I'm reminded of the saying, "If you are a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

If your world view is convinced that rake is the world's most important issue to success of an online poker site, then every decision is viewed through that prism.

I am actually stating the exact same thing. People, especially those who are used to winning, look to justify or rationalize their losses. The catch here is that rake is the reason vastly more people lose online than in, for instance, a home game. And it's completely unnecessary since there are profit models that don't involve changing the score of the game as it's being played.

You are right that online poker is played much faster and that will increase the frequency of beats and other such hands, but even more importantly it will dramatically increase the amount of rake you pay. Again with the example of low stakes PLO - that game is raked at ~20bb/100. Playing a rush style game you can get 200 hands an hour on a single table. That's 40bb of rake paid per hour per table. They will experience more beats but more importantly - at the end of all of it they'll have about half the stack they started with even if they have a completely breakeven boring hour. That is an absolutely devastating impact and I'm not even talking about the long run - 40bb per hour per table is ridiculous even in the short run.

You're right - the sole money making mechanism of the current sites isn't the most important issue to their well - making money.

Okay assuming you actually phrased your comment a bit more cleverly - I know what you're trying to say and obviously I realize the current sites don't believe rake matters. It's invisible. People will lose an extra 20bb/100 and respond in no way to it whatsoever. What I'm saying isn't necessarily geared towards the current sites. I expect Stars to try to keep charging high per-hand rake until the day they go out of business and there is absolutely nothing that could change their mind. But real regulation and major companies are entering this industry in the near future and I know for a fact that people involved in that process do peruse these threads which is why the more discussion on how to improve the health of online poker, the better - even if the current sites would rather watch their companies fail than consider the possibility that they might actually be wrong. The point is I don't need to convince everybody, just one person in a position to actually do something innovative is all it takes.

So the rake at the most raked online game is less than the rake in most live poker games. And the rake at most online games is much less. You cannot cherry pick the most raked online game with the least raked offline game as it is not a like for like comparison.

Do I think that microstakes rake should be lower? Yes. Do I think this means the whole model of rake is broken? No.

I assume by "major companies" you mean "US companies". Virgin, Yahoo, Genting Group ($15.2bn assets), Sky and various others are already in the industry.

If you don't need to convince anyone can you stop just posting the same things again and again without ever giving any solutions please. I said this to someone on IM the other day - you're a preacher, you aren't an architect.

Think about what you just said. You need to look at rake in terms of the amount actually paid - the rake paid per hour. Live, at the lowest stakes games, you're looking at somewhere from 3-7bb/hour of rake paid. Online it's a bit trickier calculate since there are so many different types of tables (regular, fast, speed/zoom) and even casual players multitable on occasion. It seems like ~150 hands/hour is going to be a fair ballpark for online. The low stakes hold'em (to compare apples to apples) games on a site like Stars are raked around 10bb/100. You're looking at 15bb/hour of rake there - or 200%-500% more than you'd pay in a casino.

Online rake is lower than casinos on a per hand basis but much much higher on a per hour basis. And since one of the few things we agree with is that most people are generally ignorant of rake, what matters is what they 'experience' and that's going to be the rake/hour.

Don't turn this dirty. I know you know what I was talking about. A company like Yahoo hardly qualifier as "in the industry." They put their name on a cheap skin of a D-tier network and then let it die. I am talking about companies actually investing, competing and trying to make a name for themselves in online poker. Right now that's practically impossible since online poker has been horribly stigmatized due to the countless disgraceful actions of the effectively unregulated operators. Real regulation will hopefully work to start trying to wipe that slate clean and rather than being an industry most reputable companies wouldn't touch with a 500 mile pole, become an industry all sorts of companies can start to participate in.

I've already offered a solution, as have others. The solution is very simple - stop changing the score of the game while it's being played. The solution isn't the tough part - describing, how and why, the current profit model of rake is failing is the tough part.

LOL you probably believe this too!

I'm thinking about not replying to you again. Thanks for the patronising post.

No you don't. Rake per hand. Talking about rake is one thing, talking about hands per hour is another. You can't conflate the two. Rake per hand is what determines the number of winners at a stake. I agree that hands per hour is one of the biggest causes of why people think online poker is rigged though.

Source? I'm glad you agree with me though. 20bb/100.

You haven't offered a solution. Your plan is to charge less rake and magically get lots of new players in (the only part of this plan I've seen is that home game players are used to paying no rake). A friend who has huge patience responding to people who claim online poker is rigged emailed me the other day asking how I kept on replying to you and I'm beginning to see his point.

They do. That doesn't mean they think DIR has anything valuable to say though.

Sample size is not an irrelevant issue here. The more hands you put in, the greater the per-person impact of rake. Taken to extremes if somebody only plays 1 hand of poker then luck is going to determine their results much more often than rake. The only situation rake could turn a breakeven or winning player into a loser would be if by chance they went to showdown for that one hand and split. A casual live player is going to play far fewer hands than a casual online player - the rake has much less likely to turn him from a winner into a loser due to the large standard deviation in results in poker. I could work out the math and show this fairly easily but I'm pretty sure you know what I mean.

A common example I use online is Stars raking 20bb/100 at the low stakes PLO games. That means in 500 hands every single penny initially bought into on the table has been raked off. Online that is not just a rhetorical device - that is a very realistic scenario. At Zoom that could happen in a couple of hours. Live that would take a 20+ hour marathon session. I'm not sure how my post came off patronizing. Apologies.

I'm not talking about sample size. I'm saying that rake per hand is what determines winners, not rake per hour. I am taking your argument as players who won who live (in home games) don't like online (or live casino games presumably) because fewer of them win due to rake. I'm not sure what the argument is if that isn't the case.

You call my post patronizing then you write something like that. Classy. I'm not sure why you think misrepresenting my suggestion is a good idea. It seems to almost offend you somehow.

The solution suggested by myself and others is to charge a rake on withdrawals in excess of deposits. The sites can undoubtedly manage an incredibly healthy profit margin, particularly in a truly zero sum version of poker where the number of longterm winners will be rather large and you avoid, in general, turning any winners into losers.

And the idea is not to get tons of new players. The idea is to actually start keeping the players you do get and slow down the process of 'churn and burn'. The benefits of greatly improved word of mouth and consumer perception due to multiplying the number of winners several times over? One can only imagine.

100 players play 1 hand of poker each.
100 players 1million hands of poker each.

Both groups use the exact same rake structure.

In the first case rake will almost never determine who comes out a winner and who comes out a loser. In the second case rake will, in every case that isn't that of player far outside the mean, determine who comes out a winner and who comes out a loser.

The big issue is turning winners into losers. The larger the sample size, the more frequently this occurs. Make sense?