PokerStars confirms new rewards program: Chests
Do you think it's good for the future of poker and growth in number of recreational players that stars is adopting a very, very popular system that many big e-sports games have started to use which is a randomized chest where you pay a set $$$ like $3 to randomly get something worth 0.02 to $500+ similar to a slot machine with very poor return on investment - but in our case we are paying with our rakeback essentially to potentially get money back , or tickets, or bonuses etc ?
Or do you think it is yet another very poor direction that amaya is taking with pokerstars?
Rolling out Stars Rewards
by Severin Rasset on May 17, 2017 7:00 AM
I'm happy to announce that this summer we will be launching Stars Rewards, our new rewards program. Stars Rewards is an integrated rewards program that will offer an exciting, personalised gaming experience that rewards players for their play in poker, casino, and sports (where available) making every game count.
Stars Rewards gives you Chests that ...
https://www.pokerstars.com/en/blog/corpo...
I emailed asking if they can release the odds for the prizes to see how much of a cut we are getting but was told they do not have that info at this time to release.
(Making this thread since we finally have a confirmation on what the VIP rewards system is going to turn into, was posted in the other 2016 made VIP thread but was buried 1200 posts in, in a discussion on if stars is going to start stealing deposits - thought it was good for everyone to know what to look forward to (or plan to ditch stars) by summer.)
This "rewards system overhaul" is pure trash.
It amazes me they had the courage to announce it as if it was going to make the lifes of everyone better.
I was not expecting a big improvement, i never wanted to be a rakeback grinder, but this is a clear downgrade. I hated it and im not interested.
Yeah for 50/100z+ you can probably benefit (if you didn't get 40% challenges regularly) off the black chest 40% flat. But below that they've essentially removed the weekly/monthly challenges and increased the requirements meaning low volume players more likely to receive a lower tier chest.
To complete a black chest on 25z I reckon it's about 160k hands/mo and just under half that for the diamond (30% flat)
Honestly boggles the mind that stars are in a prime position to prize some market share bac
How are you even gonna get upgraded to a black chest on 50z? You need to rake 6000$ in 28 days to get it. Even on 100z it is super hard and would require around 120k hands.
Most players bellow 200nl will be stuck on max 30%.
Chests are a scam.
Before the chests you had star coins, it was fun, you could see your star points, gather them, exchange them in the store for items and cash… and there was a 10,000$ and 1,000,000$ cash with enough coins so it was a cool goal to aim at.
When the chests came, I felt they were hiding something.
They’re not fun, sometimes they’re buggy, gathering them feels risky…
More importantly, it sucks to open a chest, getting random ****. It’s really rare to get star coins opening a chest, so you can kiss your 1m$ in coins good bye.
Just a ****ing scam. They give small money, or tickets. By the way, tickets cost pokerstars 1% of what it would cost them to give you actual cash.
I feel they sneaked a reduced rakeback, and on top of that added “prizes” that cost pokerstars less than what theprizeissupposedlyworthforyou.
I felt I had 10x the rakeback that what it is today, really cut my faith in pokerstars, I don’t even play there anymore, and since the other sites are even worse to look at aesthetically speaking, Im just done with online poker.
Very greedy. It’s rakeback for **** sake, you’re already making money while you sleep. Rakeback. RAKE…back… the majority of the rake is already going their way, but they had to chip away from the rakeback too, in overt and covert ways.
How are you even gonna get upgraded to a black chest on 50z? You need to rake 6000$ in 28 days to get it. Even on 100z it is super hard and would require around 120k hands.
Most players bellow 200nl will be stuck on max 30%.
whats wrong with 30%? i remember chests where i had a RB of 2.1% over an entire year
Is it known how many chests are needed to upgrade to each level?
That is not correct.
You need to earn 5 chest in 28 day rollin day period to level up.
Earning just one chest in that period will maintain your current level.
You are arguing something I didn't write.
I'll try to be clearer.
(PS uses the word "unlock" which is very important here. "Collect enough points to complete your progress bars, and you’ll unlock Chests")
Lets say you start clearing your first chest on 22/january. You rake the required amount and UNLOCK it on 1/march. Then you have until 29/march to unlock the next 4 chests.
example
Chest 1 unlocked: 1/march
Chest 2 unlocked: 6/march
Chest 3 unlocked: 16/march
Chest 4 unlocked: 22/march
Chest 5 unlocked: 29/march
=> you level up. You have unlocked 5 chests in 28 days. Even tho you really started 38 days ago.
Starscoin are now redundant and will be converted to cash soon
oh i see what you mean now.
but i still believe that 28 days starts to count when 1st chest progress starts.
otherwise they would call it 38 day rollin period
mato4 seems that you were correct.
You do need to earn 5 chests within 28 days to upgrade, but it considers the first chest earned at day 0. First chest earned on day 0 counts, so think of it it that after you earn a chest (day 0) you would then need to earn an additional 4 chests within the next 28 days to upgrade level.
Yeh, it works the same as it does now
This "rewards system overhaul" is pure trash.
It amazes me they had the courage to announce it as if it was going to make the lifes of everyone better.
I was not expecting a big improvement, i never wanted to be a rakeback grinder, but this is a clear downgrade. I hated it and im not interested.
My expectations were really low but I'm still disappointed, mostly because I have to keep playing on GG.
My expectations were really low but I'm still disappointed, mostly because I have to keep playing on GG.
You are a shill for GG, or at least against Stars. As seen in 'all' your other posts. Stars doesnt have a PVI which you cannot check that demolishes your rakeback%. Nor does it have blatant superusers and botrings.
You are a shill for GG, or at least against Stars. As seen in 'all' your other posts. Stars doesnt have a PVI which you cannot check that demolishes your rakeback%. Nor does it have blatant superusers and botrings.
I used to be a dedicated Stars user for about 10 years myself, and I even stuck around when they had their 1%RB because games were soft enough at the time that I didn't really care.
+The competition at the time was pretty sh.t, with only Partypoker trying, but their LB challenge had it's own issues (account sharing people grinding 24/7 all week) and their client was also a gigantic mess.
What ultimately drove me away was:
-The client being a buggy mess that freezes frequently/doesn't load in my cards on multiple occasions, or just straight up server shutdowns. They forced their Aurora sh.t down everyone's throat instead of the old client, which was clean AF/used less resources and was reliable as well. Back when PS was The "Poker Giant" the one and only option, this site/client used to have 0 issues to host 100K+ people on average, with numbers reaching 150K-200K on peak days. Last year the site was unreliable AF with sub 50K averages.
-The RB challenge that people tend to praise so highly here --> I have received un-doable challenges for more than 12 months straight, despite actually not doing great at the time (massive -EV runs), requiring inhuman number of hands to be grinded over the stakes I was playing at the time. Even when they "lowered it one tier" it still would required me to grind like 60-70K hands a month.
-And lastly, the playing field just gradually got worse and smaller. I play PLO zoom almost exclusively since they introduced their sh.tty 4 table cap and their terrible new waiting list system.
The Pools between 50-200 were already bad at the start of last year, but it actually became a joke as the year progressed. PLO200 barely runs even now, but there were actually long periods where it simply ceased to exist. PLO100 having mostly the same regs battling it out in low EV games and eventually even PLO50 started to be a regfest for most of the day.
And there is a reason why these pools got so much worse as the time progressed, people were simply ditching the site, rightfully so.
Pokerstars isn't renewing their RB system because "they are listening to player feedback regarding satisfaction" or whatever BS PR stuff they are using. They are changing it, because the site is failing, not having enough regs to sustain their pools and this also makes the site less attractive for recreational players when they see that the playerpool is small AF, and consist of the same regulars every single day.
___
I said it in a previous post as well, GG poker has it's own issues. Their RB system might not be that transparent either. But the playing pool feel much better, (more recs and even the avg. reg plays worse/more exploitable) and their RB with the Leaderboard money and the occasional GGcare money is more than generous.
Pokerstars IMO is beyond "redemption" at this point. They had an insanely favourable position initially with their monopoly in the market, and all they did with it was just exploiting it as much as they could, f.cking regs and even recreational players along the way. FFS they offered 1% RB at a point and even then we didn't really have great options, because competition was a joke with sh.tty software that was ugly AF, full of bugs.
Well those days are over, the competition is here (not just GG), and Pokerstars is a bit too late to realize how much they ****ed up. This "new" RB system is basically them putting out fires, but sadly there isn't much to save anymore.
at first it sounded nice, then i looked more at the details and its actually a downgrade.
right now im earning 18.5% from gold chests + 40% WC. sure, i don't complete the WC often, but maybe 1 out of 2 i do complete. so lets say i earn 30% RB overall.
so with the new system my current level Gold will be auto downgraded to bronze which is 17.5% with no WC.
i play $2 spin and gos, at this limit its impossible to reach 40% (Black chest). to get 30% i'll need to play a min of 7500 $2 spin and gos a month (250/day, 10hrs 3tabling LOL). im averaging maybe 1000-2000/mo right now which will take me to only silver level (20% RB).
how does this make me better off as they claim?
meanwhile GG is rolling out their 50% RB "killer whale" promotion for everyone LOL.
Stars and their stinking 20% RB. im leaving stars for GG
You will be downgraded to silver not bronze.
I don't trust the data they are providing for the reasoning the slightest, and I don't see how you can sell this as beneficial to recreational players. In 2023 I played 150k hands of z10/z25 and lost money so I'm closer to a rec than a reg both in volume and results, yet was receiving 17.5% from silver chests or at times were I played more 18.5% from gold chests, plus the odd weekly challenge completed at 40%. Completing 1 weekly challenge entailed 5-6k hands of z10 or even less if mixing some z25, perhaps 3k, both somewhat reasonable even if playing sporadically, and would get a 40% on top, combined with other leaderboards & cardex promos I think most people would be getting 60% consistently in micros, even if you failed some challenges and lost the accrued RB%, if you just completed one that you started sporadically you would easily be looking at 50% RB runrate average
With the changes I'm looking at 20% RB at best, perhaps 25% if I played consistently for a period of time to unlock the gold chests, massive downgrade. If anything I can only see benefitting recs playing very low volume like less than 1k hands a week
as rightfully mentioned above,micro/mid stake regs will get ~3x low rb(from 65% to 20-25%).I play 1$ flashes,so to get "Pokerstars Select" with 40% rb level i need to play 50k tourneys per month for whole year=unreal.Even 4x less distance is extremely hard(10 hours of pure game per day on 5 tables with no weekends)
