Easing a bit of controversy that surrounded the world’s largest online poker room last week, PokerStars announced on Thursday that it is reversing a previous decision that raised the ire of players who enjoyed using Frequent Player Points (FPPs) to register for satellite tournaments.
Starting a couple months ago, PokerStars changed the way tournament dollars worked for customers who bought into satellites for Frequent Player Points, though it was a gradual rollout, so most people didn’t begin noticing it until about a week and a half ago. Previously, players could register for satellite tournaments with FPPs and if they won a seat into the target event, they could unregister and receive the buy-in in Tournament Dollars ($T), which would be credited to their PokerStars accounts. Nice system, everyone was happy.
But then PokerStars decided to make a slight adjustment. Instead of being able to unregister at will and take the $T, players would have to use the first seat they earned in the target tournament. After that first one, the rest could still be converted into $T.
At first, this might not seem like that big of a deal, but for certain types of players who were used to being able to unregister to get Tournament Dollars, it had an effect. Interestingly, heavy cash game players were the ones who were really going to feel it. How so? These players earned high volumes of FPPs and found that playing in certain satellites was a good way to earn $T. Of course, to a cash game player, $T weren’t all that useful, but they could turn around and sell them to tournament players for almost full value. Requiring players to actually use the first seat earned from a satellite would naturally take away some of that potential cash.
After players complained, PokerStars quickly turned around last Thursday and reversed the change, setting things bac to the way they were. On the Two Plus Two poker forums, “PokerStars MikeJ” wrote:
Over the last two months PokerStars has gradually introduced a requirement that FPP satellite winners must play the first seat won to a given target. We are now reversing this change. By Monday, 21 July, winners of FPP satellites will be able to unregister from the target once again. Before that time, you will be unregistered upon request if you write to support@pokerstars.com and request it.
Please note that this reverting of recent policy change does not include satellites which finish after the target begins, or “Mega-Path” satellites, which will continue to lock winners into the target in the same way that they always have.
There are two reasons for reverting this change at this time:
1) We’ve encountered a software bug on mobile devices that causes the warning message not to appear.
2) The goal of this change is to ensure that satellites are achieving their intended purpose, to help players qualify for tournaments that they might not otherwise play. However, the change had an additional substantial, but unintended, negative impact on the value of VIP rewards for a subset of players.
He did say, though, that within the next year, PokerStars will still probably begin requiring satellite winners to play in the target event, but will also hopefully fix the policy so that any negative impact will be lessened.
