PokerStarsâ Latest Rake Grab Met With Player Anger
5 years ago17 Feb
You must be doing something wrong if even your own poker news outlet has a pop at you â and thatâs exactly what happened to PokerStars this week following their latest rake-grab, PokerNews.com reporting the bad news and player anger at the moveâŚ.
PokerStars announced that as of Friday 15th February they would be cutting player rewards by a massive 55% in MTTâs â a massive slash in what players can expect to earn â with Severin Rasset, The Stars Group Director of Poker Operation and Innovation claiming that âplayer feedbackâ was partly responsible for the huge change.
Itâs rare for PokerNews to question the Stars Group flagship poker site, the Canadian conglomerate among the main shareholders of the news portalâs own parent company iBus Media, but PokerNews staffer Mo Nuwarrah stated that:
âSatisfaction with the PokerStars system may be at an all-time low at this pointâ, despite the poker site still being the industry leaders.
Naturally, the Twittersphere was soon alight with the bad news for PokerStars regularsâŚ
âŚwhile competitors such as partypoker quite rightly smelled an opportunity to push their own player-friendly reward systemsâŚ
and really listened to âplayer feedbackâ, stepping in to offer an alternative tournament without the greedy pawsâŚ
The âchorus of disdainâ, as Nuwarrah describes the outpouring of anger by poker players, has been a regular response to PokerStarsâ decision since the company was bought from the Scheinberg family back in 2014.
For those who werenât part of the poker scene a couple of years ago, PokerStars under new owners Amaya (now named The Stars Group) proceeded the dirty on their highest-volume regulars, removing the SuperNovaElite (SNE) rewards halfway through the earning period, costing hundreds of players $tens of thousands at least.
Several player boycotts were instigated and the reputation of PokerStars has never quite recovered, their main ambassador Daniel Negreanu still feeling the heat to this day for his contentious âMore rake is betterâ comments.
Whether the latest rakegrab by PokerStars will lead to a mass player exodus remains to be seen, but with new sites and innovative ideas from their rivals, it seems the times they are a changinâ!
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