Taking effect from Monday March 28, PokerStars will be changing its pricing for Spin & Gos, multi-table tournaments (MTTs) and Heads Up Cash Games on its dot-com and dot-EU sites.
The changes will also affect the regulated shared-liquidity rooms in the UK, Denmark, Estonia, Belgium, Bulgaria and Romania.
PokerStars Will Be Charging Higher Rake in Most Games
The biggest rake increase will be seen at the hyper-turbo tournaments which will see a rake hike from 2% up to 5%.
Spin and Go tournaments are also affected. Rake at all but three buy-in levels will go up by at least one percentage point.
Rake at the $1 Spin & Gos will go up to 8%, a 14.3% increase. The rake at the $3 Spin and Gos will be bumped up from its current 6% fee to 8%, a 33% increase. The $15 spins will see a 20% increase with the rake going from 5% to 6%
The only low stakes buy-in to remain the same are the 25c spins which stay at 8% rake. The $60 and $100 games also remain the same at 5%.
In addition, PokerStars will begin to rake rebuys and add-ons in multi-table tournaments. PokerStars estimates that this increase will impact approximately 12% of all tournaments played on its site.
For no limit and pot limit cash games, there will be changes to both the rake caps and rake percentages.
Increases will also been seen in heads up games, and in some cases rake caps will be reduced.
The decision for increased rake prices follows “a review of the current business environment and the pricing policies employed across the competitive landscape,” according to PokerStars.
Still the Operator with the Lowest Rake
However, PokerStars claims that even with this with this increase it has lower rake than its major competitors.
Based on tests PokerStars conducted itself using a sample of real hands played at PokerStars tables over the last two months, it estimates that partypoker’s rake structure would have caused players to pay 7% more in rake. 888 and iPoker would be higher by 16% and 19% respectively.
The rake increases, which were announced on the same day PokerStars entered the regulated New Jersey market, are expected to increase parent company Amaya’s online poker revenue by 4%.
