Wow. Its almost been a year since my last post. Admittedly this has been due to laziness and motivation, but I'm back! I tend to write stupidly long posts which take ages which also had added to the excuses to not post. However I do miss it, because it is in some ways quite therapeutic to get things off my chest.
Its kinda sad to see this being a trend amongst my fellow poker players that also did some blogging. Circumstances in the poker world has really hit everyone hard and its easy to understand the lack of motivation for continuing blogs when so much negativity and struggle is apparent within the community. And as much as I hate that I start again with something like that, I feel its important so here we go...
The Fumblings of Announced Changes
It has been a long time coming that Pokerstars was going to announce some changes for 2016. An announcement of an announcement was posted in August, saying it would happen mid October.
October came and went, and only rolling tumbleweeds from Pokerstars. Every Supernova Elite or player who was thinking about potentially going for it waited nervously.
Then October 31st, someone noticed that a post was announced on the Russian site;
No response from Pokerstars. So whilst the community was wondering whether this was a fake or not, the announcements did not look pretty. In fact they seemed so drastic that it didn't seem out of the question that it was a fake. But shortly after I linked it to someone I know in Pokerstars, the official announcement came Nov 1st.
Now who knows what on earth happened there. The announcement was 1/2 a month late, and whatever the hell that was, it was messy, and seemed like some kind of mistake. Who even knows if Pokerstars was going to even do these announcements at all at this time, they could have been wanting to stall til Dec 31st? Who knows. Either way it was a complete disaster, lacked professionalism and just wasn't what a pre-Amaya bought Pokerstars was known for.
The Changes
This is a lot of information overload, the official posts are linked below, but here's a summary;
Sources - 2p2 Post, Statement of Intent Stars Post, Stars Official VIP Changes
• All rewards will be given in a new currency, StarsCoin, each of which will have a fixed value of $0.01
• All current rewards – FPPs, Stellar Rebates, and Milestone Rebates – will be consolidated into a single form of reward called StarsCoin earned via VIP Steps
2016 Average Rewards by Status
BronzeStar - No change
ChromeStar - Up to 10% increase
SilverStar - No change
GoldStar - No change
PlatinumStar - Up to 10% decrease
Supernova - 0%-27% decrease
200k+ - 44%-60% decrease (30% rakeback cap)
• VPPs will not be earned in high-stakes cash games. High-stakes cash games include pot-limit and no-limit games with blinds of $5-$10 or higher, 8-game $10-$20 or higher, and other limit games with blinds of $10-$15 or higher (limit hold’em of stakes $15-$30 and higher).
• VIP Store
Cash Rewards will be offered as follows, and there will be no restrictions by VIP status:
- $25 – 2,500 StarsCoin
- $100 – 10,000 StarsCoin
- $1,000 – 100,000 StarsCoin
• VIP Freerolls
The Supernova Quarterly Million freeroll will be discontinued
• Supernova Elite VIP Status will be discontinued on January 1, 2017
The benefits cap for players who earn Supernova Elite in 2015 will be 45% in 2016.
• There will no longer be monthly maintenance requirements for Supernova and Supernova Elite statuses
• Concierge service for Supernova and Supernova Elite status to be discontinued
Mass Cutbacks, Maximize those Margins
This damning announcement of changes is the harshest that Pokerstars has done so far. It can be split into two categories, cutting back and getting rid of High Stakes Players.
The List of Cutbacks - Pokerstars seem to be furiously cutting back on the rewards system in order to maximise their profits.
- SNE discontinued in 2017.
- Concierge service, Supernova Quarterly Freeroll, Stellar Awards, Milestone Credits all abolished.
- Starcoins to replace FPPs. All FPPs will be converted automatically in 2017 with a decreased value of 25%.
- Supernova capped at 30% rakeback.
- Supernova Elites capped at 45% rakeback.
- PlatinumStar reduced by 10%
- If a Step is not reached by the end of the month, half of that step's FPPs is lost.
- Monthly TLB promotion for MTT players removed.
- Battle of the Planets promotion for SNG players removed.
An awesome podcast with Ansky talking about these changes pretty much summarises why these changes are terrible and how Amaya has destroyed the reputation and direction of Pokerstars.
The way that things are presented through their statements are unfounded and just complete typical annoying corporate talk. What is shocking is how stupid they think the poker community is. Don't they know that this community has probably one of the highest concentration of smart people within one space?
Quotes taken are from the sources above, and the 2p2 thread.
Against Volume - The stance that Stars has taken is that there are too many players playing for the rewards system that they created. This rewards system was created in order to balance out the high rake that they have in the games. The higher the rake, the harder the games are to beat. Without one, there cannot be the other.
If that was true the most logical step would be to reduce the rake, make the games more profitable to play, and less of a reward system would be needed.
What an unskillful easy thing it is playing a huge volume! Those regs didn't study hard, put dedication in to their games at all! Thank god!
The Two Percent - This absolutely must have been something that was included in some meeting telling everyone to promote the randomly arbitrary two percent "statistic" that they've been throwing around. Poker players wont tell the difference will they?
Don't worry guys its only two percent of players! Does that include all the dormant accounts? Are you only counting Supernova Elites and Supernovas that have 200 vpps+? Are you saying 2% of all existing accounts since the beginning?
The fact is that this is so far from the truth that it makes them look silly. Please stop saying 2%. Seriously. What will happen is that high stakes players wont play high stakes, so they will move down to the lower stakes and play there, therefore making the lower stakes harder and more reg filled. Cash games will be much harder at 3/6 since any higher then that will receive no VPPs or StarCoins at all.
Simplifying the FPPs into StarCoins is fine. But saying that its pretty much the same, making statements that "its very much in the same ballpark" is another outrageous claim. Lets be clear; PlatinumStar is reduced by 10%, Supernova is reduced up to 27%, Supernova Elite is reduced by 44%-60% and the "receiving more" that they are referring to is ChromeStar getting 10% more, which is 30 cents a month.
Lets Merge Two Announcements For Confusion! - It was also announced in their blog that third party softwares such a HUDs (Heads Up Displays) would be removed from next year. This being a different topic entirely, seemed to be thrown into the mix. In fact poor Mr Negreanu who is for this got a ton of stick for referring to this as a good change, without realising that everyone else is talking about the VIP changes. He has said that he will make a statement in the next few days after assessing the whole situation, if anything he is in a very tough position, as the "People's Champ" and Poker Ambassador.
RIP High Stakes Cash - The death of railbirding those nosebleed stakes is upon is for the new year. Dispite the huge rake that it gives to Stars, they don't want it. So what amazing excuse did they make up for it? Well apparently its too expensive to run?
Another Dark Day for Poker
Pokerstars had spent years gaining the reputation of being the best online poker site out there. It was great at communicating and listening to the community, open minded, and had impeccable support. But since it has sold its soul to get back into the US market to Amaya for 3x worth its value, this has all gone. And what is worse is that it own Full Tilt, and all other rivals are inadequate and just not stepping up to the plate. It has the feel of an unfair monopoly, that can do what it wants because it is the only competitor out there.
Every announcement they make takes away, and treats us like idiots. Two great posts by "MeleaB" here explains what is really going on.
The PokerStars Model
Rewards Models
Amaya's direction towards making Poker feel more like casino games, getting that short term profit to show to their shareholders, and new "policies" is looking like it will be end of Pokerstars demise. However, they have a few years yet to see if things will change, but most likely it wont. It could be that the banning of Stars getting them to desperately want back in by selling their soul could be the most slow round about way of killing off this company lol.
Anyways welcome back Puyan, shame it has to start on such a downer. I will try and write more renditions of War and Peace in the future. I need an iced latte... for $2 cheaper! (Oh wait, its Nov in UK)
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