If you want to write an article in August, please post it here.

Have a look at the old Digest threads and see if you get an idea what to write about.

If you are relatively new to 2p2 SSPLO, it's a great way to introduce yourself to the community and leave your mark here.

Don't be afraid if not everything you write is not 100% correct. Thinking through things and writing about them is a great way to learn.

Previous Digests:

January 2011

February 2011

April 2011

November 2011

December 2011

April 2012

June 2012

July 2012

ima let this float freely since no one has been interested in writing anything since april...if you feel like doing something, bump this thread and write it here.
cheers

One of these months I'll write something. Maybe if nobody picks it up in a week and I'm bored and inspired.

someone do a sportsbetting post

goodspeed!

Cashback Hunt

Cliffs: the lower a company is in the poker industry ladder, the friendlier it is to players, but it's not the reason for not extracting maximal value from all of them, which is an art as it's easy to get blinded by ads hiding bitter truth so deep that unprepared customers can't see it.

This is my 777th post - the 'triple axe' milestone - but I'm not going to 'max out the triple axe drive' by good threadsavers as I'm not proficient at that (however, each section will have a metal track as an epigraph prompting my attitude, maybe killing readers' boredom). Instead, I'm going to talk about extracting 'thin cashback value' from the online poker market, as a continuation of June 2012 Digest by napsus, who focused on 'fat value' (comparison only at the highest level - networks).

These issues apply to online poker in general but the biggest rake amounts in bb/100 are paid in small stakes PLO, and that's probably the only game type where cashback should actually concern you, so I hope this topic fits into this forum well.

No specific networks, skins or affiliates (affs for short) will be mentioned in this post: words about networks and skins should be either good or void , I wish to say warm words about affs but 2+2's rules don't allow me to advertise them in public. Anyway in some situations you'll understand who I'll be hinting at That I'll provide too few links doesn't mean I can't prove my words.

I won't give you specific advice because the market is changing so fast that it will become outdated shortly, also it's better for you to learn to do it yourselves.

Reg's Unhappy Lot

Regs are increasingly hated by the industry nowadays but shouldn't lose heart. It's their destiny they should be proud of.



At all the three main levels of the market - networks, skins and affiliates (the highest level is absent if a poker room is independent, also there can be additional layers between rooms and players, such as affiliate networks or subaffiliates) - there is still a battle for high volume regs because they help games run on a steadier basis and increase the rake-to-deposit ratio (RDR), especially if they play a lot against each other.

Thus regs can be viewed as hired workers, even when networks e.g. don't monitor their politeness in chat (I wish more of them did it ), and it's important to sell yourself profitably in this labour market.

You'll argue that this will add only a few bb/100 to the winrate at the micros, much less than self-education or table selection, but it's much easier and nobler: this way you take money from greedy gaming business sharks, not poor recreational (rec for short) players.

Poker rooms have few reasons to feel pity for net withdrawing regs, especially bumhunters. The RDR (the bread and butter of rooms) is the lowest when money is won from a rec player and cashed out shortly after. It's higher when people with close skill level because money flows back and forward, being wagered and thus raked a lot of times. It's also higher when people win money at lower limits and then carry it to higher ones.

In an ideal (for networks) world everyone should be of the same skill and oblivious with poor bankroll management, then more money would be deposited and wagered a lot of times at a lot of limits before being cashed out. This explains the latest tendencies of fencing players of close skill levels, or punishing them for play against people with lower skill levels (that drops RDR as said above), or punishing affs for bringing too many regs (who tend not to deposit and not to take shots like mad).

Affiliate forums, especially the 'How do super affiliates do it?' thread, are an interesting and revealing read. I think affs are franker there about the ins and outs of the industry than anywhere else.

To sell themselves profitably in the affiliation market, regs should learn its terms to speak with affiliates in their language, I hope the below glossary will help.

Poker Affiliate's Glossary

Disclaimer: I'm not an affiliate myself and pay nothing to players! The definitions are based on my understanding (upon reading a lot of affiliates' forums and own webpages), which may be wrong in some cases, so specialists should feel free to correct me!

Affiliate (aff) - a company that is recruited by a skin to advertise it, in return the skin pays either a CPA or a revenue share.

RMP - a (newly recruited) real money player.

Organic signup - a RMP that had never played poker for real money before signing up with the aff in question.

CPA (cost per acquisition) - a fixed amount that is paid to an aff after a RMP brought by them has raked a certain amount.

Revenue share (RS) - a share of RMP's MNR (or, very seldom, MGR) that is paid to his aff; it can be fixed (flat) or may grow along with the monthly number of RMPs recruited by the aff or their aggregate MGR.

MGR (monthly gross revenue) - the total amount a RMP raked in the given month; VIP rewards and rakeback amounts are based on the MGR.

MNR (monthly net revenue) - the MGR minus the total amount of skins' payments to the player (rakeback, bonuses, rewards from VIP, races and other promos); it's common for private deal payments to be based on the MNR because that's usually what the aff gets a share of it - not MGR - from the skin.

Rake-to-deposit ratio (RDR) - a key parameter of network's development model reflecting how effectively deposited money is turned into rake (and not withdrawn money); the revenue of a network is exactly the total deposited amount multiplied by the RDR, so networks are taking measures to improve both deposits and the RDR (dependent on how many times deposit money is wagered before being withdrawn by its ultimate winner).

Under-the-table (UTT) deal - a deal where an aff pays rewards to players directly from his RS (thus it can be hidden from the skin or the network) - don't request such deals publicly in the forums (advertising affs have light-green 2+2 screen names and should be contacted via the RB/VIP request form or the corresponding thread for people with low post counts) or you'll be subject to a ban!!!

Grandfathered deal - a deal that became illegal because of changes in network's policy or a move to another network, but was left intact according to a special agreement.

(Flat) rakeback (RB) - a reward to a player that is a fixed % of his MGR (MNR in the case of some UTT deals).

VIP program - a complex system of rewards that a skins pays to its RMP, non-decreasing (mostly growing) percentage-wise as his MGR grows.

Subaffiliate (second/third/.../tenth-tier affiliate) - a person who is referred by an aff (subaff) to promote a skin via a refer-a-friend program; the referrer is rewarded for play of his referrals and sometimes their referrals too and so on.

Affiliate program - a program recruiting affs for a skin, run by the skin itself; its RS% often depends of the size of the aff to whom it's paid.

Affiliate network - a company that recruits smaller affiliates for multiple skins, often offering a bigger RS% than the aff program; often it offers the maximal possible RS%, so its website can be used by players to determine how generous a certain skin is in general.

Rake race - a competition where a prize is given to a player usually basing on the number of players who raked more than him, according to a leaderboard; there can be variants like aggregation over a certain amount of best days.

Raked hand race - a competition where prizes are awarded basing on the number or results of raked hands (hands where you contributed to the pot and rake was charged from it); its value can't be calculated percentage-wise relatively to the MGR and is usually better for the lowest eligible stake.

Rake chase - a promotion that gives prizes to players reaching certain rake targets, often with a limited number of prizes (always check this!) given only to those who reach those targets earlier.

Endurance challenge - a promotion that distributes the prize pool equally between players who rake a certain amount or more every day.

Exclusive promotion - a promotion restricted to customers of a certain skin, group of affs or a single aff; if it's for a single aff it can also be called private.

First deposit bonus (FDB, welcome bonus) - a bonus paid by a skin on its player's first deposit; it can be proportional to the deposit amount or fixed, released in small increments or lump sum (check it every time!) proportionally to paid rake.

Reload bonus - a bonus paid by a skin on its player's second and further deposits.

Clearance rate - the share of paid rake that is returned to a player who is on a welcome/reload bonus.

Low/high-end affiliation - an affiliation strategy targeted at players raking little/much; rake races and private VIP programs are examples of high-end affiliation, while raked hand races and private (especially depositor) freerolls are low-end affiliation.

Choosing networks

In today's environment, there are many threats for a player. He can be blocked for paranoid document verification, accused of chip dumping or collusion and parted with his funds.

Networks should be not ego-centred but responsive to their players, otherwise the latter will react to the poor management by saying bye bye and feeling good about it.



Personally, I hate it when networks explicitly show that they don't care about winning regs: introduce shady models of rake allocation (is it honest when it can't be tracked?), put obstacles to autosaving hand histories on a disk (a relatively new trend; I think most of you haven't encountered it). You know I'm not a winning reg, but I like to have an incentive to grow as a player.

The main idea behind rake allocation models based on relative skill is that less skilled players are also less cashback-savvy, and also this way rake figures can’t be audited by savvy players themselves but only by regulatory bodies that are less player-friendly than 2+2 peers.

When choosing a network, it's certainly necessary to check its traffic and its distribution over time for your preferred game types, its peak hours. Pokerscout is your friend in this research. Ideally, you should have enough running tables at your playing hours. or adjust the latter accordingly (that's why I prefer South America to Asia for grindhouse/repatriation purposes: it's good for mental health to sleep at night ).

However, as peak hours of most networks are similar, checking network's integrity and its policy with regards to software, players and skins is of primary importance. Read what Casinomeister, 2+2, affiliate forums and the Internet in general tell about it (search for the network's name adding something like 'block', 'chip dumping', 'collusion', 'bots', 'hud', 'suspend').

Although the search of networks, skins and affs should be done as an integral process, people usually begin with search for good networks (it's usually better to deal with many of them at a time to keep eggs in different baskets and get access to more tables) and it's not a mistake because fishiness - one of the key parameters - mostly doesn't depend on skin choice, though there are examples of tables exclusive for one skin.

It's important to decide how big your volume should be (depending on life circumstances) and how it should be distributed among your networks and in time (depending on the traffic and winrates), which of course should be done with certain skins and affs in mind because there's always an optimal MGR level and an optimal timetable for which a certain skin-aff liaison gives the most cashback percentage.

The following parameters should be taken into account at the stage of choosing a network because they're network-wide (they're sorted by descending importance for me personally):

- the traffic and its distribution in time;

- fishiness, nittiness, bot contamination;

- compatibility with tracking software;

- the rake allocation method (dealt, average contributed, weighted contributed or shadier variants ) applied to players;

- the policy on rakeback (RB) or VIP rewards: usually a unified RB % or an upper bound on the maximal VIP return % is imposed by the network, there are even examples of united VIP systems - these things can be checked by visiting websites of various skins, if you're not sure which skins belong to a network, check it at Pokerscout;

- minimal requirements on the weekly/monthly rake to get the RB;

- the policy on payments to affs (e.g. a ban of revenue share affiliation or a different rake allocation method applied to aff payments ; these things can be checked at websites of aff networks - they're must-attends when you're choosing a network and especially a skin);

- the reliability of the cashier if it's one for all skins, its restrictions on withdrawals via different methods (there's an example when aggregate monthly withdrawal amounts via all methods are limited by $75K!);

- the policy on fraudulent actions if it's centralised;

- the policy on account verification if it's centralised (NB: it's recommended that you send verification documents as soon as possible, even before your first hand on a network);

- multitabling restrictions;

- anonymous tables;

- fast-fold pools;

- private tables available not for all skins;

- the quality of the poker client, special gameplay features like timebanks and synchronised breaks;

- availability of multitabler helper scripts.

In other words, everything you can find. It's better to examine such things in advance than post factum. I can't assess the weight of these factors in the final decision, it's more intuitive than logical.

Networks have their own websites, so it would be interesting to find out more about their policies by acting a wannabe skin owner , but anyway affs tell already enough about them.

At this stage, no ultimate answer can be found, you just leave out networks you don't like. Some other networks can be excluded further because of absence of rewarding skin-aff combos.

Choosing skins

Skins are often blamed for treating players, especially winners, badly, but I believe it mostly comes from the network's poor policy: it either invites too many skins that end up rivalling and decreasing their own profit margins, or imposes too harsh restrictions on the reg/fish balance or security. It's very hard to operate a skin nowadays, thus skins may sometimes relay their problems on players, being like the middle link of that humancentipede, but I don't think they should always be the scape goat in players' accusations. Skins don't have much freedom as it seems imho. They struggle hard but, if they fail to recruit organic signups, they risk being charged ridiculous fines or suspended.



It's allowed to sign up with as many skins of a network as you like, so you should first determine the value of skins' rewards and decide whether to multiskin on the network or stick to a single skin. As said above, certain promotion combos give the maximal effect
at a certain MGR, which may be smaller than your total one, so sometimes it's indeed effective to 'divide and conquer' though it sounds counterintuitive. The fact is, while VIP programs give better reward %s for bigger MGRs, that's usually false for rake races, whose budgets are restricted, and deposit/reload bonuses, and the increase of VIP's value is diminished by the dropping value of races/bonuses as MGR grows. It's also useful to rotate money between skins to make maximal use of irregular reload bonuses ('bonus ***re') if they aren't synchronised (they may coincide in time if skins have a common owner, so check this in advance!).

First of all, please read Terms and Conditions of skins thoroughly!!! To begin with, they may be banning your country (or allowing to play but refusing to pay bonuses to its inhabitants) even if the network isn't! As an important particular case, US-facing networks have non-US-facing skins so be observant!

It goes without saying that VIP programs should be thoroughly examined until you understand them absolutely clearly, at least at your planned MGR levels. The first thing to do is to find out how many player points are awarded per unit of rake, then proceed to assessing MGRs needed to achieve VIP levels, finding out whether the levels are for lifetime or should be confirmed yearly/monthly/weekly, applying point multipliers, if any, finding out point-to-cash exchange conditions, periodicity and regularity of other promotions, especially reload bonuses.

Note that if reload bonuses are irregular, they're usually announced via email by the skin's support, but don't be shy to beg for them!

Often point-to-cash exchange is made at better rates if you save up points, that's a way to tie you to a skin and allow it to operate with the funds you could have otherwise cashed out. Look for good rates but don't forget that the point targets should be realistic enough to be reached within a year or whatever period you find comfortable.

If you don't understand a VIP program fully, don't be shy to ask your (future) aff to explain it - they'll do it with pleasure unless the skin prohibits it because of tense relationships. The aff may even post thorough explanations on their site because their main goal is to make you rake more for them and, in the current state of events, they mostly won't blame you much for being a winner (I think years will pass before they fully adopt this mindset of networks).

When analysing rake races, it's useful to look at leaderboards for many preceding months because race results have big variance.

If results are somehow disguised, there might still be ways to circumvent this by comparing different promotions running simultaneously. E.g. one of the rake races I know aggregates players' rake from two networks, its leaderboard displays not actual rake figures, but rake amounts needed to reach the leader. However, it can be solved because there's a parallel rake chase leaderboard for one of these networks where actual rake amounts are given. That the race aggregates over two networks is not a problem because the network excluded from the chase bans players from a certain country, so I can track the rake of one of inhabitants of this country in the chase board, add it to his lag from the race leader and get the leader's rake Alternatively, you can find the aff of a certain player and see how he fares in a private aff's race, and so on...

Let's see what traps may await you in the process of evaluating skin's central promotions (those that are in force for all or most affs) - there are some because skins want to decrease their reward payouts by legitimately paying lower rewards than the maximal ones that are announced across aff sites:

- grace periods: if you don't play a single raked hand in a certain period, the skin may subtract points;

- point expiration times: there are examples when player points should be spent in a certain amount of time after they were earned or will burn otherwise, which limits your ability to accumulate enough points to exchange them at the best rate;

- limitations on the amount of points that can be exchanged in a month: you'll either end up getting less value if you exchange points at worse rates (because the limit for the best rate is exhausted), or have to spend points on tourney tickets at a lower rate, or cash out points for months of almost not playing, occasionally raking small amounts to avoid grace period reductions;

- reload bonuses bought for points in loyalty shops: if their clearance rate is lower than their cashback value (the share of paid rake they return), you won't be able to buy these bonuses by all your points, thus some percentage of player points will be spent on tourney tickets or direct point-to-cash exchange which returns less value, the overall value of the VIP program should be calculated with this in mind and is lower than that of the bonuses;

- point multipliers: if there are any, usually point amounts needed for loyalty shop purchases are expressed in multiplied points, but clearance requirements for bonuses are expressed in terms of non-multiplied points;

- lower bonus clearance rates for customers getting rakeback;

- monthly rake chases with too few prizes that may be taken as soon as within the first several days (!) of a month.

One of the key points in evaluating a skin is its overall generosity, which depends not only on its central promotions, but also on shares it's ready to pay to affs!

In order to check these shares, it's useful to view websites of affiliate networks. Although they bear no direct use for players, they publish maximal RS% available for publishing affs, which could be bigger than RS% available directly via skins' own aff programs. If a skin isn't dealing with any aff networks, look at the direct aff program that is published at the skin's website.

Once and again, your list of desirable skins at this stage is not final. You must be ready to exclude a skin from your list later if no affs offer good deals for it at all.

Choosing affiliates

Affs are great and friendly because, as said above, they care whether you're a winner much less than networks or skins: your winrate is almost irrelevant to your MNR, RDR doesn't concern affs much nowadays (but will concern them soon when more and more networks adopt disgusting skill-based rake allocation models , so carpe diem).

They're also smaller than networks so it goes without saying that their support is more friendly. Affs (and 2+2) will be the only defenders should networks or skins deprive you. And they are the only ones who really appreciate your high volume and agree how great it is that you're a grinder!



As soon as you surf through aff networks and forums and find out RS% affs may get from a chosen skin, you're well armed for negotiations with UTT affs. Nowadays the competition in the market is so high that affs have to reduce their profit margins. Personally, I don't appreciate deals that offer me, as a player, less than 2/3 of the RS. It goes without saying that CPA affs are of little use to high volume players, unless the network prohibits RS affiliation at all.

Also, it's important whether RS% are flat (fixed) or differentiated by aff's size. It determines the strategy of seeking affs: in the former case, getting UTT deals might be worthwhile, though generally I don't like them, but in the latter case I'm sure you'll be better off with medium and big affs that either get maximal RS% or negotiate customised promotions with skins directly (all affs advertising on 2+2 are of this type). In the case of directly coordinated promotions all rewards are usually paid into your poker account by the skin itself, which is a pleasant perk.

One more important parameter is availability of refer-a-friend (subaff) programs. If you're easy-going or even have your own website, definitely consider being a subaff - you'll get either CPA or shares of your referrals' (and sometimes their referrals') RB/MNR/MGR, if you have many you won't need to play poker yourself, let others play for you!

But if you're a sociopath, consider sticking to affs without subaff programs because they spend more money on player rewards than on self-development

Evaluation of aff's value is similar to that of skin's value because private promotions come in the same forms as central ones: customised VIP programs, rake races and chases restricted to a group of affs (shared) or a single aff (exclusive/private), sometimes even customised bonuses.

However, you should pay attention to central skin's promotions that are included into the offered deal. Sometimes affs completely exclude customers from skin's VIP program and promos, sometimes they preserve all skin's rewards and offer something on top of those, in rare cases they are opted out of selected promos of the skin - watch out! As with skin evaluation, you should be totally understand all components of the deal offered to you!

Pay attention to whether a promotion is exclusive or skin-wide, which can be checked by looking up at the skin's site. Some affs are too shy or lazy to list all skin-wide promos, which can wrongly devalue them in your view.

If you like a certain rake race, find out (with the help Google) whether it's exclusive for one aff or is shared with some other; if it's shared, look at all affs that share it (affs from the same network that can be recognised due to using the same site template bear the same value, except for subaff programs, so they're probably not worth wasting time) - maybe you'll like another one more than the one who helped you discover the race.

It's up to you whether to 'affiliate ***re' or not: every good aff has first-class unbeatable deals for certain skins and second-class deals for others - they hope that customers will be loyal enough to take the bait and not to seek first-class deals elsewhere - but bear in mind that some affs run rake races aggregating rake from most supported skins, so brand loyalty may pay back if you sign up everywhere through your favourite aff.

It's important to assess regularity of aff' promos: if they're running for the first time or were irregular before, there's no guarantee that similar promos will run on a regular basis. If you're not sure whether the feast will go on, stop and think because you won't be able to get retagged to another aff (fyi a retag is possible only if you first signed up with a skin directly, without affs). Even though you might waste one bullet out of the charger (I mean one skin of many sharing the same network) by getting tagged badly, it can be a golden bullet.

As some affs care about recruiting high volume players that want to be educated, they can also offer such perks as free training videos for tagged customers, free access to training sites for those with a certain MGR, discounts for poker helper software and, of course, staking. The latest trend is that skins have also begun educating players and supplying them with helper soft, but they're doing it so ridiculously poorly now that the only hope is for affs. I can't talk staking proficiently, but from what I've heard it's too unprofitable for affs given today's state of games, even though it incentivises players to sign up for certain second-class deals, and those whom I know have cut or suspended their stables. Personally, I don't like it when RS is spent on such perks, but your mileage may vary.

Again, don't forget a skin-aff liaisons gives the maximal effect at a certain MGR, so you might want to prefer an aff that generally rewards less, but gives a better effect for your current or planned MGR. That being said, if you want your MGR to grow, stick to affs that will reward you well along the whole way to greatness

To sum up: don't be afraid to waste your time on careful search for the best skin-affiliate pairs for your current and planned situation, and don't forget to read all relevant info and T&C's thoroughly until you fully understand the deal you're offered, or ask peers or affs to explain it, this will save you money in the future.

All right, for those who can't live without threadsavers:

Thank you for reading! Happy grinding, and may the variance be with you!!!

wow awesome stuff, very nice job buddy

thanks for taking time to write it

yeah great post/resource

Great post!

Great post. Thanks for writing this.

First of all, thanks for warm comments. Sorry for grammar misprints - I was too stupid and didn't manage to restart MS Word for a grammar check after spell checking.

I want to see more articles itt, especially by ndahlhoff10

To those who, for some reason, want to PM me seeking for advice.

If you're lazy to google, first show your loyalty to the 2+2 brand by seeing what 2+2 advertising affs offer. To this end, go to the RB/VIP request form. All advertising aff accounts are listed there. Then either send a PM through this form (they won't spam you too often if you reject them, don't worry , e.g. my aff emails me only once a month) or search the whole 2+2 for threads started by these accounts - these are their official threads where you can find info about their current deals. Don't post RB requests in the forum as you'll be sent to the request form anyway.

If your post count is so low that you're denied access to the form, post in New RB/VIP request form issues and advertising affs will PM you.

That these affs have light-green names means only that they've paid money to advertise on 2+2, and nothing else

They'll explain VIP programs and their deals to you. It would be better if you listed:

1) your expected MGR (rake at micro PLO is usually 12-18bb/100, the more aggro you are, the bigger it is), or what games, stakes and how many hands per month you play;

2) networks you're surely not going to play on and networks where you'll play for sure, for the latter list skins where you've already signed up through an aff;

3) (for networks with VIP programs) how much money in bb/100 you'd like to get immediately (monthly) by points exchange, and how much you'd like to save up to get a better point-to-cash exchange rate;

4) whether you tolerate having part of the RB given out in tournament tickets (sometimes NLHE only or even one huge monthly MTT ).

I don't mind your PMs too but this way you kind of breach 2+2's rules. Anyway all info I can tell you is public and can be found by simple googling.

epic, nj

I'll just make a remark about rake. People often ask if rake is high on various networks and get answers like 'zomg I pay x bb/100 at PLOyy there'. I guess people often refer to these Osterror's and napsus's whines.

As you may have noticed, I deliberately didn't include rake structure into my network choosing criteria. Certainly there are differences in rake structures and you should check them. However, it's safe to say that for full 6-max PLO50-100 tables rake is mostly weighted contributed 5% with $3/€3 caps, with few (but famous) exceptions.

It all boils down to rake structure and allocation method. If two networks have identical rake policies but people report distinct bb/100 rake rates, it indicates that the site with the bigger bb/100 rake has looser games - the average pot size is bigger, as simple as that, so bigger rake is far from a disadvantage in this case , or why don't you whine then that variance is bigger there too?

Remember: what matters at the end of the day is how much net rake (rake minus rakeback) you pay. For example, at a site with 9bb/100 gross rake and 41% RB you pay 5.3bb/100 and at a site with 12bb/100 gross rake and 57% RB you pay 5.2bb/100. You'll say I'm too biased, but I honestly deem this method most logical for rake assessment. /grumble

Great stuff!

Missed this the first time around. Extremely good posts ****. Seeing how much effort you put into this makes me feel lazy about not having written any articles yet. Good stuff!