A new experiment sees players in Belgium unable to play at the lowest stakes cash games on the site.

Last week players on the Belgian PokerStars software discovered that they could no longer player in the $/£/€2 buy-in No Limit Hold'em and Pot Limit Omaha games.

While players in Belgium play as part of the main PokerStars liquidity pool, they use a separate software for regulatory reasons. These games have been removed as a way for PokerStars to test the impact of removing these games, before possibly rolling it out to the whole market.

The changes came in on June 15th, and Belgian players have been told:

We frequently review the selection of ring games and tournaments within our lobby and monitor how that affects the overall playing experience, whether playing on smartphone, tablet or desktop. We experiment with all aspects of the game by trying out new challenges, promotions and types of poker; launching new online series, such as the MicroMillions; and sponsoring live poker festivals around the world

While this stake level is very popular, it seems that this experiment will be to determine whether low stakes players are attracted to whatever the smallest stake is, and if they will naturally move up to the next highest stake, which is currently $/£/€5 buy-in games.

Barry Carter Barry Carter is the editor of PokerStrategy.com and the co-author of The Mental Game of Poker 1 & 2. Twitter

Google+

Share this with your friends