Protests Affect Cash Game Traffic at PokerStars

When PokerStars announced changes to their rake structure and VIP schemes, many players on poker forums suggested that some sort of protest was in order. Eventuallly, players settled on a combination of simply protesting by not playing at PokerStars, and staging "sit ins" where players would log into tables, but sitting out from playing in games.

While some suggested that the effects of these protests would be minimal, they do appear to be having some impact on the world's largest poker site. PokerStars.com has seen a slight increase in cash game traffic week over week, but that increase was smaller than most other major poker sitse. While PokerStars enjoyed a 5% week-over-week increase, that paled in comparison to PartyPoker, which saw a 29% rise, and iPoker, which has a 12% increase.

More dramatic was the impact seen at PokerStars.fr, the version of the site accessible exclusively in the French poker market. That site actually saw a 10% decrease in cash game traffic, which was enough to knock the site out of the top position in terms of French poker sites. According to PokerScout, Winamax.fr is now the largest room in the French poker market.

The drop in French traffic might be especially harmful to PokerStars' bottom line. A PokerStars.fr protest was organized at ClubPoker.net, and reportedly includes over 100 high volume players on the site, including several Supernova Elite players -- the highest volume players in the PokerStars VIP program.

The controversy that led to these protests stems primarily from changes to the VIP Player Points (VPP) system used by PokerStars to reward players for their play on the site. Until 2012, PokerStars used a method of points that rewarded players each time they were dealt into a hand. If a hand was raked, it became eligible for VPPs, and all players dealt into the hand shared equally in the VPP rewards. Under the new system for 2012, players now recieve points based on their contribution to the rake -- a so-called "weighted contribution" system.

This change has been extremely controversial. High volume players tend to be winning players, but they're also tighter players than average. This means that they contribute less to pots on average. The change in the VPP system will means substantially lower rewards for these players. On the other side of this argument, more casual players are likely to see an increase in their VPP haul, as they tend to contribute more to the rake on each hand. However, since high volume players who have large numbers of player points get much better returns on their rewards, taking VPPs away from high-volume players and moving them to casual players will likely benefit PokerStars more than any group of players.

PokerStars has announced plans to speak to player representatives in an attempt to find a solution to this issue that works for all sides.