People were afraid that the purchase of PokerStars by Amaya Gaming would be the beginning of the end for the internet’s most popular poker room and as it turns out, they may be right. On Wednesday, the world’s largest online poker room made yet another customer-unfriendly change, announcing that it has raised the rake on many games.
Most of the changes go into effect today. Of particular note, all stakes of Heads-Up Hyper Turbo Sit-and-Go tournaments, favorites of the professional grinder crowd, will see their rakes increase. The total buy-in will remain the same, but the portion that is raked will go up, meaning less money goes into the prize pool. For example, the low $1.50 Heads-Up Hyper Turbos will now have $0.07 coming out for rake rather than $0.06. On the high end, the $1,000 versions now have $13.42 rake rather than $11.17. While it is a fairly small uptick on a percentage basis, these small numbers can add up quickly, especially in games like these that have small margins even for the best players because of the high variance.
The rake will soar in Hyper Turbo Multi-Table Tournaments (also known as Scheduled Tournaments). On the Two Plus Two forums, “PokerStars Steve” said that the rake will increase from 2 percent to half of what it is for regular tournaments at the same or similar buy-in levels. Examples given: $50 + $1 tourneys will now be $50 + $2.50 and $210.80 + $4.20 will now be $207.23 + $7.77. Knockout MTT’s will also have their fees increased. $10 + $10 + 1 will now be $10 + $10 + $2 and so on and so forth with the increases generally being lower on a percentage basis at higher buy-ins.
Fortunately, the rake is not increasing at all cash game levels. In No-Limit and Pot-Limit ring games, the rake had been capped at $0.50 for hands in which exactly two players were dealt cards; now it is $1 for all levels below $25/$50, while above that level it is going all the way up to $2. Also at $25/$50 and above, the rake cap when five or more players are dealt in is now $5, compared to just $3 previously.
And finally, beginning today, the rake on Spin & Go tourneys, which were only recently introduced on PokerStars’ dot com site, will be increased on all but the $1 level. Some minor changes are also being made to the prize table; the top prize is now 3,000x the buy-in instead of 1,000x and probabilities have been redistributed to make the instances of the 4x and 25x prizes more frequent, to the detriment of everything else.
At the turn of the New Year, other games will see their rakes increased. Hyper turbo satellite fees at stakes under $2,000 will be elevated to about 75 percent of fee that is seen in a cash prize hyper turbo. Additionally, and this one is a bit odd, tournament fees will start to be charged for re-buys and add-ons for players “whose play is subject to significant local taxes in the form of gaming duty and/or VAT.”
These rake increases have, needless to say, not been welcomed by players. It does not help that they have come shortly after PokerStars announced new foreign exchange fees as well as the introduction of Spin & Go tournaments, which have not been popular amongst the site’s more serious, high volume players.
