Mass Sitout to Protest Stars 2012 Rake Changes

Emanuelc16 e-mailed stars and got this:

Hello Emanuel, Thank you for your email and giving us the opportunity to assist you. There is currently no announcement of such a change taking place in the near future at PokerStars. Pleast, rest assured that all of our players would be notified should any change of that order come to pass. We hope this sets your mind at ease. Please let us know should you require any further assistance. Regards, Alberto M. PokerStars Support Team

Read here what Godlikeroy thinks here.

Originally posted by bazerk
Emanuelc16 e-mailed stars and got this:

Hello Emanuel, Thank you for your email and giving us the opportunity to assist you. There is currently no announcement of such a change taking place in the near future at PokerStars. Pleast, rest assured that all of our players would be notified should any change of that order come to pass. We hope this sets your mind at ease. Please let us know should you require any further assistance. Regards, Alberto M. PokerStars Support Team

Read here what Godlikeroy thinks here.

When did Emmanuel send them the email?

The pokerstars rep put this on the forum today

PokerStars.com VIP Program and Ring Game Rake Changes effective January 1, 2012

didn't even see this. Sorry dude

Originally posted by prashanthreddy88

Originally posted by bazerk
Emanuelc16 e-mailed stars and got this:

Hello Emanuel, Thank you for your email and giving us the opportunity to assist you. There is currently no announcement of such a change taking place in the near future at PokerStars. Pleast, rest assured that all of our players would be notified should any change of that order come to pass. We hope this sets your mind at ease. Please let us know should you require any further assistance. Regards, Alberto M. PokerStars Support Team

Read here what Godlikeroy thinks here.

When did Emmanuel send them the email?

The pokerstars rep put this on the forum today

PokerStars.com VIP Program and Ring Game Rake Changes effective January 1, 2012

From: support@pokerstars.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 21, 2011 1:13:49 AM
To: emanuel.xxxxx@xxxx.com

It's partly because of this that I feel so pissed off at them. I asked nicely to prepare for such a change so I can plan for next year's marathon. I feel lied just as much as when FTP said my money is safe when I had a cashout request pending for over 2 weeks.

That's what I couldn't believe. "nah we're not", then "oh yea, we are".

I don't see a problem here. We don't know how they work from the inside but my guess would be that support is getting informed last about the decisions made by those who are in power to do them. At least I don't see a point in informing them long time before public announcements are made. And if they do get a word or two from their co-workers it's not like they can write to you "well, hey you know Emanuel, there was no official announcement yet, but John told me that indeed they are planning to change the rake calculation method". That would just be unprofessional and would get that person fired.

What is bothering is announcing it 3-4 days before they are implemented when Stars VIP system is built as such that you need to plan for 1 year of work if you give even the smallest crap about rakeback. Which the vast majority of players do.

I say 8 days after I sent that email is near future enough for me to say the Promo team or who handles these changes was bulshitting the players and that is already unprofessional. Telling the players they are planning changes that will be announced officially in time looks more professional to me than what they did. Of course, I'm not saying support is to blame, Like you said, they could be the one's that here last about this kind of stuff.

the fact of the matter is, stars is the biggest platform, and this affords them power to change their business model as they see fit.

inb4 metagame changes.

looks like they are trying to buy people from sitting out;
http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/promotions/vip-club-blast-off/

If the mass sitout doesn't work, how about a mass cashout? I'd love to see the Scheinberg family get really worried!

will be interesting to see what happens over at FTP when/if it relaunches.

Funny because they players sitting out usually are sitting out, waiting for big hands.

Business as usual on Stars eh?

I'm sitting out at the play money table

Start is today at 6 P.M. / 18:00 MEZ

Here are some cliffnotes about the strike :

- There is an IRC-Chat where a lot of persons which strike are in

http://webchat.quakenet.org/?channels=occupyPS

Please choose your nickname like the limit you wanna strike, e.g. "NL25-D4niD4nsen PLO10-Nickname" etc.

You can change this later in the Chat by "/nick RandomName"

Important is that you can also strike if you dont have money on Pokerstars. By sitting on 50 Waitinglists you also block the traffic !!! Really important to do this by sitting 24 Tables + Waitingslists etc.

We in the German Community are discussing if we strike specific limits. The official is currently that it is a little bit more random about all limits but if we in the german com defined some limits I will update her. ( Most likely at 17:30 )

Sorry my english is epic fail but i hope the message is clear Thanks

Viva la Revolution

i hope nobody supports them...how can you after you screw your clients like that.....ludicrous

you need at least 1 BIN to go onto waiting list i believe

how did the sit-out go? How did pokerstars react?

I just read they have banned lots of players from playing more than 1 table? is this true?

Roo

The strikers, who were mostly 12+ tabling regs anyway, were restricted to play 1 table.

In Stars' deffence, it's not fair to fellow players to disrupt the games. I've always been against these sit-out to block tables protests. Cashing out, emailing support with the reason seems a much better way.

All in all, second part of 2011 and starting of 2012 seems like the time when PokerStars shows their true colours. First they award the 70bil hand to some guys fast folding 24 tables of HU, then they change VPP distribution just 3 days before the New Year fucking up plans for all their grinders and now they restrict all the grinders that had wanted to protest about their actions.

Imo, it's all a way of trying to improve their profits as a company now that they seem to have what some would call a monopoly on the market.

Originally posted by roopopper
how did the sit-out go? How did pokerstars react?

Roo

It went terribly

About an hour before it happened the Pokerstars rep on 2+2 made a statement answering some questions from Star's point of view and stating that any attempt to interrupt the games would be treated as a violation of the ToS.

Stars were more than ready for the attempted sitout.

Those who tried to block high numbers hof tables were kicked off the tables and eventually some had their playing privelidges removed altogether and when a banned player on 2+2 PM'd the Stars rep about when they'd get there account back te response was basically "We haven't decided yet"

So, overall it acheived next to nothing aside from maybe stirring up some bad blood for any further negotiations.

I can't say I blamed Stars, they said they were willing to negotiate new rake structures with a group of people this month but they went ahead with the sitout anyway and, like it or not, Stars has every right to protect their business. Try doing that in a casino and see how far you get.

I wouldn't have minded but the guys sitting out can't even come to a consensus on what they want, aside from the obvious "You make less money so we can make what we used to", which no sane company is going to do btw...this was just badly planned and executed from start to finish.