Quoting this as I think it is very important - just in case people would miss it and consider it tldr

Yea, I am aware of the math which is why I would like to refer you to the post I made afterwards:

It was a silly example, but I was unable to edit my post and/or post a disclaimer.

^^ sorry, when I was talking about people who don't know statistics I wasn't talking specifically about you. I apologize if I was being unclear or seemed dismissive. And I did notice that you added a disclaimer. I was just trying to:
1. show in a comprehensive way how to do this math, and how relatively complicated it is to draw conclusions just from looking at winrates
2. get the point across that an in depth understanding of statistics would help here

You sound like you would have made a good representative at these meetings, maybe in the future?

My head just blew up.

He's not completely wrong. Players are stupid. Courchevel was rake free and nobody wanted to play and learn it.
Hyper Turbo sattellites had no rake initially, yet only about 30/day ran. When they added rake all the regs started to play them and 200+ per day would start to run. I can't remember the exact numbers because this is sort of hearsay from Jorj.

<3 VPPs

Before I get yelled at, yes, lower rake is better, and I hope we get a new and sustainable model for PLO, that gives players a chance.

Thanks alot.

Very intrested overall in this, partly casue just very recently thought move into PLO and also cause like numbers i guess.

Math and logic might be faulty below, but anyways will alteast try contribute with something:

If we take the biggest winner in the sample:
VillainA: 355K hands at approx 4ptBB

We get 80*sqrt (355K/100) = 4766ptBB/100

Since the bit of sample we seen so far feels like it raises a question if anyone is really able to beat rake in this game,

so therefore put VillainA winrate at 0ptBB/100

He has made 3,7*(355K/100) = 14200ptBB

14200ptBB / 4766ptBB = 3 SD from Mean

To run 3SD from mean is 0.23% or 2.3 in 1000

Is all this correct? Although its hard to draw much conclution from it since ppl quit who dont run good, most ppl dont get this sample appearently (i thought we would see alot more grinder in this sample tbh but i dont play Stars but was bit surprised).

Anyways, if we say the best regs can just breakeven in PLO100, we wont have a big number of the best regs and that we have one at 355K hands that hit a 0.23% variance likelhood would talk in favour of this winrate being set to low, and most likely best regs have alteast a postive ptbb/100 ?

**Although bumhunting or very hard table selection might skew this. Im not sure , as i guess this was regular game, if we would choose what sample we wanted to analyse how beatable the games are wouldnt a possible sample of Zoom/Rush poker be the ultimate

Awsome post, thanks!

Andrew Boccia already answered, but that isn't really stupid thing to say at all.

Most regs simply don't care enough to make things better, eg. they choose to play on 888 because the games are soft although it's a direct "we don't really care about rake" message to poker sites. And there's also other examples, especially among SNG regs where you see ridiculous "omg that's a great way to collect VPPs" mindset all the time. Even such things as favoring high rake and low edge (eg. superturbos) are pretty damn clear example of this, if anybody really cared about longterm poker economy we'd be trying to force the volume towards games with high edge compared to rake paid (eg. in SNGs it would be MTTSNGs), but rather than doing that people will just be playing whatever gives them the highest hourly right now.

My corrections in bold. And yes, you got it right.

About the remainder of your post: I think you had the right idea, but the way you wrote it is hard to understand, so I'll exposit some of your ideas here:

So, what does the existence of a guy who won 4ptbb/100 over 370k hands mean? Well, if there were much less than 1,000 regs then the existence of this guy would be surprising, and we'd have to conclude that his true winrate is probably above 0ptbb/100. (Although we have to be careful when running multiple experiments until we get a "surprising" result.)

But you can claim: well, there are only ten regs that played more than 300k hands. Isn't it surprising that one of these regs has a 4ptbb/100 winrate? Well, no. Consider the following not-far-fetched model: there are 5,000 regs, and each starts playing PLO. After they played 150k hands, they keep on playing PLO only if their winrate so far has been at least 4ptbb/100. In this process, the players who play the most hands are self-selected to be the ones that did best in the first 150k hands. And math will show that it is no longer surprising that one out of the ten player who logged a lot of hands has a 4ptbb/100 winrate.

Oh, thank you, that's very kind. But I'm terrible at representing and communicating with large groups of people and in politics of any sort, so I wouldn't be a good player rep. However, this subject is dear to my heart, and I'd love to help the player community with anything that I am qualified to, in particular anything that requires statistics of math. So if there are any issues of this sort, like the one discussed in this post, I'd love to help as much as needed.

By the way, when I wrote in my long post
I meant "should be approximately normal", obviously.

It's just absolutely insane that out of the nearly 8kk that was put into theses games, Pokerstars was able to rake all but 2k of it. This is obviously not a problem that affects only the small stakes games, if no money goes up then it severely affects higher stakes as well.
It's just mind boggling that Pokerstars can't see the problem with the current rake.

The way it is now with Pokerstars having a complete monopoly in the market, I really can't see this situation getting better. It's time for the community to get together and do something about it.

eldodo42,

thanks for the correction and yes, that was better words for what i meant.

If indeed a decent winrate at PLO100 is possible, shouldnt we than see a decent chunk of money being taken out of the games. By seeing a total profit list for players with some type of sample, wouldnt this give us a pretty good idea if this guy results, VillainA with 355K hands, is a case of variance or a case of beating the game.

**there will obv be winners, i meant the above comparision to the number of winners. If we have a low number of winning players between 50-170K hands it would indicate VillainA result is a case of variance, and the other way around.

However i have to say i be very surprised if we find VillainA result to be anything else than a result of variance. If ppl are beating PLO100 for good winrates i assume there would be alot of movement of player in the PLO200+ games but also that many take a few shots than move down to the game they beating to "recover" so having so such poor result amongst the 25 top grinders doesnt make to much sense to me. Also if u are beating PLO100 + rakeback on top of that im guessing many would consider it an ok hourly and would grind it out bit longer to built good bankroll or for whatever reasons.

Looking forward seeing the guy with the numbers come back and show some more or maybe PS found a way to silence him

So true and Stars has everyone by the balls with their VIP scheme being the only way to make money in some games. PLO should be a big edge low rake game right now and it's looking like the opposite.

It is offcouse also possible that the expected long term winrate is like 1bb/100, which makes the 3,7bb/100 more likely.

If this discussion was held in SSPLO I'd understand but how highstakes regs can beg for lower rake is insane to me. I love the high rake, high rakeback system pokerstars has in place, nice barriers for people to start grinding.

Yes, I do not think its optimal for pokerstars profits, and yes the reasoning above is not completely 100% ethical or however u wanna call it but every SNE itt who is begging for lower rake, i really dont understand at all tbh

ye def.

Got the combined result of the group to be something like -1bb/100 (-.5ptbb/100) If they good representation of good regs at the stake maybe a top reg got squeeze out 1bb and a good reg breakeven hehe Seriously hope something is skewed making assumption from these 25 players about the state of the game

PLO is never gonna grow/boom, that actually would be hugely beneficial to good PLO players, having a huge influx of fish and even most grinders would suck. At this rate it's either slowly going to shrivel up and die or end up a minority game people are disillusioned with.

Mecastyles,
fwiw there's lots of micro/ssplo regs posting in HSPLO (and midstakes also belong in HSPLO), it's not like in NL subforums where HSNL is clearly meant only for HS players and issues around HSNL. It doesn't really make sense to make many separate threads for issues like these concerning almost every PLO player (excluding nosebleeds etc, at least for the direct impact of possible changes) so they're typically only posted in HSPLO and these threads are linked (or sticky with link is added) to SSPLO LC and PS regs threads. Several highstakes regs and mods (eg. blopp and napsus) have frequently informed SSPLO that their input is welcome/wanted in threads posted in HSPLO. So that's basically just how things are done at PLO subforums, threads concerning players from wide variety of stakes are posted in HSPLO.

And from what I've seen, many of those HS regs, or midstakes+ SNEs who have posted in these threads lately have been worried more about micro/smallstakes rake and its long term effects to PLO economy, than the rake they're paying themself at their games. Most of us aknowledge that once you reach midstakes and high VIP levels, the rake situation isn't nearly as bad. However, it's currently pretty much killing PLO below 2/4.

Go check some posts by those midstakes SNEs yourself. For example blopp (Skjervoy at FTP and PS, nosebleed reg) has been one of the most active players campaining for more reasonable rake so at first sight I'd understand your reaction... but if you look closer pretty much every comment he has made about rake being unfair has been about micro/smallstakes rake, so clearly it has no (direct) impact on the games he play - he's worried about the long term effects of "unbeatable" micros.

i think its really sad that not more famous people in the poker world talk about this. Like daniel negreanu who works for stars and is always talking about integrity honesty and fairness but when it comes to a game being destroyed by ps he doesnt give a ****.

More than 8m had to have gone into these games. The 8m is only the fee that Pokerstars takes in order to host the games, part of which it redistributes back to the players. This is not enough data to conclude that there is an unhealthy amount of money going into the games and coming out.

I think that's a good point. I've never been a fan of long term VIP schemes as they reduce my ability to react to changes in the market, which in a way gives Stars more market power.

I'm not sure I agree with this. PLO has clearly been growing up until this point. There are a lot of games running on Stars at various stakes. As I mentioned above, I don't really think we have enough data to make claims that the market isn't sustainable as is (that is with edges as they currently stand and with the current amount of liquidity going into the market). As long as the influx of liquidity into the market is greater than Stars's cut and the cut of the players that take liquidity out of the market, then it is clearly sustainable and even growing.
Naturally, as we approach the long run, edges will become smaller and changes will have to be made in order for the market to be sustained. Assuming everybody will keep playing PLO and liquidity in and out remains the same, this can only result in a reduction of rake. Stars could also let the games die and transition people into other variants of poker such as they recently introduced.

CoronalDischarge posted a link to a thread for the site I am developing. 2+2 thread

I have tried to follow all these rake discussions especially the PLO ones and I am looking to lower rake but also build in features to reduce bum hunting and mass multi-tabling and offer a completely new HU lobby.

I will post my rake structure here for PLO and NLHE, it would be great if the people with huge databases could do some numbers to see what the true improvements would be here.

I've gone already. I've been saying for a while if you don't make SN+ at PLO it isn't worth grinding at all due to the rake being so high. I get 50% RB else where at the moment and if that ever goes I CANNOT play PLO AT ALL. I haven't got the $ to play high stakes either. Me and other people are being completely pushed out of PLO altogether because of this. The only difference between me and them is that I have realized the rake rape and left for good already.

I'll offer my services to do some stat analysis too altho eldodo might have it covered. I'm rusty but have done it to PhD level too and would hope I can figure out how to analyse a database again.

I really wanna play omaha cash online but low stakes rake has always put me off and i've never had the balls just to jump in at 2/4 3/6 with all you sharks.

someone should make a website about this that shows up when you google "pokerstars" or "pokerstars plo" that highlights the company's greed wrt this issue.

or would this keep fish from playing plo thus hurting us even more? It's that vs pokerstars flipping out and doing something rather than have their "dirty laundry" aired for everyone who googles their company to see.

just an idea

I think you have to be careful with statements like that. Stars rake is competitive. I believe with exception of a few low rake sites such as Svenska Spel (Sweden only) or Win2day (Austria only) that have a rake cap of ~1$ (these are government run sites that do not pay taxes) Stars has the lowest PLO rake: http://www.pokertableratings.com/pok...ot-limit-omaha
Also calling a corporation greedy in a capitalist setting doesn't make much sense. Their goal is to maximize profit and within the system that they operate their is nothing immoral about that.
I've said this before, but to reiterate, if you want Stars to reduce rake in PLO, you need to come at it it from the right angle. That angle would be convincing Stars that it is in their best interest to do so.
It seems we have a lot of qualified and willing number crunchers in this thread that may be able to present such an argument in a convincing manner, but first of all we will need the data, which is probably the biggest challenge, because no matter how hard we try there will always likely be asymmetry between what information we have and what information Stars has (I'm thinking primarily of net deposits here). Stars is not very likely to hand over their data for us to analyze.