888poker recently demonstrated that it will become the latest online poker room to make a significant move toward catering to recreational players at the possible expense of high volume grinders, announcing that it will introduce a new rewards program on March 28th, 2016.
In a post on Two Plus Two, an 888poker representative wrote:
We’d like to let you know that as of 28/03/2016, we’ll be launching our new rewards program, “888poker Club”, which will replace our current rewards plan.
The new 888poker Club will reward players based on different criteria to that of our current rake-based program. The vast majority of our players will benefit much more from the new program, which will be much easier to understand and will give significant weight to long term loyalty with 888poker.
Once the change is implemented, our current rewards program and statuses will no longer be applicable. Players will be awarded according to the new 888poker Club system.
We’d like to assure you that despite these major changes, 888poker will fully honour its cashback commitment to all players, including its VIPs, who are currently entitled to yearly cashback in the existing rewards plan. Moreover, any reward points players accumulated in the current rewards program will be automatically transferred to Gold Tokens, with equal value, in the new 888poker Club and will continue to be redeemable any time.
The cashback available in our current rewards program will likely not correspond to that offered in the new 888poker Club. Therefore, in the event that the cashback earned by a VIP player within the 888poker Club structure is lower than that which the player would expect from our current program, we’ll make sure to grant a monthly compensation of any difference in these amounts up until each player’s VIP status expires. We’ve emailed each VIP player the expiration date of his VIP status.
We are very proud to be launching this new and innovative rewards plan and we expect it to make a very positive impact on our user experience at 888poker.
For more on the 888poker club visit this link:
http://www.888poker.com/poker-promotions/888poker-club/
While the change has already made some players angry, it should at least be appreciated that 888poker is trying to avoid the same mistakes that PokerStars made when it announced the widespread changes to its own VIP system last year. 888 is admitting that high level VIP players will likely be hurt by the changes, but it is also trying to make sure that any current commitments to its players are being honored.
No significant details of the new 888poker Club have been revealed yet, but in general, players will be given challenges to complete that will require them to both earn points and earn them playing certain games. Once the challenge has been completed, the player will advance to the next level, collect Gold Tokens that can be exchanged for prizes, and receive a new challenge.
Some challenges will ask players to participate in real money casino games or bet real money on sports, but players can still complete challenges by only playing poker; it will just take longer to move to the next level in those situations.
Note that because the challenges are largely NOT based on anything having to do with rake, this means that rakeback at 888poker is gone. Certainly, it would be possible for a player to calculate a rakeback percentage, but it sounds like it would be pointless.