I have no doubt that urubu could climb up easily from those games (I remember his busto -> freerolls -> +70k or something at small/midstakes month posted at hunl forums back in the day)

However, that is quite irrelevant imo. Somebody like odd_oddsen, skjervoy or urubu beating microstakes plo wouldn't really tell us anything about how hard those games are or if the rake structure is OK. (It'd be interesting to rail for entertainment purposes for sure, though)

Ideally, it should be possible for a new player to build his bankroll up starting from the nanostakes if he's working hard to improve his game. Currently it can be really difficult, if we assume that the rake in microstakes is so high that plo10 is nearly as hard to beat as plo200 would be.

Back when I started playing at nanostakes (NL4 -> NL200 before switching to plo) there was a clear progression in player skill at every stakes. Each step moving up the games got a little bit tougher. However, as nowadays the microstakes games are assumably much tougher than they were back then and PLO has higher rake, there isn't as clear progression. As long as you're in those rake trap stakes, the difference in skill required to "beat" different stakes is probably marginal.

This might sound plausible to a mathematician, but don't try to sell this argument to a PLO player. PLO has lots of close spots due to the nature of the game (equities run close). People see more flops than in NLHE, which generates more non-trivial decisions per table. Playing fewer tables in PLO doesn't mean that there's less thinking going on.

The answers (or lack thereof) by the PS representatives in these threads are downright insulting.

I dont think you could get from plo50 or plo100 to plo400 with proper bankroll management. If the rake was 50% less you could do it easily. Never if its the only income.

Even if you long term can win 10bb/100 the rake is going to eat it all.

With a winrate of 12bb/100 for January (25,000 hands 50% 25PLO, 50% 50PLO) I've made 739,09 USD and paid 1061,33 USD in rake.

That can't be fair that with a decent winrate they take 57% of my winnings when at the same time the rakeback at micro stakes is a joke at best.

That's why if you are a SSPLO grinder, you SHOULD NOT play on PS. Everytime someone ask me advice for SSPLO among my friends, I always tell them to go with their higher % rakeback. At stakes lower than PLO 100, room selection >>>> seat selection.



Btw urubu, you should do a prob bet, Going from PLO 10 to plo 1k in a year with 0% rakeback to start with on PS. As you make it sound easy, you could give us some odds on it. My 10k to your 40k ?

guys, this is interesting thread, we can have nice discussion here. don't think we should talk about winrates here... ofc they are co-related w rake, but lets focus on rake, and not on winrates, or if xxxx can make it at plo10.

btw, i like talking about this, i will post about winrate, prop bets at plo10 etc, at ssplo bbv thread.

Not too many alternatives though. OnGame seems dead, FullTilt doesn't accept Danish players etc.

Absolutely. I have given this advice to hundreds of people in the past year. Nearly all of them just don't realize the enormous amount of rake paid to play PLO and when I tell them about it most of them instantly quit and go back to NLHE.

I have a student now who begins from scratch and I stake him for small stakes. I directed him to MPN where rake in bb/100 is a little bit higher but I was able to get him a 75% rakeback deal for a couple of months due to some nice affiiate promotions running atm (even without promotions he'll easily get 60%). He pays close to 20bb/100 rake at 10c/20c but he gets 15bb back through that deal which makes the effective rake 5bb/100. At Stars he will pay 18bb/100 or something close to that but he'll get no more than 20-25% back for his volume which makes the effective rake at Stars 14bb/100 or close to 3x times higher! This is a HUGE difference.

Playing PLO at stakes bellow 1/2 at Stars is the biggest mistake one can make.

"We are poker, we have the lowest rake in industry...but we also have the lousiest rakeback deal for you and you will lose a ton of money because of it."

Doesn't make for a good slogan.

with the whole furore over time to act changes, why are like 75% of all available midstakes tables running over the last day or two suddenly fast?

Srtp starting fast tables guys !

Just in order to bring the rake discussion back on track, I think it's important that we, as a PLO community, keep the focus on the similarities between PLO and FLHE.

FLHE obviously has a lot of post-flop action because pot odds dictate more post-flop play.

PLO, being pot limit, doesn't have the same exact pot odds structure, but because of equity parity, in a lot of post-flop situations it would be a mistake to fold from a math perspective.
So in both games, you have similar types of incentives to see more flops, despite the differences in game design.

But when Pokerstars made changes to fixed limit, the games were DYING. It just wasn't profitable a profitable game for players, who deserted it, and something had to be done.
That's not (yet) the case with PLO. But there's no reason not to review the rake structure of (especially midstakes) our game before games might become unsustainable.

Especially given the fact that one of the chief arguments for keeping rake structure as it is, is larger winrates. Numbers simply suggest that this isn't true.

Isn't this factually incorrect, plain and simple? For starters, every time you're playing UTG or it's limped/folded to you in later positions, you have 15 seconds less (35 --> 20) for the PF action.

Why did you leave out the Time to Muck and Warning Time changes from the tables in the announcement (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...73&postcount=1)?

They are shown in the proposal poster by PokerStarsBaard (http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...postcount=2809), but you decided to leave them out. To make it look better?

So if you are a good small stakes plo player, you can realisticly hope to work for free for the site? At least you get VPPs so you can wear their hats and shirts while working for them.
This information should be spread, most people are not aware of this, but everyone can see how unfair it is. You can only expect to win if you sit with giant whales, and there is no point for regs to play eachother.
We should get the poker media to raise this issue, but they are probably all sponsored by stars anyway. We also need high profile high stakes plo players to raise this issue, like Phil Galfond writing a blog about it or something, it is hurting their game as well, as allmost no money moves up the poker economy, in the end it hurts higher stakes games as well. I like to play plo, but knowing this, it is simply not worth it, and if i want to play it i will have to play tours. The rates they are charging to offer a card game is totally crazy, and they are screwing their own customers to a disgusting degree.

Pokerfuse is independent. They are writing about Stars' screw ups, the latest being the PCA Zoom challenge.

I totally agree with this, the situation is not acceptable as it is now, something must be done, our best option is this. We need to somehow get organized and make our decisions collectively. And we need independent poker media, to let our voice be heard and get the word out to the recreational players who dont read on the forums. Im sure that if the recreational players knew the rake they are paying to the site most of them wouldnt play. This hurts us as well, but since the rake kills the game anyway, it can only get better. And the worst thing is that if the sites werent so greedy, we could probably have a much better situation possibly for all parts, the sites included.

Source

Yep and they actually follow the threads.
I'll go ahead and ask them if they could be interested in an article about PLO rake.
Will post their answer here.

I wanted to learn plo last year. I played 36k hands of PLO at PL5 from November to December and won 237$ and paid 260$ in rake before I realized that this is **** and just quit and didn´t play a single hand since then. I don´t want to play holdem again as it will be way to boring now, but I will also not play any more hands at plo. fu stars.

I might add, that during my PL10 shots I lost 90$ and paid 260$ in rake in 15k hands. ridiculous?! (!)

if numbers are true, than it's beyond ridiculous. sick

Seems low if anything. I definitely don't envy anyone trying to grind their way up from microstakes nowadays. I'd guess that most PLO grinders either started out playing NLHE/LHE(back in Party days) or avoided microstakes PLO purgatory by running hot or aggro shot taking.

Seems like every new table that spawns at stars is only fast tables... omg

I think the best way to make our collective voices heard is to email Pokerstars support at support(at)pokerstars.com (rake etc) and issues specific to highstakes at highstakes(at)pokerstars.com (time to act etc).

I don't think everyone should send the same email (for example shared on this forum) but rather make a detailed, personalized emails regarding issues that are bothering you and also about things that you appreciate, for example some recent changes.

I know companies always appreciate feedback, especially the higher management is keen to hear about the buzz on the street...and in case Pokerstars high level people don't read 2p2, they for sure are getting weekly/monthly reports from support regarding the feedback from clients, since that is truly the only channel, together with 2p2, where they can gather accurate feedback. This is also shown by the fact that Pokerstars is defending the recent changes from emails from recretional players, who have been complaining about slow tables etc.

So in case you have something on your heart regarding play at Pokerstars, shoot them an email.

To add to my earlier post:

Please keep in mind that the more respectful you are, the more seriously you will be taken. Provocative emails and complaints can easily be wiped off as someone blowing off steam. I know this since I was working in a business providing services to the public, and I was constantly receiving and handling feedback and reporting it to my superiors. So I would appreciate if you could be respectful towards Pokerstars with all your feedback and our voices will speak ever so louder.

Also it's good for everyone to keep in mind that if we didn't care about something, we wouldn't bother complaining about it. We care about future of PLO, our livelyhoods and we care about Pokerstars as a service provider, this should not be taken lightly by players or Pokerstars management. There is a reason these complaints or rather "suggestion for improvement" as I like the call them, are directed at Pokerstars. They are doing a helluva job and I hope they stay on that path.

We should ask Stars to remove the ""short"" hu tables, there is absolutly no purpose for them and they just make the lobby bumhunter list twice as long.

THIS x1 000 000