Yes, I agree, credit card companies always want to dump the people who obsess over maxing value because they will always be money losers. And while I try to optimize, I've never obsessed over maxing - that is what I liked about the CSR; it was good enough to be a daily driver and not worry about it. The benefits mostly operated "in the background". To your point, it was the card I always recommended because it was simple.

Before the CSR, I had multiple cards with multiple earnings categories that I used to balance and it sucked. The CSR was cheap enough ($250 effective AF) to have and then at effectively 1.5% cash back on all and then the bonus categories of travel/dining that it wasn't worth putting spend on another card - getting 2 or 3% back on groceries or 3% back on utilities or whatever wasn't worth using another card. Citi even closed my Costco card against my wishes because I wasn't using it for the 2% Costco cashback because.. well, it wasn't worth .5% more back at Costco and having to manage another monthly payment and also deal with the end of year coupon. So, Chase got that spend instead. And Chase benefited from my balance accumulation... I've redeemed maybe only 500K or 600K of Chase points but earned over 2 million of them. And honestly that balance would probably have just continued to inflate away if they just left the program as is as I have enough trouble burning through my first party points. So, in that regard, I was a profitable customer (maybe not, perhaps my travel and dining mix was still too high to be profitable).

So, I guess even though I am a relatively savvy credit card user and traveler, Chase still managed to find a decent niche from me. As a secondary benefit to them, I was seriously considering consolidating more finances to Chase (likely checking and savings, possibly brokerage - I was forced into Schwab through acquisition even though I don't like Schwab much) - but that is out of the picture if I move off of the CSR and Chase card ecosystem more broadly.

But at the end of the day - you're right. The entire point of the "new" model is to create information asymmetries: "2 cents per point" sounds good on marketing materials and we have zero way of knowing what proportion of hotels or airfare will qualify for it (and it can change any time). $300 dining credit sounds good until you realize there are like 10 restaurants per major metro that make the cut. $300 of "free" tickets on Stubhub sounds great until you realize you're buying resold tickets and end up getting scammed and then try to navigate their claims process. $25 of monthly Doordash credits sounds great until you realize it's $5/$10/$10. IHG status sounds great until you realize the premium hotels they're pitching in the brochure don't actually give you most of the benefits. It is a model literally designed to attract people who think to themselves they'll get "value" (however you want to define it) but then end up not getting value (either because it's for things they wouldn't have otherwise spent - which is what drives the cost-share from their partners - or they end up unable to consume the credits).

We'll see how it plays out. Amex continues to double down on the coupon book strategy (and others - beyond Chase - emulate it) so I'm guessing it works.