PokerStars reported to raise the rake starting from March 28

One week after publishing the 2015 financial report, the Amaya Company shared news, which has connection with PokerStars. According to Eric Hollraiser’s article in the poker room blog, the rake of the most games will increase by 4% starting from March, 28 2016. This is mostly due to the above mentioned report, which revealed that Amaya would have to pay off the debts to its creditors.

To start with, it should be pointed out, that not all games will be subjected to change. The following disciplines will face the main alterations:

• Spin&Go tournaments with buy-ins from $1 to $30 will have their rake increased by 1%. $3 tournaments will have their rake increased by 2%. The rest of Spin&Go tournaments for $0,25, $60, $100 will remain unchanged. By the way, the chance of the maximum prize in Spin&Go has also been reduced. It used to be 3/1 000 000 and now equals to 1/1 000 000.
• Multi-table hyper-turbo tournaments will have their rake increased by 5%.
• Some no-limit and pot-limit cash games with limits starting from NL50 (heads-up mainly) will have their rake increased as well. The tables with certain limits will stay unchanged.
• The most severe changes will fall on multi-table tournaments with re-buys and add-ons, as in the end re-buys and add-ons will have the same equal rake as buy-ins.

However, it’s worth mentioning that even after the rake is increased, its total sum will still be less that the same in other poker rooms. The administration of PokerStars published the graph as a proof: it depicts the rake structure in comparison with “prices” of peers: Party Poker, 888 Poker and iPoker and etc.

The graph shows possible profit of the poker room in case it would follow the strategy of the other poker rooms. According to the diagram, after the changes are implemented, the rake in poker room Party Poker is 7% more than in PokerStars, and in 888Poker and iPoker - 16% and 19% more.

The administration of the poker room promised to control the situation and increase or reduce the rake size when needed.