In an ongoing effort to make its site more attractive to casual players, PokerStars announced Sunday a “comprehensive plan to enhance the PokerStars playing experience,” highlighted by a complete overhaul of its loyalty program.
In a post on the PokerStars corporate blog (and, in turn, a page detailing the VIP changes), the company explained that the goal of the new system, which will be put into place in 2016, is to “effectively incentivize and reward more players and to encourage competitive play over high volume play.”
PokerStars estimates that the average rewards earned for players with VIP statuses of GoldStar or lower will remain unchanged or increase slightly. The ones who will take the biggest hit in terms of rewards are the high stakes, high volume players. PlatinumStar players are expected to earn about 10 percent fewer rewards, SuperNova are estimated to see their rewards dip as much as 27 percent, and those who normally go for the gusto and earn more than 200,000 VPPs in a year will have a rewards decrease of 44 to 60 percent. PokerStars says that the negatively affected players make up about 2 percent of the customer base.
“The reason we are focused on the highest status levels,” Amaya Gaming’s VP of Corporate Communications Eric Hollreiser wrote, “is because these rewards have become so enticing that we have inadvertently altered why some people play and how they play. We are introducing these changes to move towards a more balanced long-term poker economy and to return the game back to one that rewards skill via winning at the tables rather than playing primarily for volume.”
PokerStars aims to reward people for winning money because of their skill at the tables, not just because they are multi-table grinders. Essentially, they want people to start playing poker for poker’s sake, not just because they need to click buttons to earn rewards.
“It was never the intention of the VIP Club to alter the fundamental reason for playing poker,” PokerStars added. “We’ve come to the realisation that the current situation has to change, even though we understand it will upset the high-status players that are affected.”
And with that, starting January 1st, all rewards will be doled out in a currency called StarsCoin, worth one cent each. FPPs will disappear, converted at a rate of 1.2 StarsCoins for every FPP. Additionally, all rewards like Milestone Rebates and Stellar Rebates will be consolidated into StarsCoins.
VPPs will still exist and will be used to track how a player advances up the new VIP Steps ladder. This was previewed in September, with the requirements for each level as follows:
Bronze Star: no requirements – everyone starts here
Chrome Star: 100 VPPs per month
Silver Star: 500 VPPs per month
Gold Star: 2,500 VPPs per month
Platinum Star: 7,500 VPPs per month
Supernova: 100,000 VPPs per year
Supernova Elite:1,000,000 VPPs per year
Each VPP level will be broken into smaller “steps” basically as a way to make it look like a player is making progress toward the next level. At the completion of each step, players will be award StarsCoins. PokerStars is looking to keep casual, lower stakes players engaged; just like in casual mobile games where players try to grind out experience to reach the next level, this may get players to want to keep playing, as they will be able to see how close they are to that next step.
As mentioned, high stakes players will get the short end of the stick. In addition to the reward reductions mentioned earlier, VIP Club rewards will be capped at 30 percent, but perhaps most shockingly, no VPPs will be awarded in anything remotely close to being considered a high stakes game. This includes No-Limit and Pot-Limit games with blinds of $5/$10 or more, 8-game $10/$20 and higher, and Fixed-Limit games with blinds of $10/$15 and up. PokerStars says this was done “due to high transaction costs and operation costs of monitoring these games.”
