PokerStars (and its sister site, Full Tilt, which is no longer an independent site) has made a number of changes over the past year or so to try to make the online poker environment more recreational player-friendly. Things like an loyalty system overhaul and the conversion of regular heads-up cash game tables to Zoom Poker tables have upset many high stakes grinders and professional players, but the goal was to keep casual players happy and coming back. On June 15th, PokerStars went the other direction, eliminating certain nano-stakes cash games – possibly just temporarily – on its Belgian site.
Some players experienced confusion when it happened, as it does not appear that PokerStars communicated the change to its customers. Instead, players who enjoyed $/€/£ 0.01/0.02 cash games (No-Limit, Pot-Limit, and Fixed-Limit games with a maximum $2 buy-in) all of a sudden found them missing from the lobby. One player e-mailed customer support and posted the following response on Two Plus Two:
This is a follow-up regarding your recent email about NL2 cash game.
We have received the following information about these games. We are sorry to inform you that this is intentional.
We are indeed trialling [sic] the removal of $/€/£ 2.00 No Limit as well as $/€/£ 0.01/0.02 Pot Limit and No Limit games in Belgium, since June 15th.
We frequently review the selection of ring games and tournaments within our lobby and monitor how that affects the overall playing experience, whether playing on smartphone, tablet or desktop. We experiment with all aspects of the game by trying out new challenges, promotions and types of poker; launching new online series, such as the MicroMillions; and sponsoring live poker festivals around the world.
However, we do value your feedback and assure you it has been forwarded to the relevant team for this trial.
We apologize for the inconveniences and thank you for your understanding.
It would appear that the move is an effort to increase the amount of rake PokerStars generates from its lowest stakes players, a group of players that makes up a significant portion of the overall online poker population. Though most of our attention goes to the high stakes players – after all, big money is fun to rail and the most notable names play at those stakes – most players stick to small stakes games.
PokerStars’ rake structure is much lower at the $0.01/$0.02 levels than it is even one level up. As another poster on Two Plus Two illustrated, at the lowest stakes found on the site, PokerStars rakes just 3.5 percent of the pot with a maximum rake of $0.30. Compare this to the next rake level, $0.02/$0.05, where the rake is 4.15 percent with a maximum rake of $1.00. What PokerStars is likely trying to do is force players to move up even slightly where the pots are larger and the rake is greater. If it seems that players are content enough to play a little higher, rather than leave the poker room, thus generating more revenue for PokerStars, one would expect that Pokerstars would roll out the change to more of its player base, rather than just Belgium.
Belgian players to play at the same tables as players on the flagship “dot com” site, but since they still login with their own, separate software, it is relatively easy for PokerStars to make adjustments just for them.
