Stars VIP Wild speculation

[OnlinePro]

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My first response was way too long, so I'll start over from scratch.

Online Pro, after reading your comments, it comes off to me (and you can disagree) that you are a bit bitter that you can't play on Party Poker anymore.

The games are tougher now, and will continue to get tougher. The reason isn't because of Full Tilt or Pokerstars poor marketing efforts like you suggested. That comment, among many other in your diatribe against Pokerstars, clearly shows that you have forgotten one major point. There is so much more information, in terms of books, message boards, training sites and even to a lesser extent TV, where new and existing players can improve their poker skills at a faster rate than ever before. Stars and Full Tilt's poor marketing didn't cause this to happen. People like playing poker and they were interested in getting better; thus the market was created for people to write books about poker and to train people how to play poker.

You write " If pokerstars would take the partypoker approach to marketing then we can go back to the good ol days of poker."

I hate to break it to you, but those days are over. I can see poker getting more difficult before it gets more easier. What took me 2 years to learn in poker, today, people can learn in under a month because of books, 2+2 type sites, and online training sites.

If you want softer games, and that's pretty apparent after reading your spiel. Then maybe you should consider moving to a different online poker room, with rakeback and better bonus offers then Pokerstars currently offers. I hear there are some softer sites out there.

Pokerstars appears to have a overall corporate marketing strategy to expand into every part of the world. Look @ their Pokerstars team, they have players from all around the world. The inroads they have made in Europe have been huge recently, and I see a ton more players online from Europe, especially from France and Germany. In addition, they have increased the player pool out of Australia, and now with their APPT (Asian Poker Tour) events, they are looking @ expanding into the Asian Market in a big way. And that my friend, should help in adding more new players to online poker, and most new players are awful. I think Stars is doing a very solid job attracting new players to the game.

The gist is that your not happy Pokerstars is a more difficult website to play on than Party Poker, and you blame their poor marketing efforts for this. Sorry if Pokerstars doesn't hand out free monies like Party did. But back in the day, when online poker was new, Party had to do whatever it could to attract people to their website. But now that poker is more popular and more mainstream, excessive bonus offers aren't necessary for certain poker rooms. One of those currently being Pokerstars since they are the market leader @ the moment. The advantage they have is they are well known with the most players online, and that helps in their recruitment effort of online players. Unlike say some Prima skins where they offer crazy 60% rakeback and bonus offers because they are desperately trying to build a client base because they have 3,000 players @ peak hours. Pokerstars is already beyond that phase of only having 3,000 players @ peak hours. Now, lets say their growth of new players slows in the near future. Then yes,you may be on to something and maybe they will look into increasing their 1st time deposit bonus, or maybe offering some better incentives for affiliates. But for right now, considering how they are the #1 site, I think they enjoy the current marketing strategy that they have in place.

Look @ the bright side. Pokerstars may have something up their sleeve if US legislation is changed and it makes it easier to deposit to online gaming accounts in the next 6 months. (The 6 month figure was quoted from Barry Greenstein who is cautiously optimistic about the future of poker in the US) If it does change, then maybe Stars will roll out a nice $500 Deposit Bonus, in addition to $25 or $50 referral bonuses to new players. It seems as if more bad then good players stopped playing after this legislation. So maybe you can be optimistic that there may be a short period of time where the games get temporarily softer. And also, if legislation gets reversed, then maybe Party enters back into the US market. But the reality is, the games are going to get tougher and tougher even if you are constantly working on trying to improve your game. And the reason for that sure as heck isn't Stars and Full Tilt's marketing efforts.

Man, this is way too long again. I pity the fool who read after the 1st paragraph. I'm not rewriting again even though it's pretty unorganized thought. It's really late, so I may have written something that is completely silly but oh well.

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hm are posts like these why so many people dont take a site like 2+2 seriously because they say so many of the posters are paid workers for poker sites.... no I dont think so. I think people just like to defent pokersites for free and not ask for more money because they are good hearted and believe that big companies need the money more than they do.

I cant comprehend to total and complete insults to intelligence that goes on around here, but then again 95% of society are morons.

[PartysOver]

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--------- Rewards (VPPs) for play during the dead hours.

6AM today Stars had more RM players playing than 2nd and 3rd place combined. This seems like a huge cost for little possible net gain.

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what about 12pm-6pm EST? pretty dead then.

Also, if you have net gain... what is the question? Let's implement this.

[xmbs]

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-------Thats like saying that because a bar is already popular at 4-6PM they shouldn't look into having a happy hour.

If the bar is already full, why not have happy hour 4PM-11PM or 9PM-11PM?

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I think the point being made is that however full the bar is between 4 and 6, even if it is the most popular bar in the area it will be even fuller if you have a happy hour, because people who would not otherwise bother to go the bar at that time would make an extra effort to.

[Henry17]

The bar analogy fails because a bar has a maximum capacity while Stars doesn't. It wouldn't make sense for a bar to offer happy hour if they already were busy while it would make sense for Stars to do it.

The question is would a happy hour encourage more playing or would it simply shift the times people play at but keep total playing the same?

[xmbs]

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The question is would a happy hour encourage more playing or would it simply shift the times people play at but keep total playing the same?

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I'd have to guess that it would mean people playing more, simply because I imagine the majority that play at a certain time would continue to do so, and maybe go out of the their way occasionally to pick the bonus points up, or even if they played then regularly they would continue to play at their usual times as well - because that's when it's convenient for them.

There's no concrete way of knowing if I'm right though short of trying it, and I suspect Stars would be very reluctant to do that because they don't like taking away benefits once they've introduced them in my experience. That being said there is something to the argument that the other sites that do this linked to specific times must feel it's worth their while, and the fact that it is linked to specific times suggests it's more related to them trying to get their base to play more than to get new players
in.

Personally I’m pretty neutral about the whole idea because I don’t think my play would shift much anyway – but it may well be of benefit to Stars should they want to risk it (which going by Scotty’s reaction doesn’t seem likely)

[Scottyy]

----The question is would a happy hour encourage more playing or would it simply shift the times people play at but keep total playing the same?

Great question + if you get more play, does the extra play cover the extra cost of giving everyone the reward.

-------I suspect Stars would be very reluctant to do that because they don't like taking away benefits once they've introduced

great point

-----Scotty’s reaction doesn’t seem likely

Just sharing my opinions, which may or may not follow PokerStars opinion.

[TheEye]

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-------I suspect Stars would be very reluctant to do that because they don't like taking away benefits once they've introduced

great point



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but then you are considering removing the 50k freeroll, even though that would lead to unhappy players.

[1p0kerboy]

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-------I suspect Stars would be very reluctant to do that because they don't like taking away benefits once they've introduced

great point



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but then you are considering removing the 50k freeroll, even though that would lead to unhappy players.

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But there would be MORE happy players than there would unhappy players.

2/3 Novas would be getting a reward that they didn't get before. And that's even before you consider how many of us actually play the thing but would really rather not.

[Mischman]

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One day a week(month?) Pokerstars should say that they will be having a double VPP day. But dont tell anyone that day and then everyone will play a lot that whole week. Pokerstars will get a lot of rake and on the day after the double VPP day a lot of players will wake up to a nice surprise. eh?

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Come on Scotty, do this!

[TheEye]

true, but put yourself in a position where you are running the company and have to choose between 2 options for a set of customers.

a)remove the freeroll in return for $70/month and unsettle 1/3 of the bunch while making "slightly" happier the rest.

b)keep the freeroll which will make no significant difference to none of the 2 sets, hence no unhappiness for 1 set and no difference for the others.

What would you choose?