2.82 cap equivalent for my stakes?

If that's not the correct, could you provide a formula I could use to come up with Incremental Rake equivalents?

edit: just realized this can't be right because it's essentially 2 separate reductions the way I've done it and I think it's probably more complicated than this.

What do you define as high micros? NL25? I define the Limits as follows:

Micro: NL2 - NL25
Small: NL50-NL100
Medium: NL200-NL600
High: NL600 - ???

This. As much as I've argued with you post-meeting, I'd be willing to work with you and promoting separate rake structures. I think we should make that our point of emphasis with stars.

Can't find it right now but I think it was stated that those containers are exactly the way it is in the lobby.

+1

I think the pizza is wearing off

I dunno i've always just abided by 2+2 definitions.

(Nano: NL2 - NL10)
Micro: NL2 - NL50
Small: NL100 and NL200
Medium: NL400 to NL1K
High: NL2K+

this.

Stars should also seriously consider direct bb/100 rake because tweaking caps and percentages across multiple game types will be horrible to maintain.

Hey c'mon, at least be accurate. I was pretty sure I told you to die in a grease fire






I don't think most people are satisfied and its just a few people upset. Your characterization is simply an ego defense of the deal you negotiated. It is much easier to believe that people just won't be satisfied, than that you have made a mistake.

Sure we weren't getting major rake cuts but you should have at least told Stars how badly they are hurting the game and that it is unacceptable. Maybe 'unrealistic' but if you don't try, you don't get anything. I prefer someone with the attitude of aiming high, rather than 'realists' like you who are cool with what we aren't even sure is a decrease yet.

And it's not that you had to negotiate a HUGE rake decrease to get props, you just didn't need to constantly defend Stars and the deal you negotiated.

I do however thank you for the long trip report you posted. I am shocked all the reps didn't write one, it was more helpful than anything for understanding the process. Someone really needed to do that sooner IMO

Unacceptable in what way? What form will this 'lack of acceptance' take?

I don't think PS want to buy your bridge btw

I agree. I would like to see drastic changes as much as anybody else itt, and the sooner the better. However I think it's unrealistic to expect the system to be overhauled in one fell swoop; it just isn't logistically possible for a big company to do that. We need a lot of increments, and we need to lobby to make each increment as large as is feasible. Meanwhile hate and finger-pointing get us nowhere.

I'm worthless because I disagree with you? I don't think that makes much sense...

If you really disagree with something, please point it out instead of just attacking me.

#2 - They don't owe you that, although I can see why you'd want it. It seems unrealistic for poker sites to aggressively market towards high volume players in this market. It's in everyone's best interest for them to be marketing towards the recreational players. Game quality is going down everywhere, and this is a major concern.

pokerstars doesn't owe you anything since it's their business and not yours.

I see them as being less likely to do these increments now knowing that people will be upset and just demand more.

I do think they'll listen to any proposals and give them consideration.

I think it is absolutely possible.

The DON's (when they had them) were a good example. They brought them in, the rake was WAY too high. They brought them down a ton in one big swoop after it was pointed out to them how unrealistic it was.

I'm not sure, but maybe they did this on some of the hyper-satty's too?

They yanked away the VPP structure at the limit full-ring tables which was a huge sweet-spot in their system and a good value. Get 80% or higher rakeback on 1/2 limit full-ring. Stars looked at that and nuked it...not gradually at all. In one quick step. No need to slow down for big studies on it. Lets just get rid of it.

Could absolutely do that for Blitz tables right now. Could very much do that right away for 6-max games or anything else that have gone on way too long with the same bad rake structure which has gotten tougher and tougher for various reasons.

Instead, they drag their feet and say they can't go better than 5.5xVPP on the 6-max games even though the new WC thing makes it pretty odd and pointless. "We've reduced the 6-max games a lot already and can't do more"....even though there is still a pretty significant gap between that and full-ring.

Why? Why is effective rake (including rakeback) more on 6-max than on full-ring just on that bit alone?

Games have changed. The climate has changed. We went from 4 tables max to 24. We went very quickly from a virtually non-existent VIP program a few years ago to adding the SN thing to then adding the SNE thing to attract high volume players.

The SNE thing with all the milestones wasn't really brought in gradually. It started all at once. To encourage high volume. At the request of players who wanted greater rewards and encouragement for higher volume. How is that any different than a rake-cut? (Answer: It isn't).

Stars listened to players who wanted higher volume rewards. It got done. And it was NOT a gradual thing that came in steps really. Players observed that you got maybe 20% or something for SN, plus some freerolls, and said, "you know. that isn't really all that spectacular." Then they set up the whole 60% thing for SNE. Right away.

Stars has the power. They can SAY "well, we can't do this too fast. Too many drastic changes would be bad. OMG WE HAVE TO BE CAREFUL. Think of the children!! Slow down you crazy race-car drivers!"

But what they really mean is that they just don't want to help the players THAT much. They won't do it. They should. It would be better for them and poker in general. But they won't.

I'm even somewhat okay with them basically charging $100k per year for high volume 6-max players which is about $200k rake per for for $100k in rewards for SNE....(severe rounding there for simplicity...go with it). Stars gets their HUGE profit and the players can still do well for themselves after rakeback if they are determined enough.

But I also don't think it's inappropriate for me to see that a rake INCREASE there is now essentially them charging $125k or $150k (net result) for the same high-volume 6-max players and for me to tell them, "really? You're going to RAISE the costs on these loyal players by THAT much? Aren't you making enough from there already? What the hell are you doing? They were already paying $100-freaking-K per year. You don't see that?"

Ummm, yeah. You are charging some of them SEVERAL THOUSANDS of dollars more per year. It's not unreasonable for me to observe that maybe charging them only $50k per year could be a better deal.

It's incredible to think about. Paying a $50k fee ahead of time to receive 100% rakeback all year would be a WAY better deal for high-volume players than what it is now.

Here's your transparency for you. Cost per year for a high-volume 6-max player per year is now $125k instead of $100k. Think about it that way. Stars isn't exactly quick to advertise it like that.

Stars could see that it's insane to charge their most loyal customers over $100k per year and could cut them a bigger break. And they can do it immediately. Even the littlest of HELP on this stuff would be widely praised and received well. You know, like if it went from $100k to the spectacular bargain price of $90k. The players would totally buy into it and thank Stars for it and go CRAZY on their site on the great opportunity to "only" pay $90k now because of the great reduction Stars did. Haha.

Or....Stars can say, "nope, we can't do that" and change things around in a different way that it becomes somewhat disguised and convoluted.

Eh, your post is well taken MicroBob but the type of across-the-board changes we're all clamouring for involve a very significant short-term profits cut by stars. Maybe not, if they market it right and quickly draw in a big influx of new players, but it would be something of a gamble. Again, that's just short term and most of us here think that it would be the most profitable move for them longterm. Nevertheless, when I talk about logistically difficult, this is on a whole different order than making abrupt changes to the rake on one game format or introducing a new VIP level.

I bash the stars reward system for being uncompetative but it certainly isn't one of the worst in the industry.

They tow out the line everyone gets rewarded in their system. However that is no longer unique with their system. A lot of sites reward every player now with the lower tiers better than stars lower tiers.

What stars does well is for the super high volume and they become a vocal minority which leaves the more serious recreational players out in the cold.

I really wish Stars could be more responsive to this.

When Stars first started the rake restructuring, everyone was upset because someone figured out Stars was taking an extra .5%.

However, Stars opened a can of worms with the whole rake restructuring.

After further data analysis people no longer care about the .5%.

That is what you do not understand.

At first people were like "ZOMG Stars wants more!"

Now people realize Stars needs to go back much more than that, but instead of doing actual reductions, Stars made the even poorer play of trying to squeeze the money from somewhere else.

It is just one bad play after another by Stars, the first of which was the delay to almost the end of the year for SNE players.

Very few people are criticizing the reps for what they did in the meetings, they are criticizing them for defending Stars now in light of additional data.

When you defend Stars now, in the face of indisputable facts, you look like a shill. I am not saying you are, just letting you know that is what it looks like.

Right. I mean I would hope that they're not so easily affected by the emotionality in the zoo, but it's definitely a concern that they could see all this negativity and it makes them less inclined to make concessions in future. Getting angry that we haven't already got everything that we want is not a good way to go about negotiating for it.