After player boycotts and waves of criticism, PokerStars owner Amaya met several high profile poker players at its headquarters in Canada. Team PokerStars Pro members Dani Stern, Daniel Dvoress, and Daniel Negreanu and former Team PokerStars Online member Isaac Haxton were among those who have confirmed their attendance on their Twitter pages.
Unsurprisingly, the two parties discussed the recently introduced changes in PokerStars’ VIP rewards system. In November 2015, it was announced that all Supernova and SuperNova Elite players would have their rewards significantly reduced as of January 1, 2016.
Since then popular high volume players have been criticizing the world’s biggest poker room strongly. Poker pro Dani Stern has been one of the most vocal opponents of the changes. Commenting on those, he said in a popular poker forum that PokerStars’ decision to revamp its VIP rewards program “has crossed the line into outright deception” and was highly unethical. Over the past several months, Stern has also supported staunchly the organized boycotts against the poker room’s recently imposed modifications.
As for Haxton, he demonstrated his disapproval by deciding not to extend his contract as a member of Team PokerStars Online. The player said that he could not support “a poker site that treats its players this way.” Alex Millar was another player to resign as Team PokerStars Online member.
As mentioned above, PokerStars announced in November that it would implement certain important changes in its loyalty program in order to be able to incentivize more players and to encourage competitiveness over high volume play. As a result, the poker room’s highest volume players had their rewards considerably reduced.
PokerStars explained its decision with its intention to return the game of poker to one that praises players’ skills via winning at poker tables rather than via playing mainly for volume. According to the poker room high volume players have grown so enticed to the previously offered rewards that they have forgot why they had started playing and how they used to play before.
There were talks about a potential meeting between Amaya representatives and high profile players over the past several weeks. Some even suggested that such meeting would take place during the 2016 PCA in the Bahamas.
