Any RB deal that you have to earn to release instead of being directly tied to your play is no longer rakeback but a bonus with play through.

Pokerstars lying again who guessed?

Yeah was actually excited for this but...it turned out really poor.

You know that this pokerstars has nothing to with the previous owners? And technically they didn't lie. System got better for the players who play 50 hands on a friday and don't care about rb. Or the higher stakes regs they are trying to poach from gg.

These targets are ridiculous, how is 6000 dollars in 28 days needed to get to black chest when select is 50,000 for a year? They want a 78,000 rake a year pace to reach black chest for 30% lol.

been putting off trying GGpoker as I like to track my play with HM in session but think I will have to now.

Lol at Pokerstars talking about Supernova, looking at the past, instead of focusing on the future.

Grinding Rakeback is miserable.

Pokerstars needs to create beatable games, that are enjoyable, so players can move up in stakes.

They probably should care about low/mid stakes regs as well, because their pools are a ****ing joke for quite a while (at least PLO, but I would assume NL isn't amazing either).

I bet GG owners/management are laughing their ass off RN. They didn't even need to put out the "Killer Whale promo" looking at how sh.t of an attempt this is by Stars, but they did it anyway because they assumed they might be at risk of competition.

This is the difference between GG and Stars. PS from a leading position didn't care about competition because they got complacent AF with their monopoly. GG from a leading position tries their best to retain that position and their efforts are clearly paying off, seeing their growth over the last couple of years.

I used to get these "generous"40% challenges where I had to rake in about this much a month while playing PLO100/50 zoom lol.
They were "nice" enough to lower it to a 3000$ one when I haven't been able to even clear 20% of it for months, but even that one would require me to grind like 60-70K hands as I was only playing in the PLO50 pools at the time on Stars.

I am a person who likes the comfort of constant things in their life/hate big changes, so initially I also didn't want to move from PS which I used for about 10 years.

But moving my action to GG was a decision I wish I made much sooner. Games are softer and even with their PVI system, the rakeback is very generous between the base one and their other promotions.

Also I seen some people complain about their HUD/tracker, but IMO it's good for multiple reasons.
A: everyone is working with the exact same stats.
B: by providing HUD to players who otherwise would not use one, they give a sense of security/equality to recreational players. These players probably won't be able to optimally use these stats anyway, so even regs win out on this. It's a win-win for all.

It's a bit of a pain to download hand histories for trackers, and they are a bit off as far as I can tell. But at the end of the day, all that matters is that the site is profitable to play on and is reasonably reliable as well (even if it does have the occasional few sec freeze). Neither of those things I could say about PS recently.

GG gives good rakeback when you do well on the flip out. But i don't know... There are not that many reasons to feel safe on GG.

One of the shadiest sites without a doubt. And the rake on regular tables is too extreme, you can literally notice that while playing.

During my 6months there I cashed 16/56 for 472$, the largest one being 84$ and also had two 50$s.

I would argue you get much more money out of the Rush and Cash leaderboard, even without grinding it too seriously. Getting a daily 10-20$ (depending on which day) is really not that hard if you grind some hours/a good 1K hands. That's a good 150-300$/month which is very doable even for someone who is not doing poker full time.


I can't comment much on safety, because I am not an expert in that field, but it's one of the largest sites, so it should be reasonably safe (I am aware of the recent news on the super-user).
I also don't really play regular tables, because I dislike the constant straddle-s which reduce edges (lower SPR).

Might not be for everyone, but in general it's reasonably well received by regs and recs alike, and personally I do prefer it over Stars atm. Mainly because of the traffic issues at PS, and also I had fewer issues with GG client than the PS one.

If the regular tables on GG had a decent rake or GG removes PVI they would be the best place to make money.

I enjoy the fish that likes to straddle, they are easy to win. Even with the SPR, they overbluff river when they shouldn't, they overcall turn when they shouldn't. It's all about being a professional fisherman

From the article:

I'd go with no, and never. At least not with the current player pool sizes.

Someone throwing money in the middle with any 2 cards is giving you a huge edge

I mean I play PLO and Straddle/low SPR is generally a big disadvantage there. I assume you play NLH though.

I don't know much about their PVI, but I was used to getting 1% RB at Stars for a period. So as long as the games are good and I get a reasonable amount on top of my net winnings I am happy with GG poker.

Pokerstars might be a bit more transparent, but the games when I last played there have been dry AF (for a while, and even nowadays the pools look pathetic). I rather have less transparency regarding my RB while I beat the game at a decent WR, than push stacks back and forth between the same 20-30 regs in the Zoom pools at Stars just so I can tell that my 20-30% RB is in fact 20-30%.

And let's not even mention the client issues at Stars. Don't know if it was fixed since, but I can't fathom how something like not loading in cards on multiple occasions is possible at a popular site like them. Their servers and softer isn't as reliable as it used to be, which was a big selling point for them. But not surprising when all they did in the last couple years is just cutting costs wherever possible.

___
I play PLO. The action pre- and POF works differently. Low SPR = less edge, and the hand values run much closer.

This

I wonder if the players complaining that Black or Select requires too many rake all got supernova elite so easy.. it almost seems like it. Of course the highest vip levels are very tough to reach

What a complicated mess online poker has become since I put considerable volume in pre Black Friday. With cheating scandals, super users, bots, colluders, RTA's, Tracking software, HUDs, Multi-accounting, ghosting, backing and swapping agreements, stables. etc., etc., etc.. Now you need a doctorate to even understand the rake back programs. Why do they make it so complicated? You used be able to get a flat rakeback % across the board and now you need to play 12+ tables, get in 100 hands per minute at least 3 different poker variants, blind folded, clicking buttons on our mouse with a fake cat paw, while balancing your keyboard on your nose and hoping on one foot singing Kumbaya lol.

Remind me why you guys still play online again?

Players on Black Chest will now be migrated to Black level.

You need to earn 5 Diamond chests to upgrade to Black so this is $6,000 in rake but the period earning the first chest is not considered when the number of days are counted. This is because it is technically counting progress bars completed in 28 days. So it can be true to say you need to earn 5 chests within 28 days to upgrade whilst it not being true that you need to rake $6k in 28 days.

Here's an example to try to explain, in which a player has earned 5 x diamond chests so raked $6k and managed to upgrade but in this example they have taken 42 days to do so but would upgrade after earning the fifth chest on 4th March because at this point the statement "have 5 chests been earned in the last 28 days" is true, the player earned a chest on 5th Feb, 12th Feb, 15th Feb, 19th Feb and 4th March so 5 chests all within 28 days. The fact that the first of these chests started to be earned 42 days ago does not matter. So technically you need to earn 5 chests to upgrade but the rake amount required to be earned within 28 day period is equal to 4 x chests = $4.8k

Has this been confirmed on that stars discord?

yeah very good, since flip out is less than 1% rb XDDDDDDDDD

goodbye pokerstars!
rest in peace!
new rakeback is actually lower than it is was...

https://gyazo.com/16df780ddb01599c1d56a803a4299419

Underwhelming start

Low stakes volume is down, but mid stakes seems mostly the same?

Has anyone got the exact numbers on how much worse off everyone is? Factoring in chests being harder to finish etc?

Hard to say because it depends on the game and stakes you were playing. For the lower stakes like flash players 40% cut is the worst case scenario. If you were clearing the 40% challenges with the black chests something like 5-10% cut. Cash regs that were on the 10% challenges and play NL200+ are the biggest winners imo.

The pool is exactly the same, nothing changed. Omaha zoom continues to die and has no signs of recover

Expected to see some 500NL action, nothing happening till now. Guess the 500NL regs are not interested in 50%rakeback (and thats why stars should give 50% to us, low stakes players. )

Its official boyysss, they will never be on top again unless GG throws away the crown and shits on the throne.