I love PS a lot, but the way they handled themselves in the past week or so doesn't bode well, though I would still give them the benefit of the doubt that they can fix what needs to be adjusted.. .

I am a (semi) professional grinder, playing FR, LHE. I paid a nice chunk of change to PS this year, in addition to averaging .093 BB/100 hands. Not bragging but in LHE terms (thats fixed limit for you NL players) this is pretty much beating the game at the best rate possible.

I did make a nice chunk of change before RB, BUT with the ammount of rake I pay, RB was and is a nice sum as well. Now I'll have that RB sum reduced by 20% with no compensations?

Uhmm, no... .

Not everyone. As a FL player I'm satisfied with no rake change ("true" rake change).

Also, this

If we organize a sitout in order to gain something (and we will, now more than ever...), we might as well ask for more than peanuts. A 6.5 -7x multiplier seems fair in conjunction with WC.

Its unbelievable how nice stars is ... like srsly look at them paying attention... gotta love it.... and esp the fact that weighted contributed remains <3


But wait - are we all so dumb to not realise that it would have reduced the rake >.<?

RIP stars

THIS!

Agree! The new rake plan would rake 5-10% more for limit games

Another random rambling;

At the end of the day, we had a good deal going PS.
A deal that made you market leader by a mile.

Us, the players were reasnoably happy. You made a ****load of money from us grinders and we knew what kind of rewards we would get back (In addition to good support and so on, judging by the threads in "Internet Poker" in the recent months, a considerable plus...).

Now you rock the boat and change things (fairer, more unfair, whatever; bottom line is most players get less).

Do the heads of PS really need to earn an additional 50 million/year and screw us over in the process???

Cause thats what it looks like to us atm.

The poker world is changing, for better or worse remains to be seen.
It is very possible that PS will see some real competiton crop up this year (facebook, Full Tilt returning...) so it boogles my mind that PS is screwing us over right now.
Dont rock the boat and PS will remain among the Top sites for a long time to come; give us reasons to leave and we will as soon as alternative present themselves (a lot of micro grinders could to that already, but a lot of us are stuck with PS for now for a lot of reasons).

Long story short:
Poker Players seem to be rather smart and evidently we do remember your past actions. Scrape ALL changes (or make them fair) and you will secure yourself a good deal of gratitude and good will for the future (a future where your monopoly wont be that definite)

Even shorter version:

Please scrap the changes, I am sure your CEO'S will survive with the current profits

All right, I've thought some more and here is really what it should be. How Stars wasn't competent enough to come up with this on their own is beyond me.

Steve, I promise if you make all of these changes, you will stop this mass sitout.


1. Rake caps of $.50/$1/$1.5/$2/$3 for 2/3/4/5/6+ handed play
2. 4.5% linear rake up to the cap
3. Winner take all rake calculation method
4. 6x VPP across the board


Alternatively, you can keep WC, but the VPP really needs to be bumped to 6.5x VPP for 6max/FR in that case to compensate for the cash grab.

WTA is fair. WC is fabricated by the sites and meant to cost winning players even more money.

Making changes 1-4 would keep me from protesting on Stars, though they wouldn't make me happy. Keeping dealt is pretty much the only way for me to want to get SNE so you are going to see a reduction in my play regardless once you change away from dealt. But at least by doing these changes I won't block all your tables costing you way more than me.

These changes I'm suggesting aren't ridiculous. Stars would still make more money from the players (which they seem intent on doing), but it wouldn't be terrible and you wouldn't have people doing the online equivalent of rioting.

Sorry, what's the fixed limit rake right now vs what they want to change it to?

Serious? I mean, I always thought that poker players were above average intelligence and not as ******ed as the average American voter.

Juk

its shocking and unbeleiveable how stars as a billion dollar company makes their decisions and it leads strongly to the impression that this was all set up.

im disgusted anyways; by the deception or the incompetence, no matter what it is

pokerstars Steve,

I know you said that "the current rake at PokerStars is the lowest by far among all major poker sites." but there is a new site out there that has 3.5% rake, this is there standard rake and not some promotion, so why can't PokerStars offer rake like this?

A lot of small pots are not raked at all in LHE, depending on the stakes.
With the proposed changes, we would have saved a bit on large pots but suddenly would have had to pay rake on small pots.

Keep in mind that a 1 BigBlind winrate/100 hands is consideres crushing the game! Taking more rake in those games would have probably killed all but the micro stake games in the long run.

LHE players already pay a huge ammount of their winnings in rake, any increase would be deadly (In fact, a decrease would go a long way to ensure the future of LHE, but thats another point)

As I said before, as a FL player old rake plan is much better than new one for limit games! So don't judge others without knowledge.

please open a thread so that more people see that

I think some people were a little confused on exactly what your second post was all about so I gave it the clarity your customers deserve :-)

Terrible change stars! you reversed the change people were happy about....the only thing people were complaining about was the increase in rake cap for 5-handed play...not the reduction in rake from 5% to 4.5%!!!

you're continuing with the WC method which is where most of the real hostility has stemmed from...please can you review your plans and continue with the the rake reduction, but continue to cap rake to $2 for 5-handed play.....thats what we really want. (well, what we really want is no change at all, but this is a good compromise!)

And since Steve mentions pokerstars rake structure versus the industry, when it comes to Fixed Limit, it is already dead pretty much every where else because of greedy sites. There was still some action at mid and low stakes only at Stars and Full-tilt (before it was shutdown, obv) but almost none else where.

Among other reasons, it is the combination of a more of a leveled player field nowadays and a relatively high rake that turns the game barely beatable at the tables.

Pokerstars was preparing to kill it there too, apparently, by increasing the rake on a variant that already suffers so much of it...


I guess that doesnt mean nothing to NL players and I understand but FL is an interesting variant that many players like or prefer to play, being their game of choice. I think its sad that sites want to kill it when there are still so many players that would play it. Its ridiculous that a site takes about 15BB/100 in rake when a player struggles to make 1BB/100 (what is a kind of luxuary nowadays). Most well above average are breaking even or making 0.5 or something like that. They should be lowering the rake, not increasing and/or reducing rewards (resulting in more effective rake paid anyway).

Unless of course Pokerstars pretends to kill fixed limit as the other sites did!





On the overall issue, its pretty obvious to me that as I said before the whole point of these changes is to increase income (I believe that they need the extra money to pay out the DoJ) but this could be much more better dealt.

The change from Dealt to WC meanst they will make a lot more money!

The revision of the rake shouldnt be dropped but "tweaked" further.

They certainly can accomodate it and still increase income...

I think its pretty clear what he said - bye dealt ;D

+1000

1). My comment was with regard to the rake being kept the same.

2). I'm not American.

Thanks for the explanation on FL. It's the same concept as what happens to limped pots in NL -- large rake increases with True. This generally isn't a problem though in NL due to most raked pots surpassing the rake increase threshold.

I like TheMetetrown's idea. Use either that or at least your original rake changes minus the 5 handed incease, but leave FL on incremental rake.

LHE FR grinder myself; could not have said it better

+111