Well I think it's safe to say that at this point it didn't work out for them. Traffic is pretty much the same and NL500 zoom isn't running too often. I think the goal was to poach hs players from gg and they managed to lose lower stakes volume.

Fair to say most of us hated the changes, so the fact it is not working might be the best news we could ever want.*

*At least to me, I don't really want to sign a deal with the devil (read, move my traffic to gg), so I'm putting my hope on stars failing miserably and bringing a better offer to the table.

We saw with Party Poker, Ipoker, the reopening of Full Tilt, the collapse of messaging forums such as HighStakesDb and now Two Plus Two, that when you lose your customers, it's very difficult to win them back.

Too much damage has been done to the PokerStars brand over the years. We all warned them over and over again. They ignored us, because they were a monopoly.

People are on GGPoker now. They are not coming back to PokerStars.

And even if you achieve select plus how do you know Pokerstars will even let you keep it. They come up with a new loyalty program every year.

They screwed over the Supernova Elites. If you were making money doing those weekly rakeback challenges they got rid of those as well.

Well,I don't play high stakes but i can say PLO50 Zoom became way worse since this new rakeback system,less fish on the pool and now i also get less rakeback.

I'm just playing on GG for now with good rakeback and way more weak players per table.

Only thing Stars has going for them is their reputation, software and somewhat nostalgia.
Software has gone to worse recently, can't open these chests + same thing with opening cashier pop-up window. At some point tournament lobby registered tournament font was so fked that it was hard to see if you were regged or not, i think they fixed that.
I used to love playing at Full Tilt and didn't like Stars at all, only played some volume at Stars to clear their bonuses at the time. Was disgusted when FTP shut the shop and had to move to Stars, but grew to like it. Right now i'm in a similar situation, where i don't exactly want to move to GG, but everything points at it.
I play tournaments mostly, but dabble in some cash. I'm European and play morning sessions and seriously traffic is absolutely bad. In MTTs all you see are these belarussian, ukrainian grinders, who are all atleast semi-decent. All deep structure tournaments or in general normal speed tournaments in the buy-in range of 5-22 are full of those guys, some punters from Germany and that's about it. Kinda feels like you can play peak hours normally, but other than that it's dry AF. Don't even get me started on cashgames.

Still the safest site to keep funds in, and security and fairness of the games is taken more seriously than pretty much any other site.

GG has more players, charges rake to an almost scummy level, and yet is not at the same level of stars in security of the games. Not even saying the possibility of a ban and confiscation if you end up being too good.

Traffic pretty average over the weekend it looks like.

It is a joke of a promotion. Why anyone would take any of their volume from gg or apps to play in this ghost town? Have select promo plus good sustainable weekly challenges of 25% rkb each and we are cooking. No more 1$ tickets, who was thinking it is good promo to open 1$ ticket when they are playing 200$+ abis/buyins. Please fire the promo stuff and i will work in your company with good suggestions with half the salary you give these clowns, but oh wait they know something, like they knew when they removed sne 3 months before the end of the year

How does Pokerstars pay out this new rakeback, I have read somewhere that they say, they pay out everyday? However, I haven´t noticed I got anything the last one week our so, and have played a big amount of mtt´s. No email, notifications, etc. Wasn´t that the reason why they wanted to change the system, more transparency? lol

Before I always got a weekly reward challenge, and I could follow the points, and when I reached that one, I got a new one, at least there I could follow my goals, and I got 40% rakeback (our at least they said that) but seems like I don´t get anything at all now? Unless it´s "only" on the chest points?

GG is a complete scamfest, one day you'll wake up and that moneys gone.

Unless you're select you'll still be on the chests

Okay, I don´t think i´m select then, but where can I see the status of this, how much more I need to hit that goal? So I guess, I am some of the ones that actually lost some rakeback then, I used to be able to grind one our two challenges of 150 usd each week, they are now gone, so I only have the chest point reward (whick looks like it got harder too).

Seems like for me it got worse, also super weird you can´t see any status at all, when the goal was to make it more transparent? Totally opposite.

Anyways, Pokerstars always been my favourite software, but damn they destroyed that site, almost no value tours/cashgames anymore, and when you actually play something decent, they just cancel the tournament halfway in, because they didn´t manage to hit the guaranteed prize sum.

If deposit options wasn´t an issue for me on other pokersites (live in Thailand), then i would had changed 100%.

Players not willing to move away from stars because of software, safety or whatever, is exactly why the can get away with all this ****. Stars being your only option (I would think GG would be the saviour, not stars, but who knows), unless you play for a living, can't get anything else to do for money and would starve to death if you stopped playing, you have choices. Even if those choices involve not playing anymore

most of us don't play for a living so a little bit of extra rb isn't that big of a deal, its advertised cashback but complete bs anyways, raking pots pre/ banning winning players/ bots/ collusion.. probably breaking every law imaginable, the whole thing feels off

nothing different than real life

word on the street is that the pokerstars promo staff also gets their salary in $1 spin and go chests

Ps coming back with the leaderboards for a while atleast, not that I could be arsed grinding them but hopefully bring some players over for a while spice up these penny games

You can't really grind them because you have three attempts 200 hands each to hit them. For cash and spins a similar one. Don't think that the avg 5% extra rb will make any difference in traffic.

LBs are great for recs who don't look at it like 5% rb but like a chance to win 800-600$ in a day. So it is a good promo for everyone.

Good point but don't think the target audience is playing NL100 or 200.

Why not? Recs are playing all stakes?

Because the pools have like 1% recs. They don't just appear from thin air because there is a lb available. So don't know how this is that good for regs playing 100 or 200 when the point system is luck based. But it's better than nothing obv. I still think they managed to fock this up. The new and improved rb system.

Thank you for your service Pokerstars!
Poker room that has died has been identified...
Really who could have seen this coming? xDD
IF they could allow deposit/ withdraw crypto; players from Russia and China; new reward system top level 80% rakeback => then I guess they have a chance to get back nr.1 spot poker room
I just cant understand why they are not doing things mentioned above, maybe its:
a) not possible legally b) incompetence

yea they should offer 80% rakeback just like all the other sites