Also what I've been wondering since these last few meetings..they invite some people that they know won't be too critical, make them sign strict NDA's and have them write up a report that consist mostly of stars buttkissing.

@GGARJ: What's the penalty for breaking your NDA? Or did you sign an NDA to not reveal your NDA conditions?

^^ Yea well im sorry but not everybody enjoys either having to use multiple different software just to continually get on good tables or having to manually table select & in a session joining and leaving upwards of 100 tables. That is not enjoyable for all my boy hence where zoom comes in, a reduction in the rake for zoom games isn't the most far fetched or unreasonable thing to ask for.

Can understand not being being able to discuss anything specific but can you confirm there is an interest and plan in place for increasing traffic there? I just get the feeling the site is being kinda run down and Stars don't see any benefit in increasing traffic. I've emailed them a couple of times re possible options but not really got anywhere.

C'mon, it's a yes-or-no question. I'm not asking for any details.

First of all: thank you very much for your effort.

I had suggested that stars adds two more vip levels, one between platinumstar and supernova and one between supernova and SNE. As long as I remember especially the one between SN and SNE was popular. Did you mention it or not?
I mean motivating players to play more than they do, this cannot be bad. I hope at least next time, there will be a discussion regarding their vip strategy, because a strategy which makes it more difficult to get cash back the more you play, how can this be good? For example: one makes it to 50k vpps. Now instead of letting me cash back 25$ each 2500 vpps, I have to gather 10k vpps to get 100$. They punish one for having made 50k vpps. I cannot think of any business which punishes his good costumers like this.

Regarding fulltilt PLO traffic:
How often I wanted to play there PLO, but only shallow tables are running. Although fulltilt says they are not going to drop a game which is popular, I think they are making a big mistake. I think shallow tables are only very popular because they kill the action on other tables.
Two: Their Pros should really start playing more PLO. 8 game and 2-7 triple draw didn't done anything to make those games popular.
Three: For one year let zoom/rush only be played at fulltilt. Or at least offer some more rush poker weeks, maybe expanding them from 7 days to 14 days promotions. Maybe also some promotions for cap or deep ante PLO tables. These are all better than doing nothing.

I mean... they'll likely sue me for damages and ban me on Stars, depending on the quantity and quality of the information divulged.

I could prob c/p the NDA here, no problem, but only lawyers are likely to find it interesting.

Isn't that kinda obvious based on me posting we discussed ways to increase traffic?

Hehe, I would still be divulging confidential information and would have to apply for permission to do so. Also, I would have to know what you mean by "significant number" to answer. 10%? 30% 50%+?

In any case, it's not really relevant to the big picture, I already posted SSPLO-grinders are doing just fine compared to NLHE-counterparts.

New VIP level between SN and SNE was indeed discussed, and I should have mentioned it in the report. Since we ended up talking about the "Robin Hooding", I'm sure you can guess how that went, lol

The suggestions for FTP PLO-promos sound good, just keep bringing them up in FTP-related discussions, I guess.

How does the sale of pokerstars affect any potential changes they were looking to make during this meeting?.


Will there even be a meeting report from a stars rep now?.

I was going to post this today.

These meetings were a waste in the first place. But now with sale, nothing is likely happening on PS front except keep everything about the same throughout sale process. Lock this thread up, nothing to see here.

sale thread:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/29...poker-1451606/

The sale is a complete surprise to me.

Nonetheless, PSSteve promised to post by Saturday

A good start would be to bring back Iron Man in one form or another.

FTP regs including myself told them that removing Iron Man would not benefit the site and sure enough the traffic has been declining since day one with the odd spike when a promo is released.

I'm probably a complete mug for still playing at FTP but I love the site

I agree. It was a disaster for the site when they took it away (and for my bankroll ). Also their bonuses aren't what they were before but I suppose that's what happens when you get taken over by your main competitor.

I emailed support recently about offering some sort of bonus for table starters as I see tables with 4 or 5 people waiting and no one starting new ones (I try). I pointed out that they are losing out on rake by having people on these waitlists when there are hardly any games running but alas I got nowhere with it.

Sad day for online poker , when the owners of a monopoly sells for imo a very under cut price it shows you where online poker is heading eh, not to mention having new owners who may not even d oas good a job sigh.

Bolded the key word. Pretty sure you'll still be able to grind millions of hands at nl25 regardless of who owns Stars.

What a condescending lil prick you are today sir.

players meetings where players from a big communities are invited and afterwards he can't say anything specific because of NDA NDA NDA.... makes sense..

but now Stars is sold, and the meetings will get better!

x100.

I made Iron Man every month for a couple of years playing around an hour (or less) 5 times a week - plus you could buy days or a continuing month if you were going on holiday.

It provided decent rewards (I also had the 27% rakeback) for part-time players like myself.

When they removed Iron Man & the rakeback it made no sense for me to play there...so I don't. If they bring it all back and re-instate our old levels I would probably put in some volume again. Loved the software but that's not enough to get my play.

WRT the rake issue it seems the poker community, and maybe Pokerstars as well, are blind to the fact that the amount of rake taken compared to the amount won by players (however you want to measure it) has increased by at least double over the last five years.

Five years ago the biggest winners won around 10bb/100, that was my impression anyway. These days the biggest winners in games don't even win 5bb/100 yet the rake has stayed exactly the same so the rake compared to peoples winnings has at least doubled.

I'd like to know what Pokerstars have to say about that, but as usual I expect no response

^^^ Prob why they sold, they see the future looking bleak and looking for a way out n found it. Time for all of us to go back to school or if alrdy got your degree open a business or find a job.

Thanks to all of the player-elected representatives who joined us on the Isle of Man for player meetings at the end of May. The input provided during these meetings is critical as we continue to work to improve our site for the shared benefit of players and PokerStars.

Below I have written up our position on some of the issues discussed and have noted some outcomes of the meeting.

Sit & Go Offering
Liquidity as a critical consideration for Sit & Go tournaments. While there are many additional formats that could be offered that would likely draw some interest, we must limit the offering to some degree in order to consolidate players so that tournaments start rapidly.

Still, sometimes there are opportunities to make additions. As a direct result of a specific request made by one of our representatives, we added $0.50 9-man Turbo SNGs for a trial that is still ongoing.


Ring Game Offering
We do not have any desire or plans to make all ring games on the site Zoom. We do continue to consider options at high stakes that include restricting play on regular tables, but this is in an attempt to address specific seating issues at those stakes. Plenty of players prefer to play regular tables, so in general we would like to continue to make them available. For complete clarity, Zoom-only is not under discussion for any stakes other than high stakes, and it never has been. I will cover the high stakes situation in more detail under the seating issues topic.

Many players continue to request lower stakes of HU NLHE. We will give this more consideration and may take action this summer.

As a direct result of a player suggestion during the player meetings, we reduced the number of tables available for HU PLO at mid stakes. The number of tables available differs by stakes.

PokerStars 7 and Mobile
PokerStars 7 is getting quite close to official release. We continue to make improvements to our mobile clients as well. Our product team appreciates the input they received during this session.


Promotions
We gave our representatives a sneak peak of the Football Fever promotion that is now running across all of our sites. We also received feedback from players about all types of promotions, past and present.

Sometimes we do run promotions that we know will not generate enough additional immediate income to cover the cost. We aim to show appreciation for our players from time to time, and this is one way to do that.

More commonly, promotions aim to excite players sufficiently to increase action enough to cover the cost of the promotion. Such promotions are beneficial to both players and PokerStars. We continue to develop new promotional concepts, such as the current Football Fever.

Football Fever includes the debut of newly developed functionality that delivers near-instant updating of status towards targets, shown visually to each player. Ticket crediting thus far has been near instant, also a substantial improvement. We plan to be able to make use of these features in several ways going forward.


Ring Game Rake
We do not engage in back-and-forth discussion on rake on the forums. Our pricing is not something that we negotiate in public with our customers. This sometimes generates the perception that we are ignoring players, but this is not the case.

While we do not aim to engage in conversation with every customer until they are satisfied with the reasoning behind our pricing, we do offer information when we make changes, provide insight into our thoughts about rake from time to time, and read and consider the thoughts offered.

We do discuss rake in detail in the player meetings, including providing detailed data to attendees and offering in-depth and confidential views on the poker economy that we do not want to share in public in view of our competitors. It is not appropriate for us to share the information in public, but we believe it is a prerequisite for any properly informed conversation on this very complex topic. For this reason amongst others, player meetings are when we choose to discuss pricing with customers in detail.

The result of the conversations in this player meeting are that we do not plan to change the rake. This is not a change from our prior plans.

We offer a product we are proud of at a price that we believe is extremely competitive with the industry. I do understand that some believe that we would do better as a business in the long run to lower rake and that just having a low price already doesn't mean that rake is necessarily optimal for our business. We continue to listen to and consider such arguments, but are not currently convinced.

Still, for players making a choice about where to play, we hope you agree that PokerStars is currently the best option.


PR & Forum Presence
We continue to have a substantial presence here on 2+2. The PokerStars staff posting here are, in general, managers responsible for making day to day decisions in their area of responsibility and making recommendations for larger, more substantial action. We invest in this direct interaction because we believe that your input has value. Post made here can and do impact our decisions.

Because the interaction is directly with managers, we are not all on here posting every day. There is a tradeoff in speaking with those who have direct impact on the site; they have many other responsibilities to attend to as well. We aim to come in to post about once a week in our dedicated threads and to respond to PMs within a few days.

As a result of the meetings, a new thread was created for direct interaction with Omaha players. Any game-specific forum that wants a thread to interact with PokerStars staff on that topic is welcome to it. We don’t discuss rake in detail in such threads, but we do have several and we do post regularly.

Our goal here on the forums is not to satisfy every person who posts. It would be impossible to do so as players often disagree even amongst themselves. Often we are faced with several choices, each of which would upset some players.

Even when there is a strong consensus amongst players here, it is a consensus amongst one segment of our players. We must consider the needs and wants of other player segments as well as the interests of the site overall when making decisions. The number of people supporting a view has some impact, and the reasons for the views can have even more impact.

The decisions we make may not always match your desired outcome, but that does not mean that we are not listening. Input provided here can and does lead to changes.


Scheduled MTT & Satellites
We are slowly making changes to our main schedule instead of doing a complete overhaul all at once.

We discussed several suggestions from our representatives including two in quite a lot of detail.

First, for next week we have added some new NLO/8 scheduled tournaments and converted some PLO/8 tournaments to NLO/8. This is as a direct result of a representative suggestion.

Additionally, we discussed details of how we could add a couple of omaha majors to our Sunday schedule, omaha high and omaha/8. We haven’t acted upon this yet, but instead plan to launch these new majors next time we run Omaha week.


Ring Game Seating Issues
We are in agreement with general player sentiment on nearly all elements of the problems here. There is less agreement on how to solve the problem.

Representatives brought with them some ideas that have been brought up on the forums. We explained why we have not chosen to implement those solutions. Further conversation did not result in greater confidence in the proposed solution.

The next change we are likely to trial at high stakes ring games is to go with a combination of Zoom only and table starters, with table starters the only way to start new tables. The table starters are designed to make seat assignment and selection much fairer, rewarding those who are truly wanting and willing to play, not just hovering to take only the best seats and opportunities.

We first need to patch a few holes in the logic of the table starter system before deploying more widely.


VIP Club

We are currently in the process of reviewing our VIP Club rewards for potential changes starting in 2015. We go through this process each year, but this year we are undertaking a more substantial review.

Our VIP Club has been an important part of the PokerStars experience for many players for many years. We understand the value of the program both to players and to the site. Still, if there are opportunities to make improvements, we want to find them and take action.

While I know players may want to hear our plans, the simple truth is that we do not have any plans yet, so I can’t share them with you or answer questions about what they might or might not entail. I can assure you that I understand the need to provide notice prior to making changes that some players might perceive as negative.


Thanks again to those who participated in the voting process, and special thanks to the representatives who spent their valuable time to come visit us on the Isle of Man to help improve the site. They have done a service to the site and other players alike.

Zoom and table starters only? So no more short handed play at the tables? I can imagine a lot of rec players will not like the new set up. I'm surprised that no other way can really be found that also allows tables to start by just 1 player sitting another.


Also what happens when tables die? will they just be automatically closed when only 1 person is left sat? will people be able to join these tables if someone from tablestarter leaves mid game? I can envisage a scenario where recs bust, and 2 regs sit and trade blinds for x time waiting for others to join the table and then we end up still with a similar situation to what we have at the moment.

No changes in rake and no measures being taken against seating scripts.
Can't wait for the next meeting.

Btw. do you realize people use seating scripts even at midstakes?
You're going to make midstakes tablestarter & Zoom only then as well?
Well thought out.

Also I can't understand how that short report with barely any content took Steve or Stars so long again...
I understand there are other things in life than work but you're sending out a message.

So can we please not send anyone to the next meeting(s) finally or how many more muppet shows do we have to see?

Steve, is there any chance we can get a FTP presence on the forums for us few hardy souls who still play there?

+1

Can you rule out that amaya will implement some sort of essense like VIP scheme. If they introduce something along those lines i think a lot of the player base will move elsewhere.

I find that a lot of criticism of table starters is directly related to lack of understanding of the feature.

There is a setting you can alter that relates to how many players the table will start with. If three players have chosen to start 3-handed, the table will start three handed. But, yes, the table will be closed when there is only one person left. The tables can be joined if someone leaves mid-game but there are still hands being dealt.

The situation with regs trading blinds is different than we have now because there is an open seat and someone who wishes to play poker against the regs to compete for a spot waiting is able to sit in the open seat and start raising away. It seems unlikely that we are going to change the situation of certain seats being very valuable.

Many of the suggestions offered on the forums are meant to change the competition for those seats from automated (scripts) to manual (clicking). This is not the planned path for two reasons. The first is that there are serious implementation problems with such plans; some of the suggestions that are made would work for a while, but not after scripters adjust. The second is that it is a better goal to eliminate the need to focus on this lobby competition that is not related to poker, instead refocusing the competition for seats in a way that settles things through actual poker play instead of lobby games, manual or not.

Yes, if a solution like this were successful it could end up being rolled out at the mistakes too in the long term. The situation at midstakes right now is not nearly as severe as at high stakes.


The primary goal of the player meetings is not to produce a report of PokerStars positions for those who do not attend. If the goal were to create a semiannual statement on all of these topics and post it in public, the meetings would not really be required.

We gained from the insight of the representatives and if you ask the representatives, I strongly suspect that they valued the experience. While you might find a few outliers amongst past representatives, as a general rule I think you will find that they think the meetings worthwhile.

These are the people that were elected by the forums and sent as being trustworthy. After only a couple of sets of meetings I guess I can see how a position could be held that somehow the wrong people were being elected, but at this point we have been through so many. If the meetings held no value, wouldn't you be hearing that from at least some substantial percentage of the attendees?



I'm sorry, while PokerStars and FTP are owned by the same parent company and there are some services shared across the two sites, Poker Room Management is kept completely separate. FTP was discussed to the extent that we are interested in evaluations of their promotions just as we are interested in the evaluation of promotions on any other site, and also to discuss the experience of playing on PokerStars and seeing advertisements about Full Tilt.

Shyam does have an account here and post from time to time. If you'd like more of a presence here, I suggest taking it up with him via PM.