The Official "I Told You So PokerStars" Thread

So I'm just gonna say it once:

I TOLD YOU SO!

Directed squarely at PokerStars. You can't give mediocre customer service, a sub-par VIP program, and then not be on top of the biggest concern all players have (cashouts) and expect people to not jump ship from your poker room to a competitor's site.

Traffic is down at PokerStars over 9% and Cereus and Full Tilt are slightly up with Party Poker WAY up. Wow.

I used to exclusively play at PS, I am now at FT, but not for the recent reasons...

Although I don't think PS will ever not be the biggest..

you do know that pokerstars customer service is argueably the best around and their vip program is actually above par for the high levels (nova+), I don't know about cashouts since i just withdraw straight into my bank account from them with no middle man, and that always goes without problem.

I don't play there either atm fwiw, but you still can't argue the facts that they have everything covered

also what is it that you 'told them'?

Im guessing that the government crackdown on Pokerstars payment provider may have some effect at stars?

I'll take this in chunks ...
As an industry analyst who has personally interacted with just about every single poker room's customer service department, I can say without a shadow of a doubt that PokerStars isn't in the top 3.

Their VIP program is worth about 35-40% rakeback for SuperNovas+ ... unfortunately everyone else BELOW that level gets about 12-15% which is by far the worst in the industry. So they reward the high volume players and don't give a competitive rate to the medium/low volume people.

As a player in the USA who has friends who can't pay their rent because of bounced checks from Stars I can tell you that they've been woefully behind on the issue as compared to the other sites.

I just did argue the facts. Rather well I must add. I "told them" in a few emails sent in and some articles I've written for various sites.

Well since I have a mac, and am in the US... not much of an option for me

Huh? The following website have downloadable mac-client OS X software :

- PokerStars
- Full Tilt Poker
- Absolute Poker

All accept US players.

Sean, isn't this sort of like a fly swatting an elephant?

Txs foir the stats and info; but I think pokerstars will continue to dominate.
One positive for them are the huge number of SNGs and MTTs, of all types. Beats the selection at Tilt.
You are surely right about the bonus ring situation. But lots of peeps at lo limits have no idea about bonus/rakeback value...
Never had trouble with payouts.

I don't think they are trembling in their boots, yet...

If you were in charge of a business that saw a 9% drop in sales (aka rake-paying customers) over the course of a few weeks, I imagine you would immediately be concerned. That's a sharp drop in a short time.

Very true... but drops and surges around 10% may be common in the industry -- how far back can u track their membership? Also, is there not a seasonal lull (summer) when warm weather hits and us cybergeeks emerge pale and pasty, squinting into the daylight? Doesn't account for upswings at other sites I know...

In any case, your reasons may not be the right ones.

Or you may be right.

OK, so more like a monkey beating up on an elephant?

name 3 better gogogo

Agreed 100% Ice.

I left Pokerstars at the start of Feb this year, and am primiarly playing on i-poker now, it was my site of choice because FT wouldnt give me rakeback.

I play on Paddy power poker. Customer service is top notch, I have legal standing because its based here in Ireland, the VIP programme really puts Stars to shame, for a relatively low volume player. I get Gold star on Stars, and 40%+ RB on I-Poker, their reload bonus's are 100% when they do them, not 20%, are easier to clear, lolz....... Yea Stars really sucks atm. When they done the UK promo thing, it really didnt bother me that I was excluded because I get that sort of value every month.

However Stars generally are pretty fast to catch up, and I could easily expect something big from them in the near future.

well it is rigged..

lol I've been playing Stars less lately but it has nothing to do with the customer support. I agree with you about lower-tier VIP levels but other than that I just think you're way off here. I don't know too much about the Euro sites but what other options to US players have? Full Tilt? Good luck getting a response back in a timely manner. They've gotten better but it's still usually 2-3 days. It's so much easier to hack Full Tilt. People have been asking for better security forever now and they insist on instead focusing on ****ing with icons in the lobby. And God forbid they think something's wrong with your account. They'll lock the account with no explanation and it'll take weeks to get it back if you do get it back.

Absolute Poker/Ultimatebet? Along with the shitty software their security is also awful. I will admit that their support in terms of time is actually above that of Stars with instant chat but I've heard of many people who have had problems and the support just tells them too bad. And then on top of that you have to assume there are still bugs left in the software if even recently it allowed a pot to go the wrong way. If it can't even figure out who wins the hand how am I going to trust that their rng is on the up-and-up? And we already know their management will go out of their way to avoid the truth and make the company look better.

Doyle's Room? Read any threads about their cashouts? They switch networks and all of a sudden the money's gone. Want a cashout? There's a 2p2 post where a guy for 8 months has been back and forth with them and still has not received his money.

Carbon? Last I checked they had like no action.

So please tell me, which 3 are better than Stars and why? Of course if you're not going to make supernova the benefits aren't as good but they still have the most traffic by far, a super-fast email support, and the biggest issue by far to me is that I trust them with my money. Everything they've done has shown they are an honest company that has always looked out for their customers. I really can't say the same for several others, and claiming they are not in the top 3 is just silly imo if you're discussing strictly US rooms and not Euro sites.

Also the cashouts from Stars are the exact same processors as with FTP and Cereus, so any time-related issues are likely on an individual case by case basis rather than the site.

i have absolutely no complaints about pokerstars and what they do, and i'm in the US right now

you make no sense Ice..

'Their VIP program is worth about 35-40% rakeback for SuperNovas+ ... unfortunately everyone else BELOW that level gets about 12-15% which is by far the worst in the industry. So they reward the high volume players and don't give a competitive rate to the medium/low volume people.'

Well duh. It's a VIP program. It's only logical/expected that high volume players are gonna get the most benefits, that's the whole reason it exists.

And what is wrong with their support ? I've been on like 6 sites overall now and pokerstars wins by far imo. Have you not heard of Zandi D ?

Ya lets get back on track people. Basically my point is that I really believe that PokerStars has holes in their business model, and that there's opportunities for the competition to take stabs at their customer base.

"What 3 sites are better than stars"

I never said "There are 3 sites better than stars" I said there are at least 3 sites with better customer service. Sheesh, are you guys on the Stars PR payroll? Please don't misquote me.

Again, the point I am making is that people unwitting accept Pokerstars as this great site and this wonderful place to play almost only because "everyone else sucks" which makes me think, well what's going to happen when the US gets opened up eventually? Seems like there's plenty of opportunity for a competitor to attack the weaknesses.

Well DUH I can understand rewarding high volume players but if the system is:

Site A: Gives 27% rakeback to ALL players, regardless of volume.
Site B: Gives 12-15% rakeback to low-medium volume players.

As a player that fits within that "most" player window which one will I prefer? I'm sure it'd be interesting to calculate to see which makes more to see the poker room perspective:

Amount of Rake Generated by Non-Supernova+ Players vs Amount of Rake Generated by SuperNova+ Players

I don't know the answer to that question, but I do bring the question up for debate.

Anyways that's all i can talk about now, gotta get back to work ...

I have tried playing on other sites, I have tried bonus whoring and enjoying huge rakeback deals.
But the thing is I always last one month before I get annoyed with the lack of traffic and the shitty software.

That's why I'll always play on tilt and stars. And if I had the time / skill to go for supernova I'd probably do more pokerstars than tilt as well.
Sure, I'll bonus whore for a month or too, in fact I'm planning on during this summer, but in the end nothing beats all the features, the player base, and the service of Stars.

You know he meant the 3 better sites support wise. And if he didn't I'm asking.

lol, i really feel this has really gotten ridiculous enty, seriously.

First of all, guess what site I play on the most?

Shock - STARS!

Why? WHY?

Because of all the reasons Zach basically laid out. When evaluating a site I think about :

1. Accessibility from where I live (USA)
2. Security/Stability of the Site (trust factor/deposits/cashouts)
3. Traffic
4. Software
5. Customer Support
6. Promotions (VIP/Etc)

So from my perspective, ya Stars is "the best site" for me but it's probably a close race with FTP ... since I've played at Stars for so long and getting funds off and on is such a pain/roll of the dice I'm sticking with it for now.

Does that mean I'm totally STOKED with Stars and think it's awesome? Nope. And that's my opinion and take on this issue and obv has been for about 2 months.

In terms of better customer service, for the last couple of months I've interacted with a lot of customer service areas ... some that are better than pokerstars include: Absolute Poker, Bodog, iPoker

Some that are worse: Full Tilt (brutal!), Cake (100% will be turned around in 6 months since they hired away PokerStars old room manager), Merge

Curious about PartyPoker support, they have 24 hour phone and email support but i haven't had the opportunity to speak with them.

My 2 cents.

joke topic, bail out people!

at least you identified FT as horrible - if you'd said FT was better I would have had to stab you or something.

party's phone support is great as long as you don't mind speaking to gutvinder in bombay who knows about 5 words of english.

Party Poker are the devil.

Ah. should have mentioned that I can't play on FT b/c of a gambling problem when I excluded myself from there 3 yrs ago??? And I don't trust Absolute after their incident tbh

As an aside Pokerstars support > FT support any day

no it hasn't. you started a thread and now people are responding to it. mostly they're people who don't agree with OP (be it the part about pokerstars support or the part where you tell pokerstars "i told you so!", or whatever)

i am of the opinion that pokerstars keeps adding more and more awesome stuff that other sites don't have and they'll probably never fade away (remember when people had their minds blown by the concierge service? or the 2x VPP week? or the upgrade-everyone-in-the-UK-to-supernova-because-why-not? week? or when they escrowed money for the 600k hands in a month and tweeted the deets to everyone who was interested?). i bet they'll start offering some bawler stuff to get low volume or busto stakes players some kind of better rakeback pretty soon anyways. (prolly in the form of partial VPPs)

the vip program isnt meant to be compared to rakeback either btw, on the basis its a vip program and not rakeback. The idea is that it rewards the people who play a lot and thus gets low volume players to put in more volume to reach the higher benefits. Their vip program is also good for casual low volume players who aren't good at the game but enjoy it, on the basis they get rewards at bronze or silver which they would never get anywhere else because theywouldn't sign up for rakeback

I like what you are say and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

ok since you say the rest is irrelevant let's just stick with this.

First off ipoker does not serve the US at this point in time.

Second off Absolute? Really? The same people who insisted that the 95/5 or whatever dominating the high-stakes HU wasn't a cheater? The ones who continued to say they had investigated and were 100% sure there was no problem even when 2p2 guys had proved that through some means he was viewing hole cards? Apparently you have a different idea of the term customer service than I do. I tend to think it includes not outright lying to your customers, but that's just me.

tbh, ive played on maybe 14 to 15 different sites and from what i have seen, nothing has compared to the speed and helpfullness of ps' support

the 9% traffic can be due to wsop and summer time doesnt tend to be the most active time of the year

but zach that was a different management (honest)

Stars customer service is 1st class imo, the software is possibly one of the best as well. It has high traffic, and a variety of games that's second to none.

However, I am one of quite a few CC'ers who have left Stars for whatever reason that maybe, (mine is I just can't win there this year, compared to last year when everything went well).

Pokerstars makes a ton of money..think about the Sunday 1/4 million...30,000 people register..at a one dollar tourny fee...

that's 30,000 dollars in the period of an hour.

Plus there are always people on waiting lists ESPECIALLY for the high limits, the tourney's are always huge..I don't really think a 9% drop is really gonna hit them that hard..imo

Well, from my point of view as a tourney+SNG player from the UK.. PS has the best volume.. Partypoker has good volume too. FT.. goes w/o saying. These 3 sites have been my staple. I haven't dealt with customer service much but I think PP's really on the ball as they are quick to respond and all.

Why is FT the worse? (in what sense) I'm currently trying my hand out at 25NL there and also taking advantage of trulyfreepokertraining's offer on FT. That's the main reason why I chose FT over PS although.. I've got Plat star thanks to the MAY UK offer.

However, that said.. all very valid observations/interesting insights above me but look at it this way guys, we, the consumers benefit as the competitors fight it out. Discussions like this and consumer feedback can only mean better goodies for us! Better service too hopefully!

PP's reload bonuses/promotion galore! PS' UK offers! FT's poker training.. TBH i'm having problems choosing.

However, that's a perspective of a UK/Non-US small stakes/micro player who doesn't have to worry about earning money thru poker or worry about his government clamping down on such activities. :s

That's my 2 cents/pennies. I'll shut up now.

Good post turby.
You're pretty much correct in every way.

For non us people there's so many awesome Bonus+rakeback offers out there it's pretty easy to earn some mega bucks without even winning at poker.

The only thing that always keeps me coming back to tilt+PS is their great software and costumer support(more pokerstars than tilt, but RB on tilt is nice )

They are all rigged

Transferring money from site to site is really not that hard when you have friends you can trade with. If that's what prevents you from switching site, you should reconsider, imo.

The main reason i dislike PS is that 200nl there is infested with regs who play ridiculous amounts of volume in order to reach supernova elite.

people get SNE playing $200NL?

i want to kill myself merely thinking about how many hands that would take.