Quote:
Originally Posted by anuj22
PokerStars Gears Up for a Major Rewards Program Overhaul in January 2024
- Scheduled launch date set for January 22, 2024.
- Specific details of the rewards will be revealed in mid-January.
- Emphasized as “very transparent,” designed to be equitable for all players and provide flexibility.
- Expected to be more generous than the existing program.
- Initial rollout planned for the dot-com market; other markets may come later.
https://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-roo...gram-overhaul/
Looks like Pokerstars is slowly realising, that just because they had a monopoly on the market for well over a decade, it doesn't mean they can treat their customers like sh.t and get away with it. From forcing an awful graphic overhaul (Aurora) down "everyone's throat" to offering the worst RB system in the industry (which ofc they did try to improve on over time, when they saw that they are bleeding players to other sites). And recent months even their servers having issues regularly (so you can't even say that at least their site is more reliable, despite ridiculously low traffic compared to its glory days).
Might be a bit too late though on their end. They really need to offer something extremely juicy here, because the traffic on the site is depressing these days if you aren't an MTT player, and even when games are running, the action isn't too hot.
I play PLO, and at the time of writing this post, at Stars only PLO50z is running with 27 entries in the pool. The site has 11.5K active players. Compared to this, GG has a healthy pool for every stake between PLO50-200, which basically runs around the clock every day. I think it's safe to say that Stars lost majority of it's regulars, and they can only blame themselves.
It's not like GG (or other alternatives for the matter) are that amazing. GG has it's own issues. But they have a lot of things going for themselves that attract both regulars and recreationals, and while it feels weird to write this given how strong of a position PS initially held in the industry compared to the rest, it simply feels like Stars is "late to the party" in the present.
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All in all, will be interesting to see what they can come up with, but unless it's something amazing, I doubt they can turn around their rapid decline from respected market leaders to mediocrity.