Kids, never think you can’t make a difference. There were those who scoffed at the idea of poker players rebelling against PokerStars because of the site’s changes to its VIP program and rake structure. After all, Stars is the largest online poker room in the world; it won’t miss a handful of players who are mad that a business wants to make money. Where are they going to find games? Somewhere that’s not the world largest online poker room?
Well, as it turns out, they are finding games elsewhere. According to PokerScout.com, the go-to site for online cash game traffic analysis, PokerStars.com and PokerStars.fr, its France-only site, lagged behind the rest of the top online poker sites for the first week of January. PokerScout directs the blame for their early year struggles at the player protests of the last week and a half.
Of the top ten sites in terms of cash game traffic, only one – PokerStars.fr – lost players on the week. Its 10 percent dip in ring game players caused it to drop from seventh to ninth in the rankings, falling behind the independent room Winamax.fr in the competition for largest French internet poker room. It appears that a strike by angry players is the immediate cause of the traffic decrease. Organized on the site clubpoker.net, the strike involves over 120 of some of the highest volume players at PokerStars.fr, including some Supernova Elites, the site’s highest VIP level. The players who have refused to play at PokerStars.fr since the start of 2012 reportedly raked more than €5 million last year.
A player representative from clubpoker.net plans to meet with PokerStars representatives at their offices in the Isle of Man this week to discuss the issues at hand. A similar meeting is in the works for players at PokerStars.com.
As for PokerStars.com, it did actually see a 5 percent increase in cash game traffic last week, but that is still far lower than its competitors in the top ten. PartyPoker.com saw its traffic rise an amazing 29 percent, though PokerScout.com attributes that to a VIP rake race promotion which started January 2nd. The iPoker network’s traffic rose 12 percent. The aforementioned Winamax.fr, as well as PartyPoker.fr, rose 10 percent.
All of the commotion stems from changes PokerStars made to its VIP program, effective January 1st, as well as rake changes that it planned to make, but postponed due to push back from the poker community. The biggest issue was the change from the “dealt” method of VIP Player Point (VPP) calculation to the “weighted contributed” method. In the former method, which had been in place for years, every player who was dealt cards in a cash game hand received an equal share of the VPPs allocated to the table. In the new, “weighted contributed” method, only players who put money in the pot are awarded VPPs, and they are awarded in proportion to how much money they actually risked. For example, if by the end of a hand, a player had contributed $5 into a $20 pot, he would receive 25 percent of the VPPs. Those who folded pre-flop without putting in any money would receive nothing.
This change made high volume players angry, as most high volume players play a very tight style of poker, folding pre-flop more often than not. With the new system, they will lose out on thousands of VPPs that they would have received in the old system. On top of that, the upper level VIPs, such as those of Supernova Elite status, receive many more Frequent Player Points (FPPs) per VPP than those on the lower end of the VIP scale. Those FPPs can be redeemed for cash and valuable tournament entries, which means that high volume players will lose out on even more.
Many players see the change as a “cash grab” by PokerStars, as the site will profit from the difference between what high level players will lose and what lower level, mostly recreational players, will gain (these players typically play a looser style, which will mean that they’d earn more VPPs with the new system).
Many PokerStars players participated in a “sit-out” protest on the site at noon on January 1st. In this protest, players opened up the maximum number of tables, took a seat, and then sat out, the goal being to prevent hands from being dealt. Since it was organized on public forums, PokerStars knew it would happen and quickly kicked players off tables and restricted them to one table at a time.
PokerStars also planned to lower rake across the board to make up for some of the VPP losses, but postponed these changes, as well as proposed rake cap changes, in response to player objections.
