Pokerstars Partners Are F**king You Over.

[MG]

Hi All,

I have delayed writing this post for over 2 months to see if my anger would calm down over PokerstarsPartners. Sadly, it has not.

I don't quite know where to start: To give a brief summary, we have a Pokerstars tracker through Pokeraffiliatesolutions and have been promoting Pokerstars through them for almost a year now under revenue share. I have always been suspicious that pokerstars were seriously underpaying us, but I never had concrete proof since I didn't have stats from any/all of my players so it was impossible.

However, after a terrible month in June when our revenue was almost non-existant, I took the liberty to email some of the big players I believed were playing at pokerstars and the results were shocking:

For a fact I know we have 8-10 regular players on our pokerstars account, a number of them are big players I believe. These are the stats I got from the biggest player for his June play:

VPPs earnt = 339157

Assuming 6 VPPs = $1 rake (could even be 5.5 VPPs which would make rake earnt higher) then rake earnt by him is almost $57,000

I asked him how many bonuses he had purchased and the value amounted to $32k, so his MGR was around $25k.

After speaking to him again this month it turns out he has just reached supernova elite (which explains his insane VPP earnings).

So, you could imagine my disgust when comparing the $25k MGR from a single player (remember there are lots of other active accounts on this tracker) with our actual MGR from June: $3,118.60

Pokerstars are deducting almost 90% additional MGR of players net rake (rake - bonuses) which is ridiculous.

After long conversations with ryan from pokerstarspartners, he would give absolutely no further detail about the stats, constantly referring to a privacy policy that prevented him from discussing the player's stats.

So, one possible reason for this might be that the player was not tracked to our account? I asked the player to email pokerstars to see what affiliate account he was tracked to:

Hello *****,

Thank you for contacting PokerStars and allowing us to be of assistance.

I can confirm that you are affiliated with the 'Inthacup' account, and the
promotional code used at the time was "psa2040".

If I can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to ask and
best of luck on the tables!


Regards,

Matthew
PokerStars Support Team

The 'Inthacup' account is PAS's account and psa2040 is our stars tracker, so this player is definately registered under us, which means that stars are just raping our revenue.

This huge drop in revenue coincidently (surely not a coincidence) happened when PokerstarsPartners announced that they were no longer paying new players under the PAS trackers, and that they wanted all affiliates to go directly through them. However, they would continue to pay affiliates for previous players that had been referred. Looking at stats for the last 6 months:

Feb 2010: $6,581.90
March 2010: $9,471.24
April 2010: $11,674.44
May 2010: $17,479.68
June 2010: $3,118.60 (Expected at least 32k)
July 2010: $2,283.84 (Expected at least 30k)

As you can see, our revenue was increasing as we referred more players and our players played more. Then suddenly the pokerstars/PAS situation happens in June and our revenue falls off the charts.

I also asked for the players stats for July, he earnt around 180k VPP and bought no bonuses, meaning his MGR should of been around 30k, yet the observed MGR is $2k.

So, there is absolutely nothing I can do as the affiliate managers at stars will just find any legal issue to avoid speaking about stats. It is also sickening to think the total amount that stars are taking from me, since these current figures are based on the play of 1 person alone. Furthermore, the arguement that other players may have purchased lots of bonuses in June, resulting in a low MGR is invalid, since the low MGR also continued into July. ALSO, PokerstarsPartners have confirmed that they do not deduct bonuses purchased from MGR, instead deducting a flat fee per FPP earnt. Taking this into account, it seems that stars are deducting 95% of a players rake as fees, which is absolutely mad.

All I can advise is not to promote Pokerstars on revenue share as they will just screw you over.

An angry affiliate.

Mike

[Tom]

Wow, that is horrible and I would be just as upset. I am sure more people will chime in on the matter.

[xYassassinYx]

Wow that is just sick man, no-one can blame you for being furious!

I've never really pushed them due to the shitty backend (I like being able to see lots of stats on my players).

I doubt you will get it sorted if that is the response from the Affiliate Manager but good luck - thats a load of cash to lose out on after sending them your traffic.

[kushmoney]

That is some sick sh!t. I almost threw up reading the numbers. I never push them hard anyway but thanks for posting this. I am going to take down all their banners and where I recommend them I will be replacing them.

Shame on you pokerstars!

[leporello]

Sickening, but based on Stars changes in the past 12 months I dare say not surprising.

[Giorgio]

Any change you can take them to court? It's a lot of money you are talking about, and if true you are surely not the only one being screwed.

I have to say that I never trusted the stats at PokerStars, being many times lower than ANY other poker room I have ever promoted.

If you want to look at fighting them the legal way, I'll be willing to dedicate some of my time to help your case.

Man... PokerStars are rock bottom, and I just put them back on my main site to provide my US visitors another poker room to choose from

[zzpot]

Ask to talk to management.

edit: sadly the temptation is too great for them to screw us in a situation of declining profits.

[Carly]

Hi,

This situation has nothing to do with costs.

The player was subjected to a legitimate routine investigation which resulted in his account being flagged for the month. We are unable to release any revenue during this investigatory period.

I am not able to give any information on what the reason was for the account being flagged and investigated. However, the player was subsequently cleared and unflagged in the following month. The changes reflected in commission will be made manually in the following months payments.

Thanks,
Carly

[doovde]

Sigh - this sucks.

[leporello]

Hi,

This situation has nothing to do with costs.

The player was subjected to a legitimate routine investigation which resulted in his account being flagged for the month. We are unable to release any revenue during this investigatory period.

I am not able to give any information on what the reason was for the account being flagged and investigated. However, the player was subsequently cleared and unflagged in the following month. The changes reflected in commission will be made manually in the following months payments.

Thanks,
Carly

So will all the revenue owed be backdated?