@napsus I thought about your decision and i came to the resolution that i will follow you.
I will play on stars my NL games, but i will play PLO (its more low-stakes learning: way too expensive on stars!!) on other sites until Pokerstars change their opinon about rake at PLO.
Its a businness decision and a hope many players will follow to create a movement on this topic.
I really like Stars and most of their business and imo most of the other sites cant match with them, but on this PLO topic a change is necessary for the playes and (longterm) for Stars.

I hope i can come back soon to my favourite site!

sry for my english

This thread started out ok but it has turned into a nice discussion where everyone feels like they are making valuable contributions and suggestions but in reality is just a pile of crap PS will never actually take seriously. I hear talk of people discussing the NBA and NFL players association and other unions. If you guys think they have done a good job getting recognized and having a voice then why is it 99% of what I see in this thread is exactly what none of those organizations ever do. There are too many unions in this world to count and if anyone in this thread has ever taken a history class or went to school I am sure you have learned about some of their successes. With that many blueprints out there why is everyone trying to reinvent the wheel and come up with all these ass backwards suggestions. Just blows my mind and is pretty frustrating to see that poker players are actually getting organized but they are spending no time actually understanding what have been successful tactics in the past for players associations and other unions. I gave a few suggestions and they were pretty much shot down and ignored by people who undoubtedly know absolutely nothing about how to gain traction with PS in a situation like this. There is a reason why after the sit outs and years of bitching and complaining to PS by tons and tons of players they ultimately just pat us on the head and tell us to go play nice. Maybe it's time to start putting a little effort into figuring that out instead of calculating rake graphs to prove what we already know and doing countless other useless but time consuming things that get us no where.

why don't you lead the way for all of us since you seem to be well informed on the strategies which could work on this issue, and make it happen?

this is the suggestion i found from you itt. is this what you mean? how do we go about it? i didn't find any action plans from you itt.

Hoopman what is with the negativity and wtf are u talking about. We are not trying to make a union or anything(then i missed something), just some people talking and this is going great, we are discussing the matter, many of us cashed out and wrote the site explaining why, what else can we do ? We do what we can and that is not to play until something changes.
I would think most players at small stakes plo are not fulltime player, im not, and I got lots of better things to do with my time until its again attractive to me to play.

I havent read every single post in this thread but i just hate the argument that "stars already has the lowest rake" because the rakeback system sucks so much. Yes Stars has lower immediate rake than others but on other sites u can get up to 65% rakeback no matter how little your volume is. Stars rakeback system is only good for mass grinders. Its in their own best interest to lower plo rake to make the game sustainable. I moved away from stars for good now and wont be coming back unless they lower the rake or change the vip system. The only way stars will listen if all the players do the same thing because they are raping us and u shouldnt let them rape u.

I think something a lot of people forget about Stars' rakeback is that *every* player gets it. I doubt the fish on other sites know about RB and are usually getting 0%.

So when you're comparing total money being taken out/given back to the ecosystem you must take into account that important fact. I'm not sure what the average RB % is for Stars but off the top of my head I want to say somewhere between 15-22%. Also the argument that "fish don't optimise their FPP usage" is already taken into account, and I think one of the nuggets of knowledge that came back from one of the player meetings was that the vast majority of users cash in their FPPs for optimal or close to optimal rates.

I'm not intentionally trying to defend stars just for the heck of it here but if you want to be heard you absolutely must use correct facts and complete information in your arguments else they are useless.

From serious players' perspective "everyone gets rakeback" is not really a good thing and I'm not sure why people in 2+2 seem to like it so much. The great thing for regs about bad rake structures with great rakeback deals is that fish pay most of the rake. It's probably not good for the site or longterm poker economy, but for an individual player it's great when choosing best rake/rakeback structure to play in. Basically it's the same prisoner's dilemma than in many other poker things (eg. multitabling or bumhunters snap sitting out when fish sits out), players make decisions that are most +ev for them but in the longrun when most regs do the same it just makes it worse for everyone.

Almost every site has VIP system you're eligible in if you haven't specifically signed up for rakeback account and in many cases those VIP systems are better than PS has for low volume players.

I'm sure you could find some sites where it's possible to not be in any rakeback/loyalty program, but I don't know any and I've probably played on something like 30 different sites.

It doesnt really matter that everyone gets it. We are not really discussing how much money overall stars gives back to the players. We are discussing that Pokerstars only makes money because people assume they can INDIVIDUALLY make money playing poker by being better than their opponents. For that to be true the rake cant be absurdly high. Lets assume for a moment the rake would be 200bb/100. Nobody would be playing since nobody could beat the rake even though some players are better than others. So the rake needs to be beatable for people to think they can beat the game. Right now pokerstars only gets away with this absurdly high rake because the players are unorganized and a lot of people in small stakes plo just play and dont care/know about rake. If all the poeple knew/cared about this pokerstars couldnt get through with this. The games NEED to be beatable with rake. Its time to form a union and boycott pokerstars as long as they are ignoring this issue.

I wasn't defending the rake, just pointing something out that I think is often neglected in these discussions.

Roy, it's not so much about how much Stars is putting back into the ecosystem or its distribution, but about providing an environment where moving up through the stakes is realistic for most serious players without a prolonged spell of rungood. At this time, small stakes games on Stars are a rake trap where it's extremely hard to achieve a sustainable winrate.

Do you agree?

EDIT: ur latest post came while I was typing this, so I guess u do

Why should the average rake in bb/100 be over 2times as high in plo as it is in nlhe ? which is the case for 25plo...

Well while I'm not defending the rake, I'm not attacking it either. Call me Switzerland.

Honestly, I don't know. I have very little in the way of actual facts in terms of sustainable winrates for these stakes and my best guess is neither do most of the people posting about the issue.

There appear to be a few different types of people with opinions on the matter:

1) Mid-High stakes players who have been at these stakes for a long time. They look at the rake in bb/100 at lower stakes and say that it's bad, unsustainable, that they want more money flowing up the ladder, etc etc. They far and wide actually have close to zero experience or knowledge of the games or the winrates possible. Some say "well I could definitely beat the games but i'm really good and it should be easier for new players to win".

2) Micro-Low stakes players who are struggling to beat the games. They look at the rake in bb/100 and then their winrate and go oh holy **** if that was just reduced a little bit i'd be a winning player! or if it was reduced a little bit more / if they were already winning, they'd be crushing it! While true it's also possible that they just aren't that good at poker (yet) and if they were better they would indeed beat the games for a healthy amount (and move up if they so desire).

3) A mid-high stakes player who has recently risen through the ranks from low/micro stakes. Everyone considers these players to be "very good" at PLO and they generally self admit that they ran well to get there. Perhaps that's true (probably is, most people have to run good to move up -- this is not a problem exclusive to low stakes) but it's hard to deny that they were/are winning players in those lower stakes games that they played.

4) Current winning regulars of micro/low stakes. Every now and then someone will post a graph of them beating the games and is usually met with either respect or a "lol sample size" reply. There are probably other winning players staying under the radar either because they choose to or probably more likely because they aren't readers of these forums.

When you consider it all there is really very little in the way of solid factual information proving that it's "extremely hard to achieve a sustainable winrate". There are a lot of differing perspectives from the above groups of people but there are problems with all their points of view (hopefully outlined above). I like to make up my mind about anything based on facts and truths and i'm intentionally very vague throughout my life on issues I am uncertain of (I really dislike both arrogance and being wrong/giving out wrong info). The same thought process applies here when I come to trying to make my mind up on the issue.

I don't know what makes a sustainable poker ecosystem. Does anyone? What the hell is a "sustainable poker ecosystem" anyway? That there's more money coming in than being taken out or something to that effect I imagine. How much would reducing rake help that? Wouldn't the better players just win more money faster (taking that money out of the ecosystem)? How would total deposits be affected? Would fish/recreational players deposit more, or less, as a whole? Will that amount offset the increased amount being won by the better players? If Stars does this and takes a hit to their revenue will they have to reduce their marketing budget? What effect will that have on the games? With significantly lower rake there will be significant impacts to the VIP system, everyone will get fewer VPPs. Will the fish notice this? Care about it? Will they notice their deposits "lasting longer" and enjoy that, or will they only notice far fewer "points" and dislike that fact (or the fact that they can no longer make it to gold star every month)?

My answer is that I don't know. As such, without enough information, I refuse to have a strong opinion on the matter.

There are a lot of self-serving posts and opinions on this topic, and a lot of people are very firm with them. A lot mask it by saying that it will be "better for the poker ecosystem". I am not saying that they are wrong. But I would love for someone to explain it to me using facts and not respond with "isn't it obvious?" or "with the rake that high, the games just can't be beat!" -- this forum is full of highly intelligent people capable of logical reasoning. I would love to hear it. Furthermore, if someone can prove that it actually IS impossible to beat the games (as so many people are saying), I think that would do a lot more for any argument than just stating over and over "with rake that high the games can't be beat".

I don't mean to be antagonistic just to run around for funsies. I value my time and everyone else's and these threads and posts take a lot of time and effort to keep updated. I just started typing an answer to your question and it just kept going and going o_0

Well only Pokerstars knows how beatable the games are, we mere mortal can only have a "clue" about it.

How much do you think your average fish is losing per 100 hands in a PLO game ? Now how many of these players do you need on a table where the added rake is 120bb/100 ?

Now, the biggest losing fish at NL is about -88bb/100, even having him at a table with 120bb/100 of rake wouldn't pay the rake for itself. Also, -88bb/100 is a NL losing rate, there is no doubt in my mind that PLO fishes are losing less quickly because of the game itself. I checked on a couple of huge fish in my DB and none come close to that losing rate.

Now let's say you are the only competent winning player at the table, you would still need the sum of all fishes to lose 120bb/100 to break even so they would need to lose on average 24bb/100. Do you realize how much of a fish you need to be to lose that much at PLO ? Now, not only do you have to be lucky enough to have such a fish at your table but you'd need like 3-4 of them to have an expected value greater than 0.

That's why I think the game at lower are unbeatable by themselves pre rakeback. You have to run super good in order to climb up.

It is not the time to discuss this anymore...its the time to standup and fight! We need to unite and show pokerstars that they will lose money if they dont listen to us!

Theoretically all of the money will be taken out eventually, either by the site or the regs, occasionally even the fish cash out.

First and foremost, a poker economy needs a steady flow of new deposits.

Secondly, any given poker game needs to allow sufficient winrates to allow regs to stay around and keep the games running, eventually bringing some of that money up the ladder for shots at higher stakes.

We're not talking about helping the regs to win more. We're talking about helping them win period. Reducing the rake will allow the regs to stay around and keep the games running.

I obv have no data to support the claim that the games are not sustainable, in addition to the points Mig made I can only tell you that most of SSPLO is constantly complaining that it's really hard to beat the rake. All of them are students of the game, thinking players. And they're having a tough time BREAKING EVEN. For me at least, alarm bells are sounding.

Of course the vast majority of them are not playing "optimally" and are not yet very good at poker. But the hurdle they're facing to move up is not reasonable.

you should not have to play optimally to beat a game fwiw.

I am not sure on the numbers, but I have suggested stars not rake split pots in games like plo. I am not sure how large of an impact this would have on the overall rake, but it would at least be something.

I do not believe that only pokerstars should profit on any given hand/game. So if no player would profit, no rake is taken. This could be a pretty large increase, because so many pots are split in plo. But it may be a lot smaller than I am imagining.

I doubt Pokerstars cares much about this and they will only take notice when game liquidity takes a big hit.

maybe so, but it doesn't make the argument any less valid, lol

Stars need to start thinking about the long-term health of the games asap

First sentence is in fact true for many many sites, like Chinz said and I have yet to play on a site where I wasn't automatically in some reward system.

About the bolded part: Why would Pokerstars recretional players be more savvy about rakeback/VIP program and recretional players on other sites clueless about them? Sounds really weird to me.

It sure is not because of them advertising their VIP program more than their competitors. Have a look at these screenshots of the landing pages of pokersites and I would argue that players on other sites are more savvy about rakeback/bonuses/rewards because the info is right there where you download the program or sign up to play.

The last 2 screenshots are littered with info about promotions, bonuses and rakeback. Pokerstars tells you how fast you can start playing and the $600 first deposit bonus is in the middle of the picture in a little box.



We write on a poker forum which is the go-to online discussion platform for the top PLO players in the world, some of them even sharing their knowledge. Still I honestly can't remember many true Cinderella stories of players breaking from micros to high stakes. On the top of my head I can think of 2: Johan and GGARJ, and SSPLO posters absolutely love their stories as do I. I know they have great work ethics and have'nt exactly ran terrible as you mentioned for these types of players. So I don't really see the money flowing up it this sense, but I see a lot of guys giving up and disappearing from SSPLO even though there are skilled players giving them tips on a daily basis. I acknowledge that I see more of the latter because I mod SSPLO and don't play mid-high stakes, but I try to keep a close eye on these issues....so I might be wrong about. Please correct me if I am.

Then again I see many of the same players still grinding the same levels (PLO25-PLO100 since this is what I have been observing the closest) and fail to make the break out. The problem is not that a skilled player can't beat the games since they can. The are people playing with other players close to their skill level, trying to improve while the rake keeps hammering them during the process and they might eventually even give up since it seems very hard to win. Is this because of wrong learning methods, faulty poker logic etc? Sure this is the case for many player. Is the process of moving up the stakes affected by high rake? It most certainly isn't helping.

The question is that is it better Pokerstars taking money out of the ecomony, or the top players taking it out? I would argue that the latter is the case. The winning players are much much more likely to bring the money back to the tables, giving pokersites turnover and running the games, thus generating more played hands for the poker sites to rake. If a pokersite takes money out of the economy, not very much of it is coming back. Sure, it goes to marketing, keeping up the site, development of the software which help a lot, but I still argue that winning players' winnings come back more effectively to tables than the money taken as rake by pokersites.

It's very hard to give facts to the questions about Pokerstars business or possible developments should something change, since there are no facts available for these questions, just speculation.

Then again, lowering rake does not mean smaller long term revenues for Pokerstars. It might even be a catalyst for a PLO boom. In worst case the players that currently play would likely keep playing longer, and as PLO is a small part of Pokerstars revenue (according to Krmont22), I believe it would be worth the risk.

I believe most recreationals players play poker to win, not to collect VIP points. Sure there are some players that wanna grind enough to get that nice chip set from the VIP store. I think generally players would be a lot more happier having a better chance to win than gaining VIP points faster to buy something from the VIP store.

Yep, it's a lot of educated speculation going on. Of course it's self-serving, we want better conditions for ourselves, why wouldn't we want that? Should we just pat Pokerstars on the back for making absolutely ****load of money?

Agree on the bolded part, but unfortunately Pokerstars is the only one capable of proving anything....and I believe their silence regarding this issue is telling something. They could provide us with cold, hard numbers but they don't.

Note the bolded part, larger winrates for the better players, not larger AVERAGE winrates. This leads me to believe that PLO and NLHE average winrates are very close to each other, as has been argued by posters itt earlier.

Approximately same average winrate for both games, PLO gets fewer hands dealt per hour (probably in 10-20% ballpark), and PLO ~2x higher rake at low stakes compared to NLHE.

Does this make sense for a game that is played on the same platform as NLHE?

Furthermore, Pokerstars is a platform, an exchange if you will, for players to meet and play poker. They don't assume any risk of players' funds (see FTP), yet they charge a very high cost to play the game. We don't owe our gratitude to them, they provide us a service. In my opinion even the NLHE rake is way too high.

I don't understand why it is generally accepted that if winrates is high enough that poker sites can charge whatever they want and everyone should be happy with it. We happily seem to accept that poker sites can manipulate (cap) the winrates based on their own discretion. I call BS on that one.

I worked in job where the market was slowly dying, and I led a group who was negotiating prices with a monopoly that was charging way too high prices for market ever to grow. The prices were just enough to keep the market barely growing and few players on the market. It took a while to get the point across, over a few years they gradually reduced their fixed costs by 90% and added a variable cost (could be somehow applied to PLO if would have the numbers to do some calculations), and now the market is booming. Turnover has doubled over the past 2 years, there are more players in the market, and EVERYONE is making more money as a result. Go figure.

Roy, you are correct in that there is no factual evidence to support those 4-5 scenarios you described.

You keep asking for proof. Here it is...

Without a shadow of doubt, it's proven that SSPLO rake is double the rake at NLHE. The topic of this tread is to ask WHY?

I've made decent amount of money at ssplo, but it's almost exclusively from bonuses like it is for >90% of micro/ssplo regs. Good luck for someone trying to play plo10-plo50 at PokerStars if they can't get 300k+ VPPs in a year and as a result get really ****ty rakeback.

As some have already said in this thread (including you iirc?), currently PS effective rake structure is awful for microstakes players until you can reach reasonable VIP level (at the very least like 200k+ VPPs, preferably more)

One of my friends had some really comprehensive datamines of iPoker and Ongame SSPLO games a few years ago, and PLO games very generally considered very soft back then unlike nowadays. Even then if you hand picked 100+ players you knew to be non-fish regs you'd notice that their average winrate was in fact NEGATIVE before rakeback. I can ask if he still has those datamined results somewhere if you're interested.

There isn't really such a thing at "winning regulars of micro/low stakes", just a few guys on a massive heater, and maybe a handful of the very best regs who can sustain something like 4bb/100 longterm pre-rakeback. Obviously it makes sense that most of those who could win at better winrate would move up before getting a big sample size at ssplo, but if you compare the winrates of solid plo100/nl100 longtime regs, you'll probably find plenty of >5bb/100 longterm winners at NL. In SSPLO I really doubt it.

Of course I'm mostly just guessing things based on my own experience, what I've read on SSPLO, talked with other SSPLO regs, PTR results and other datamines etc. and PS has better information on this, but at least when looking at pre-rakeback winrates I'm very confident that at least in $0.5/$1 and lower the winrates of regs (almost regardless of your definition of regs) are significantly lower than in NL.

And again another thing I'm just guessing/estimating from personal experience: NL 6max games have been somewhat same for last few years, while PLO is still "the new game" and games are still getting significantly tougher each day. Even if the same winnings+rakeback bb/100 is achievable in today's games, it doesn't look good for future of PLO.

Roy,

We agree that there is a lack of data showing what attainable winrates are at ssplo. Do you think we can get Stars to do an analysis for us, or maybe invite a few plo players to do it? I don't think it has to be a total IOM tour like the other meetings, just a meet up with some data wizzards of Pokerstars and check a few things here and there? If regulars are really beating the game with a few bb/100 pre-rakeback, I will rest my case.

Roy, why do you think FLHE have different rake structur?

Do you think PLO should be threated as NLHE on a general basis?

Do you think its simply fair that SSPLO is raked twice as SSNLHE in bb/100?

I think we need to have a Sticky post in all the Plo forums here that warn people not to play SSPLO on PS!+
By the way why isnt this a reliable source ? http://www.pokertableratings.com/poker-rake-analysis

Directly compares the average rake paid for plo and nlhe or not ?