I've never quite been able to wrap my head around why sites use this logic. Player funds are allegedly held in trust by the site, so it's not really their money. The profits come from rake. The more hands that get dealt, the more money they make. A reg that plays 4k hands a day should be much more valuable than a rec that plays 4k hands a month. I don't understand why net deposits/withdrawals matter so much to a site, since the only portion of that money that belongs to them is the portion they actually get to rake. Low volume recs that randomly come and go are just chum to draw in the sharks who are going to spend 8 hours a day playing a bunch of tables.

Presumably their segregated account holding the players funds is an interest-bearing account.

Me neither - that's why the largest couple of sites probably don't use that logic.

That doesn't apply to all sites.

Regs can be replaced by site-run bots if need be.
Depositors cannot be replaced by bots.
You cannot rake what has not first been deposited.

/Now tell me who are more valuable: regs that grind rake and withdraw or rec depositors that deposit and rarely if ever withdraw?

This is kind of a nitpick, but if you play 100 HUSNGs and have an underlying winrate of 80%, your expected number of wins is 80, the variance is 16 and the standard deviation is 4. If your underlying winrate is 60% then the expected number of wins is 60, the variance is 24 and the standard deviation is 4.89 - so it's not correct that variance is unrelated to ROI from the point of view of the player.

When I log in to Pokerstars (I still drag my brother and father on there for a play-money home game every week) I get a load of "news" in language seeming aimed at the people who blow their benefits on scratch cards - the 5 current items are the "double jackpot", "Christmas Festival", "PCA 2016", "Casino Birthday Party" and "Poker School - Spin n Go's". So 4 out of 5 are basically aimed at a particular type of problem-gambler recreational players; it looks like a consultant told you to use the word "million" as often as possible and you've taken this to heart making it read like SEO spam for the keyword "million". There is nothing aimed at converting recreational players like my brother and father (businessman and retired MP respectively, also play chess and all kinds of other games) by offering something a bit classier. As for myself, I have a ton of emails about casino challenges and sports betting, but your system has not seen any reason to send anything try to tempt me back to MTTSNGs (which I played hundreds of per month before leaving).

So at Pokerstars you obviously believe that you can direct and influence what games people play.

The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I get that people aren't going to play my reg-speed MTTSNGs on their mobiles on the train, but you know 6-max cash is also good on a mobile device.

As for the more general point,
yes you need winners (if you're into sports betting now, well Betfair have had the biggest growth and that's with a winners welcome low overround model),
yes you need volume and liquidity,
yes some games are overraked without the rake-discounts - but you don't need liquidity to be provided by the same person on Sunday who provides it on Wednesday, so volume discounts for people playing full time make no sense.
Poker needs to be beatable - and I don't just mean in the same sense that you can be a lifetime winner at the lottery - but it needs to be potentially beatable for all players, not just for people willing to play it full-time and multi-table. Work out a sustainable level of rake and offer it to all of us. Then I may come back. The SNE changes are going along the right lines but I suspect it's the whole story because why wouldn't you announce positive stuff at the same time?

I agree entirely.

They give a damn the way a bee gives a damn about a drought.

That was unique in the history of online poker and was largely organic. Why do more kids in the midwestern US seem to play basketball than soccer? Because their heroes are basketball players, they watch basketball every day during the NBA season, they play it in their driveways etc, its an organic preference. People wanted to play NL cuz Moneymaker, ESPN, and probably even some vague notion of Doc Holliday (sure he wasn't playing NLHE but they dont know that) as the archetypal American Man playing the archetypal American Game, where you can be killed at any instant, where balls matter, where bold moves are rewarded and weakness is ruthlessly punished.

Can that sort of explanation be proposed for Spin N goes, or " casino games, sports betting and other skilled video gaming/social gaming verticals" without bursting into laughter?



The claim is neither extraordinary nor demeaning, its simple truth which is hardly debatable. Are you suggesting that a first time depositor with no poker experience has command of his options at the same level as a full time grinder?


If we are comparing sub populations it should be clear that inexperienced players will suffer from worse, in many cases superlatively worse, table or game selection ability than their inveterate peers. This is not debatable, it appears you are implying that it is.

Well, the vast majority of players don't have an accurate rep on their edge in games either, and a fair few will have 'variance issues'. I'd give you the bankroll reason though. Especially as more new players are going to be reckless types than nit types in 2015.

I don't know enough about bees to be able to respond to that.

or droughts for that matter

Originally Posted by Josem View Post
anyone remember "the move of honour"??

Ever heard money talks, bs walks?

I've wondered very much the same as the bocks of text i will not read. is there revenue stream mathematically pandering to the players who are most exciting on tv,, and/or play the type of cards they wish to promote. Is such an algorhythm possible. and ot just seems unlikely in fileds this big to have the same player final tabling the big ones as often as they do

+1.

Just make all NL tables max 4 up to and including $0.25/$0.50.

/solved

not all of them. some of they do a 3 day boycott and then lose 2 mega to berri sweet

It isn't difficult to figure out if you have an edge in a game. I know within 15-20 hands if a table is +EV or not. If it's taking you 200k hands to figure out if you can or can't beat a game, you're going horribly wrong somewhere.

Regs serve a purpose, but I don't think there should be any such thing as a low stakes pro. If they didn't grind, the fish would have a better chance to win a few dollars and move up. The low stakes 'pros' would also probably have a better life if they got a job. Same goes for the midstake pros who have been breaking even for years. Tons of guys are clinging onto the dream of being a successful pro with zero hope of achieving their goal. Some people just don't have what it takes. The fact is that the market is more than saturated.

Both the poker economy and the lives of the individuals mentioned above would be better off if they moved onto other things.

More regs play like this be lot better good post

Stars likely raking it in casino sports and would not go broke without poker

Poker might just be like a casino game to them know like slots, but slots might make way more quicker?

Ignition has it right that you can't really table select and everything is anonymous.