looks more like a $16 hourly to me if he started with SN.

Other than that rake is too damn high still.

iamZERGG - That is appalling on pokerstars behalf.

good point

+1
I am playing since 7 years 0.25/0.50 because of this!

Imo, you need to be very careful with your bankroll in PLO at those stakes. You need to absolutely minimize your expenses and play a lot of volume in order to move up to say 200 plo where expenses won't be so significant in relation to the winnings. Ideally you shouldn't be playing pro at those stakes and if you do, then you better put in a lot of volume.

Does anyone have a clue about the skill level it takes to beat the rake at 25 or 50PLO? I don't really know what the skill level is at those stakes on PS but it would seem in order to beat the 20bb/100 rake or whatever for 500k hands you would have to know enough about PLO to grind out 200PLO? Maybe if PS would at least just lower the rake for 50 and 100 PLO then the micro stakes players wouldn't mind paying so much rake to build their way up to 50PLO. But to build a 200PLO roll from 25PLO and the crushing rake... it doesn't take a genius to figure out why new regs are building their way from micros - MSPLO

I would go the other way around. I would work hard on my game and try to improve a lot.

@ hoopman, i think the skill level required to beat 25plo is much much lower compared to 200plo.

Yes, I agree with you, but you need to do both. You need to keep your head down and study, play a lot and not spend a lot of money.

Let's say you start out with 5k at PLO 50 and you want to move up to PLO 100 with a 100 buy-in rule and your winrate inlcuding rakeback is 10bb/100 (I think this is the only way to think about winrates at these stakes), then you need to play 100k hands on average in order to move up. This is before any expenses and expenses will be fairly significant in these games.

I mean let's say this is all dollars and we need $750 a month for expenses which is very modest (depending on your living situation and what country you live in) and we play 50k hands per month (which is a lot if you plan on studying a lot too, also depending on how many tables you can profitably play). Then we would make $1750/month on average $5000/$1750=2.86 months so we could move up in roughly three months.

To reiterate, this is assuming you can actually spend $750 a month and are winning 10bb/100. I also think you want to protect yourself from variance, so this means more study and more playing. If you want to move up within a reasonable time frame and you have to cover expenses, then it's not that easy.

Your winrate seems awfully, awfully, low...

I dont know if its the rake probably is but online poker is not sustainable anymore,sites will keep winning and middle class recreative players will get sick of loosing money and because I think the middle class is coming to an end an more and more people are coming to a poor situation I think the future of online poker will come to an end.



I ask sorry if my English is not the best , Its not my native language

I think the rake might have something to do with that

According to pokerstars for achieving supernova a holdem player must play approximately 450k hands at shorthanded tables and a PLO player 225k (0.25-0.50).
This suggests, they know very well that PLO players are paying twice as much rake.

But Pokerstars has twisted the conversation and presents it as PLO players getting twice the rewards.

In virtually all words by a PS rep, the conversation is not about rake but about rewards. Any solution to current problems ends up with PS only willing to do rewards based solutions. All the while everyone knows it is a PLO rake chart solution that is needed.

The argument that Pokerstars reps make is that PLO players are not worse off than their NL counterparts. I think it's misleading to say that they say PLO players get twice the rewards. They are saying the the total return is competitive when compared directly to NL.

Personally I don't see why the games have to be raked in a way such that the games are equally as profitable, when PLO should clearly be more profitable than NL (winrates before rake are significantly higher). However given that this is the current standing of things, it's hard to get them to back off from taking such a large cut from the PLO games and giving it back to the players. They will only do that if they are absolutely sure that it will make them more money in the long-run. Another way the rake could be lowered were if a competitor were to offer lower rake and for Stars to lose market share to them. If that doesn't happen, then assuming the poker market is a free market, the price or the rake is justified.

But this is not a new argument and has already been addressed in the thread.

In first paragraph, I said, "presents it" as in the calculator showing it as twice the rewards. Separated by a new paragraph, I talked about PS reps and no where did I say they used the phrase "twice the rewards". I essentially said the same as your, "they are saying the total return is competitive when compared directly to NL."

I also personally don't think the games have to raked the same such that the games are equally profitable. But having said that, when something is skewed (pre-rewards) to the extent that the difference between NLH and PLO is skewed, it does beg the question if there is a problem with their methodology. Most people can see that limit deserves a different rake chart. Maybe just maybe, pot limit versus no limit deserve different rake charts and/or omaha versus hold'em. There does now exist a micro omaha rake chart which in some way acknowledges the possibility of differences in game type.

At the very least it is screaming that the rake is too high.

I wonder what pokerstars thinks about me. I'm a break-even/losing PLO-player. I pay twice the rake that a break-even/losing NLHE-player does.

Pokerstars justifies this by saying that the winning PLO players have higher winrates than the winning NLHE players does.

Uh... OKay. Thanks for that one stars... So much logic.

If they tripled our rake, we'd get more rewards too. Such amazing rationale.

Has someone pointed out that microstakes rake is 20bb/100 or whatever and at 5/10+ its 2-3bb/100. Does stars think that 10x more rake is fair, how about they only rake microstakes at 3-4x as much as they rake higher stakes?

We as poker players should be ashamed to even entertain the fact of supporting these crooks. It is so obvious that they do not want a thriving poker economy. They make Billions in profit but can not lower the rake?

We should stand up for ourselves and stop supporting these thieves.

Solution: Poker players unite and START OUR OWN POKERSITE. 1000 players donate $1000 and we equally own the company. Loan the rest of the money from a bank and voila we throw Poker stars and the rest of these crooks out in the garbage were they belong!!!!!!

This is the only way, we will rule the poker scene in no time and Poker stars etc will be out of business.

I truly hope that pokerstars would change the rake but it seems unlikely. Until that happens or even if it does, play on sites that offer a good cashback instead. It is not like there isnt a lot of good networks with good traffic. Pokerstars is good but the rake is unbearable and I give 90% of my action to other sites.

wow, this is very eye opening

http://www.pokertableratings.com/pok...ot-limit-omaha

You can get very good deals outside of Poker Stars though and then the effective rake will be lower or even the same but with more rakeback. So El helado Patata does have a point.

However I also agree with you that Stars has actually lowered their rake here and there and has competitive industry wide rake as you pointed out, which people seem to forget sometimes.

Its not just Poker Stars that should lower their rake. looking over Hem I notice depressingly high rake taken at Micro Gaming as well.
PLO 20 = 23bb/100. (4.6 euro per 100 hands)
PLO 50 = 18bb/100. (9 euro per 100 hands)
PLO 100= 14bb/100. 14 euro per 100 hands)

How on earth is anyone actually suppose to make money in this scenario. 99% of players can't move up in stakes. Even in other sporting professions things are not as harsh. Look at football for example. Loads of other divisions and all those players making $$. Obv not making 50k a week playing League 1 but I bet you they are fairly well off.

Companies like Stars and in fact all these poker sites do not care in the slightest about you as a poker player. They care for money, they are not poker players and thus have no idea how to run a poker business successfully. They'll try and squeeze as much money out of you as they can, that's what business people do. Ruthless. When there is no more money to be made they will simply move on to other business ventures.

Time to wisen up stop supporting these people. Pokers players unite START OUR OWN POKER SITE!!!!!

Ofc stars has the lowest rake. Biggest % of multitabling regs/supernits, smaller vpip makes it less rake paid.