look, you have to draw the line somewhere. this isn't pee wee soccer where everybody gets a medal of participation. if you have a promotion where even 1 person is losing money even after getting their "prize," it's a broken promotion. if levelling out the payouts isn't enough (although frankly it should be if done properly. 1st place making double 2nd place is beyond laughable) then you have to pay out less players. are people going to get screwed? ya, probably, but that's still preferable to screwing over the people who do make the leaderboard

In order to have a rake race, it's not possible for the promotion to be profitable for every player who contributes. If everyone got back what they contributed we'd all be breaking even on the promo - eliminating the point of having it in the first place.

As I said in my first post, I'm in favor of eliminating "The Beast" entirely rather than keeping the system as is...

That being said, if "The Beast" must be kept, it could be improved upon by paying the top 250. Paying places below the top 250 seems silly since players who fall in that category are playing roughly 5,000 hands or less per Beast period, that's maybe 2-3 sessions for me...

I'd prefer if they kept the system (for purely selfish reasons) by revamping it so each player in the top 250 is paid an equal amount of money per point earned.

Example: 5,000 points = $100, 10,000 points = $200, 50,000 points = $500, numbers are arbitrary of course

It can easily pay 500 and have everybody who gets a prize make money off it. I've made this point elsewhere.

I think you have to look at it not only from a player perspective but WPNs perspective as well.

The way "The Beast" is currently structured earns them tons of rake they wouldn't otherwise have earned. That's because the top 10 have a huge incentive to keep starting up more and more games, because they're earning a disproportionate amount of "The Beast" rake. The payouts are so top heavy that these players can play break even or slightly losing poker and make more money from the promo than from playing their best poker. At the same time they are legitimately 'rake' the rest of us for a huge amount of money, while also making WPN tons of money. Basically WPN is raking these really high volume players the most, and "The Beast" is allowing these really high volume players to essentially "rake" the rest of the low to medium volume players due to the top heaviness of the promo. A big win for WPN as well as the super high volume players, but a big loss for everyone else.

If you pay out too many places (I think 500 is too many) the money becomes spread too thinly to encourage these very high volume players to play a lot of tables & hands.

That would lose WPN a ton of rake from these high volume players and replace it with nothing.

By paying out something like 250 places, I'd think the money would be distributed in a way that would still cause the very high volume players to play a lot less, but the lost volume would be made up for by more low to medium volume players increasing their volume since it's now much easier for them to profit off the promotion. There has to be a sweet spot where WPN makes the same rake, or close to the same rake they are currently making. I think the game quality would also improve (more fish per table)

You just wasted a lot of words in that post. I've looked at it from a lot of different angles, and analyzed the numbers. Most of what you said there has very little basis in reality.

So you're of the opinion that "The Beast" would make WPN the same amount of rake they're currently pulling in if they were to pay 500 places, without keeping it as top heavy as it currently is?

It would make more, if they adopted the changes I've suggested elsewhere...

I think it would clearly make them more rake if they got rid of all their stupid promos and just gave us a place to play normal poker.

When I heard that WPN was a legit site for fast cashouts I was excited. Then when I found out their games were not even close to being legit it negated everything positive going for it.

Fish and Sharks alike want to just play poker. And if the site must have a gimmick, the fish like ones that they have a shot at winning. But with The Beast, we get a gimmick that takes money from all the players and gives it to a select few who put in the most volume. It's the worst kind of gimmick you can have. It's an extremely short-term way to pad your pockets quicker while sacrificing the health and profits of your site in the long term.

Link to your suggestions?

I'm a believer that getting rid of "The Beast" would increase unique traffic - but would decrease repeat traffic (multi-tabing players going after "The Beast JP"). I don't think the increase in unique traffic would make up for the rake lost from the decrease in repeat traffic.

Currently on WPN there are 35 25NL and 50NL games going, I doubt there would be near that many without some form of "The Beast" promo - thus a loss in rake for WPN. "The Beast" grinders make up a large % of the players on these tables... and at least one of them (MamaCoolJ) is on every table. That would be like a reduction of 6 tables of rake coming in if MamaCoolJ alone stopped playing. If you add in a few other players you can see half or more of the tables at these limits wouldn't currently exist without "The Beast" grinders.

Could that many tables be made up for by attracting more players? Maybe, but I doubt it. If WPN was successful and started getting a lot more traffic, they'd also be putting a pretty big target on their back for the DOJ.

I think that's the main point we are disagreeing on.