for what its worth i actually agree the rake is too high, even at the high stakes games!

but what makes me laugh the most is none of you realise how brutal the rake is at lowstakes, if you take the game of cap for example (i dont play this game because i think its retarded but w/e) there are VERY few winners in the WHOLE player pool at .25/.50 and .5/1, 1/2 it starts to get better but still, the amount of rake stars make in the games completely blows any of the winners at the stakes out of the water...

now obviously people probably suck at the game, hence there being less "big" winners and huge losers but does that make it right that barely no one that sits down at 50nl or 100nl cap can beat the house? poker is supposed to be about competition and fun, how are you supposed to do either of those things when stars is the only winner?

but yeah you guys keep complaining about your relatively small rake increase when your still winning 6+ figures a year

"imo its about the principal more than anything else" along with what came before, what a silly thing to say. Obviously how much rake is charged is relative to how much people can win. It's a business deal between the host of the game and the pros. The host of the game wants to rake as much as he can while keeping the games going and the pros want the rake to be as low as possible. If everyone is winning at 20bb/100 then the host can get away with raking 10bb/100 and people will still queue up to play. If everyone is winning at 3-4bb/100 then the host can't rake much and still keep the games going. Trying to say well you're prepared to pay huge rake in some super soft home game, why won't you pay it to play Sauce HU is rather foolish. That's why the site charges much higher rake in bb/100 at lower stakes, because you can still win a lot despite the rake. If there are some games where you can't win much because the rake is too high then stars have set that up a bit wrong and you can try to get them to rectify it which is what has been happening. Criticising lima for saying:

"this was your argument all along in the old thread in internet poker, you would be happy to have a 2-300% rake increase at 25/50 if the reg:fish ratio was similar to 10nl or whatever."

just shows a lack of understanding on your part. Of course he would happily pay much more rake to play 10nl standard games at 25/50 because he would make more money than he makes now.

It was mentioned elsewhere but needs to be reiterated that the actual costs of running hs is much higher than any of the lower stakes. Paying people to keep an eye on wires, cheating, etc, needs to be done at hs constantly for obv reasons. And since so much more rake is generated at the lower stakes (% terms AND $ amount), they are, essentially, paying a large part of the hs expenses. Sure, hs makes money in other ways, but to make a big stink about this hike is quite ridiculous in any way you look at it. Essentially, instead of a hs reg, wait, a 50-100 reg making a **** ton of $$ you're now making ever-so-slightly less than a **** ton of $$. You are costing yourself a ton of $$ in hourly by reading/writing/giving a **** ITT!!!

I think its in all players interest to lower the rake especially at the lower limits. The amount of rake small stakes player pay is absurd and by cutting the cost will lead to players bankroll to increase and there will lead to better games at higher stakes as people will try to move up in limits much faster.

I also agree the rake is too high for those games. I just think it won't matter to anyone who will be able to throw around any weight to get something done about it except maybe a certain Mr. Galfond.

i think PS is going public and wants to make their short term profits as strong as possible.

lol stars could not care about galfond or any other pro. people are still under this illusion that name brand pros mean anything to poker CEOS. all they are is advertising mascots in monkey suits. PS will charge as much as the market will bear.

Poker sites gives the pro players the opportunity to make much more money than they could ever make doing any other job. Including the absurdly high rake, the game is still profitable for a lot of players. It's the way the business is done, they provide you with the fish and charge you for it. Although the rake is very high, if you can't beat micros after a few months of studying the game and playing, maybe you should change a profession. There will always be winners and there will always be losers. Not everyone can be a winner. The borderline winners will soon become losers because more winners will move up. Let's say they even lower the rake a bit. After 6 months, there will be even more winners in the same games and more borderline winners will become losers (while the rake is the same). Then those losers will start crying again how the rake is too high, but it's just them being too dumb or lazy to learn the game and evolve. Unless, with the influx of new winners, the poker site provides more fish that will keep borderline winners winning.

My point is that rake will always bee too high for some people and it's always someone else's fault that they are unable to beat the game which is still very much beatable. Even if the rake was 0, some of the regs would eventually be unable to beat the game.

However, what bothers me the most in this rake thing is that people started complaining when Stars actually changed the rake system from unfair to fair (dealt to contributed). They didn't increase caps or anything else (they wanted to, but didn't go through with it). They just decided to distribute the rakeback MORE FAIRLY. They made the system BETTER, not worse. So people who started complaining were the ones who were getting/stealing other people's rakeback for years now. And now when you can't steal it any more, you start complaining which results at quadrupling the rake for high stakes hu which you don't play and it doesn't affect you. So you keep stealing, just from different players.

You can call me a douche as much as you like, but talking bad about people who are real douches at the tables doesn't make me one. If you (or anyone else) saw me doing anything douchy at the tables (grimming, hit and running, shortstacking, ratholing), please come forward with it right now.

So you are saying that most of the regulars at the micro/small/medium stakes games are overall losers? They actually deposit money each month to play in those games?

I agree that rake is absurdly high, but games are still very much beatable for all regulars except the most retarded and lazy ones who are not supposed to be professional poker players in the first place. Pokerstars probably won't lower it until the games become unbeatable. At that point they will be making a ton of money even with raking much smaller because there will be many more regulars than now and therefore many more tables running.

And that's what you get for letting Microtards throw everyone else under the bus and be the sole deciding factor for rake changes at Stars...

This is going to make the HU games even worse, as regs will bumhunt and avoid other regs more intensely than ever before.

Why is everyone ignoring Kanu7, the only poster in this thread that still plays HS at pokerstars while listening to the posters that played HS is 2005 and just want to remind people that they too played HS when people were awful by posting constantly in this forum?

I am just a low stakes fish who reads this threads for entertainment purposes, but the way I see it is at some point you guys are going to have to come to the realization that in the current state of online poker there is no way you guys are going to be able to make a deal with the pokersites that will allow most of you to make a living playing highstakes online poker. There just is not enough dead money for the sites and professional players to split up.

I think even if the sites made highstakes rake free there would be a short uptick in traffic as regs played eachother a little more initially, then the losing regs would probably pretty quickly stop playing the regs better than them, and the status quo would be resumed.

The issue at highstakes is not the rake. The issue is the pyramid is inverted and there are not enough fish to feed the regulars. Period. Therefor, instead of wasting your energy worrying about rake at the high limit, you should be spending your energy doing one of two things.

1. Devote your energy to figure out ways to improve the poker environment to invert the pyramid back to normal.
2. Find a new way to make a living.

IMO, there are just too many regs for #1 to ever really happen, so it is going to have to be 2. As more and more online players realize this and move to live poker I predict the same thing will happen to live poker, although to a lesser extent as there will always be fish willing to play live poker, although they may not be willing to play highstakes against a lineup of pro's.

This.


I see 15-20 HS players complaining about the rake increase in this thread.

Here's a little tip: STARS DOESNT NEED YOU.

You could disappear tomorrow and no one at Stars is going to bat an eyelash.

But take the microstakes regs complaining about rake being too high though. Say the top 1000 micro regs all quit playing tomorrow, Stars is going to notice that. You bet your sweet ass Stars cares about those players staying on the site.

Get over yourself high stakes douchebags, you are an incredibly small minority in the poker world and no one cares that your WR isn't as high as it was in 2007. If the HS games are still beatable, then Stars is doing their job, shut your whiny traps.