Current Problems WIth Pokerstars VIP/Supernova Program And Suggestions

[chezlaw]

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Agree with the FPP flexibility point. Not so much on giving out stuff free.

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B&M Casinos gives stuff tho their best customers all the time, and online poker players are often bigger customers than B&M customers. While they don't neccesarily have to give every one of their $200k/y customers a car for no points, it would have been a nice gesture (plus good business) to have one as a race to 3 million points. Think how much money they could have made by saying: "First to 3M points gets it for free; If you aren't first don't worry, you can use your points to buy it anyways." The whole FPP system creates a feeling of having this currency that you have to think about spending on what. When that currency is only amounting to 28% rebate it puts Stars at a real comparitive disadvantage compared to players on Party who are getting close to 33% straight up cashback right now. Stars, for a cost that they'd easily recoup by increased business, could be sending people all kinds of free stuff that they don't need to think about whether they want to use points or not for. Let me think about what I want to spend my 28% (or in my case, only 20% as I've played tons and tons and tons and am still only Platinum) rakeback on, but surprise me with some A's playoff tickets in the mail or a trip to Hawaii, or a weekend in the Bahamas with a $1k tournament entry. They could easily be rebating people premiums like that for just an extra 10% of people's rake and you'd have the whole industry playing on Stars. People like getting stuff that really feels free, and when you have to spend FPPs, it doesn't feel free.


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I disagree with that. I don't want suprise gifts that I may not want or be able to use. Please suprise me with bonus FPP's

Gifts to attract new players is a great idea but the serious vips want agreed fair reward. If rakeback isn't possible then the flexible FPP system is fine with me. The only big isue is the rate which is low at the moment. A new tier or two is a great idea.

BTW Stars have given special benefits to there VIPS, during the 5 billion hand bonanza the prizes were increased for vips I won one and think I got an extra 40% for being platinum.

Just in case these thread seem to be knocking stars. I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] stars.

chez

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Fine, then offer an alternative of 25% of the cash value of the award as a cash bonus or something. The fact is people want things to feel free, and under the current system they don't feel free. It's also something that can help the smaller volume player.

Currently, if someone plays 40 $114 tournament per month they gross Stars $360. This is barely silverstar level. That means they earn somewhere between 1800-2700 FPPs per month or roughly $29-$43 in value. That's just not going to get the casual player excited about playing more, particularly if he feels he's just burning those FPP's in longshot satellite tournaments for much smaller stakes than his average game. If they budgeted another 10% in premium items for the guy, they could send him a new book every month just for being a good player, or a $30 dinner for two at Friday's, or put players like that in a category and send 1 out of 6 of them an ipod nano.

I'd love to see an extra 10% in FPP's awarded, but quite frankly I see the value of just doing some sort of promo giveaways with that 10% as far more enticing to attract casual players, and to get casual players to play more. And the value of casual players playing more than the irritation of getting a poker book that I already have, or a weekend in Cabo San Lucas that I may not want or be able to use.

Make people feel like high rollers, and they'll act like high rollers. Just think of the business they would get if they had a monthly vacation, with no FPP redemption required. Simply clear $10,000 in a rake (or the FPP equiv.) over ANY period of time and select from a $1000 pokerstars vacation package or some Bose speakers. Clear $2,000 in rake and play a satellite vs others where 1 in 5 win...They could get good value by getting NBA/NHL/MLB luxury boxes and just giving people trips to games and stuff that didn't require redemptions.

Seems like a 10% risk in their revenue is worth the risk to get at the middle limit casual players they are desperate for. Imagine where all the casual 10/20,15/30 and $50+ SNG players on Party would play if they knew for the same amount of play they could get some FPPs to do with what they wish and some primo tickets to the game or a trip to somewhere cool every few months.

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I agree with that, gifts, special promos targeted at new players and low/medium volume players makes great sense. Chuck a few at the high volume players as well by all means.

Platinum, supernova and hopefully higher levels need fair volume discounts. Its in stars interest as well because its costs them a lot when we play elsewhere (and we do).

I'm very happy to pay Stars a premium over other sites because they are so much better to deal with, support and decent software costs money. At the moment the premium seems excessive.

chez

[Newt_Buggs]

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Sure it's really nice that Barry Greenstein is a member of Team Pokerstars and plays a tournament every once in a while, but the millions of dollars paid to him should really have gone to Pokerstars' most active players.

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You say some good things in your post, but you really missed business perspective of having players like Barry Greenstein on the site. They pay him tons of money because it will indirectly attract more fish by having big name players on their site. That in turn goes back into your pocket when some of those fish stumble into your SNGs.

[DCJ311]

Newt,

I don't deny that Barry Greenstein carries a lot of name recognition, but Chris Moneymaker is by far hands down the name that carries Pokerstars and is the cornerstone of online poker even today. He's an 'everyman' and is featured in the majority of their commercials for good reason.

Adding Barry Greenstein and other much smaller names really doesn't do much but add marginal gains to the spectrum of new players that join Pokerstars. People that go to Pokerstars' website and say "ooh, Barry Greenstein is a member of Team Pokerstars" are the types of people that are likely to be already investing money in online poker, and don't need to be swayed by any 'foot in the door' ad campaigns.

PartyPoker barely uses any money towards player sponsorship and that allows them to take care of their VIP players and offer them lucractive opportunities, as I'm sure you are specifically aware of. They instead focus on catchy commercials that are likely more successful than Pokerstars', IMO.

As a person who invests a lot of money into Pokerstars, I feel obligated to be skeptical about how they use some of their funds. I'd much rather see a large Supernova only freeroll in the Bahamas than see that money go to endorse one player.

[Newt_Buggs]

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Adding Barry Greenstein and other much smaller names really doesn't do much but add marginal gains to the spectrum of new players that join Pokerstars. People that go to Pokerstars' website and say "ooh, Barry Greenstein is a member of Team Pokerstars" are the types of people that are likely to be already investing money in online poker, and don't need to be swayed by any 'foot in the door' ad campaigns.

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Just curious, but what are you basing this on? Just your own observations and experiences as a player on their site? Lee Jones and his management team have access to every stat of player usage on their site and reasonable conjectures of the success of every advertising investment they have made. Furthermore Lee Jones has proven that he is an extreemly savvy businessman who is probably very capable of taking advantage of all of this information that only he can exclusively access. I find it difficult to believe that me, you, or anyone else on 2+2 would have a clue on what the best business decision for pokerstars is when we are a single players in a single limit with no additional information about a huge site with dozens of games and limit in a complicated business with a huge turnover rate.

Sorry, I don't mean to be sounds like an ass but it just bothers me when I see these statements, especially with everyone ranting about how stupid stars is for not offering rakeback. I'm sure that Lee Jones carefully considers the costs and benefits of offering rakeback or hiring on each of the members of team pokerstars for millions of dollars. To be honest though the manager of a poker site is in a much better position to evaluate these decisions than us players.

[davebreal]

I think the #1 question about the Pokerstars VIP program is...

HOW MANY FPPS DOES IT COST FOR A DATE WITH ISABELLE MERCIER???

[Gotmilk]

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Adding Barry Greenstein and other much smaller names really doesn't do much but add marginal gains to the spectrum of new players that join Pokerstars. People that go to Pokerstars' website and say "ooh, Barry Greenstein is a member of Team Pokerstars" are the types of people that are likely to be already investing money in online poker, and don't need to be swayed by any 'foot in the door' ad campaigns.

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Just curious, but what are you basing this on? Just your own observations and experiences as a player on their site? Lee Jones and his management team have access to every stat of player usage on their site and reasonable conjectures of the success of every advertising investment they have made. Furthermore Lee Jones has proven that he is an extreemly savvy businessman who is probably very capable of taking advantage of all of this information that only he can exclusively access. I find it difficult to believe that me, you, or anyone else on 2+2 would have a clue on what the best business decision for pokerstars is when we are a single players in a single limit with no additional information about a huge site with dozens of games and limit in a complicated business with a huge turnover rate.

Sorry, I don't mean to be sounds like an ass but it just bothers me when I see these statements, especially with everyone ranting about how stupid stars is for not offering rakeback. I'm sure that Lee Jones carefully considers the costs and benefits of offering rakeback or hiring on each of the members of team pokerstars for millions of dollars. To be honest though the manager of a poker site is in a much better position to evaluate these decisions than us players.

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Remember that Lee Jones isn't the one responsible for all these decisions, all he can do is take ideas to his bosses. I think the bosses in question tend to err on the conservative side, and it costs them in the middle limits where targeted marketing efforts could really benefit them.

[ryanghall]

O'Doyle, the problem with a live freeroll in whatever exotic place is that some Supernova members (like me) have full time jobs where we can't just take a week off from.

If this promotion was given out to Novas and I couldn't make it, I would be livid

[MicroBob]

yeah. It's not unlike the same problem that we currently have with the weekly freerolls.
Kind of annoying to hold them at a set time that is REQUIRED in order to receive your full VIP-value.


So if Stars were to do something like this then they need to have an alternative compensation for those who can't make it for one reason or another. It would be impossible for all Supernovas to all be available at the same time for something like this.


I don't mind the suggestion that much though.
Because I would be all over this in a heartbeat AND I believe I could do whatever necessary to MAKE myself available.

Just pointing out that this isn't exactly an ideal solution or incentive for many imo.

[DCJ311]

Although Pokerstars runs a very successful operation (either the best or 2nd best in the biz), the poker industry is not necessarily a perfected one, and Pokerstars admittedly has many areas that could use improvement.

That is why Lee takes the time out to talk personally with active players and take suggestions from them, and I give him and the site a lot of respect for that. Gotmilk and I have personally spoken to Lee and voiced what we feel are the sites' strengths/weaknesses and explained how to improve on those.

But if you're asking me to quantify what gains/losses the site takes from adding a player like Greenstein, I obviously can't do it. But if I had to set a line on how much adding a player like Barry Greenstein will make their site in the long run, I would take the 'under' compared to what they are paying him now, and that amount would be about 1/100th of what Chris Moneymaker has made them so far. Whenever a site chooses to endorse a player, they are taking some calculated risk that has no guarantee of paying off, it's not like they're huge geniuses who all know something we don't.

This argument is obviously futile, but I do think it is a bit naive to assume that the manager of a poker site is 'far more' qualified at his position than some of us out here who have also spent the vast majority of their adult lives either working in the gaming industry or being an active participant in it.

[jige]

what is the "supernowa news" it has been talking about should be released in October?