PokerStars VIP Changes 2016 and onwards

[DaveShoelace]

Bet Stars seems more coherent.

BetStars
PokerStars
CasinoStars
BingoStars
FantasyStars
etc

This could be the thing that finally brings Stars down

why?

Oh, I was trying to be funny.

Why?

Chronic people pleasing I think. Daddy never hugged me.

[Ironside]

Bet Stars seems more coherent.

BetStars
PokerStars
CasinoStars
BingoStars
FantasyStars
etc

This could be the thing that finally brings Stars down

why?

Oh, I was trying to be funny.

first for everything but failed again

[Ironside]

Bet Stars seems more coherent.

BetStars
PokerStars
CasinoStars
BingoStars
FantasyStars
etc

This could be the thing that finally brings Stars down

why?

Oh, I was trying to be funny.

first for everything but failed again

can I join the club

[lucky_scrote]

Never understood the aversion poker folk have to A) a sponsored player being self serving and B) an online poker room trying to max their profits.

It's remarkable how many people on 2+2 have posted to the effect of 'I guess we have learned PokerStars are only doing this for the money...'

What the hell else is a business doing it for? Given they have staff as well as shareholders, I'd be mortified if they weren't trying to make as much money as profit. You should of course complain about the way they make a profit, and especially if what they are doing is short sighted for all parties, but complaining because a business is motivated to do the exact thing it should be motivated to do is silly.

And everyone complaining about Stars wanting to make as big a profit as possible is complaining because the latest changes are stopping them from making as big a profit as possible. Nobody 24-tables hyper turbos for the love of the game, so why does everyone demonise Stars for wanting to make money?

btw not directing this at anyone here, all of it directed at the many ludicrous comments I've seen on 2+2.

This x1000000

Let's just see how this all pans out shall we.

[teddybloat]

the aversion is the same aversion people have to any price rise.

to any company patronising or outright lying to their customers

any company whose customer service drops [esp when it had formerly been an industry leader]

any company whose interests do not appear to allign with their customers.

any company who suffers regular sofware outages [esp when they were market leaders formerly]

more importantly poker folk will have an aversion to a world class card room becoming merely better than average.

i cant understand why poker folk would not have an aversion to this, much less feign surprise that others do

if DTD upped their rake, cut promotions / guarentees and encouraged poker newbie / recreationals into  newly annexed and heavily promoted pit-games then i couldnt  fail to understand why DTD regulars would be unhappy

I hope all poker folk would mourn the demise of a world class poker-focused live card room.

what i cant understand is poker folk not lamenting the change in its online equivilent.

pointing out that amaya likes money is bromidic, frankly

[SuuPRlim]

the high stakes rake changes are absolutely terrible for poker games on the internet, and it's not because Anskey is going to loose out ~$50k p/y in rewards lots of individuals will lose out when changes like this come in, that's pretty much just HEY HO...WHAT CAN YOU DO.

You have to understand the ecology and development of cash games, if we go back a relatively short period of actual time, but a fricking lifetime in poker terms, to 2010 the ecology had a rather different look to how it was now.

Firstly, and most crucially the standard of poker throughout the stakes was generally a bit poorer, if you had a strong-ish mindset and good-ish work ethic and a little bit of talent/aptitude you would really not have struggled too hard to make money at the $0.50/$1 and $1/$2 levels online, after a bit of harder work and development as a player and ofc a little run good then you could be playing $2/$4, occasional $3/$6 and making pretty good money. Naturally next step was $5/$10 and most people would wait for some run good at 2/4~ levels and then have a little shot at $5/$10, see how it goes you could afford a 10k~ go at that level because if you didn't win then you could drop back to 1/2 and 2/4 relatively unharmed and win the money back, have another go later.

Once you get to 5/10 and are bankrolled and beating that game your next big hurdle was 25/50, and if you got there the next big step would be to the 50/100, 100/200 tables... Not many people actually got to be playing this limits bankrolled properly ofc but lots of people tried...myself included. You could afford to lose 30k trying to hit the big time because you could win it back lower.

Slowly, since then fewer and fewer people have been trying to move up past 5/10 and 10/20 level, because the games are tougher and the rake is higher... This means that players who ARE good enough to be beating 25/50+ now play 5/10, this makes it very difficult for the 2/4 and 3/6 guys to break into 5/10....

This then makes it much more difficult for the 0.50/1 and 1/2 guys to break into 2/4, which in turn makes it very difficult for begginning players to get stuck into 0.50/1 and 1/2.

THIS IN TURN MEANS LOW STAKES RECREATIONALS ARE GOING TO BE PLAYING MUCH MUCH MUCH TOUGHER GAMES

THIS IN TURN MEANS THEY WILL LOSE QUICKER

These changes are just going to 5x this problem, now incentive to move past 3/6 has been even more reduced, as a player with RB at 3/6 will likely find similar winrate and much less variance than at 5/10.

Other sites, ipoker/888/sky etc will have regs from stars flooding in and make those games tougher too.

Every other move from Amaya might have been tilting but seemed to have some solid business thinking behind it...this one though...baffles me.

[SuuPRlim]

also r.e DN...I heard he gets paid $8m a year to promote stars...

Who would do anything differently?

and here he is!!!

[TightEnd]

one hour 43. blimey

cliffs?!

[The Camel]

One hundred and three minutes listening to Negreanu

[arbboy]

One hundred and three minutes listening to Negreanu

I have max sold your post minutes on here at 2 minutes.  Done my nuts.  Made up at 22!

[tikay]

Ha had to watch the first 10 minutes so as not to pre-judge poor Danny.

[arbboy]

the high stakes rake changes are absolutely terrible for poker games on the internet, and it's not because Anskey is going to loose out ~$50k p/y in rewards lots of individuals will lose out when changes like this come in, that's pretty much just HEY HO...WHAT CAN YOU DO.

You have to understand the ecology and development of cash games, if we go back a relatively short period of actual time, but a fricking lifetime in poker terms, to 2010 the ecology had a rather different look to how it was now.

Firstly, and most crucially the standard of poker throughout the stakes was generally a bit poorer, if you had a strong-ish mindset and good-ish work ethic and a little bit of talent/aptitude you would really not have struggled too hard to make money at the $0.50/$1 and $1/$2 levels online, after a bit of harder work and development as a player and ofc a little run good then you could be playing $2/$4, occasional $3/$6 and making pretty good money. Naturally next step was $5/$10 and most people would wait for some run good at 2/4~ levels and then have a little shot at $5/$10, see how it goes you could afford a 10k~ go at that level because if you didn't win then you could drop back to 1/2 and 2/4 relatively unharmed and win the money back, have another go later.

Once you get to 5/10 and are bankrolled and beating that game your next big hurdle was 25/50, and if you got there the next big step would be to the 50/100, 100/200 tables... Not many people actually got to be playing this limits bankrolled properly ofc but lots of people tried...myself included. You could afford to lose 30k trying to hit the big time because you could win it back lower.

Slowly, since then fewer and fewer people have been trying to move up past 5/10 and 10/20 level, because the games are tougher and the rake is higher... This means that players who ARE good enough to be beating 25/50+ now play 5/10, this makes it very difficult for the 2/4 and 3/6 guys to break into 5/10....

This then makes it much more difficult for the 0.50/1 and 1/2 guys to break into 2/4, which in turn makes it very difficult for begginning players to get stuck into 0.50/1 and 1/2.

THIS IN TURN MEANS LOW STAKES RECREATIONALS ARE GOING TO BE PLAYING MUCH MUCH MUCH TOUGHER GAMES

THIS IN TURN MEANS THEY WILL LOSE QUICKER

These changes are just going to 5x this problem, now incentive to move past 3/6 has been even more reduced, as a player with RB at 3/6 will likely find similar winrate and much less variance than at 5/10.

Other sites, ipoker/888/sky etc will have regs from stars flooding in and make those games tougher too.

Every other move from Amaya might have been tilting but seemed to have some solid business thinking behind it...this one though...baffles me.

Good post Dave. 

Tikay Skypoker must be liking this short term because your volumes are going to pick up at the higher stakes but longer term the casuals on your site are going to get butchered even quicker than they already do at the higher stakes.  A few online cash grinders i know pretty much only play on sky and they are killing it at the mid level stakes so your casuals are going to take even bigger beatings surely with this stars news.   Is that good or bad news longer term?

[Rexas]

I've not bothered to watch most of it, but Daniel seems to agree that what is being proposed currently doesn't help anyone, but there is some secret plan (which obviously he can't go into detail about) that stars have for 2016 that will make it all better.

[tikay]

the high stakes rake changes are absolutely terrible for poker games on the internet, and it's not because Anskey is going to loose out ~$50k p/y in rewards lots of individuals will lose out when changes like this come in, that's pretty much just HEY HO...WHAT CAN YOU DO.

You have to understand the ecology and development of cash games, if we go back a relatively short period of actual time, but a fricking lifetime in poker terms, to 2010 the ecology had a rather different look to how it was now.

Firstly, and most crucially the standard of poker throughout the stakes was generally a bit poorer, if you had a strong-ish mindset and good-ish work ethic and a little bit of talent/aptitude you would really not have struggled too hard to make money at the $0.50/$1 and $1/$2 levels online, after a bit of harder work and development as a player and ofc a little run good then you could be playing $2/$4, occasional $3/$6 and making pretty good money. Naturally next step was $5/$10 and most people would wait for some run good at 2/4~ levels and then have a little shot at $5/$10, see how it goes you could afford a 10k~ go at that level because if you didn't win then you could drop back to 1/2 and 2/4 relatively unharmed and win the money back, have another go later.

Once you get to 5/10 and are bankrolled and beating that game your next big hurdle was 25/50, and if you got there the next big step would be to the 50/100, 100/200 tables... Not many people actually got to be playing this limits bankrolled properly ofc but lots of people tried...myself included. You could afford to lose 30k trying to hit the big time because you could win it back lower.

Slowly, since then fewer and fewer people have been trying to move up past 5/10 and 10/20 level, because the games are tougher and the rake is higher... This means that players who ARE good enough to be beating 25/50+ now play 5/10, this makes it very difficult for the 2/4 and 3/6 guys to break into 5/10....

This then makes it much more difficult for the 0.50/1 and 1/2 guys to break into 2/4, which in turn makes it very difficult for begginning players to get stuck into 0.50/1 and 1/2.

THIS IN TURN MEANS LOW STAKES RECREATIONALS ARE GOING TO BE PLAYING MUCH MUCH MUCH TOUGHER GAMES

THIS IN TURN MEANS THEY WILL LOSE QUICKER

These changes are just going to 5x this problem, now incentive to move past 3/6 has been even more reduced, as a player with RB at 3/6 will likely find similar winrate and much less variance than at 5/10.

Other sites, ipoker/888/sky etc will have regs from stars flooding in and make those games tougher too.

Every other move from Amaya might have been tilting but seemed to have some solid business thinking behind it...this one though...baffles me.

Good post Dave. 

Tikay Skypoker must be liking this short term because your volumes are going to pick up at the higher stakes but longer term the casuals on your site are going to get butchered even quicker than they already do at the higher stakes.  A few online cash grinders i know pretty much only play on sky and they are killing it at the mid level stakes so your casuals are going to take even bigger beatings surely with this stars news.   Is that good or bad news longer term?

Morning Argue.

I don't really buy that stuff.

Poker is subject to fashion, & trends, they come, they go.

The concept of "soft sites" has never made sense in my mind, though of course 'Stars, by it's sheer size & dominance, is deffo tough. People play there because of the liquidity, as well as the superb software, it's where the big action is. 

The Big Boys, who take it serious, are out to earn as much as they can, & so they should.

So they hear about a so-called "soft site", & they go play there. Word spreads round - they rarely giq - & soon shed loads of them migrate across - & soon they are back where they started. It's a self-levelling equation.

I've seen, many a time, players saying "I would never play on whatever.com, the software is shite".

Really? I don't think so.

If they can win more money, more easily, they'd be bonkers to be put off by inferior software.  Poker players, by nature - perhaps many of us these days - are becoming more & more intolerant of trivial irritations, but if it means a 25% increase in profits, most with common sense would tolerate it.

It just how poker is, people move around, things change, they move again.

[DaveShoelace]

If they can win more money, more easily, they'd be bonkers to be put off by inferior software.  Poker players, by nature - perhaps many of us these days - are becoming more & more intolerant of trivial irritations, but if it means a 25% increase in profits, most with common sense would tolerate it.

It's remarkable how many good players ignore game selection in this way. Why do they insist at playing at the Venetian, when the softest game is at the Flamingo etc.

Shit software + reasonable traffic usually = soft games with players who don't know any better.

Super slick software optimised for 24-tabling, not so much.