I agree with OP and the others posts... Make something happen with that PLO rake as well

I can't really add anything more eloquent than has already been said but I agree with everything. The current rake structure is very unfair due to the structural differences between PLO and other games. More interestingly for Stars though - it looks like its creating a situation at low stakes where money is being sucked out of the economy too quickly to the point where they are limiting the expansion of the PLO player pool. This is obviously bad for us all.

This is the only Post I found from PS Steve regarding PLO rake.

Maybe we should start arguing from here:

With regard to the rake, according to the above post Stars position seems to be something like "that's the way it's always been in casinos, that's the way it's always been, so that's the way it is now". Just because something has always been that way, doesn't mean it's the right way or that it's the most efficient way.

In at least one other post (can't find it right now, must be one of the posts re. min. buyins) Steve talks about a 100bb buyin being standard for no particular reason other than because 100 is the arbitrary number the earliest online poker room operators decided to set it at. So Steve at least would seem to agree with my bolded sentence above. The bolded part could also apply to time to act at the table, ratholing, or any of the other matters Napsus and others are doing such a good job highlighting.

Currently Stars seem to be in favour of the status quo whenever it suits them, but when there's a chance that something might hurt their bottom line (and it's not even clear that a change in PLO rake stucture would do this) they're not interested.

I always had a great deal of respect and trust in the way Stars was run as a company and their communication, thought of them as dynamic and forward-thinking, particularly in the volatile industry that is online poker and it saddens me to see how stubborn they are over this and that recently Stars reps have pretty much disappeared from certain threads on these forums (edit: even those threads they have started themselves!).

I think Stars position is more along the lines that "there's still winners playing low stakes PLO" and "there's still player able to climb the ladder (stakes)", what they fail to understand is that variance itself is playing a huge part in these 2 statements. When you have a standard deviation of ~175ish+ (probably close to twice what you experience at SSnl) and when you have a decent sized player pool, you will indeed have some people go on a massive heater, even tho they charge a staggering 100bb/100 hands as whole for a 6 max game.


My main problem with their approach is that, while taking a lot more out of the game per 100 hands they fail to promote the game we love.

- Their is no sunday $215 for PLO and such
- No PLO TV promotion
- No PLO promotions

How can all this not lead to the predatory system we have right now. Are they really expecting 5-6 decent-good player to battle it out against each other while waiting for rec player while sending PS a 100bb check every 100 hands.

I'm a $50PLO player, and I have in the past (with discussions with napsus if I do remember correctly) advertised playing on Stars kontra other sites because of tableselection opptertunities and also deep tables. I have also probably logged around 80-100 000 hands on Stars ranging from $25Deep and $100Normal.

I was also one of the guys to contribute my nickname to those who did some rake-research a while ago, though I can't remember when this was, or who this was.

Anyway; I've quit pokerstars now. I planned for 2013 to reach supernova, but I probably wont (if I'm to be realistic), and if I do it will be in sacrefice of other aspects (like winrate, or schoolwork, or funtime) so I've decided to go to a site which offers rakeback. It really doesnt matter that you can tableselct decently if you already have problems beating the game pre-rake, or if you see yourself as a player who likes to have it as a hobby + maybe earn a buck, its ****ing hopeless.

I'll gladly go back to stars if they offer a serious competition with regards to other sides, since they clearly have the best software, security, service and more. The sad thing is that for a small-stakes player with a roll ranging from $500 to $5000 it really doesnt matter with security and service, as the rake rapes you so ****ing hard.

I would urge people to just turn their backs to stars, since they absolutely refuse to be reasonable (they have a sick marked-share, and they would GAIN markedshares by lowering rake (or offering more decent rakeback to smallstakes players). They, litterally, kill the game. If you care about the game, like really care about it, even if your motives are purely monetary, you probably should do the same. (Not sure though). If they notice a massive decrease in PLO regulars, and if we migrate to other sides who offers decent rakeback, they would probably have to react.

Over the last 3400 hands (played last week, on Stars) I've payed exactly 13.88bb/100 in rake.
With 60% rakeback that would be 5.55, which I find OK to cope with. Numbers from new site will come here later.

Edit: Plus, if more PLO regulars migrate to other sites, it would increase (substantially) trafic on those other sites.

4 pages of posts, hundreds of votes, and a few days later... still no response from a PS rep... hello?

Its really easy to test for winners at a stake, and i'm afraid its not being excecuted when analysing data...

1. Determine two seperate sample periods for a stake
2. Select winners in sample 1
3. Test how they did in sample 2

I would really really like to see an analysis like this... I'm stunned i'm making this remark, but at these moments you miss ptr

Unless Stars is losing money I doubt anything will change. Ratholers will be rampant as long as they can buyin for 30bb. The rake structure was forgiveable when SNE chasers earned at a VPP/hand basis but with contributed rake it simply put more money in their pockets and made SS SNE chasing impossible. The lack of a big Sunday MTT is due to the fact not enough people play the MTT that exist already. For Stars to guarantee a prize pool they have to know it will be filled week after week.

I think it would make a hell of a lot of sense to move the Monday $530 MTT or the Saturday $215 to Sunday when all the MTT grinders are filling their screens with 20 games. I'm confident a lot of them would add one more even if they don't play much PLO. I just feel 100-150 people on Monday for a $530 when most MTT grinders are taking the day off is good but move it to Sunday and you probably double the entries

I keep editing to add a sentence but if people agree with me about moving MTT to Sunday we need to collectively contact our local VIP reps and send emails to whoever at Stars deals with these "usually ignored" requests

Unite and fight!
Lower the rake for PLO games. Its common logic that it shouldnt be raked harder than NLH games.

Poker is Poker!

+1 to everything said re rake

bottom line; Stars needs to understand that the current model is likely unsustainable and short term profits aren't going to outweigh the long term losses they would incur if there was no money left in the plo economy.

excellent post. the problem imo is the lack of business competition to pokerstars so they kinda have a dictatorial regime.

+1

Do we know anything tangible about net-new players in the PLO economy on stars or are we just guessing re: sustainability?

No kidding lowstakes rake is absurd. If Pokerstars want to give some consideration to the best interests of poker, they should seriously think about letting more people have a chance to win in the longrun. With that sort of rake I'd speculate that basically everybody loses. The house is not supposed to be the only winner when it comes to poker.

The "just turn your back on Stars" argument has some pretty big flaws. It all stems to where they make their money from. They make money by having people deposit to their site. If you're making money then you're probably not as valuable of a customer as I think some of you think you might be (in their eyes purely as a business). Obviously having more games running is good for them and all but their money is probably better spent on marketing poker and PLO and getting new players into the game and more money into the economy - this is great for us as players too.

I think people forget a lot of the positives about Stars when threads like these come up, especially when you compare them to the competition out there. There are sites that are blatantly banning winning players. Others that adjust the rakeback they give out based on how much a person wins over a given period. Then there is Party (and maybe other sites? i'm not sure) who just decided to eliminate all high stakes games. All this before even considering that stars has already got the lowest rake system of any major site. Given their monopoly of the market I think we're treated pretty well. Perhaps it's because of those things that they have the monopoly.

As a whole I think they treat their players better than any other site has in the history of online poker - and they have better customer service and overall "good will" than any other company of their size I can think of in the "real world". That's not to mention all the other great things - software, security (this is HUGE imo), marketing and so on and so forth. I'm not trying to argue a point here as I think almost everyone ITT agrees with me on these things.

I want to give a different perspective and some things to think/talk about other than +1 and "we want less rake". My views are obviously my own and while I probably do have a bit better knowledge of the inner-workings and thoughts of Stars than I would if not a member of Team Online, it's not significantly more than one would be able to garner just by reading their posts on 2p2. If you look back over my past posts, there's a decent chance I'd have made a post very similar to this were I not a part of the Stars team. I think someone like Krmont22 who has been to the player meetings has far more knowledge on the hows and whys they make some of their decisions - and that's a big reason that whenever he makes a post on any of these topics I give it 10x more weight than anyone else's posts. Not because I respect him more or anything (lots of great posters ITT) but because he can give an opinion with real perspective from both sides better than most, and that's big (and rare).

Anyway, back to rake. I think anyone with any real (let alone high) expectations of them lowering the rake in the near future is going to be disappointed. Taken from Steve's quoted post above:

Stars has all the information. This thread is bringing nothing new to the table to them (in terms of rake at least) and I doubt it will change any minds about anything. They understand the widespreadedness (yup sticking with that word) of the discontent towards the rake at low-stakes PLO of 2p2 posters. I don't expect them to comment on rake any further either based on this:

I don't want to battle with everyone here about the rake. As a player I obviously want lower rake but being realistic I honestly feel like it's a bit of a waste of time at the moment discussing the same things over and over. Maybe bring the topic up every several months to remind Stars of your thoughts on the issue(s). Or if there are new ideas that are worthy of discussion then great let's hear em but with the amount of threads/posts on this issue over the last few months despite the response from Stars (see above quotes) I just think it's wasted time. Actually what would be fantastic is if we could get (another) rep to go to one of the player meetings and get their feedback. Napsus seems like a fantastic choice if he could manage it but really any regular poster here is more than capable of representing the interests of us all. I don't know when the next meeting is but any volunteers?

The other problem with all the rake discussion is that it hijacks threads and takes spotlight away from other important issues that have potential (legitimate) chances of resulting in changes on Stars.

Take this thread for example. There are some great ideas and thoughts on timing to act, more MTTs, greater marketing of PLO and so on. While I'm sure that they'll all be read by Stars I feel like if we focussed on those non-rake issues that are still of importance - and are far more likely to roll into ideas that would be implemented - everyone would be better off.

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I'm a big fan of the idea of a Sunday Major being PLO. I think the reason it isn't at the moment is because they tend to like to keep Sundays for NLHE and Saturdays for all the other games - if we can get a PLO major then it would be a huge boost to PLO. I don't know how likely it is to get them to move away from "nlhe only" majors but I reckon it's possible and would be a great step in the right direction to better marketing for PLO.

On time to act I'm not sure where I stand. I'm not a big fan of the fast tables ATM but if it makes the recreational players happier (and discourages mass multi-tabling a bit) then that's a good thing. I definitely agree that the replenishing time bank issue needs to be looked at a bit more as well as perhaps even greater time allowances for those playing super high stakes (25/50+ ?).

I think the ratholing issue is worthy of much more discussion. There's that big thread in Internet Poker and then a few posts in this thread and a couple others in this forum but I think it warrants it's own discussion thread here in HSPLO. I'll admit to not being as up to date on this issue as a lot of others - I would love to hear what everyone has to say.

I do believe Stars will and are listening, but fair to give them some time for this specific thread. For the roundtable, rake and Open Discussion: Ratholing, Table/Seat Selecting, and More! threads they should probarly start being active again, and not selective choose when and what thread to reply in.

I dont like them grouping NLHE and PLO together at all, and think asking for the opionions on tablespeed for HSPLO specific then not listening and transforming it into fast tables pre and fast warning timer postflop is really bad as Ive stated earlier.

Anyway: they did listen with the min buyinn discussion and made a step in the right decision. We can hope they will find a compromise for the table speed as well and make the rake fair and same as NLHE. I trully believe the later can be a win-win and it would be smart making PLO more sustainable (taking less out in rake, creating less variance and more winnners). The best we can do is logically reason with them and clearly say what we want and believe is fair.

Def agree with the marketing efforts for PLO specific is missing. Besides Isildur and his showdowns it have been very little that I could see while Ive played there.

Why not make more showdowns / pick some new action creating PLO pro , maybe some 6max challenge, anything that draw attention to HSPLO cash tables, but also the MTT efforts that will draw attention to the game as whole.
+1 Visibility for this thread and the issues at hand are good.

Please show us some marketing effort for PLO then as well.

The rakeback, numbers Ive seen esp for SSPLO dictate this is not true after RB an also the RB for rec's is really bad. When they changed the rakesystem --> contributed regs lost as a whole RB to rec's, and its a fairer system that also doesnt promote nitty play, but due to their lower status in the vip system (as I understand the issue) lots of money went to Pokerstars instead of the looser players. Different discussion but valid point. What their rake is pre RB isnt that interesting and if your are less then SN Im pretty sure Stars doesnt have the lowest rake system for you. Please show me wrong, I could be.

We certainly bring this up, still we should have discussion when they threat PLO and HSPLO in a way we don't like.

To summarize an answer to the last of your post, I think its ******ed off us to not discuss rake when its clearly unfair to NLHE rake. We understand their reasoning but when they threat fixed limit holdem different for rake, they admit different games need different structures. VPIP in PLO probarly plays more like FLHE in 6max at least much looser on average and less folding pre when you got money in the pot.

Even they dont want to bring the rake discussion in the light for obvs reasons we have all reasons to do this.

We can still on the same time have a fruitfull discussion on other subjects. Booth we and Pokerstars are capable of having dual discussions and thoughts in our head at once on different topics. One thing doesnt exclude the other and the discussion have been respectfull so far from the community.

Sending player rep's is all good but its lots of criticm in internet poker about latest results from those meetings. Loots of good candidates from HSPLO, and someone should def go there to voice our opinions anyway. I might volunter if timing is right and no other stronger candidates like Joeri or Napsus have time.

And I give lots of poster credits certainly not anyone 10x others or even 3x. Even Krmont is one of those I respect alot.

I respect that you have tour own opinions and views, but I disagree on your last half, if Stars want to share more info we can discuss it with it but until then dont underestimate the experience in this forum from the PLO cash games in any stakes and format. Very sure there is very few if any places HSPLO is understood as well as here incl IoM (no offense).

Wp, napsus!

@Roy

I think most people feel like those player meetings are a fail overall, at least that's what i noticed.
Someone said stuff could be openly discussed in forums way better than on such player meetings a few times a year and as simple as this statement might be... it's just true.

And here we are, but where is stars?
Does this ignorance look like something they would be willing to seriously discuss with a few reps over at their hq?

THIS is wasting time. I'd rather put some more "pressure" on stars the right way than being like "*bump* mhh... another 7 months, rake still too damn high".

Sure if any of those things can turn losing players into winning players as much as a rakechange could i'm happy with that. Rake is the #1 problem.

YOU don't (have to) care about rake i guess .

I'm sure you would have a different view w/o having 100% rb.

Sorry but while i thought it was cool that you are for a min buy-in change while being a shortstacker, this post sounds more like you have a gun pointed at your head.
Should i call the police? :P

/e

Yea i was judging by the thread in the Internet Poker subforum and i think there was one in NVG as well.

Shrug, I have had literally zero contact with stars about this thread.

This thread is still really young.

Also, I do not have 100% rb.

+1, others is growing older but its unreasonable they answer this one in 24hours.

And I think attacking Roy isnt going anywhere either, I think everyone deserve their opinion so we can have nuanced discussions.

Roy: Whatabout taking that mtt discussion into a new thread to seperate that discussion out from this one?

Roy, for me the rake problem is the biggest at micros and ssplo. Sure, the security issue is huge if you play decent stakes, but the people playing the stakes that suffer the most from the current rake system simply don't care about security. (2-50plo)

And those stakes are vital for the sustainability of the plo ecosystem.

Rake is obvious issue number 1#, dont think we can argue anything else.

Dont you think its simply fair Roy that PLO is raked same in bb/100 as NLHE. If you answer rake structure is same, do you think its similar games? And why do you think FLHE have different rake structure? This question goes for Pokerstars as well.

I 100% agree with Roy that we should work hard on issue 2#--> as well, but not that there is no point in arguing the biggest issue.

Even they are giants they have lots to gain by keeping us happy, there could come new players in the online poker field esp if US opens up that could put out a real battle. Google Poker, XYZlandbasedcasinochain Poker etc (maybe even Iveypoker will have a go at it).. or some old giant can rise again. Players follow the fish and there might be some companies that could bring in competition and fish from their customer list if they wanted. Pokerstars is a new company in a new industry and I doubt they will waste their position easy by showing off power when there is no need, take shortterm wins rather think the most long-game EV decision.

Point being I think Pokerstars care about us and our opinions and they have reasons to be fair as they usually are, and by far are best at in the industry right now. Just give them time and I'm sure they listen. They also need regs to keep up the big mtt series and guarantees I would assume. #Optimist.

TBH I didn't know the PLO MTTs referred to in posts above even existed, I would likely play them if publicised.

When was the last time there was a PLO-specific promotion (I've been a SS reg for ~3 years, don't remember any)? Ever?

--

As an aside I would consider going to the IoM for a player meeting, haven't been particularly active on the forums in the past (and mostly whinging when I have, but I'm a changed man :|) but I am def. qualified: 3* SNE at various games (PLO, NLH and decent SNG volume too), have a relevant background (10+ years as a data analyst and programmer in the real world, used to dealing with big datasets, maths + stats degree etc.). And I live relatively close to IoM (and have been to IoM before, so I know the risks ) in London.

That's if they decide to have another meeting; right now it seems all forms of communication with the players have been blocked :|

When it comes to MTT for PLO players we have roughly 15, ballparking dont hold me to that but for sure under 20, MTTs a year across all sites and live MTTs that payout over $100k to the winner. NL have I cant even count amount of them. Im sick and tired of all these 2 card idiots binking massive monies and buying bentleys when the PLO world isn't given a fair chance to cash in a lottery ticket more often

#morecarsforthe4cardworld

People are doing good work in here. I have nothing to add.