PokerStars remove micro stakes games from the Romanian market, and Leicester City players join forces with members of the Great Britain gold medal winning hockey team in #CallIt promotion.
If you listen carefully, your customers will tell you who they want to be. Unfortunately, money deafens the greedy, and you end up trying to make them what you want them to be.
In June, PokerStars removed the $0.01/$0.02 ring game action across the board. When players who were accustomed to playing these stakes wrote to ask why? They received the general corporate, pre-designed, makes-no-sense, thinks we are all stupid response that they usually dish out.
“It is a trial.”
And what exactly was the trial supposed to accomplish?
We don’t know because PokerStars don’t like to share.
The Trial Was a Success
It seems that whatever the key performance indicators were, they were met with some gusto after PokerNews revealed that PokerStars have also ripped the same games out of the grasp of Romanian players.
Both Belgian and Romanian customers log on to a country specific domain name, but share international liquidity, meaning PokerStars can trial experiments like this on a dot by dot basis without affecting the worldwide player base.
Only PokerStars know the exact reason behind the decision to eradicate the micro stakes games, but the most obvious answer is to reduce costs by driving recreational players into higher stakes and paying more rake. As Jason Glatzer at PokerNews points out, players competing at the now defunct $0.01/$0.02 stakes would have been paying 3.3-3.5% of any pot where a flop is seen, capped at $0.30/€0.25/£0.20. Players will now have to compete in $0.02/$0.05 games where the rake is 3.9-4.15% capped at $1/€0.75/£0.60 when there are five players on the table.
Will the rest of the world be brought into line?
I guess we will have to wait for someone within the micro stakes community to tell us when it happens because I don’t think PokerStars will.
BetStars Roll Out #CallIt Campaign With Premier League Champs Leicester City
PokerStars online sportsbook Betstars has been busy taking advantage of their relationship with the Premier League champions Leicester City with a new advert about hockey.
BetStars teamed up with two members of the Great Britain gold medal-winning hockey team, Maddie ‘Mad-Dog’ Hinch and Helen Richardson-Walsh, to put Leicester City players Danny Simpson, Christian Fuchs, and Marc Albrighton to the test.
The three Leicester City stars had to try and score past ‘Mad-Dog’, and it was the winger Albrighton who took the honours scoring two goals. After the hockey challenged had finished, the Foxes put Hinch in the middle of the football sticks and blasted penalties at her.
The advert is part of BetStars new #CallIt promotion.
