if you mean by fixing not adding more BM events as promised and suits to be done only till certain date (in september I think)

oh and there is this raffle ...

@OurSurveySays: Even if your points are all true you still forget that most pokerstrategymembers are not angry because ps.de wants to change something in future but wants to change promises for members who raked already a lot of money! Most agree that the affiliatemarket is harder now and they have to reduce their promotions but Black Members already raked for 500k points and a good company saved money for the bonusses which come with that ( like the suit).
And don't forget the players who are close to become a Black Member, they already rake 80%+ for this status and no get nothing for it!
If ps.de had said everybody with reg-date of 16.2.2015 and later don't get the old benefits anymore and even if they said everybody before that date has now only one year left it hadn't been such a big deal for the community.
Last but not least their communication and use of words ( we can change anything anytime how we want it) was pretty bad, too.

I agree. again for reference I am pleno1. But please look at the last quote I made from cornie. He is a very good friend and COO of PokerStrategy. He apologised and said that the communication was very wrong and they will try to fix it and reiterated how wrong they initially were.

@ OurSurveySays
I certainly agree to some of the points you mentioned but you miss some substantial things here imo:

- it is not that much about what they changed but how they communicate and implement their changes with their long term members and the overall community
- their overall change of business strategy seems inconsistent with their basic business as a poker school and most people feel excluded from these developments (again BAD communication is a key reason)
- their new approach and view of the poker ecology is imo a simplified misconception that is pretty much in line with iPokers view on the subject
- a lot of their brought up arguments to justify changes (i.e. those ridiculiously stupid tables and graphics) are just nonsense
- Pokerstartegy is not and has never been like astandard affiliate so they wont be hold accountable to their decisions and actions like a normal affiliate. We expect more and they alwas promised more
- This also means that "what others do" is simple irrelevant because that kind of argumentation simply leads nowhere. Wrong is wrong, even if someone else out there is doing it even more terribly wrong
- as you already recognized with your second post. They are changing things retroactively, meaning that all members (even the ones joining on day one) taht aren't BM yet, wont get anything. They remove z, as you put it. And thats a disgrace to that once trustworthy company

And these are only the things that came quickly to mind...there is much more to criticize about their business startegy and especially (!) about their customer relations and communications since iPoker took over

Still. How could a major **** up like the last 2 weeks even happen? It makes everyone question their professionalism and trustworthyness and that won't be fixed easily...

Yeah and as cornie suggested in his posts,they know how wrong they've been and don't expect you to forgive then and won't try and apologise/make bs excuses up. They accept they have been wrong.

i consider cornie a friend too. I am a BM from cz/sk after all. Apologizing will not change anything now imo. I believe that the trust is damaged and no money in the world could repair it. definitely not the money "saved" by this step.

And saying one thing and then also acting by it is another. Since their aplogy they haven't posted a single thing towards the issue and ignore all related threads for more than a week now...appreciating bad communication and taking the issue seriously as well as changing their approach looks different to me...

They dont even talk about it anymore. They dont do anything...they simply ignore us. And thats inacceptable

Posting on lhone sorry but..

1- agree initial communication was potentially poor in some communities and this could/should have been better

2- i think their poker school will spend a lot of resources in helping new players develop into the game and survive the first deposit (most players go broke then don't redeposit) they definitely don't want to exclude high stakes content. They ask me very often to make content and haven't asked me to change prices from the "good old days" they still have live coachings, make new strategy articles etx. For example their is a "beginners guide to cash" 2 years ago we spent dozens and dozens of hours on t and it could have been used forever. They are now spending a similar time imptoving it, modernising it etc. Similar they could have kept the old awful forum which still worked perfectly fine but now they have avery phone friendly site/forum that helps the modern llayer that prefers to browse on their phone rather than their pc

3- I disabree. Ipoker perception is taken from PokerStrategy not the other way round. The guys running things now at ipoker (including brand new software that is very beginner friendly) are the PokerStrategy guys. I know this for a fact. They were even the better PokerStrstegy staff and are currently trying to improve ipoker as much as possible. They worked alongside me for 4 years and can confirm they are very competebt and also have a very good grasp on the industry. I think that it's impossible that their view on things could be less educated than yourself or myself

4- too vague to reply to sorry

5- sure but it's relative. Is never say look they have 6 videos and pokervip has 5. But if in the past they had 30 videos a month and raketherake had 10 and now raketherake has 5 and they have 20 they are relatively still very competitive. The most important things to ck spider here are always relative. How much are they putting back into the industry compared to the dollar they are receiving. Then look at any other affiliate and you will get yor answer. Yes they have to make huge cuts but relatively compared to any other single site they are and always will offer way more, even if the other affiliates have the old stars contracts that are still very lucrative whilst pokerstrstegy went for the longer term worse contract.

regarding guys who aren't already black members this is tougher to answer but still these guys are way better off at ps than anywhere else. I however would be at the very least very disappointed if I was 10% to black member. Although if k was playing those stakes required it wouldn't really be a huge thing and the money lost from it (suit/party) really isn't that big of a thing.

Sorry if I came across bad in this reply. Tough from lhone but I don't mean to be.

Yeh but he accepts that and says that himself in the post. He said they were wrong and he doesn't expect anybody To forgive them.

hi guys -

thanks for the discussion here. Let me firstly re-emphasize that we are very sorry about the impact of the changes on our long loyal customers. We would have never done the changes if they were not necessary/making sense from the view of poker market trends and related considerations.

Regarding the suits, we have indeed fixed the situation as fast as was humanely possible. (both our CEO and I were in the office until 3,00am in the first days reading all the posts and evaluating the situation). Solution was there next morning announced already on Friday 20th. Tailor is going to every BM event (more than in the past), we accept individual tailor apppointments in all cities where BM events take place (was not possible in the past) and in the meantime it is possible to organize individual appointment with tailor in Hamburg anytime. You can see the details about suits in the FAQ.

As for the communication, we could have done a better job. We have always known that the changes will be very negatively received by players, so we tried to explain at our best while respecting the negative reception of the news. Because - and please trust me I am also a poker player - we deeply understand and regret that we have to remove some benefits from VIP players. We should have done better in communication. It was hard in the circumstances, especially in German community. We are still working on providing more communication for Germans and that is coming soon. (as I´m writing now, it is probably happening).

I agree with OurSurveySays, that even after the changes, our offering is going to be the best on PokerStars. Nobody else offers so much content for free for tracked players. I´m sorry about removing the BM luxury from it. The BM benefits were something on top, which noone else had and I respect that it hurts when we removed them. It is not my intention to convince players to not hate us. I can only say - we are sorry!

For those who understand the decision and will continue using our website, I can promise we will continue doing our best with content and offering for both recreational and VIP user segments. It just has to be more balanced and not so top heavy.

Have a good day all! Cheers from Gibraltar rock.

Cornie

Hi Cornie,

I understand the German community is the biggest one but members in the English one have the right to know what's going on.
Communication problems haven't been solved there I'm afraid.
Unless official communication from Pokerstrategy now takes place on 2+2 of course.

words and deed!
you cant say that you messed up communication and that you are sorry for all what happened and still not publish news in all communities, still not answer questions and outsource the whole discussion about PSGY to 2+2 lol

Cornie and pleno: you still don't get the point. We can all accept pokerstrategy adapting to the changing environment but we cannot accept making changes retroactively. All the tickets and suits at stake have been earned in the past, if the BM business model ceased to be economically viable you should have made changes right at that time. You didn't and that's your fault and not the poker ecology's, so take responsibility for your mistake and offer adequate compensation, anything else is not acceptable.

Is there any reason why HannesZ (or anyone else) are ignoring all posts regarding this topic? HannesZ hasnt been posting since 20.02., so basically a week without any post which is pretty tough to accept during the time of those drastic changes.
I dont care at all about any appologies until the communication style hasnt been changed drastically. Talk to us and let us know what you are working on.

Nice Story. Unfortunately, it is not about how nice or good an affiliate pokerstrategy.com in comparison to others.
It is about; why do they shorten the benefits? You - just as well as pokerstrategy.com - are telling that they are spending the Money to get new fish on the tables. However noble this may Sound, eventually they are just trying to get new customers in order to pocket more Money for themselfs. From a Business perspective, this is the right Thing to do, but please...pretty please don't walk around, tell the world that you are Robin Hood and then just pocket the Money on your own.

Now, People may tell; more fish is good for the Regulars as well. But we all know what is gonna happen next; good winning Players are gonna get much more discriminated by the pokerrooms maybe even banned from the poker room at all. No questions asked. They have the legal right to do so and again; from a Business perspective it makes sense.

Both pokerstrategy and the poker rooms are fighting for the best possible Business perspective in the future. On the other Hand, former "VIPs" do the same - with the difference that they have no weapons in their Arsenal. You tell that the canabilistic affiliates are bad - but they are offering goods deals. If we asume that poker is coming to end soon, why would any good winning Player wanna sign up with Pokerstrategy for any room any more? Everyone tries to dry the market...so why should VIP Players sit on the side line just doing as they are told?

Let's go canabalize the **** out of the market before you are banned anyways.

WRONG!
It doesn't make sense to exclude winning players from the market!
First, winning players most of the time play a lot, too, so they generate traffic and rake which is both important for the sites.
Second, every player wants to be a winning player, so if a beginner will hear that winning players are banned/discrimated, he/she will be afraid of that and won't play at all.

And that's another big thing @pleno1 and Cornie4ever: ps.de communicated even with doubtable graphics that winning players are bad for the ecology which is pretty bad as a topic itself but hearing that from a pokerschoolsite ("learn to win") is even worse. Any questions to that weren't answered yet.

Because they likely get way less money than they did previously from PokerStars/player and because of the monopoly they don't make money from black members grinding 100k hands/month at random skins on on game/micro gaming like was possible previously because of the current state of most rooms.

I assume anyway.

"Why would anybody want to sign up through PokerStrategy" well why would they want to sign up throug any site? PokerStrategy has always, currently does and I assume will continue to offer more than any other affiliate. At least legally.

well, the best offer is worthloss if they don't consider themselves to be under any obligation to adhere to them, which is exactly what Hannes told the German community.

Does anyone even know if OurSurveySays or Cornie being (ex-) PS-staff are legit? Seems more to me that those are troll accounts, since why would pokerstrategy solely communicate over 2+2 and not their own forums? Because the ps representatives are sitting it out silently on their own forums since the announcements.

I'm sorry if their legitimacy has been verified.

cornie4ever is coo pavel stehno, verified. oursurveysays claiming to be pleno1 sounds legit to me, too.

nevermore hi, we have acted within our legal rights and did not omit any of our obligations.

I regret that the outcome does not satisfy you. I would have loved if it still made sense to provide benefits for BMs for longer time.

If you have more to say, please stay respectful and provide constructive comments in German BM forum. I will not reply to further criticism in public.

I have made my argument many times in the relevant threads but no rep bothered to answer for over a week. Today, Dami started posting further "explanations" in the BM forum but so far I don't see any answers to the crucial questions.

just to clarify for all potential future customers:
pokerstrategy does not consider itself to be under any obligation to deliver its advertised and promised services.

Thanks for respectful reply.
I understand.

You already have access to the CEO in the BM thread. It is important that the dialogue there goes constructively and focuses on key points. Myriad of communication channels and dozens of posts in public forums are a distraction that only slow us down in providing more tailor made replies to you guys.

Greetings from the Rock!
Cornie