Some of us forgets the fact that Stars has had to eat all the processing fees for US customers the last 5 years after UIGEA.


AP/UB was estimated to have spent 29cents/$1 to be able to move American players money. Stars probably spent less because it was more efficient and much larger (economy of scale.) Stars got American players money and FPPs back to them at a speed that no one really expected after the catastrophe that was Black Friday. Don't forget that Stars is still possibly on the hook with the DOJ for 3 birrion dorrars and jail time up to 30 years for Isai. Stars is spending huge money and hired high-power law firms to defend itself against DOJ charges.


Given the sick turn of events a few weeks ago and everything that Stars has done for American players the last 5 years since UIGEA, I still appreciate and would love to play on Pokerstars again one day.

boc - I kind of feel sorry for you not realizing you got hosed on your FPP value but if you're okay with it then that's all good for you I guess.

I take issue with those who say "at least they're rapidly processing cashouts and not charging fees." I would gladly accept a delay if it resulted in getting full value for my points. I fully expect a quality company to not charge fees for my own money so I give them no credit there.

I do not feel like this is a situation of me just going out of my way to find something to complain about. I am truly surprised I was not awarded 1.6c per FPP in my account. I really did have that expectation as I felt it was reasonable and correct to do so for their SN players.

And I absolutely never in a million years would have thought they would leave a guy with 1M FPP's in his account in a position where he still has to take them out at 1.1c each or whatever it is.

And I also absolutely in a million years never would have guessed that they would create a situation where thousands of players are all forced to leave leftover amounts of "money/FPP's" in their account. Whether it's 3c leftover from each player or $30 or whatever they have created a scenario where almost nobody is getting back all of their rakeback.

I'm truly stunned. I wasn't looking for anything to complain about. I had realistic expectations that Stars would do right by their players. I wasn't expecting the moon. Just let me take out my points at the value at which I was earning them. For them to only give the option of taking lesser bonuses OR wait to see if they ever return to the U.S. is bad enough but to make it absolutely mandatory for almost all of their players to leave FPP's (rakeback) in their accounts is 100% wrong.

Charles - Some also apparently forget (I honestly have no idea how) that players like boc4life were literally paying them close to 6 figures PER YEAR to play there. So pardon me for not feeling too bad for them on the processing fees. They are still quite the profitable company. Having high expectations for a company holding YOUR money and also charging their best customers thousands upon thousands of dollars per year is not an extremist view.


A player who regularly purchases cash bonuses at the 250k level simply should have received all of his leftover points at the 1.6c rate. Certainly a player like boc4life at 240k FPP's should get 1.6c. Instead he gets 1.5c for 150k FPP's and then 1.3c for the next 60k or whatever it is he has to do...thus losing hundreds of dollars of his own rakeback...of which he literally paid thousands of dollars to Stars to get.

Stars really is raking their own players' rakebacks. And whether it's 3c or $300 I think it's incredibly disrespectful to their players.

If they gave me $300 less cash than what was showing in my account or told me that I could only cashout a round number to $100 and therefore I had a leftover $43.27 they were going to keep I would be pretty outraged at that. And it is no different at all than this situation with the FPP's except that it isn't quite as obvious.

+100

This is ridiculous. I had platinum earlier this month and nova last month. I always wait until the last moment to hit nova and this is what I did last year. Since my vip level is sh%t a month before black friday, I would be taking a 40% hit on my fpps.

This is so egocentric its ridiculous. So because you would take a delay everyone else should be willing to do so? Because others are willing to accept getting their money in a timely fashion, which all other indited sites haven't even made mention of a bank roll cash out date let alone FTP's/FPP's, doesn't mean their are wrong.

And lol charge you a fee, what fee? Are your points are gone forever? Sorry that the DOJ made this a difficult situation, but given the circumstances it is really ridiculous to see people complain about losing some small amount of intimidate value to be able to know that you get not only your roll but at least some value for you FPP's. And again, just because you want to wait does not mean that every one who wants the money now is wrong to do so.

+100 again

Bob said it right: if I had converted all my FPPs to tourney tix on April 14, I'd have received 1.6c in value (what I expected to receive over the long term with those FPPs). I didn't do that and now I am only allowed 1.1c in value. There simply is no excuse for this (or at least I haven't heard a legitimate excuse -- if the DOJ mandated this specifically, my gripe would be with them not Pokerstars).

I won't make proclamations that I won't ever play on Stars again, but it just leaves a tremendously bitter taste in my mouth.

go get it - Learn to read please. The person I was responding to said that Stars didn't charge a fee. I don't think that's a great thing...it's my expectation. If you have a problem to the reference of fees then you have a problem with the person who brought it up in the first place...not me.

Regarding the delay part: it's a hypothetical. Stars is not providing any kind of option to "either get a delay plus full FPP value...OR get your money now but we keep some of it." So there is no ego involved in the matter.

I'm perfectly fine with Stars processing everything so quickly. Much quicker than I would have guessed if you had asked me (or anyone) on April 16. So that's all dandy. But they kept some of that money in the form of FPP's which is kind of bad. I was simply responding to the previous post that said, "at least they processed it quickly." Well...yeah...that's great. But that doesn't really have anything to do with them keeping some of everyone's FPP's. It just isn't related.

Just to clarify for some who probably over-read my previous post: I have not made such a proclamation either. I've skimmed part of this thread but I'm not sure anyone else has made this kind of proclamation either.

What I did say was:

And I stand by this 100%. I don't think it is a terribly extreme statement.

My near unfailing loyalty previously for a few years I felt was warranted by their commitment to their customers.

I vote with you guys.

When Stars went down for the US players, I assumed that as a Supernova player, I would, at the very worst, be able to cash out the FPP's at .015, as I had about 170K of them.

I had hoped that I would get the .016 rate though, as Stars has always stepped up.

I'm out ~$350 with the bad exchange.

Do people think the negotiation went like this?

Stars: We want to pay out our loyal customers FPP's at a rate of (.016/.015/whatever).

DOJ: No, we want you to keep the extra money.

Stars: But it's really unfair, we want to pay them.

DOJ: Absolutely not, you have to keep the money.

Stars: OK, it's out of our hands, cash out what you can guys.

the stars apologists are growing shrill. of course american players are relieved to access their account balances and FPPs. of course we are glad our money and points were on stars rather than elsewhere, where we'd so far have nothing and a non-zero chance of getting nothing.

but please, please stop comparing stars to cereus and full tilt. stars' speed in returning funds and some FPP value does not excuse them from examination, nor does the relative (and still very favorable) differences between stars and the other sites.

how can you all ignore the cause of this? stars and the player pool are not equal parties here. stars, as well as FTP and cereus, is charged with bank fraud for their coding of transactions. if this is true, the sites have created this situation, not the players, and the sites should be the ones holding the bag here.

The first post does not sound like a hypothetical to me. If you meant it as such, then obv the more options stars would have provided to players the better.

And obv I'm for players, on all the sites, getting everything that they are owed. I believe we just have a difference of opinion on how stars is going about the FPP cash out process. TBH, I wish they would let everyone cash out FPP's at SN level regardless if they were a lifetime bronze star. Who knows how much money in the form of interest that stars was able to make from player balances, in short term investments, while players had no access to that money. But, at least to me, it is really hard to really think that stars has not done everything possible to assuage players concerns regarding cashing out.

If I'm referring to an option or scenario that has not been presented by Stars and/or does not exist in the least (and that I somewhat obviously do not believe would be realistically entertained) then that means it is hypothetical.

I agree with this, but don't you think there is a possibility that all the indited sites hands are legally tied on some issues dealing with cashing out?

FPPs are not money.
You say you've lost money, I say you can't lose something you never had.

Pokerstars no longer operating in USA = no more FPP program in USA = FPPs are worthless.

If somebody gives you a gift you should appreciate it because they didn't have to give it to you. Don't stand there being ungrateful thinking it should have been a more expensive gift.

microbob, you misread boc's post: he had 240k VPPs, not FPPs. So he gets 40% of the 300k bonus which is greater than any value he loses in FPPs if he can't play on stars again this year. Of course, such a situation is only possible for the more high-volume players who are a decent percentage past their previous reward level...a small subset of total players. I don't think the fact that a few higher-volume players benefit in this scheme makes up for the value most of us lose.

Also stars never charges processing fees so I can't see how them not adding additional fees now to us should be seen as a positive. And just because UB is horrible does not excuse stars from their actions: they should not be seen as doing good just because the others are much worse.

one of the amazing things about repetition is that it has the quality of making what is illogical logical

lol it doesn't look like you know the meaning of logic.

People crying in this thread are the same people who claim joker sites are rigged and will have "I got 1 outered on the river, OMG" as their epitaph.

iplay, you have a very skewed and wrong view of the world. and quite frankly, I can't understand why you are posting in this thread -- is it to prove some sort of theory about the value of things that the majority of intelligent people don't understand or are you just leveling us?

When Pokerstars offered us FPPs to play on their site, did they warn us that they might not have value in the future and that, therefore, you should spend them as you get them? Did they encourage us to hoard them to earn bigger prizes? Did they "sell" players to their site on the basis that the FPP system was a rewards based system in lieu of rakeback? Come on dude, you sound so ridiculous making these statements that there is no value in FPPs. So unless you can truly add content to this thread, I'm like for you to stop posting your nonsense -- I'm sure you will ignore that request.

And are they now still operating in the US? Please stop crying on this thread because you won't get any sympathy from me - I'm sure you will ignore that request.

I'm on Stars's side, but some of the people arguing for stars have some pretty poor arguments. And I do see the point of those who say on April 14, FPP -> T$ for ~.016, and T$ -> $ after Black Friday. It isn't fair, but in a ****ed-up situation like this, every solution is going to have a group calling it unfair.

Personally, I feel that stars did the best they could, and they are not intentionally trying to screw anyone over, and this is the fairest solution they could come up with. We may not know for sure, but i think they get the benefit of the doubt based on their past history of customer service and relations. I understand others don't share my viewpoint, and they can continue to fight to good fight and try to get .016c/fpp. I just don't think its fair to describe the way Stars is handling this situation as criminal.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Often when I make a general sweeping statement it is the insecure people who respond thinking I am talking about them.

Your assertion that FPPs were "gifts" given out of the goodness of PokerStars hearts is pretty lol.

I imagine that you are one of those people that thinks television is free, the health insurance that your employer pays for you is "free", that you do not pay the income tax that your employer pays for you, etc. In other words, if you don't see actual money leaving your wallet/bank account, you think it's free, right?

I'd elaborate more but I am kind of eagerly awaiting you making a fool for yourself by saying "why yes, that is true"

Wait, so since your ad hominem attack was not directed at the guy that pointed out the logical fallacy in your argument, it is therefore not an ad hominem attack?

I mean, do you LIKE embarrassing yourself?