Likely Impact of PokerStars January 1st Rewards Program Changes

Home » Poker News » Likely Impact of PokerStars January 1st Rewards Program Changes

Wednesday, December 9th, 2015 | Written by Adam Brown

In a move designed to entice more recreational players to its site, PokerStars.com recently announced that it would be making major changes to its VIP Club. The new changes that go into effect on January 1, 2016, will offer more rewards to recreational players, but could prove a real game changer as far as the site’s regular high-stakes grinders are concerned. In the past, this group generated significant rewards from the program, allowing them to earn a tidy living from the game. Nevertheless, the far reaching changes will now likely force this group to rethink their strategies, and possibly career choices.

So just what will the changes mean? Here is what industry insiders predict will happen as a result of the modifications to the VIP Club:

Less Popular

1: High Stakes Cash Games

Rakebacks are eliminated under the new version of the VIP Club. As a result, players that were making money off of rakebacks at high stakes games will likely set their sites on the less costly $3/$6 games. This will make it more difficult for moderately seasoned players to win, so they will likely begin to play at the $2/$4 level, resulting in a domino effect where few people will be interested in the high stakes games, and most of the middle limit games.

2: Zoom Poker

Zoom Poker’s biggest appeal for players in the past has been the rakeback. Without it, most experts feel that there will be very little interest in the game. With a pool of up to 100 players involved at a time and Zoom data mining now restricted, it is very difficult to get an edge in the fast-fold version of poker. As a result, players who once participated in the game are likely to start focusing on traditional formats.

3. Some Sit & Go Games

The elimination of rakeback will also likely impact Sit & Go games, which were popular because they allowed for fast grinding that could add up to a higher hourly rate of return. Without the incentive to play at the high stakes games, players are likely to migrate to turbo and multi-table Sit & Go games, leaving high stakes hyper Sit & Go games and Spin & Go games with fewer players.

Maintaining Appeal

While experts are predicting that the popularity of some games will drop dramatically, not all types of games are expected to be affected. Analysts anticipate that the following types of games will still remain appealing:

– Multi-Table Tournaments. The people participating in MTTs are not usually ones who capitalize on the rakeback benefits of the VIP Club, so there shouldn’t be much of a change in the pool of players interested in the tournaments.

– Micro Stakes Games. Although the VIP Club benefits for micro stakes games have improved, it’s unlikely that interest in these games will increase unless PokerStars begins to market them more aggressively.

January 1st 2016 Launch

The new VIP Club changes will go into effect on January 1st of 2016. We’ll all be keeping a close eye on things at PokerStars.com to see exactly what impact the new program will have. While most experts agree that the player pool at PokerStars won’t shrink because of the changes, it’s clear that some games will see an increase in liquidity while others may end up becoming completely obsolete.

Time For Change

PokerStars’ announced changes can be seen in the context of a declining online poker industry which has been waning since the the UIGEA brought the poker boom to a close in 2006, and the subsequent DOJ poker sites shut down of 2011. Since then, the online poker scene has been dominated by increasingly skillful players using ever sophisticated technologies to clean up against recreational players at the virtual tables. As a result, the all important recreational player base on which the industry depends has been decimated, with amateur players now increasingly turning to other forms of gambling for their kicks.

While an overhaul of the iPoker industry is now deemed a priority, the proposed changes by PokerStars have not gone down at all well with its legion of online grinders, who have been crying foul ever since they were announced. Between December 1st and 3rd, for instance, around 2,500 grinders even took part in an organized boycott of the site, although the effectiveness of their action has been seen as limited at best. In the meantime, one of the game’s most respected pros, Terrence Chan, has advised many of his fellow pros to consider choosing different future career paths. As an extract from his blog post called “The end of the online poker pro?“ explains:

“If you are an online poker pro, and you have not made at least 100k/year in the last two years, you should strongly consider applying for a real job somewhere. If you are an aspiring poker pro and haven’t quite made the leap yet, you need to look long and hard about whether you really want to sign up for this grind. Stars’ goal is to create an equilibrium where everyone is a small loser. It is an uphill battle when you are fighting against the most powerful organization in poker.”