This weeks Poker News Roundup

Juicy Stakes and Intertops Poker are running sattelites for their latest live tournaments in Seefeld in Austria called CAPT 2016. If you've never heard of Seefeld, its in Austria and what a beautiful village it is. The prize pool is expected to be around 800,000 Euros and you can win a dream package which includes the following: 2,160 Euro buy-in to the CAPT Main Event (February 25th to 29th) 4 night stay for two (1 double room) at a premium hotel close to the Casino $500 to help with travel expenses Satellites are running now for as little as $2 + $0.20. You will recall PokerStars announced changes to their VIP programme starting in 2016. As a result of this, players boycotted PokerStars for 3 days. Eric Hollreiser, communications chief, made a statement recently about the way they handled the changed VIP programme and the subsequent boycott as follows: "In hindsight, we could have communicated to players more often that significant changes were coming in 2016. We could have been more explicit that these changes would be significant and would take effect in 2016. And we could have noted this on our VIP web pages that gave details of the program. Although we did not publicize it at the time, we did recognize that players might not be expecting as severe a decrease in awards, so we provided a higher level of reward in 2016 than originally planned and delayed implementing the full decrease in rewards until 2017. This was explicitly in recognition that players were grinding in 2015 in order to reap the maximum benefit for 2016." He went on to say "We will not alter those plans. The current VIP program is no longer fit for its purpose. When combined with the increasing skill gap in the online poker market, the result is an increasingly poor experience for recreational and new players."