This is what I with regards to a recent query. Of note they do not say what sites were used for comparison.

Thanks for your email.

Regarding your comments about rakeback in comparison to our reward points, understand there are many conditions to rakeback deals, and such promotions must be paid for somehow. Usually this means higher rake charges in large pots, higher tournament fees, and/or reduced value frequent player programs. Most sites that offer rakeback will also deduct rakeback paid to players from deposit bonus payments or charge far higher redemption prices for items in their loyalty programs.

As a basic example, I recently researched the rake structures for our site and another popular site (which offers 27% rakeback) across two table limits and three table sizes (number of players).

Table Limit $0.05/$0.10 NL Hold 'em

Our rake:
2 players - rake = 4.5%/max $0.50
4 players - rake = 4.5%/max $1.00
9 players - rake = 4.5%/max $1.50

Other site's rake (27% rakeback):
2 players - rake = 6.7% /$1 pot (max $0.50)
5 players - rake = 6.7% /$1 pot (max $2.00)
9 players - rake = 6.7% /$1 pot (max $2.00)

Table Limit $1.00/$2.00 NL Hold 'em

Our rake:
2 players - rake = 5% /max $1.25
4 players - rake = 5% /max $1.25
9 players - rake = 5% /max $2.75

Other site's rake (27% rakeback):
2 players - rake = 5% /$1 pot (max $0.50)
5 players - rake = 5% /$1 pot (max $3.00)
9 players - rake = 5% /$1 pot (max $3.00)

If for example you were playing a 5-handed $1.00/$2.00 NL Hold'em hand on both sites with a pot of $75.00 in total, the rake at our site would be $2.00, and the rake at the other site would be $3.00. That's because at that level, we have a lower maximum rake of $2.00 compared to the other site's maximum rake of $3.00. With 27% rakeback, the rake is still $2.19 at the other site compared to $2.00 at our site.

So although the "maximum rake" levels at our site are higher in some circumstances (e.g. lower limit tables), the actual rake charged is often lower, even after rakeback.

Instead of rakeback, we prefer to simply offer a competitive "base" rake and our extensive Stars Rewards program.

Our loyalty program rewards you for all your gaming activity across all of our products. You will earn a variety of rewards personalized to the games you like to play, including StarsCoin which you can spend in the Rewards Store on items such as poker books, poker accessories, electronic items, and many others. For more information about Stars Rewards and the Rewards Store, please visit our website and go to the 'Stars Rewards' pages.

While we hope you are convinced already, remember that we also provide the widest variety of games with the biggest prizes available online. Additionally, we believe that nowhere else on the Internet will you find a site that has put more effort into ensuring its games are fair, nor which has a higher regard for integrity or commitment to customer service.

Please let us know if you have any other questions and thanks for playing with us.

Regards,

This is funny. We don't give basically anything back and if you for some reason get something back you could buy useless and / or overpriced crap like books from our store.

Have no idea what popular site that could be other than acr. Atleast at party or mpn you don't get that number back. And 888 is like stars. You should email them back and show mpns lower baserake and better rakeback.

Emailing Stars support, especially the lowest level one, about Rewards is a waste of time, unless you do it for laughs.

Stars could have written a much shorter one:
"You idiots are still playing on our site. Laters"

Amaya wanted a higher rake (the model being like 5% to 3 dollars with some rewards) than what Pokerstars before had, that's all.

Basically, the 10 to 30% (40% if you were not regulated till they changed that also) rakeback was removed (and the Elite before that). It was easy to get like 10 (I needed about just to log in) to 20%, to Gold, and it was a good motivator.

Now you are not rewarded for raking, making them money, no discounts for paying that much. They don't pay enough for the losing and break-even players either. I do hate the break-even multitabling morons but there are also a lot of just losing players who just give up, even when they beat the competition, but can't beat the whole rake. So, the rake for cash is definitely too high, sick, and we have some options.

I don't even know about the higher tourney ticket rewards these days, playing some zoom (PLO and getting NLH tickets). They do put a lot of money in free tourneys; but I am not usually there, that should be more important. I was in one platinum tourney years ago, didn't play any good NLH but it was nice, not some crap tourney.

So, you might get an idea here what motivates and what is nice. Compare to Hearthstone's (a digital card game) rewards (and fancy stuff that would be like Silver, Gold, Platinum in poker), that's known to be addictive or so.

You are free to compare the rakes of the rooms and play where the deal is overall better. Stars can do whatever they want (I have accepted the rules of capitalism). I am always actively searching the best deals for myself and on average they have been twice the better than playing at Stars. Stars is good for MTTs and Zoom if you like, and getting as much PLO action at many places is tough, and some (mid-)levels have suffered, as the cost of play is way higher than elsewhere.

Someone - whether it be a poker site, or a poker software tracker, or an affiliate - should create the service whereby X,000 hand histories are uploaded, and then it automatically compares the rake charged and the rewards by different operators.

Such a service couldn't include PokerStars, since I don't think that they disclose the details of their reward program any longer, but it would be a useful tool for players to make judgements about these things.

The other "popular" site seems to be IPoker (6.7% Micro-rake and 5% on higher stakes). If IPoker, lol at popular.

What does party and 888 charge for rake?

they would be #2 and #3 in terms of volume would they not?

Stars obviously would pick a 'popular' site that puts them in the best light as it were. Vs a site that is more or equally competitive in terms of actual rake paid (money paid in rake - rakeback=??)

At the end of the day given all of its promotions Pokerstars finished 2017 with 900 million US in revenue - all paid for with rake.

http://www.starsgroup.com/press-cent...-year-guidance

Most poker rooms show the rake structure on their websites.

What the support officer chose not to mention is that Stars uses 'fair' rounding to the nearest cent (the 'half to even' method) in rake calculation, while most competitors always round down - to the nearest cent or sometimes the nearest multiple of 5 cents at higher stakes.

I only get Casino and Sportsbetting promotions/challenges/reload boni which is exactly what I am not playing at STARS.

It feels, they try to lure you into other gaming activities instead of giving you promotions for the games you like to play. Maybe we should make some survey among Pokerplayers at Stars just to reveal the reality.


Do you guys actually get Poker challenges/ Poker related promotions or reload boni recently?

This year I have received two deposit x ammount and receive x ammount for free. I don't basically play at all stars these days so maybe they are targetting players to come back don't know.

Did you get any of these offers at the time of logging into the client after a long absence, or maybe at the time when you clicked the withdrawal button in the cashier? I got my latest offer ($50 worth of Spin & Go tickets for a $200+ deposit, likely because Spins are my main game) on Sep 20, in the session where I did both these things. I'm not sure which of the actions was the trigger for the offer. I'm trying to detect a pattern.

No. Both times stars emailed me these promotions. And I wasn't logged in like a month or two both times plus my account was empty.

Ah, thanks, so they seem to send offers to inactive accounts in general. I, too, did receive a few such offers while my Stars account was a bit dormant or sometimes even empty.

I play 20 hours a week (or so)
Have got two offers in ten days after going half the year without anything. 1st offer was deposit $300 get $75 and second offer was deposit $200 get $30.

The current offer to me is a random prize up to $20K for a $200 deposit (as seen in the Bonuses section of My Stars). Of course, I'm not gonna use it - the EV is vague this time

Im curious but has anyone here or heard of anyone that won any type of big money when depositing into stars for those frenzy bonuses etc? Like the person above say deposit 200 for random prize up to 20k.

There were some reports about decent prizes in some of Stars' randomised promos on Russian forums; I'm too lazy to dig links up, though.

Also, I'm quite sure that gambling commissions do audit promos with such bold claims.

A friend of mine deposited $200 and got this, and was allowed to immediately withdraw it. He's such a luckbox!