It's interesting that you linked to my post in the other thread. I would like to point out that that was written before Pokerstars changed its rake/reward structure. I've not read everything that Stars reps have said about the changes, but I believe they at least hinted - if not said outright - that one of the reasons they've changed the system is that deposits are not coming in as much as they used to and that players are no longer moving up the levels like they once did.
I believe that the majority of microstakes players on Stars make a couple of deposits, find out the games are too tough, and then leave the site to play elsewhere, or give up poker entirely. Stars has the same few SNEs each year, and these have been drains on the company's profits.
I've not seen the precise numbers, but I presume Pokerstars has re-balanced its system precisely because it thinks altering the eco-system is good for the company's long-term future. It's addressed the "top-heavy" structure of the rewards. In effect, it is now going to reward the winners (withdrawers) less, and will try harder to attract more depositors. It is depositors (losers) that create liquidity, not winners.

There is little to no "secret value" of winners. Winners take money from poker companies. Fish are much more valuable, to both the grinders and the site itself.

OP, did u really have to make a whole new thread stating the same faulty logic after a ton of ppl tried explaining it to you in your old thread?

Agree. A mathematical model is only as good as its assumptions. Your assumptions are based on conjecture.

The overall thesis that poker sites will be served better better by players that trade rake is obviously true. How to distribute incentives to maximise rake in the real world ecosystem is a massively complex problem that could only be approximated with massive amounts of data.

With regards to Pokerstars it seems likely that they have been overcompensating regular players at the expense of losing players and are now readjusting.

It's worthless in the long run to discriminate against good players, because others will take their place.

We don't live in a world where everyone is either a 'good' player or a 'bad' player. We live in a world where there are really bad, bad, mediocre, decent, good and great players and everything in between. If you eliminate the 'good' and 'great' players, then the 'decent' and 'mediocre' players will take their place.

Also, great players don't become great overnight. Usually, great players start out as recreational players and then either 1. figure out they are actually good at the the and start trying and get better, or 2. develop a passion for the game and start trying and get better. Both cases support the argument that if you take out the present winning players, then others will be there to take their place.

In short, it's a circular argument.

Actually steroids weren't always cheating until the games were changed to make them cheating. Meaning a steroid user before the rules were changed could of used your weak argument.

except for that little detail regarding the legality of using steroids

are HUDS illegal? are training sites illegal?

FAIL

Not really. Your reading comp could use some work. That or your logic.

@Korn: In poker, players don't play with the house. How can you apply the 'casino view' here? Please enlight me.

What's a difference? As well as you set payout in slot machine you can control ev for an every player in a system (if you tax people who will play 1kk hands in a year instead of giving them $100k something will change, right?)

If that were true (particularly the last paragraph) would pokerstars rewards programs remain so top heavy? Their rewards used to effectively give out like what 70-100% (I made these numbers up lolz) rakeback for SNE players depending on tightness. Now they give out less, but they still give high volume/loyal players quite a lot of rakeback. Much much higher than lower tiers. They pay a lot less in rake as well.

Lol, same "few" SNEs.

Well it always puzzles me because it makes absolutely no sense. If we make player who play 6 tbls play 24 and make more money we suddenly multiplies instances of that break even now player and make fish life harder.

I am totally agree.

It still hasnt prove value = net loss

Is that to spite UUUUP or did Obama take some line in the past 3 years that's making you switch?

I do not want to derail the thread. I will pm you later with reasons why I switched.

i dont really understand the view of op. Korn is the CEO of the biggest affiliate in online Poker and tells Stars & CO in the biggest forum how they can generate even more Rake. It is of course true that the most Rake is generated when the skilledges between the players are very small.
But the amount of winning players will be much smaller too. The money goes to the Pokersites instead of the winning players.
Here on this forum are more decent winning players and not so much representatives of the big Poker sites. So it is very clear that most people here are against your View, because it would cost them alot of money in the long run.
Basically what you write here is an instruction to poker rooms how to make more money, which makes sense as your company is the biggest affiliate, but the players will not like your view of course.
sry for bad english.

The argument isn't shall we discriminate against winning players and incentivize recreational (losing) players, its shall we reduce the huge sums of rakeback to subsidise 'pro' players and use some of the savings to attract new recreational players, and from the poker rooms point of view the answer is yes

Korn as a CEO of pokerstrategy has only his business in mind.
People overestimate poker rooms role and don't see the whole picture.
The biggest problem are predatory affiliates like pokerstrategy that due to their size are getting like 70-80% of the rake (minus deductions like player bonuses)which leaves poker room with 20% max.
The current system based exclusively on rake is unsustainable.
Just because of that system pokerstrategy heavily promoted the short stack strategy that almost killed standard games (Fr games had like 6-7 20bb rats on every table fortunately sites increased the min buy-in which helped a lot).
Many sites almost don't promote directly only via their affiliate program however their affiliate model is almost exclusively based on rev share. So the more your players play the more you get.
That way we had huge influence of players from Belarus, Ukraine, Russia where reg to fish ratio is jsut ridiculous but it was extremly profitable for affiliates (cause grinder>>>>fish).

We got to the point where the regs population is too big and fish population is too small.

Korn if you want changes start from yourself. Your company has huge power and can easily force most of the poker rooms to change things. Additionaly just the whole pokerstrategy society is based on heavily winning regs. It is a shame to be a losing player on the pokerstrategy forum.
So you created yourself an enviroment where regs stay and play a lot and fish insta leave cause is berated by regs.

I do understand why you want to protect your business. Just it is the same as the sss fiasco when you were defending that to the very end despite how negatively it was viewed by players (cause hey it was your company profit and who cares about players,right??)

Most of regs here are not against the changes. I wouldn't mind no rakeback/fpp kind of stuff if the money went to fish directly(basically huge amount of fish>>>any rakeback).
It isn't like that the regs are discriminated now. The problem is that they have been VIP's and fish were Pariahs.
It should be more like it is in casions where the whales are VIP customers treated with huge respect cause at the end of the day they keep the poker ecosystem going.

Firstly, Ill admit i didnt read all the responses ITT, but FTP realized this a long time ago and started "poker academy"or whatever it was called.
They realized they need to keep the fish alive for longer in order to generate more rake IMO.
Less skill difference= more rake ultimately.

Haven't read all posts in this thread, but see that most try to talk about a direct measurable economic value, and while it makes a lot of sense to look at the poker economy from this point of view, you have to remember that it isn't the whole picture.

There is a reason that people - fish included - play poker and not other casino games, it is because it's a challenge; you can actually win and beat people in the long run. So that is imo some hidden value of winning players.

Random side note; there was actually a reason that NL was not popular pre poker boom, and a big part of that reason was that the skill difference between recreational players and regs was too big, and poker games can't survive without them.

It's all about balance. The OP talked about a sort of binary structure, where you either help the winners most or you help the fish most. For sites like Pokerstars to maximise long-term profits, they need to earn money from rake (long-term grinders), but they also need to keep liquidity high by attracting deposits from fish.
If more money is being cashed out by winners than is being deposited by fish, lots of rake is earned, but the total liquidity falls. If liquidity keeps shrinking, then site earnings from rake will also start shrinking. (It should be obvious that if there is less money on the tables, there is less rake that can be taken).
Liquidity comes from deposits. Liquidity is reduced by winners cashing out. Artificially helping customers that make withdrawals (while doing little to attract more depositors) would be a pretty crazy way to run a poker site.

Truth

fish itt

You should tell this to all the poker rooms here in Florida where that's all that's legal. You could save them a bundle. Oh wait, no, they make millions.

"Poker rooms don't make money" is pure urban legend. What's actually true is that they make less per square foot than anything else, which makes management sneer at it a little, but even making less is simply less money if they don't have it. It's not like they can't add more room...