Recent changes in the levels of online poker traffic have revealed that the industry leading PokerStars have experienced a notable decline in players, whilst the Microgaming Poker Network (MPN) have moved up to eighth place in the breakdown of the top ten online networks.

November 2015 has seen a number of changes in the levels of online poker traffic, with some other top sites shifting position in addition to PokerStars. The popular Partypoker site lost around fifty players on average – an seemingly imperceptible number which actually does have an impact on rankings. The third place Bodog/Bovada poker site lost over double this, as it dropped an average of 100 players. The iPoker Network has also seen a slight rise, with another 100 players being added onto their tally.

The biggest loss was felt by PokerStars however, with over 500 players being lost in the month of November. A number of factors are being blamed for this development by commentators – such as PokerStars’ recent change in loyalty scheme. The site has announced that it is altering its new player loyalty programme, with a brand new VIP scheme due to be implemented on the first of January 2016. The new scheme will mean that players with less volume will have the ability to redeem more rewards from the VIP scheme than from what is currently in place. Some existing high volume, high stakes players are thought to be unhappy with the changes, and may have already started to drift elsewhere. One PokerStars fan declared the changes to signal “the day PokerStars formally announced they no longer care about their customers”.

The Microgaming Poker Network (MPN) has had a positive month, and have now moved up into an 8th place tie with Full Tilt at 850 ring game players. Their rising popularity may be down to a number of factors, but some commentators have attributed it to the €50,000 Cash Drop promotion which MPN is running from the 20th November to the 17th December this year. Basically, five instantly awarded cash drops will be given to a random player every 5 mins from  on all cash game tables between these dates. A €10,000 leaderboard race is also running, which pays the top players which receive the cash drops.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 30th, 2015 at 11:04 am and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.