There should be a representative for people who aren't SN/SNE otherwise it's just going to end up being really biased.

Obviously we all want to reach our goal of making it to GS/SN/SNE and with slower grinding the VPP's due to WC we already have to play more/much more. Bringing down direct rake will also hurt the amount of VPP you make in 1hr /a day so you will have to play more again.

Don't think a lot of SNE-players can afford it to play 20% more time to reach 1mln VPP's. So this is also a very big issue imo!!
0.5 vpp x 3.5 (fpp) (or 5.5) x 0.016$ = close enough to compensate 0.5% rake i think.
So 6.5x and 4.5% is a good start for calculating things through.

The whole SNE-hype brought Pokerstars tons of publicity and new players and don't think Stars will be looking to kill the posibilty to reach SNE for 80% of the excisting SNE's.

To the posters who would like to represent the players at the Isle of Man,

Outline your goals and views, everyone who agrees and would want that person to represent them can "+1" it to give their vote. As simple as that.

I have outlined some of the recent updates from Steve in the cliffs thread. I'll continue to add to it as the day goes on. You may view them here: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...hread-1145908/.

Again, please do not post in that thread and continue all discussion ITT.

Msauce, thanks a lot for that! Great job sir


yeah, that makes a lot of sense. i knew there must be an angle to the vpp thing that i was missing

Are you seriously complaining about getting less vpps if the rake is decreased?

Anyway, I don't mind being nominated because it seems like a good challenge.

My prime goals would be:

- to lower the rake across all stakes
- lower the cap at the lowest of stakes
- come up with flexible solutions to each 'problem game' (LHE/PLO/...)

I think the philosophy to strive for more rakeback as opposed to less rake is having it backwards. It's good for the games in general when all of us (including fish) are raked less.

Thank you for the update. However instead of bringing 2-3 to visit HQ which seems like it would be a rather huge waste of everyone else's time waiting while the logistics of having everyone physically present are figured out, is there any specific reason that this can not be done via skype?

The trip might look good for PR on your end but my concern is that once you have 2-3 people out there you just end up throwing a ton of numbers at them about games they are not familiar with and they don't know how to respond and come back empty handed or with changes they thought were good but turn out to be bad once the players that are affected actually get to look at the numbers.

From our perspective I think we would see a lot more timely progress considering the late date that it is if we could have 1-2 reps from each game category present in a series of ASAP conference calls and allow them to each have an additional 1-2 reps of their choosing to consult with (with all involved signing an NDA if necessary). This would give you a much broader and more accurate sense of what the community needs.

Steve:
thanks for stopping by. these days must be when you like your job the least since people tend to shoot messengers.
I understand there is frustration on both sides. I personally believe that you and many of your colleages are working to find the best solutions to make profit for PS while making/keeping us players happy.

please understand that it is frustrating to get changes announced last minute, then stating you guys are open for discussion, then disappearing from any discussion (I understand you can't be at the forum 24/7, but maybe colleagues could help out here) for a long time. The invite of players to IOM is appreciated, and I can understand why you would like to show real numbers rather live than online, so noone can record anything despite any NDA etc. I do not necessarily think it would be necessary to go down that road to show some players all the sensitive data.

what is NOT ok is, that you offer to discuss changes/mitigating factors AFTER you actually hit the switch and make the changes. You are leaving many of us in the dark for the beginning of the year and many need to know the final outcome of those discussions before the year starts in order to reach their VIP goals either on stars or somewhere else.

edit: the OP of this thread pretty much sums up what the majority here wants:
http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...hread-1145908/

forumers:
maybe it would make sense to make another thread where people can be suggested and elected to represent us at IOM if need be. Again, I don't think it would really be necessary, however we should be prepared to send people (and that should work with those ppls schedule obv.)
Since not everybody is familiar with everybody, I suggest that for nominations you include not only the screenname, but also their area of expertise.
We can only pick very few posters so it would be good of the selected posters might have more than 1 area which they would feel comfty representing. We need to avoid that we avoid 3 NLHE 200FR players etc.

I want to just chime in and say I agree with this a lot. 2-3 people representing an entire community (when everyone plays different games, has different goals etc) is probably not the most effective way. With that being said, neither is a thread with hundreds of people yelling different things with trolls in between. It seems like the best way to do this would to have some type of moderated thread where people could give feedback in another area and a few representatives (maybe more like 10) could relay this information in a troll free environment and reach a very widely agreeable compromise.

It's a good move for stars and likely not the best move for concerned players. That's not to say there isn't sincerity about opening a dialogue on stars part.

Thus the suggestion of a restricted participation thread here.

Who cares about VPPs? When lower rake gives you much higher win rate?

Agreed, I suggest these guys;

SuckoutKing - http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1153

Duckslayer2k - http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1110

Klairic - http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=1857

Dedicated Negotiation Thread +1

The question was higher VPP's or lower rake%. READ pls. as i said 0.5vpp more per $ can be close to a 0.5% rakedecrease, i can be wrong someone should give a calculation on that.

Higher VPP's = lower rake in the end!!
What you think that a milestone less will mean for the 300/400kVPP players around? All VPP based bonuses will be far more difficult to reach!

The thing is, it's hard to outline goals IMO b/c we don't have numbers.

Like, do SNEs stand to lose if we're putting rake at 4% and not touching VPP/$ raked? If so, how much? Remember, vpps are max ~70% rb if you're SNE, but the rake u'd save by a 1% deduction in rake taken is 100% rakeback.

It wouldn't be hard to calculate this with the dealt method, but I don't think we can even get close to a correct answer with WC unless pokerstars gives us the numbers.

What happened to the player panel that was in place to discuss changes? Was this discussed there and who said it was a good idea?

Also added Mrtrebus' post to the Cliffs thread HERE in order to illustrate how WC affects the poker community and Stars.

You should also consider one player that play LHE because that is a totally different area, as far as I'm concerned Coreysteel or Piranha would be the most appropriate ones.

At this time, this has just been offered by Steve and is not currently occurring.

That second line was addressed to everyone, I totally understood what you were saying, sorry for the confusion, should have made it a separate post

In the event that Stars agrees to the conference call idea are these categories sufficient for filling in nominations?
Trying to base number of reps on game variation size:

FL Holdem (1-2)
NLHE FR (1)
NLHE 6M (1)
Cap (1)
Omaha (2)
Stud / Other (1)

and if MTT/SNG want to get in here too
MTT (2)
SNG (2)

That would give you 7-8 cash reps with 7-14 consults backing them up and 4 MTT/SNG reps with 4-8 consults.

Lol @ how you calc your winrate.

My winrate at the end of the year = how much i make on the tables directly + the off-table benefits from a VIP-program.

Shouldn't we first focus in having their word in mantaining everything the same way, before we can get an agreement? Stoping every change first should be our first goal.

We will surely prepare things better that way. How can they ask us to send a representation to IOM 24h before the changes are going to be applied? I just can't understand this.

A bit long way for Piranha, but he would be my favourite. There should be someone from 1/2-5/10 as well. Those games are drying up because of the rake.

Edit - if necessary for FL, i have no plans for the beginning of the month, i could go. I do play for living 1/2-3/6, have worked in finance industry for 5 years so i am number friendly. If somebody WANTS, no problem, i will be very happy.
My screenname is Qwertyfax if somebody is interested. Feel free to contact me in skype hidden.hidden
I live in Latvia which is 3h flight from Isle of Man.

I will back CoreySteel and piranha as a FLSH player and say that a 4.5% flat rake structre would pretty much be the same as deleting the LHE tab off Stars it would increase the 2/4 FLSH rake by about 60%

The current Stars system rakes about 2.5BB/100 at 2/4, which is by far the best on the web since FT went under (it was better than FT but only just). Ipoker adopted a flat 5% strucutre and that came out at 4.5BB/100 rake. the 0.5% reduction won't do anywhere near enough.

LHE below 5/T would die and there are enough people saying it's dead at that limit and above anyway that it'd effectively kill the online game so I'm afraid I don't think you'll find much FLSH support for a flat rake structure