I just posted the following in the rewards thread but am interested to hear responses from others as it relates to the value of playing cash games on ACR. Are my concerns shared? Can Bovada compete for someone who is grinding but not a mass multi tabler... is the rake rate itself lower since you are not automatically entering into a rake race? If RIO successfully launches how might that affect this landscape?


"Fairly new to WPN. The Beast is driving me away from the cash games. Paying 12bb/100 in rake and once the rake is divided up between the jackpot and regular rake that 27% rakeback goes down to ~20%. Is the general public supportive of the beast? Seems like a BS promotion propping up a few players at the expense of everyone else. It sucks to know that the more I play on WPN the more of my $ gets directly redistributed by the site and placed into other players accounts. They don't beat me for it on the table but I pay opponents like IceBankMiceElf to simply see flops.

Along these lines was anyone happy the tournament entry via the beast was changed from a 1k cage satellite to a PCPA satellite? So, we lose the opportunity to efficiently turn that rake paid back into real cash and it's instead used to prop up ACR's tournament that is out of the country and 4 months away... I couldn't attend if I wanted to. A nice tweak to the rewards program in the site's best interest and against the best interest of their customers.

Is this business as usual for this card room? I love the software and games but the ridiculous unfair nature of this promotion/rakerace feels like a giant ripoff and deincentivizes me to play."

My personal opinion on your US Online Playing Options:

ACR -
If you want to be successful on here you can either opt to play higher stakes say $1/$2 or greater where the rake won't affect you as much but you are playing stiff competition, grind mtts, or put in high volume so that you can compete in Beast. If you don't have the roll or time for either of those options then playing on ACR and making money is possible, but will be tough.

Ignition -
Much better mtt structures than ACR (no 5 hr late registrations) and most tournies are freezouts, lots of cash game options, but you can't choose your table, don't know who your opponents are, and are limited to how many tables can be open at once.... so if I were going to play ignition it would probably be just for stt and mtt.

Global Poker -
They are advertising using Facebook so what that means is... they have the "greatest potential" hands down to attract the most fish. Between the $2 giveaway and the "sweepstakes" model. If they stay open, this site should be your best option for cash games because at the moment the competition cannot use tracking software just their own personal notes. So even though there is rake, this should be the softest field....

Obviously this is my opinion, but I am curious to see what others have to say.

Daddyduck, very informative, valuable response. Thank you!

op, if you are trolling, this is truely epic and I have mad respect for you.. pretty sure he is trolling. he probably trolling. dear god please be trolling.

I think you need to go more in depth then, I hope your trolling or your post makes no sense to me. People were ****ting on the beast a lot when I first stated, if you have no chance at the beast then essentially you are just spewing off money that on another site would give you higher rakeback. On top of that the games are dog**** from top to bottom cuz there are just endless grinders cuz of the beast.


So please clarify why you even bother posting that....

How much rake does it take to min-cash the Beast ($100 tier)? How many hands is that at the various micro and low stakes?

Not trolling at all. I don't mind tougher competition in some respects because I'm relearning NLHE and it will benefit me in the long run. Spent years away from the game and it seems crazy that this rakerace model is now apparently the accepted norm. Having said all that, I'm glad I posted and got this info. Obv I'm done with ACR.

Max, I roughly calculated it out to ~8500 hands @ .25/.5 so~ $510. I've narrowly been on the wrong side of that & the Beast as a whole.

Thanks for the info.