Well, I guess we can always "force" Pokerstars' hand. Just don't play. 50-75% decrease in traffic should set some bells ringing pretty quickly.

Make it $5+1 and $10+2 on 18mans please. You ****ed them anyways so it's all the same.

And please don't link goldstar and platinumstar craps, because these VIP levels suck as well. Actually what you are doing now is something like:

"Dear players!

Pay more rake, get less rakeback. We appreciate your comments but we do not care so stfu and play these or leave.

Regards,

PS"

The problem is that you don't really believe that regs will leave stars but I have to disappoint you...they will.

Steve, most of what you posted is good, but the rake part is horrible.

Even if you don't increase revenue here (and you aren't considering the volume you're bound to lose), what you've done is essentially increased prices for the majority of players to decrease prices for a few, the higher stakes players. So it's an increase for most players. And it's a big increase in the 16s. That's where most regs played and players were able to beat that game to move up...a lot didn't because of the rake on higher games.

A quick comparison of stars and full tilt on $10 turbos, with the values as they are now:

stars: 10+0.85. assuming max value attainable by most players of 1.6c/FPP, that's 14.96c back for goldstar, 18.7c for platinum, 26.18c for SN. So in essense it's somewhere from 10+0.5882 for higher-volume players to 10+0.663 for goldstars.

full tilt: 11+1. 27% rakeback makes it 11+0.73. This is equivalent to 10+0.66363... which is already equal to goldstar, except you get the money constantly instead of having to earn enough to cash in rewards. This is before iron man and whatever other promotions they have. I'm not nearly as familiar with full tilt's rewards program as stars but it certainly seems like full tilt is just as good or better, rake-wise, here. The difference may be more pronounced still in FT's 24+2, although certainly a stars player playing higher limits also is more likely to benefit from higher VIP level.

At least though, stars used to be a better deal hands-down whereas with the new rake it doesn't seem so clear.


Regardless, even if you accept that stars still has the best value, it's not good enough value to maintain the health of the games (and thus stars' revenue) as it has been...even after BF. Part of the reason stars is #1 is because stars offers better value to a lot of players or, alternatively, your competition offers poor value.

Good change...I only hope that 18.20+1.80 example you used was for demonstration purposes only. Otherwise, another horrible change.

Change it to 18.75+1.25 (same rake% as the 16s were) and adjust the higher stakes accordingly and it should work. For the 10s, I suggest 9.35+0.65 or in that area.

I cannot emphasize this enough: the system was imperfect not because of the 16s but because of the higher stakes.

Understood. My reason for recommending that was largely to make it easier for players to move up to higher stakes in conjunction with rake decreases. Volume is definitely needed though.

I'm at 190 vpps and will not be playing sngs anymore untill the rake is lowered.

Would have thought that after losing the USA market, they might have tried to entice more players to play, but no they took the stupid route by trying to grab more from the rest of us.

This example needs to be elaborated on Steve. The current $20 tournament has a $1.70 rake, for a rake of 8.5%. The example you mentioned would now be 9.89%, yielding yet another increase in rake. You should elaborate if this was an example-out-of-your-ass, or an actual intent by PokerStars to throw yet another low-midstake rake increase.

i will completely stop playing 18mans.and steve, you dont realize how many regs will HAVE to leave them.no money, no play.as will the recreational players.

if regs could get themselves to show them **** by giving them the MASSIVELY decreased volume in their ******ed "evaluation phase" anssi mentions, we maybe get a second look at it.

although, tbh, i dont believe you anymore steve.post in here what you want, be as nice and credible as you personally are, the ACTIONS taken by pokerstars tell a whole other story.
even if volume will go down as i tell you now, you wont change ****, because u dont care, you just repeat nice looking lines without any real care for the ecosystem of stts and mttsngs.

i call it blalant lies, extreme shortsight to the edge of dumbfolded ignorance, and direct robbery.
i should work even more and longer to earn less but make you richer?
i knew i was a slave before already.no need to **** in my face even more.
but thats what u did.

Imagine government deciding to tax poor and middle class people more, some substantially more, while decreasing taxes on the rich and claiming it will result in a net revenue drop for the country. Do you not see how the majority of people would be unhappy with this? Do you see why people would consider it disingenuous to call such a plan a tax reduction?

Dubai feels ashamed of their tower




Linked from atkinator.net...not sure where he got it from but yea...

+1 to this question!

You aren't taking into account the fact that competition at Stars is tougher. Rake needs to be considerably lower in order to compete with other sites. Add the fact that low volume players can receive much higher rakeback at other sites and it means that Stars really need to reduce their rake substantially.

Seriously, what is wrong with just increasing the buy-in slightly and keeping the rake amount the same, thereby decreasing the rake percentage?

Do you really think that a player who previously played $10+1 games won't play $11+1?

Fish may not know much about poker but that doesn't mean that they are too stupid to realise that the latter is a better deal. Inflation alone suggests that buy-ins should be increased and the need to revive SNGs tells us that the rake percentage should be decreased.

This is spot on. higher rakes + lowered buyins are definitely bigger problems and are a direct hit on people's hourly rates.

Definitely. Buyins should go slightly UP, NOT DOWN. For people making a living on stars, lowered buyins really = a big paycut, for no apparent reasons other than the new buyins are consistent in all games (?!)

But I dont think upping buyins and having round numbers are mutual exclusive.

they took our jobs, tukutuuuu

I guess all we can do is sit and wait until the new round buy-ins are implemented, hopefully stars does the right thing and lower the rake. I doubt that the 15+1 level will return though

Did you actually read what was said?

[ ] Rake getting lowered
[ ] 15+1 will return

read pokerstars greed's, uh steve's post.

"Poker-Bubble" a true story...

Pokerstars grew and grew!! Fatter and fatter! a huge fat-ass company. Suddenly 25% less income... OMG! a heart-attack for the Fat-ass company...

Instead of eating less and loose weight, managing the crisis and keeping the company alive, they have come to the conclusion that eating more is a better idea.

So not reducing costs (firing 1st all the one's came to the briljant idea to change the structure), but increasing profit is the way stars wants to compensate their loss!!

It's like a grinder doesn't downmove while in a sick downswing but upmoves! to earn it all back asap. you feel me,,,

-------

Obvious Stars was the biggest player in the online poker-branche. We see it in every branche, so many bubbles. arrogance and incompetence has taken over. It's a human thing I guess. The bigger they get, the harder they fall.

Pokerstars: you Know what capitalism is right? Sure demand and supply will find a new way to find each other. It's already happening.

A wise man said:

You Fail and just got Bubbled!

STRIKE STRIKE STRIKE!!!

Love the comment about the 1k and 2k standard stts never running. Rather than reducing the rake for the sake of action Pokerstars are just saying 'f**k it, if they wont pay the rake we just won't run them'. So ******ed.

Partypoker and Betfair have rake caps for the sake of getting the games going and generating some profit. Stars are greedy and refuse to do this.

Stars biggest amount of rake comes from STTs once all the action dies they will soon realise they will have to change it all back.

goddamnit i would jizz my pants if ftp doug opens a thread in internet poker about REAL long awaited rake decreasing.

i am a starsfanboy at heart for all my online poker career, but now, i sincerely hate pokerstars and the people making these ridic decisions. I hope you just killed yourself in sngterms pokerstars, i really do.

With any luck, other sites who are watching this shambles may seize this opportunity to decrease their own rake and swell their player pool with all the disappointed Stars players. I hope this happens as Stars would have to do something pretty spectacular to regain my loyalty now.

Well if I were a poker-site I would hire ASAP some new-business developers and jump asap in the gap.

lets start a rake war between sites!

viva la revolution!

i play on pokerstars for 1 reason- the traffic is greater than any other site. pokerstars is killing sng traffic each day w/ these unnecessary changes. the only way for u to correct your mistakes now is to lower the rake for ALL sngs. everyone here knows that decreasing rake will increase traffic; i dont see how pokerstars doesnt understand more traffic= more profit. 99% of people buy products for their value (rake) and quality (structure/traffic) when compared to other products. myself and many many others are already exploring other options as far as sngs are concerned. if pokerstars takes too long to implement the CORRECT changes sngs on your site will be dead. it is seriously insulting to consider how naive pokerstars must think its customers are.

PokerStars is well aware of the cashout problems that Tilt and others are having.

Pokerstars is also aware that their traffic (and your income) cannot be matched by any other poker site.

Instead of insulting and throwing empty threats at Steve and Pokerstars, maybe trying to reason with them in a calm and polite manner will go a lot further.

It appears that nothing is set in stone with pokerstars new changes, so try to reason with them.