"Please note this special thread is only for posts by xPeru, Klairic, Krmont22, Hood, and Chisness. Please use [linked thread] for discussion of these posts."

Discussion Thread LINK
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PokerStars Player Representatives Report

TL;DR cliffs

● All changes will be implemented on February 1, 2012
● VPPs will continue to be awarded according to the weighted contributed system.
● Overall rake has been reduced by about 2% from the 2011 rates, which is giving more back to the players than the 1.5% loss in VIP rewards
● Supernova/SNE kept for 2013 as long as monthly VPP maintenance requirements are met in 2012 (this year only)
● Supernova/SNE lasts for 12 months instead of 9 when monthly requirements are met and the right to miss one extra month taken into account.
● Supernova monthly VPP maintenance requirement lowered to 6500 VPPs/month
● 3c-6c and 8c-16c NLHE levels will be added

New Rake Structure (USD)











Introduction

Stars announced changes on December 28th to be implemented on January 1st, 2012:

● VPPs allocated by the weighted contribution method instead of the dealt method
● Major rake changes involved decreased rake percentage and caps at many levels.
● Rake is taken at a true percentage instead of incremental.
● PokerStars canceled the rake changes pending the results of this meeting


Key Issues Raised by 2+2/Poker Community
General
● Rake at the microstakes was high to the detriment of the whole poker economy because new players were “discouraged” by losing money too quickly
● Rake at some games made them almost impossible to beat: CAP games, Limit Hold’em and Micro/Low Stakes Big Bet
● Delays in communication of changes


Weighted Contributed Change
● Distribution of VPPs and FPPs shifted from SN+ to Platinum Star and below
● SN+ tiers are harder to achieve for many players
● Claims that PokerStars was increasing profits

Rake Changes
● Rake increase at some stakes
● Lead to claims that PokerStars was increasing profits

Solutions from Player Meeting

Rake Revenue
The change from dealt to weighted contributed rake gave PokerStars an increase in cash game revenue of about 1.5%.

PokerStars originally reduced rake to the extent that only 1% of the 1.5% revenue was returned to the players. They have now agreed to reduce rake by about 2%, resulting in a net revenue loss for PokerStars and net revenue gain to the players.

Rake changes occur in terms of either cap changes or rake % changes.

Rake Reductions
About 40% of the rake changes are associated with microstakes games. Every game at the microstakes has seen a rake reduction.

Rake Increases
● Rake at big bet games 25/50 and higher has increased
● This rake increase goes directly back into lower stakes games
● Rake at the high stakes games is very low in terms of bb/100 compared to lower stakes games
● PokerStars still offers competitive rake structures at these levels
● Associated costs with these games are much higher due to detecting collusion, fraudulent deposits, monitoring games, etc

Supernova/SNE Made Easier
● Returning SN/SNE players now can miss 2 of their monthly VPP retainers before they lose status
● Returning SN/SNE players will keep their status for 12 months instead of 9 months if they meet the retainers
● SNE requirement remains at 50,000 VPP/month and SN is reduced to 6,500 VPP/month

Supernova/SNE 2012-2013 Only Change
● Returning SN/SNE players now will retain their status going into 2013 if they accumulate a yearly VPP total equal to 10 retainer months

*
Edit/MH: "This applies only to 2011 SN/SNE players with the majority of their VPPs earned in cash games since these are the games affected by the WC change"
*

● For example, an SN earning 6,500 per month in each of 10 months would need 65,000 VPPs and an SNE earning 50,000 per month in each of 10 months would need 500,000 VPPs to keep their status throughout 2013
● To be clear, you must earn the 6500 or 50,000 in 10 different months
● This only applies this year and retaining status only includes the higher FPP multiplier (does not include milestone bonuses or tournament entries)

New Micro Levels
PokerStars has agreed to introduce two new stake levels for NL Hold’em of 3c/6c and 8c/16c. This will make it easier for players to move up/take shots at a higher level and should help to “unblock” the micro stakes. If these prove successful, new stake levels will be considered.

Fact Checking
PokerStars has agreed to revisit the rake figures later in the year, and if the actual rake differs significantly from the projected rake, then they may make further rake reductions.

Additional Issues
Communication

PokerStars has recognised that it made mistakes in communicating the latest changes.

● It has committed to providing as much notice as possible before making changes in the future
● It will invite player representatives to discuss issues with PokerStars, twice a year in April and November
● PokerStars reserves the right to make changes without prior consultation if business conditions necessitate. They intend this to be a rare thing.

VPP Multiplier
● Many players now have different VPP rates per hand than before. Data shows average losses at 14.3% for SNE and a 13.0% loss for SN.
● The total amount of VPPs remains the same, so VPPs reduced from higher tiers are entirely redistributed to lower tiers.
● PokerStars will not reduce the 6x VPP multiplier at full ring games. They recognise the inequality, but full ring games are a small portion of real money games. This should be considered a bonus for full ring and not a punishment for other games.
● 8c/16c will have a 6x VPP multiplier at 6max. 3c/6c will be determined.

PokerTableRatings (PTR)
PokerStars opposes the exposure of player information by PTR and will take whatever action it can to prevent this information from being publicly disclosed

Max Table Caps
We have been briefed about plans to cap the maximum number of tables. If you keep timing out and frustrating other players by acting more slowly than the average player, Stars will reduce the number of tables you are allowed to play. If you are playing 24 tables and acting much more quickly than the average player, you may get a max table increase.


General

We were given access to confidential information and data which we analyzed. We tried a number of sensitivity tests that make us confident that the changes listed above do mean PokerStars is putting extra money into the poker economy rather than removing money.

This post is a “succinct” account of the outcome of the meeting. Each player rep will make a post below to provide their own opinions and more details on their specialist areas of interests.

One final point: I think that this is a first in the poker industry, that major changes to product and pricing have been announced by the players and not by the company.

Fixed Limit-Specific Report

FL rake

The rake simulations I had ran prior to the meeting - and posted in the fixed limit forums - broadly matched empirical data PokerStars showed us during the meetings.

The original proposed switch to pure-percentage rake would have brought a slight overall rake reduction, with large reductions at low stakes heads up (which now includes HU at ring games), reductions at most low- and mid-stakes tables up to 5/10, and slight rake increases at 15/30+. I had not analysed any data for 15/30+ beforehand so the slight rake increase had not been noted before the meetings; however I felt the increases were acceptable to bring rake relief to key lower stakes.

After negotiations with PokerStars and the panel to bring further rake reductions, I implemented two structural changes to lower the rake at 1/2 and 2/4 at 6-max. The original proposals would have increased 6-max rake at these two stakes (but decreased it significantly at heads up); with my two structural changes means the change is close to rake-neutral on 3-6 handed ring games at these stakes.

Overall, rake at fixed limit has reduced by 2.85% [this figure and others is based on analysis we did on Thursday, we are awaiting more exact numbers and they will be posted in the OP later], which is more than games overall (1.9-2%). Note that individuals may not see the same rake reductions if they play a different distribution of how many players they play against - 3-handed, 5-handed etc. – compared to the distribution of hands PokerStars deals. 3-handed rake is a significant increase, but this was not an issue with the community and so has not changed.

Something to note: fixed limit does not “suffer” from this switch to weighted contributed (WC), at least not as much as NL and PL players, as many high-volume players are not going to see significant reductions in rewards – if any. From that perspective, fixed limit has done comparatively very well within the boundaries of the discussion.

FL Game Quality

However, the reason cited by PokerStars to switch to WC is to bring improved game quality through more incentives for low volume players: a benefit FL will not see.

For that reason, a lot of fixed limit-specific discussion was outside that of rake negotiations. The PokerStars team shares our concerns over the liquidity of fixed limit games and assured me they are committed to revitalizing the games and to ensuring the long-term viability of the game – and this means making sure the game is beatable at all stakes.

Many of the promotional and structural ideas proposed by the community to try to improve game quality were discussed with the team. Some ideas were rejected. One common concern with some ideas proposed is PokerStars does not wish to appear to push players specifically to one game. Another was that PokerStars is opposed to anything that will segregate players as “winners” or “losers.” Also, many promotion ideas require development time and would not be high priority. No exact plans were formed for FL-specific promotions; however I was assured that promotions and/or events for fixed limit to boost its popularity among recreational players will be tried out soon. With the introduction of regular player meetings, the effectiveness of these promotions can be discussed, and more community ideas can be proposed.

Regarding technical developments, I can say personally I was very exciting to see some updates coming soon that could have a real positive effect to fixed limit and other games. I recommend that the community continues to discuss many of the topics mentioned in this thread and elsewhere for client changes. I would also point FL readers to this post by Steve in the high stakes PL/NL forum: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=254 although note Steve’s disclosure.

I voiced players’ concerns over a “fast-moving ring game product” (now officially known as “zoom poker”) that would further segregate the already sensitive fixed limit liquidity. This was noted and any rollout would only be done with careful consideration at the appropriate stakes, if at all.

Conclusion

Overall, I feel that my expectations – limited though they were prior to the meetings – were exceeded. It was refreshing to hear that guys at PokerStars understand that fixed limit requires specific attention, and that they are committed to providing a good environment to the game. I haven’t come away with broad and significant rake reductions; this was not on the table and nor was it the consensus of the community as the best way to proceed. However this 2.8% rake reduction, along with promising new development plans and a renewed commitment to fixed limit, is a positive result.

This thread is for posting by

xPeru, Klairic, Krmont22, Hood, and Chisness

ONLY.


31 posts were deleted or moved to the discussion thread.

How I suggest the community best conducts discussions with player respresentatives to help them understand what was and wasn't changed

This is a re-post of something i wrote in the discussion thread. I feel the discussion is going off the rails and hopefully this clears up some misunderstandings and brings things back on track. I think it's worthwhile reposting here so it doesn't get buried

Hi guys, i am going to make a post to respond to some of the common concerns in this thread. This will be long, but I think this thread can't progress if we don't all read the key posts.

Firstly, please keep in mind at all times that the players on the panel have no vested interest in the result of the meeting. It is EV neutral to me whether you personally continue to play on PokerStars. Not I nor anyone else on the panel has a reason to "sell" these changes. It's not out job to convince you one way or another. The only reason to respond to people in the thread is to try to benefit you and the community, and because we were nominated to do this job and we will see it through. We are doing the role that you asked of us. There is no "spin."

Someone above accused me of "sounding like PokerStars." I'm not really interested in what I sound like; I'm not in PR and I'm not selling myself nor what I'm saying. I'm just trying to pass on what I have learnt to you and the community.

So lets please keep the "idiots" and the "brainwashing" stuff down because it does not further discussion. We spent probably 60 hours thinking and talking about the issues raised with the community, presenting them to PokerStars, discussing amongst ourselves how best to raise issues and proposals. Now we will spend this weekend and beyond conveying this information on to you. That's the ground rules we need to work from in this thread.

Consider that we were under NDA throughout the meetings. Specific data has (and will be) released, but there are lots of things that we looked at, data we interrogated, that won't be released. This was the whole premise of the meetings - specific nominated players would get to see certain business data to form opinions and negotiate changes, then report these opinions and changes - without the sensitive supporting data - back to the community. That's the whole point. Yes, some figures are unintuitive. But there has to be some level of trust that our opinions are now better educated than yours having seen this data.

You will note that in the original report posted by xPeru that it just presents the facts of the results of the meeting. It does not say anything of the invididual being happy with the changes, nor the lengths of negotiation or compromise on individual points. Issues and proposals were raise and rejected. These will come later once individuals have the opportunity to write more.

It is a shame that we could not post everything in one, with the full data report on rake changes by games/stakes, everyone's personal trip report. Please consider that was some last minute issues on the exacts of the data, and we were all very tired after the meetings, people flew their separate ways, and personal plans changed at the last minute due to the extension of the meeting. If we held off until Monday/Tuesday to post everything, we would have a thread filled with people clammering for answers, and it would have been 24-48 hours before changes came in to effect, which is unnacceptable. So is delaying the implementation of the changes.

I think it is unfortunate that in Joss/xPeru's article on rakeback.com that the subheading includes "caves in," as I believe this to be inaccurate, I'm not sure if this was an editorial mistep or an oversight. Otherwise, Joss is entitled to his opinion as to the results of the meetings. I look forward to his trip report here and that of the other players on the panel.

One common issue raised is the increase in five-handed cap. First, obviously keep in mind that when we talk about an overall rake decrease, it takes this in to account - we look at multi-million hand samples over a specific date, and so it took in to account the distribution of 5-handed hands dealt.

Nowt the 5-handed thing can be argued that it now encourages more games to break, and that some players (maybe proportionally more winners?) play more five-handed. These seem reasonable points. The topic of 5-handed increase was discussed during the meetings. The result of the meetings - 5 handed increases stayed. You can deduce that either PokerStars did not budge on it, or the players were convinced that it was a minor or non-issue having been privvy to more data and debate. If you want to know more about your reps stance on this before and after the meeting, then just ask your representative.

Don't go "ZOMG STILL INCREASE 5-HANDED WTF", it doesn't help you. Ask your NL or PLO rep if this issue was raised, and what were the fruits of the discussions. Again I stress, the whole point of the meetings is that your representatives could come back and say that, having seen more data that you, our now informed opinions may have changed. Or report back that sadly, pokerstars just aren't budging on this issue and seeing the light. Or whatever. That's how this discussion should continue.

(I could offer you my stance on 5-handed rake caps, but then from the FL community this was not a key issue, so it's not so relevant.)

I am fielding FL questions in this thread: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...sland-1153183/ it will be more productive than this general thread.

Microstakes

The three biggest problems at the micros were:

a. High VPIPs and high caps meant that rake in bb/100 was higher than fro any other players especially at PLO.

b. The difficulty of moving up in stakes created blockages.

c. The concentration of better players who were unable to move up made it particularly difficult for new players to make their money last long enough to learn the game, and turn an interest in poker into a long term hobby to the detriment of all of us.

The microstakes buy-in levels are an anomaly:

1c/2c - max buy in 250bbs ($5)
2c/5c - max buy in 250bbs ($12.50)
5c/10c - max buy in 100bbs ($10)
10c/25c - max buy in 100bbs ($25)

Rake reductions

All stakes have received a rake reduction. At 1c/2c the rake reduction is much greater than PokerStars´initial proposal taking the rake down from 5% to 3.5%.

Cap Reductions

Caps almost never came into action at microstakes because they were a ludicrous number of big blinds. The caps have now been reduced. They will still apply to a very small percentage of hands, but they will remove the situation where microstakes players were paying a relatively large $ amount on their biggest pots.

The two lowest stakes play very deep, so big pots can often be 600+ big blinds.

The cap reduction at 5c/10c will apply to more pots than yuou might expect and was the most expensive change to make.

New Stake Levels

We debated introducing 2c/4c for a long time, but decided that it was more important to keep the 2c/5c level that so many players have got used to.

1c/2c max buy in 250bb ($5)
2c/5c max buy in 250bb ($12.50)
3c/6c max buy in 100bb ($6)
5c/10c max buy in 100bb ($10)
8c/16c max buy in 100bb ($16)
10c/25c max buy in 100bb ($25)

The anomaly at 2c/5c remains, but it should be clear that there is a now a much easier route to move up in stakes from 1c/2c.

I argued for the retention of the 2c/5c level. Replacing it with 2c/4c made much more sense, but irritating guys who have got used to playing there didn’t seem to have any purpose.

If this works out we can expect a new level to help people move from 25nl to 50nl (15c/30c max buy in $30).

The structure at micro stakes now looks much more sensible and should be much better for everyone, from the 1c/2c player looking to move up, to the 10c/25c regular who wants the lower stakes guys to move up and take shots.

My personal view of PokerStars

1. I trust the company. I’ve spent many hours now looking Isai in the eye and I believe he is a man of integrity. He runs the company with an extreme attention to detail. I trust him with my bankroll.

2. The senior staff are all ex poker players and have a good understanding of our position. They think that keeping the players happy is good for the future of poker, which is good for the future of the company.

3. I believe that PokerStars has given us a lot more than we expected. The new rake caps at 25c/50c and above are very expensive, and I had exactly zero confidence that they would concede them.

I’m going to address many of the concerns that you guys have brought up so far.

Why did Stars want to make changes to the rake/vip awards system?

• Stars gets many complaints about their rake being too high. They have a lot of proof that their rake is lower than other major sites, but wanted to make it more obvious. By increasing the rake at 5-handed and going to true percentage rake, they’re able to distribute those gains to places that make it more obvious to players that Stars does have the lowest rake.

• Stars wants to discourage players that were taking advantage of a system that allowed much higher or lower “true rakeback” – high volume players as a whole were getting much higher rakeback than what they were paying for.

Why can’t Stars just leave things as is?

• Online poker is facing a problem right now in attracting recreational players. They believe that by having a more competitive rake structure, and by discouraging exploitative rake strategies, they will be able to attract more players to their site.
Why did some of the highest raked games (bb/100) not get a bigger rake cut (e.g. PLO/Micros)

• We felt that it was important to look at winrates of various games to help determine who needed the cuts the most. This was not the only deciding factor, but it did play a part. Stars was able to show us that PLO and the Micros had much larger winrates by the people playing a lot of hands. Because of this, we felt that they didn’t need as big of a cut as we previously thought. Also, the Micros received a very large chunk of the cuts in proportion to rake paid.

Why is Stars using the “industry standard” line with these changes?

• This was something I didn’t like as well. It seemed like Stars was giving up their leadership role by trying to do what everyone else does. I don’t feel this is the case anymore. I think that it was done like this with the intent of being able to bring more recreational players to the site via directly comparable rake structures.

How can we be sure that 1.5% is the right number?

• We can’t. This was something that concerned me greatly at the meetings. I was very concerned about taking the 1.5% number as fact without understanding it. The number is based on actual play from this year, and could be off. We went through the numbers, and played with the assumptions used to see how much it would affect the 1.5% number. When we did this, we put in what we thought was reasonable, and then we put in unreasonable numbers both ways to try and get the possible upper and lower bounds of the number. We found that it would be between 1.3% and 2%. I think that the most accurate guess at this point would be between 1.6% and 1.7%.

Since the data sample is small, what if it’s really much higher than that?

• Stars has committed to looking at the numbers again in a few months (I think April?) If the actual number is higher, they will find a way to compensate for the higher number.

Why didn’t we get a 6x VPP multiplier across the board?

• It’s possible that something like this could’ve been instead of rake decreases cost wise, but Stars doesn’t want to increase VIP benefits. They believe that it’s a better strategy to reduce rake because they feel like they can attract more players that way.

What did we have access to? Were we making the suggestions, or Stars?

• We had access to a lot of information, within reason. Data on rake, winrates, net revenue (multiplied by an unknown constant), and more. Many simulations were run on various rake scenarios to find out the costs, and determine where we thought the decreases would be best spent.

This is not meant to respond to all points, but thought it would show how we were looking at things while on the Isle of Man. I’ll be posting a trip report later.

I have a lot to say, but I will try to keep this concise and organized.

Clarifications

My understanding is that SNE's and SN's who got the majority of their VPPs from cash games will get the easier retainer for 2013. I think this was not explained correctly.

The 2 months you can miss and keeping it for 12 months if you maintain applies to everyone.

The NL charts apply to all big bet games. ie NLH, CAP, PLO, PLO8, anything that is pot limit or no limit.

Limit applies to any game that is played with limit.

Key Issues

Rake was decreased across the board at the micro-stakes. The move to 4.5% is huge here. The 2.80 cap on higher stakes games also results in rake reductions.

The 5 handed cap increase is a huge misnomer. You must first count the hands you play 5 handed, then those hands which actually would hit this cap. Compare this to all the hands that don't hit the cap and have a 10pct lower rake percentage. I have seen the numbers, and this is a rake reduction overall.

PLO and PLO8 got rake decreases. I went into the meeting arguing for a separate rake structure for these games and for more equal rake in bb/100. The data showed that people were doing better in these games than NLH despite the heavy rake. I had a very difficult time arguing after this was shown.

I don't doubt the numbers we were shown. Star's analytics team is new and small. They do not traditionally look at the data we requested, so I doubt they fudged the numbers. We helped them with a lot of the process.

Everyone we worked with showed honesty, integrity, and understanding. We still doubted the numbers after the first go through and scrutinized them thoroughly for two days.

People seem to be saying that we "ate too much pizza" or got "spinned" or whatever else. We fought for as much as we could get. We disagreed with a lot of things that Stars said and doubted the numbers. We did not accept anything as true until proven true.

I 100pct believe the numbers were accurate and that rake was decreased. I was elected for this purpose, and people will just have to take my word. I gained absolutely nothing from this. I spent literally 100s of hours before even going to the meetings and spent every waking hour while there thinking about the best ways to help the most people.

I am upset with how the news got displayed and wish it would not have had mistakes and all the data we wanted to show was available first. This didn't happen, and I apologize. I hope by the end of the day Monday, we will have everything perfect. Sometimes there is just not enough time in the day and pressure causes mistakes. Once again, sorry.

People seem to think Steve mislead people. I think his initial post could have been more clear, but he never said anything that wasn't true. Stars stood to gain about .5% gain on their revenue after the 1% decrease. These changes will have Stars losing about .5% on revenue plus whatever the SN+ changes cost them which is hard to calculate.

I went into the meeting thinking Stars would all be math nerds and data crunchers. The truth is they barely have an analytics department. They are trying to fix this. Before now, they just concentrated on having the best product, best customer service, best rewards program, and keeping their customers happy. It's been incredibly successful for them so far, and I think they will keep it up despite this hiccup.

This is surely just rambling at this point...I am exhausted and was accosted by the TSA upon entering America, having my bags torn through and lots of questions asked. I will try to post some more coherent thoughts tomorrow.

If people want to talk to me one on one, just PM me, and we can talk over that or skype.

Bump and if you have a specific concern or question, can you please PM me? I will answer it as thoroughly as possible here. It is hard to know what to address at this point.

I believe once they finalize all the info and are ready to update their website, I assume he will make an official statement. I can't speak for Steve, though; just my opinion.

I think something along these lines will be posted. I am not sure exactly what the details will be, but we are in discussion about it.

I don't know anything about the US market, but I do believe they are very concerned with the long term health of the poker ecosystem. I got no impression that they thought PokerStars wouldn't be around for a long time.

I know nothing about if they can get back in the US. If they can't, they probably will still be dominant (I don't really trust the US Govt to do poker right). If they can, then they will probably be the market leader for the same reasons.

I think the changes directly benefit the people who were hurt the most and best addressed their concern that they would not be able to get SNE this year.

The theory is that the money will trickle up, but it is just a theory. I hope the games will be better. PLO is growing and becoming more popular. The changes to WC should help eliminate some of the shortstackers and supernits who were kinda wrecking the playability of the games.

New rake reductions, rake tables, and rake change % data

As first reported, analysis run on the final day of the meeting came out with the figure of 2% reduction in rake with our proposal, more than the estimated figure of 1.5-1.7% PokerStars will save net revenue with the switch to weighted contributed.

However, PokerStars has performed additional analysis, looking more accurately at data from other months (during the meeting we used December data which was not representative of the play throughout the year) and at non-omaha and HE games, have concluded that in fact, the proposed rake reduction would be larger that first thought: 2.22% to be exact.

After further discussion and consulation with some of the players on the panel after the meeting, PokerStars has decided to implement further rake reductions to those proposed, specifically:

- % rake in NL/PLO 5 has been reduced to 4.15%, the cap at NL/PLO 50 is reduced to $2.50 in USD and EUR games
- in fixed limit, rake caps have been reduced in 5c/10c, 25c/50c and 50c/$1
- The proposed rake increase at NL/PLO 5000 has been rolled back.

With these changes considered, the total reduction in rake across all games is 2.95% (2.94% at USD tables). A summary by stake band and game is shown below:



Following is a % change in rake compared to 2011, broken down by individual stake, game and currency.

NL/PL Hold'em:


PLO:


Omaha 8:


Fixed limit Hold'em:



Following are the full rake charts, marked are the original proposals as a result of the meetings (yellow), additional changes now announced (orange) and cancelled changes (purple)


Big bet games - USD




Big Bet games - Euro



Fixed Limit games

Given the negative feedback in this thread, PokerStars will not roll out the proposed 3c/6c stake tonight, choosing to wait for further feedback from the community. Many have raised concern in the discussion thread with the proposed introduction of this stake.

8c/16c will still be deployed as planned.

Issues Since Report Posted
NDA: Getting a revised NDA at the meeting was a non-issue for me. It was just an expanded version of the one we had sent with no changes of substance.

Winners after rakeback: This measure has been talked about a lot. It's being misunderstood as a major driving factor in the rake changes or lack thereof. I don't think this had much of any affect on changes that we made. It was mostly a curiosity so we could confirm that people are in fact winning and that the rake rates aren't unbeatable. We acknowledged problems with looking at this sort of data (variance issues in particular) and it in no way changed my beliefs that the rake could use some drastic cuts.

Experience at IOM
The IOM had a very safe and cozy atmosphere because it's so small (80k population). We sat next to some random guy and his gf at dinner the first night. The guy struck up conversation after hearing my food order (a) taking multiple minutes to complete and (b) having some chip/fry confusion. Once we told him we were from America, he immediately knew that we were there for igaming business.



The scenery was very nice and the dinners were great (though the nicer restaurants were pretty much vacant). The lunches at the Stars office sometimes looked a little peculiar but tasted pretty solid.

How Things Worked
We usually had an early breakfast at the hotel, went to the Stars office from about 930 to 6, ate lunch there, then took an hour break and then had dinner for a couple hours.

At the offices we were in a conference room for most of the day with the 5 reps, 3 ring game managers, often the Stars owner, and occasionally others who gave special presentations.

We spent probably 20% of the time talking about rake and other topics of interest, 15% small talk/eating, 15% on PokerStars specific presentations, 50% on actual analysis of rake changes.

Experience/Views on PokerStars
The ring game guys and the owner were the ones we spent the most time with and they all seemed extremely smart and hard working. The owner and Steve completely live and breathe PokerStars and they care a lot about player satisfaction, especially that of 2+2ers.

I was impressed with how much they knew off hand from their internal data analyses and also from following 2+2. They said every single suggestion gets vetted and goes around to a few people before being discarded or added to the (seemingly very long) priority list.

They were able to logically address or refute all sorts of ideas, including my non-rake requests like global timebank and removing the Fold to Any button (this one is hopeful!).

They genuinely wanted to make the situation right and they agreed to reduce rake by what they felt was a substantial amount, but were not ready to do anything drastic because that would take MAJOR consideration (we should be trying to convince them of this now). Their agreement to reduce rake at the meeting revolved around settling to make the cumulative changes (after the WC change) net revenue neutral for PokerStars. Originally it was going to be a small profit for them in Dec, then it was looking like they'd agree to breakeven (beginning of meetings), then they agreed on a small loss (end of meetings), and eventually agreed on a larger loss (days after we left).

Although we made a lot of inquiries into their figures (mainly to serve the purpose of validating them), which may have helped in them agreeing to give us a bit more in decreased rake, for the most part we didn't have much negotiating power beyond them at least not profiting off of the overall change. We intended to ask for a bit more since our read was that they wouldn't go much over that 1.5% mark (the amount they gained via WC), but they offered even more (2%) than we were planning to request (1.7-1.8%) and pretty much said that was final, which we were OK with (and which was later changed to about 3%). So we took what we were given and used that budget to create our specific changes using the tools of player structure, rake %, rake cap.

I suggested that instead of Stars revenue we try to use the benchmark of roughly making the average SN/SNE player (who lost 13-14% in VPP rate) overall rakeback equivalent to what it was before by reducing rake to whatever extent necessary to make that happen. This did not work.

Although before the meeting there was a vote that said not to bring specific reps for different games, I'm glad that there was a diverse group from all different stakes/games, because we all mostly worked on changes for our own games/stakes (though were conscious of the overall goals of the community).

So we settled on the micro/limit changes early and then pretty much used the remaining “budget” to reduce the big bet games by as much as possible (all of these changes are where the reps had the most say). We decided that 2-4 and 3-6 should have the same structure since they’re so close and determined that in order to make the rake reductions most steady throughout the stakes (lower stakes getting larger reduction), we’d reduce the caps to $2.80 for those games.

The biggest request from the community was that micro games got a reduction and that was where the bulk of the decrease went overall.

We agreed to the 5+ player structure because Stars wanted to do that. If we didn’t do that, we would’ve just had higher rake caps and/or higher rake %s resulting in essentially the same rake for players.

CAP Specific Changes
I would've liked to have gotten CAP specific changes, especially for the harder to beat lower levels, but we didn't have the budget to do CAP-wide changes (in part because the rakes there were being decreased alongside all NLHE). There was also a lack of CAP data available which made it difficult to do specific analyses that could've possibly made some small changes to the lower levels.

My winrate is roughly constant throughout the stakes 1-2 to 5-10 and my winrate goes UP through the stakes because the rake gets so much lower, so I know how it must be very frustrating to be a 100CAP player.

I think there's a good chance at fighting for these next time Stars does a rake update.

NLHE Changes
The rake at NLHE stakes up to 3-6 went down and beyond that it went up slightly (using the same changes that Stars proposed from end of December). At 50-100+ we increased the rake more because our feeling was that the micro/small stakes had extreme bb/100 rates and the only way to budget to fix this was increase the rates at the high stakes where the bb/100 is incredibly low compared to anywhere else on the site.

Other Things
We should get the Player Panel back up and functioning soon.

I'm convinced that PTR is a top priority and that measures are being taken against it.

I definitely like the idea of reviewing rake data a couple times a year. I think it's useful to have reps at IOM, especially if private data is needed. I do understand the community not wanting this to happen again because it has the sense of being closed off and is possibly something the Player Panel could handle.

Get rid of the stupid Fold to Any button!

I went for an SN/SNE 1-year fix plan that credited players with a set number of VPPs for this year based on last year's cash VPPs earned. This was nixed in favor of the reduced requirement for the year, which is more in favor of those who hit exactly the threshold 100k or 1m and those who saw larger VPP hits (who I don't think should be helped beyond the average VPP hit level). (For example, a 1m player who took a 30% VPP hit and plays the same amount this year will get 700k VPPs and maintain elite. Under my idea he would get a roughly 100k VPP credit so he'd hit 800k but NOT get to maintain elite. The guys seeing a more reasonable 10% VPP hit would get those VPPs "made up" this year with their 100k credit and still reach 1m and all SNE perks involved even after earning only 900k.)

Major Rake Changes
I think what people want to see is a DRASTIC rake reduction, something that really disrupts the entire industry. I think this could work. People like EASY to understand fee structures and transparency. People don't want to pay $10k/month for poker.

An incredible percent of winnings that gets raked at the lower stakes. If one only took home 35-40% of his pay in the real world, incentives to work would be much lower. I think there’s a chance that Stars could make just as much money with major rake reductions as they do now because of the insane increases in traffic they’d see, not just from other sites, but from people who previously weren’t playing at all.

Major reductions were never going to happen over our 5 days with PokerStars, but I think we should encourage them to think about this now. The rake table now is better than last year, but there are many inconsistencies (eg why doesn't PLO have its own rake table when FL does?) and it’s not easy to understand, especially for non-serious players (it is now more comparable to other sites, but they’re all hard to understand, especially in terms of $$/hand or bb/hand costs).

There are tons of startups that disrupt well fixated players in an industry. For example Stripe (www.stripe.com) is taking on PayPal by making it super easy and straightforward to set up online payment processing.

It's been tried before, but now that rake is in the spotlight, maybe a new site or Stars themselves could disrupt the poker industry by offering a completely new structure. Something like a monthly or per 100 hand fee that is drastically lower.

Conclusion
I believe that the data we were shown was as accurate as possible. I think WC is better for the games overall and am content with the rake decreases that we made in most areas, but I would have liked to have seen the average VPP-reduced SN/SNE player like myself not be worse off now compared to 2011.

I like the people at PokerStars and believe that they do care about what's best for the players. I had a great experience meeting all of them and felt like the time there was valuable.

I do still think that the rake is too high overall and I'd like to see some of the complainers coming out with some real proposals for how they'd fix it.

PokerStars Steve has broken down the rake changes by 6 max and Full Ring based on January's data.