Tournament Leaderboard changes and 18% cash game traffic increase on PokerStars

PokerStars has announced changes to their Tournament Leaderboards. The biggest change will be inflicted on the monthly TLB. The December Poker Festival on the site has also been a success, cash game traffic has increased by 18%.

The company has officially announced that they are changing their Tournament Leaderboard (TLB). The changes will come into effect in 2015, and will see the monthly payouts being lowered and the yearly payouts increased.

The weekly, monthly, and yearly leaderboards award the players who deliver the best results in a given timeframe, the leaderboard points are calculated with an algorythm that takes the buy-ins and field sizes into account.

The changes will not affect the weekly leaderboards, the weekly TLB winners will still have the opportunity to play a heads-up match against a Team PokerStars pro for $1,000.

The monthly TLBs have been removed in their current form, they will be replaced with a summer leaderboard. This leaderboard will only exist in June, July and August, but the prizes will be increased. So far roughly $44,000 has been paid out every week, in the 2015 summer months this will increase to $100,000, which is clearly a decision to try to increase the lower player numbers that are usual in the summer.

The yearly TLB payouts will be increased by $250,000. So far the yearly payouts were $200,000, in 2015 it will be $450,000. The winner of the yearly TLB will receive $35,000 in cash, can participate in Sunday Million tournaments for free for a year and will receive other tournament tickets aswell, which brings the total value of the title close to $50,000.

The number of players getting paid will also be increased, on the yearly TLB 100 players will be paid. 100th-41th place will "only receive" a ticket to a $75,000 guaranteed freeroll, but the top 40 finishers will receive roughly $5,000 in tournament buy-ins, which is a pretty huge jump in the payouts and will guarantee a lot of action.

In 2015, PokerStars will pay out a total of $800,000 in their TLBs, which is roughly $20,000 more than in 2014.

As we have reported, PokerStars once again hosted their December Poker Festival, where they pay out huge sums in milestone hand promotions. The promotion is showing its effects already, cash game traffic has increased by 18% already, which is only 2% less than it was in 2013, and is most likely caused by the introduction of Spin & Gos. 

PokerStars' 18% traffic increase has also increased the global cash game traffic by 6,5% since December 1 according to PokerScout.