Unfortunately I can't play on 2 sites since I play on the South European Market and only CoffinStars is available here atm. I intended to swap all my action to PartyPoker once it arrives in Portugal but it seems they also had a nasty surprise for the French-Spanish players: they cut their rakeback program entirely for this market pool probably due to the taxes they now have to pay.

Rough times!

Formula: Add an incentive to start playing, then deceptively reduce the chest drop frequency. Many recs wont notice. Profit from rake.

They don't reward you for playing because they know enough players will play regardless of rewards.

im not sure if it matters if the recs plays a lot or not because the formula also include net deposit and winrate not including that a rec 'playing a lot' still doesnt play that much in term of hands on his 2 tables.

but your second point im impressed people don't seem to care that much about rewards. it really really matters even if youre a big winner.

I don't know how many people realise this since I'm sure people don't regularly click "my stars" --> "chests", I know I certainly don't, but I just noticed that chests have a 3 month expiry date.

well they dont rake enough so they gotta take money back somehow, might aswell take it back from the free giveaways they give you.

Just a question its probably been answered. When you upgrade to the next chest.. how long does this last for? is it indefinitely as long as your still earning chests?

Uyoi will stay at the new level until your last 3 chests were all earned on different days (and a day is calculated by EST).

Apparently a strategy of earning 2/0/2/0/2 etc will work.

update from a few months ago when I was having to pay 13.5k points for bronze chests after binking a mtt, stopped playing on stars for a few months just came back and my bronze chests are now 1500 points each. Also got a email with a $50 deposit bonus on $200+ deposit which I haven't had offered to me in probably years

cashed out anything? if yes, did your bronze chest requirement increased after the cashout or after the gains

I can confirm that stopping playing for a couple months will decrease the requirement. I can also say that it's not really worth it to do it on purpose the ''formula'' is fairly quick to reassess you with what it thinks you should have.

I really think we should make a thread where we all reported in detail our activity so we could maybe have some vague idea of what trigger the chests. With a couple dozen people we can probably come up with somethings

Infos like:
- stakes
- nb of table
- type of game
- frequency of play
- cashout history before/after chest (a vague number no need to be precise)
- winrate

if there's interest ill make a thread

There is a thread like that in the internet poker forum although it hasn't been active for a while.

I actually just cashed a red chest and my points total for the new basically doubled to 550 points. Keep it in mind I play less than 10 hours a week and average maybe 5 hours a week or slightly less. When Stars has a better promotion I might play up to 10 hours. I do "win" but I play Russian donkey stakes so I rake very little.

-> You win;
-> You don't deposit;
-> They don't like you;
-> Go away!

So.... past few months my chests have actually been really good... silver chests have been 'only' 1975. I'm a micro stakes player so getting a couple of these a day hasn't been too difficult, but its not exactly easy either. THEN i made a few small withdrawals over the past week totaling maybe a hundred bucks and all of a sudden the same silver chest is now 13500!!! I contacted support thru chat to ask about the huge jump (7x previous) and was given the generic answer " the chest requirements are tailored to your playing pattern"
I asked the rep to explain to me how my playing pattern has changed so drastically that it justifies such a huge jump in requirements and was told that my "case" will be forwarded to the promotions team and they will get back to me with an explanation....
Holding my breath waiting for a reply! hahaha

to be continued... (if they even bother to reply)

So this is the reply I got.

Thanks for your response.

I understand your comment perfectly, but as we said before, this system is personalised and there are a lot of factors. Please also note that we do not penalized the withdrawals.

I have forwarded your comment to our Ideation Team, who is best placed to address your comments and identify if this is something that we could improve at this time.

Rest assured that all feedback is very important to us and we consider all suggestions and comments that are sent our way.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Regards,

Diego
Stars Support

What a crock of *****

Now... I think about the amount I'm paying for a silver chest. I would need to pay roughly 500 bucks in rake in a day to move up to gold.
Then how much will those be? Somewhere about 30000 i would guess. So to move up to platnium, need to pay $1200 in a day??? Is that even possible???
Thats like playing the sunday million 80 times....IN ONE DAY
How ridiculous is this???

Hi hawaiisteve,

I agree with you that changing disbursements/percentages of rewards payouts on the fly and in such an unclear manner is ridiculous, but selective pricing may be here to stay unless the marketplace rejects it. These personalized systems can unfairly exploit consumers imo by using their purchasing/deposit/withdrawal info against them.

If you want to learn more about one particular company that offers a similar "system" service to mobile game developers (not Stars as far as I know -- I'm just showing a comparison of what's happening in video games), watch the short video below by Scientific Revenue.



"Now, nothing stands between you and monetization."

---

These are the types of services being offered to the gaming industry nowadays, especially on the mobile front. I think it's important for customers to be aware of them and consider whether it's fair to have targeted pricing (or rewards payouts?) manipulated by such info. Here's a popular YouTube video rant on the topic from Jim Sterling. The relevant part begins at about 3:20 and there's a reference to what Zynga Poker is doing.

Bull****.

I didn't cashout recently yet my red chests went from 220 to 550 points. For the last 3 chests I had to grind 1650 points for a whopping 26 coins reward. This is worse than 888's rakeback.

Yes mine too, I did cash out a meager 53US which I was giving as a gift to some kids I know. But now if I get the minimum on awards my rake percentage will be less than two percent at 7 points. Unbelievable....

picking up the slippery soap for stars every day



3=================D ( O )

Ok. After a few chats with Pokerstars and a bunch of emails, the final outcome of my situation is...

They will do nothing about and will not offer any explanation of why my rewards requirements were raised to 7 times the previous amount for the same chests (again 1975 to 13500 for a silver chest).

And I even quoted to them from THEIR OWN FAQ:

"If you’re winning one Chest per session or fewer (i.e. if your last three Chests of the same type were each won on different days) we’ll make sure the points targets for your progress bars remain achievable so you won’t miss out on regular rewards"

Their reply to this was basically "sorry there is nothing we can do"
Which means the FAQ is completely useless because how can you believe anything printed there if pokerstars does not even follow it. Who knows? maybe there is no such thing as the "big prize"... a 1 in 10,000 chance of winning the biggest amount could well be zero and nobody would or could question it.

On top of this, they raise my requirement right before this new Christmas promo started, and there is no way in hell I can even get one at 13500 per chest to participate.
Again, I was told " sorry, but there is nothing we can do"

THEN I pointed out to them that THEIR FAQ states that if the requirement is too high, they are able to lower the level of your chests manually. The rep I was chatting with wasn't even aware of this option and nobody even brought this option up through 6 different emails and 4 or 5 chat sessions. I had to point it out to him in the FAQ and after a few minutes, he came back to me and said yes, it can be done.

So finally, I had them lower my chests back to lowest level(red chest now 550) just so i can try the Christmas promo.

The main reason I'm so upset about this situation is the principle of the whole thing. We, as players, put our trust in Pokerstars that they are running a fair game and our money is safe there. Finding outright lies and misleading info in something like a promotion FAQ brings their integrity into question. Their false sympathy combined with lack of action when they are clearly wrong really bothers me. Am I wrong in feeling this way?

if you are a winning and withdrawing player your chests will cost more, period. It's been that way from the start of their new system.

If you are a losing player who only deposits the chests are cheaper, or if you are a player who plays very low volume (or both.)

When I grinded plo on stars 40+ hrs a week and binked a mtt for a few K my bronze chests were 35k points each.

Now if I play my gold chests are 7500 each (i blow through the lower tiers super quick obviously) after not being on stars for ~2-3 months+

Pokerstars rep adamantly denies that they raised my requirements due to withdrawals... The only reason they give is "many factors" contribute to how the requirements are set

It seems to me some poker sites may be utilizing services similar to those of Scientific Revenue (outlined in Post #2266 above), but that's pure speculation. I see the 1-minute clip embedded in Post #2266 has been removed by YouTube, but here's a more in-depth talk on the topic from Scientific Revenue's Ted Verani from 2016.



Note that the comments have been disabled for that video, and there are 4 Likes versus 276 Dislikes.

These selective pricing schemes are wildly unpopular among gaming consumers in general, and further risk fomenting distrust between operators and players... but many gaming execs simply don't care. It's sad (imo) that so many big gaming companies claim to value "transparency" in their communications with consumers, yet will do everything in their power to stop their "dynamic pricing" schemes from getting aired publicly.

When it comes to "loot boxes" (which have similarities to PokerStars' "Chests"), big companies like Electronic Arts are willing to ignore even threats of criminal prosecution to thumb their noses at lawmakers and ensure these mechanisms remain in place.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...fas-loot-boxes

It's actually a lot worse in video games since they're generally available to kids through ESRB ratings that don't take the microtransactions and hidden gambling elements into account when labeling a particular game.

huh, usually they just don't come out and admit it

I've been meaning to read this thread for awhile. It's wild.