PokerStars Suddenly Reverses Rake Increase Decision
January 7, 2015 1:17 pmPokerStars players woke up to some interesting news yesterday morning after Eric Hollreiser, Head of Corporate Communications for PokerStars, posted an article on the Pokerstars Blog explaining that the site had now reversed most of the rake increases they had previously introduced on November 3rd. Hollreiser also added that the second batch of changes that they were supposed to have introduced on January 1st would also be cancelled.
When the proposed changes were initially announced in October 2014, there was an instant backlash from the site’s legion of online grinders who accused PokerStars of making a money grab by increasing the amount of rake they paid, while doing nothing to improve the actual games themselves. PokerStars was also accused of failing to listen to the views of its online community and ignoring the feedback of its customers. Addressing these concerns, Eric Hollreiser has now attempted to paint a different story of these events, and stated in his post:
“After additional analysis and consideration, we have now returned the rake to pre-November 3 levels in most instances and have cancelled the planned additional increases. Spin & Go tournament fees and payout changes implemented on November 3 will remain in place. We will not increase any rake in 2015 other than in jurisdictions where we have already or will experience increased gaming duty or VAT.”
This could therefore explain why the site decided to keep the rake increase at its Spin-and-Gos intact, as these games do not tend to attract regular grinders, and so were less likely to receive a backlash from this group of players.
Interestingly, the original proposed tranche of rake increases most affected higher stakes players and high volume grinders, with the changes designed to not so much increase revenues at PokerStars, but make the lower stakes games less inundated with multi-tabling grinders. In this way, PokerStars may have been trying to allow its less experienced players more room to improve and so help increase their upward mobility.