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A strange article appeared on US Poker Magazine's website with the title "Is PokerStars Extending An Olive Branch To The Poker Community?" [3] last week. The piece claims that a lot of Stars' recent unpopular changes were put into motion by the former owners, the Scheinbergs before Amaya took over; and later points out the measures PS took to mitigate the negative backlash. When GPI owner Alex Dreyfus tweeted out the story, however, online poker pro Isaac Haxton who was sponsored by PokerStars till last year had some harsh words to say about it.
At this point it takes a lot of time and energy to list all the things PokerStars did to evoke the anger of the online poker community. They abruptly ended Supernova Elite in 2016; by 2017, the entire Supernova program was done away with [4] and their old VIP program got replaced by a more chance-based rewards system that favors frequently depositing losing players, while cutting rakeback drastically for winning regulars. They also introduced a bulk of less skill-based games, like Beat the Clock and most recently Spin&Go Max, also to appeal to recreational players. In addition to all that, they increased the rakes at low-level games and - this is another fairly new development - decided to hide the tournament fees and just display the full buy-in amounts at the tournament lobby. This is by far not all players hold againts Stars, but there's only so much space here.
The article in question writes about all these and more, while also pointing out that Amaya decided to re-brand themselves as The Stars Group because of the bad reputation of the former name - partly earned by the aforementioned negative changes and partly by the legal troubles the company got themselves into [5].
So the US Poker article is by no means a puff piece for Stars, yet it still got a negative response.
[6]
It simply claims that the changes Stars implemented are necessary to adjust to new industry trends and mentions the steps PS took to appease their angry player base, like meeting with players to discuss potential changes to their tournaments' payout structures, re-launching PokerStars Caribbean Adventures after not holding it last year, and bailing out the players of the bankrupt MGN room PKR [7].
When GPI owner Alex Dreyfus tweeted out the story with the comment "great piece", however, former Poker Stars pro Isaac Haxton who decided to leave the company in 2016 repsonded with the harsh judgement "Stars lied and defrauded players out of millions. Any apparent generosity is to be treated as laying the groundwork for the next con" [8].
That comment is a great specimen of the type of reactions Stars tends to get these days. Partypoker sensed the "blood in the water" and countered PS's actions by introducing a loyalty rewards system that is very generous with rakeback. You can read a comprehensive comparison of party's and Stars' new VIP programs here [9] to see the stark differences. PS has been losing player traffic while party growing as a result.
The US Poker Magazine article does have some strong words for the players hyping up the "Stars hate" too.
"The narrative that has developed over the past few years is that PokerStars doesn’t want winning players. That it wants all winning players to just go away. This isn’t true. What the company wants is winning players who exhibit the right traits. PokerStars doesn’t want you if you’re a nitty low-limit 20-tabler whose income is generated almost entirely through rewards and rakeback. And it shouldn’t be surprising that these players were the most impacted by the changes. If you’re a solid winning player who moves up in stakes instead of adding more volume, they do want you. The 2017 changes are aimed at these players. They say, 'yes, we are listening, and yes we want your business'. PokerStars is also making it very clear that they will continue to move forward with some of the changes players don’t like by continuing to implement other changes, This is evidenced by the new Spin & Go formats and the ongoing rollout of its new rewards program."
Maybe this is the part Haxton really didn't like.