My guess is that there are confidentiality reasons for not disclosing such information to the public, or a select few people, outside of the player meetings.

I played a couple of hours of PLO 0.05/0.10 today and the games seemed incredulously soft. I draw no conclusions from that fact, but it was interesting to see the games first hand.

I don't know.

No, I don't. Obviously there are similarities between the games and certain aspects will be treated the same however in the areas where they differ appropriate additional considerations should be taken into account. Whether or not any resulting changes are in line with the majority opinion of 2p2 isn't as important as the fact that they are treating the games differently on their end. believe that they have done that in the past and will continue to do so going forward.

I really don't have an answer for this without knowing more information and giving the issue more thought.


http://www.pokerstars.com/vip/earn/

Thanks to antchev and jackpot13 for the links, they detilted me and solved the conundrum that had been torturing me for months - now I know for sure what the main rogue site in the industry is

What do people think about beatability of upcoming 5-card PLO(8) under the existing uniform rake structure? It used to thrive on Entraction but regs had 68%+ deals there. With the Stars VIP program, I'm afraid that micro 5CPLO will be a rake trap for non-SNEs.

Hi guys. I've played everything from PLO10->PLO100 (PLO200 if you count SS'ing heh) over the last two years. I'm a reg fish, or something. Lately been wanting to get back to playing again and tried to build a roll from PLO10 on stars. I found that I was unable to (I'm simply too bad combined with too high rake), so I quit. This was in december.

I had at that point in december played 16000 hands of PLO10 and paid 26 full buyins in rake playing 24VPIP.

edit: Before someone tells me how tiny of a sample 16k hands is to decide if I'm +EV in the games or not; That's obviously not the point of this post.

Worth quoting this from the NVG thread, since it's eloquent in its simplicity:

+1000 to Napsus for his great effort and all others supporting the thread with their views, ideas, research and suggestions. If so many PLO regs from all stakes unite something is up and needs to be done.

@ Roy

I'm very amazed by your previous posts expanding on the matter and your convince me with hard data and Switzerland attitude. So amazed that I'm writing this post right now.

(i'm not good with pasting quotes and links 2+2 style so i'm typing them myself)

Lets start with your question: 'what is a sustainable poker ecosystem/economy' or maybe easier, what is not.

To start with some hard data plz check out this link of the PTR country leaderboard http://www.pokertableratings.com/top-countries

Total amount of winning countries in $ (roughly): $12.5M
Total amount of losing countries in $ (roughly): 1B

The difference = RAKE (plz note that only Party and FTP are included in this data)

I'm not sure what the market share of PS has been over this period, but i can image Party and FTP combined or more. So now we have an idea what has been taken out of the poker economy.

Back in the day where every month resulted in more deposits than the month before and poker was booming, rake structures we have nowadays were introduced and never changed.

Compare it to a plant: if it grows 10 leaves a day and you cut 5 it still grows pretty fast. But in the present, deposits have gone down drastically and the plant doesn't grow that fast anymore, but we keep on cutting it at the same pace. Obv result plant dies.

Heh, but there are still enough players playing micro/small stakes and depositing. It's not that poker died completely, but nevertheless almost no players are able to move up, games get tougher and tougher (also for players developing skill faster then the average player pool) even good regs who used to crush the games are moving down. Indicators enough that the industry is cutting this plant to fast.

Therefore I think that the rake taken should have a relation with the total amount of deposits to sustain a healthy poker economy.

Then the question: what is beating the games/rake?
What kind of winrate should one have when you beat the games or the rake for that matter and since we're talking about PLO here are some rake figures for different stakes on PS (source PTR) :

PLO2: 25bb/100
PLO5: 22.6/100
PLO10: 19.5/100
PLO25: 18.4/100
PLO50: 15.9/100
PLO100: 12.8/100
PLO200: 9.4/100
PLO400: 6.2/100
PLO600: 4.8/100
PLO1k: 2.9/100
PLO2K: 1.4/100

So to make clear at plo2: 1.5 full buyin is taken off the table every 100 hands

When you see these figures it's kinda obv why 'no money is flowing up' and games are drying out. But back to the question what is needed to beat the games. Well for plo2, you need a monster crushers winrate to b/e before rakeback. How many people have had a 25bb+/100 winrate at any given stake they played for 'decent sample size'. Only the superstars we know now is my best guess. Then we are only b/e, no roll building yet which is required to move up obv.

Roy you mentioned: I played a couple of hours of PLO 0.05/0.10 today and the games seemed incredulously soft. I draw no conclusions from that fact, but it was interesting to see the games first hand.

You do not seem to realize that you are a 'PLO superstar' in the top 0.00001% of the total playerpool, having played millions of hands, I cannot believe you wanted to 'see this first hand' like your perception of what you see has anything to do with people not able to move up or beating the rake.

Also you wrote '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".


Roy c'mon, ofc it's possible to beat the rake (positive winrate after rake), but that would require WAY to much skill for that stake

I'll give you a story of my own life. I tried to explain my father that i payed 180K in rake last year while not winning anything remotely close. Since i'm paying around 10bb/100 i would need to crush the games with a 20bb/100 winrate to win as much as i pay (before rb obv). I am by no means a superstar on my stakes, but def in the higher region of the playerpool. Try to explain this to anyone outside of poker and you'll see how ridic it is.

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

"I really don't have an answer for this without knowing more information and giving the issue more thought"

Rake = cost of playing that simple.

I understand that less hands/hour get dealt at a PLO table compared to a NLH table. What is the service? The hands we get dealt or the hours we sit a table. (obv sofware,security etc, but those are constant factors) Can think of arguments for both sides, but since NLH tables don't get twice as many hands dealt this should be an ez question.

The pokerstars rep answer about this are to ridic to respond to imo.

Roy, you have been signed to the Team Online congratz on that achievement, this is one of the reasons I wrote this reply, since you 'had to be convinced' and maybe can change things from the inside.

Cheers Elglado

Not really. The boost is quite notable, but their base-rakeback will be awful. It'd be really hard to maintain even goldstar playing plo2. But difference between PS rake and typical 5%/$3 rake structure is bigger at nanos than at micros, so that also helps.

So at least with quick look at rake and reward structures it'd seem like PS does better compared to other sites at plo2-plo5 than at plo10-plo50.

Even if the game is "soft" you would need 2+ 60bb/100 loser to break even in such games and these kind of loser have to be close to what you would consider chimp dumpers. Losing 60bb/100 at PLO is just lol hard to achieve compared to NL.

The rake is over 120bb/100 at nano. You need a perfect game to be able to beat such rake structure.

yea a midstakes reg realizing that plo10 games are soft is not really the issue here, it's all about how beatable the games are for PLO10 regs.

So the next obv question is: why the VPP boost?

Did someone realize having zero winners after the rake would put a quick end to the scheme?

I appreciate your post but there wasn't really anything in your response that I wasn't already aware of or that hadn't been posted ITT or one of the others.

Note that I can't change this from the inside. I can't communicate the discontent over the issue better than napsus or some of the other posters. Yes on some issues and at some times I may have better access to Stars' ear but on this and at this time we know that they are reading these posts on 2p2 and I can't do any better than that.

Being a part of team online by no means gives me influence over such large scale policy changes on an issue that has already been addressed by Stars and one where their position seems firm.

I'm going to bow out of this thread now. It's a considerable time sink, and I ended up aiding the thing I was against in the first place - focusing on the rake issues and letting some of the other stuff fall to the wayside.

If anyone has non rake related ideas or suggestions for anything to do with PLO and you want to discuss them then feel free to contact me. Promotional ideas, tournament changes, marketing improvements, etc. There are some ways that I could expedite the process of taking a thought or idea to having the right people at Stars take it into consideration.

I want PLO to grow and expand as much as almost anyone. One of my goals is to find ways to aid that process and help implement them. I'm focusing on these other non-rake areas because I believe that's where I can actually make an impact right now.

Cliffs: according to my small DB, at PLO20-50 fishes (VPIP>50%) pay 40 bb/100 in rake and lose about the same excluding rake, regs slightly lose pre-RB on average but still profit post-RB.
You confused fishes' lossrates with and without rake. There are indeed few fishes that lose 60 bb/100 excluding rake, but many of them lose 60 bb/100 including it: according by my small database, fishes (defined as those who I have >49 hands on and whose VPIP>50%) have paid 42.5 bb/100 in WC rake on average over 43K hands of PLO$20-$30 (5-6-max on Boss, MPN, Merge, Revolution, FTP that all have 5% rake capped at $3/€3 at these stakes) and 36.7 bb/100 over 19K hands of PLO€30-€50 plus ante PLO$25 (I used WC rake and not attributed one because they're close in the long run and PLO30-50 fishes have run too hot ), while their average observed EV bb/100 lossrate excl. rake has been -45 bb/100 across the above stakes combined.

They might have been running bad, but given that their luck-adjusted std deviations are typically in the 120-180 bb/100 range (they vary vastly), this means that their average lossrate is at least 30 bb/100 with 95% confidence. This of course excludes fishes who busted out too fast to generate a meaningful sample.

I also filtered my DB for regs (those who I have 50-2700 hands on (i.e. excluding my different names ldo) and whose VPIP<=50%) and saw that they've paid 18.5 bb/100 in WC rake over 105K hands of PLO$20-$30 and 18.2 bb/100 over 49K hands of PLO€30-€50 (the fact that I picked mainly the fishiest tables there means that in reality they pay less if these limits are their working) and lost -4 bb/100 AIEV post-rake (but pre-RB and partly because regs whom I've met most have been flopping ridiculously bad ).

Edit: hmm, someone on this planet must be flopping good; as I can't accuse myself of this, I'll be more comfortable thinking that fishes are in fact destined to lose massively, at least 45 bb/100 excl. rake

The samples are ridiculously small, but I believe rake data is quite accurate as it converges way faster. Table rake data from my DB mainly agrees with what PTR says about these limits, i.e. 110 bb/100.

So, if e.g. there are two fishes losing, say, 32 and 40 bb/100 excl. rake and four regs at a table, the average regs' pre-rake winrate is (32+40)/4=18 bb/100, so on networks they are about breakeven pre-rake on average, at Stars they even be slightly winning, like 2 bb/100; if they're Supernovas, their RB is 7 bb/100, so the full winrate is 9 bb/100; but my sample is from networks where I've had 60-65% RB on average so it should be more like 11 bb/100 there

Everyone with a big database can reproduce this analysis (I don't know if it's possible at Sharkscope); a small obstacle is that PT4 doesn't have a built-in stat for total WC rake in bb (it's necessary for averaging the numbers across different currency stakes) so here it is.

Go to 'Configure -> Statistics' and define a column 'amt_rake_wc_bb' as
Then define a stat 'Rake WC bb/100' as
(choose numbers with decimals as the format).

If you prefer attributed rake (from won pots), define a column 'amt_rake_attr_bb' as
and a stat 'Rake Attributed bb/100' as
Those who use OM2, write a stat on your own and share it if it isn't built in

^ I stand corrected: 1) in my above analysis 'fishes' were losing 45 bb/100 including rake; I didn't believe my eyes and took desired for real; 2) I erred when I put a 50-hand sample threshold for someone to be called a 'fish'; in fact I have 50 hands only on 20-25% (!) of players with >50% VPIP in my DB, which is logical because genuine fishes don't play often enough and never return at times.

So I chose a slightly better 'fish criterion': either >49 hands and VPIP>50%, or <50 hands (the share of regs among those who I have small samples on is small, and those whom I saw just for 1-2 hands posting blinds don't contribute much into the lossrate, while there are a lot of people who lost their entire stack in their first hand).

The result seems closer to reality: fishes under the new definition have lost EV 58 bb/100 and paid 38 bb/100 in rake on average.

It means that two fishes together lose 40 bb/100 to regs, who get a 10 bb/100 share of this pie each but have to pay 18 bb/100 in rake so lose 8 bb/100 pre-RB and win 3 bb/100 post-RB, blurgh...

There are of course several biasing factors. Firstly, fishes might have flopped hot and regs - bad (sample sizes are so small). Secondly, I played too loose-aggro than needed for these stakes and might have lost money to fishes and won them from regs (Robin Hood style).

And again, my DB is too small to draw conclusions...

Of course we understand. You keep ratholing with our rake money as you get 100% rakeback. Essentially you are subsidized by Pokertars with our rake to rathole hit and run the games even further, causing even lesser profits for us.

Even if you understand that the rake is ridicously high, you shouldnt say anything cos u get 100% back anyway, and your employer would be pissed off if you cause any damage to their billion dollar botline.

Pokerstars saves a lot on processing and money transferring fees by raking us to death. That 100bb/100 rake ensures this.

They have screwed affiliates in the past (search for more info on this if interested) so its natural that they will screw players as well.

They shut down PTR.com on their site, one of the reasons is hiding the rude statistics on winners/loser ratios and rake.

It is all about Stars bottom line. They dont really want anyone to win there, expect maybe the biggest cash games and tournaments so they can get publicity value and thus more rake slaves.

I have just sent email to Pokerstars support about not being happy about rake at omaha

hope as many of us possible send feedback to them. this thread is great, but it can't hepl to also send them feedback. i mean if they never receive feedback throug offical channels, there is no problem in their eyes, right?

so get your lazy fingers up everybody and start typing to Pokerstars support.

open software-->help-->contactsupport

then help us fight the rake war!

if you want PLO to grow more than now, you have to start at the bottom like in any other thing. the bottom is small stakes in PLO. and the rake is ~10x more higher there than at mid/highstakes in meassure of big blinds.

are you Roy afraid that you will loose your sponsorship if you start talking about rake to Pokerstars people?

Just received an email from stars, which is supposed to be sent to all supernova +. Here is a list of things they are working on :


-Making VIP Reward Bonuses easier to purchase
-Improvements to ‘Registered in Tournaments’ window
-Reductions in Limit Hold’em rake at certain stakes
-Increased priority for developing Run It Twice (now released)
-Increased priority on fighting PokerTableRatings (now successful)
-Ideas about how to show Zoom hands to observers (coming soon)

Do they really need PLO to be dead like limit is to acknowledge that their is a problem with the rake at certain stakes in PLO ?

^^These are the topics which were directly influenced or inspired by the player meetings at the IoM and this is stated in the e-mail. There is much more they are working on some of which will be revealed in these e-mails.

It's a week long series of e-mails, 9th of February will be about Ring Games, we'll see what they have planned for PLO. 10th will be about tournaments schedule which is directly related to this thread.

But this sudden urge to share smells bad to me. Since it is stated in the e-mail that the main focus will be on recreationals and their experience, it looks to me that the regulars will have to bare a lot of unpleasant changes in the coming year and this is Stars' way to contaminate the storm before it has even started. I hope they prove me wrong.

On another note, PokerStars.net is going to be on Facebook soon as a direct competition to Zynga which I think is very positive for the futute softness of the games.

http://pokerfuse.com/news/poker-room...acebook-05-02/

PS. Maybe the e-mails discussion is more appropriate for the Stars Regulars Thread.

guys, we need make sit out for one entire day. ok, some regs will play and have 10buy ins up because most of us will be sitting out, but thats doesn't matter.

we need sit out, its ridiculous. everyone sitting out...

yesterday i did 3 flips w friends at plo10, blinds 0.05/0.10. after 3 hands, we lost $1.50 to rake. we both started w $10. should be $30 at table, but theres 28.50. jesus ****** god, its impossible to play plo at pokerstars.

I have a different look on this. It's great to see that they realize rake is killing some games, rather than taking the "other sites aren't lowering their rake either, why should we?" approach many other networks have taken in similar issues. (which is big reason why PS is so succesful)

I'll much rather see them decrease rake in a game I don't play but has similar problems with rake being too damn high than ignoring the issue completely. At least it shows they're paying attention to this stuff and how current high rake structures are starting to kill certain games because it becomes very difficult for any regs to be profitable in them.

As a .5/1 and 1/2 Regular for about 3 years, I am now in the process of reconverting to NLH. Rake just eats too much of my winnings.

While the winrates /100 might be a tiny bit lower at NLH (but who really knows?), I see my friends making way more per hour there.
I can possibly play 2x number of tables and additionally get more hands per tablehour.
So even if my PLO-winrate/100 WAS 2 times higher (which I doubt), NLH would be a better choice.

While SS PLO is not completely dead yet, it's getting close to...

Also, back at NLH I can play anywhere, no need for Stars, while at PLO there just isn't enough traffic on the smaller sites, so I was commited to PS.

We need to do this.

Even if Stars temporarily limits the stuff we can do, its still worth it.

roy in your posts you seem to be implying that we need PLO to be more popular, when that isn't really the issue by and large. 4-5 years ago PLO was a fringe game like mixed games are now, and nowadays at peak time there are 30-40 5/10 games running online. we have also all seen thousands of whales pass through PLO, the 2010 25/50 games on stars were softer than 2/4 is now. the issue isn't promotional, it's not like fish don't know about PLO, it's that rake takes so much out of the economy that the games have dried up so much that basically on stars you have rakeback pros taking almost every single seat above 1/2. fish don't last, the health of the game worsens every week, no-one moves up in stakes, the majority of profit being made by pros is getting a refund on rake. anyone remember when games were so good being called an FPP pro was a dirty insult?

honestly though, IMO probably the single biggest contributing factor to the strangulation of PLO was galfond making training videos. too many people play with too much efficiency now, which makes rake far too big proportionally. obviously a couple of other people made very good videos on other sites too but they were pretty fringe, only serious content-hungry proactive PLO regs were bothering to watch those, whereas every serious poker player whether they had any interest in PLO previously or not has seen galfonds PLO videos.

all it takes is 500 mediocre regs becoming pretty damn efficient and leaving way less money on the table and now all of a sudden edges become very small at mid to high stakes, then the regs who can't quite keep up move down to small to mid stakes, and at that point tables are pretty much frozen out at most stakes whereby a very small % of the player pool are winning before rakeback.

PLO is a far different game to what it was even 3 years ago, and rake needs to change to reflect that... you need to snap out of the mindset that we can somehow go back in time and make PLO so soft it's a joke again, it's not gonna happen, now is the time for rake to fairly reflect the game when it's played relatively skilfully by most of the field.

When I started playing in 2005 micro stakes were rake free on Pokerstars!!! I dont know how many of you remember that but it was exactly this way, and it was a brilliant idea allowing people to build bankrolls from scratch and learn the game while playing it as a true zero sum game.