Having said that, your assertion that the Sharks pay for the Beast themselves is not only inaccurate (hello main argument of the thread, nice to meet you), but it misses the point of the greater picture... the one that WPN also isn't getting.

I think I understand what you are getting at and in principle I agree with you but the way I look at it is this. WPN puts money back into the economy in the form of the beast, money that otherwise would be kept in the form of traditional rake if there was no beast. The fact that it goes to the highest raking players is not that important, the important part is that it is kept in the player pool. The spin off effect of the beast is that hopefully it brings in new players which is up for argument no question. But to me the beast is a boost to the economy and helps not hurts it. Could it be improved? Probably, but it still is far better than having nothing.

For the first part of this quote, consider the logical fallacy of the excluded middle.

For the second part, the fact of where the money goes is an issue (see the YouTube link I posted earlier on "trickle down" economics), but the even bigger issue is where it's coming from (the main point of the thread: the de facto tax on the small players). The fact that the smaller players are still better off here than at other sites, while true, doesn't change the reality of what overarching framework is best.

If my assertion is wrong tell me why you think so. Just to throw out some rough numbers, the last time I cashed in the beast (min cash) it gave me roughly an extra 25% effective rakeback. That means a portion of beast rake that I and many others paid went to the higher finishing players. Now since there are many more players like me than top place finishers means the beast does actually pay for itself. That it is why I think it would be interesting to see how much non-cashing players contribute to the beast. I personally dont think it is that large of a sum since those players while greater in number, dont actually contribute as much individually.

If you like take this example. Table with $2 rake cap. That is including the beast. Now remove the beast and guess what? That same table will still have a $2 rake cap and now that money goes straight to WPN and nothing goes to the players.

Ok. Follow through. Do your math for all the players. Don't stoo at the one example that doesn't apply

The math has already been done, just look at the rake rates.

The math they did says Bob only gets rakeback for his effective rake after beast contribution. Are you purposely talking in circles or what? How simple can this get and people just ignore the facts lol.

I think you mean his rakeback for his effective rake BEFORE the beast contribution but I know what you are getting at. And what I am trying to get at is that despite a small loss to the player pool as a whole in the form of rakeback, the beast puts far more back into the player pool again as a whole.

Except the portion of the player pool that takes the brunt of this extra loss is the portion that needs the most help. I'm not going to comment any further on this because you just make the same comment over and over that ignores the core of the issue for everyone who has an issue.

Its telling that the Rep doesn't have any more to add despite a very simple question being asked.

not much for staying on the main point, are you, CastleFrank? the point that everyone is trying to make is.. Oh look! a squirrel!!.. how cute!!!

But what you fail to realize is that those players arent taking the brunt of the loss because they are raking less then the players who are cashing in the beast.

Just responding to the posts within the thread itself.

Can't believe no one said anything about the over half million dollars annually of VIP/RB that are being sucked up by the top 4-5 cash game guys.

For anyone to pass that off as missing out on "a little bit of rakeback" is ridiculous to me.

I will tell you that one of the only reasons I play on WPN is because they offer a VIP reward system and because they have player to player transfers (to facilitate staking and such). 95% of everyone that will ever log on to this network will never clear more than 5000 CP's a year. I might clear 8-10K this year. That's 2 or 3 hundred bucks in tourney bucks/ medal bonus's that I'm not getting anywhere else in the US. And that is a huge reason that I even open up the client when I sit down to play. If it wasn't for this I would just play MTT's on merge and bovada that are MUCH easier games.

I'm telling you that the 4 or 5 $10 medals that a recreational player that plays 300 or 400 hands a weekend earns matters a lot to them. With VIP's figured after the beast money is taken from the rake they lose out big time. to the tune of over a million worth of VIP benefits a year.

Every rec player is in the VIP system because they don't know what the hell rakeback is and haven't asked for it.

With the rewards they earn they lose their money to the same guys, but slower. The way it is now there are so many reg's in every game no matter if it be cash/ SNG/ tourney the non grinding player has 0 chance to get lucky and even feel like a winner for a week.

I was a fish back in the day on stars and FT but there were so many people like me I had some great weeks and some bad weeks but it took a while for me to burn through a $200 deposit because I usually earned a couple $10 FPP bonus's here and there and I didn't get crushed in every game I sat in. It wasn't till I made about $1000 in deposits that I started to make withdrawals.

What I'm saying is that if I just got my face smashed in and lost my $200 in a week because I got crushed at everything I sat in I can assure you the $800 additional dollars wasn't going to be deposited on that site.

You have got to make it easier for the little guys to earn a little VIP stuff, NOT make it harder by sucking off $500,000 of THEIR rewards and give it to the top 5 cash grinders on your network. The best players are going to get that money eventually. Why make it happen at warp speed?

For what its worth.....with the added money to the SNC it is getting to be the same way. 25% of the rake is going to the SNC bonus instead of to the rake where I get no VIP credit and all my VIP credit goes to the 5 guys that can play 20-30 tables at once.

All of this makes it very difficult for anyone to build a bankroll slowly and move up to the next level and so on and so forth.

Bottom line is the little guys love to work towards getting a $10 medal as a bonus and these things work GREAT to keeping rec players and players that are trying to get better to stay and deposit again and again. Why make it as hard as possible to do it!

Can you actually prove any of what you just typed? The site continues to grow doing what it is doing, something must be working.

Yep get a calculator, look at the top 5 payout from the previous week. This is where it gets tricky....then you add them together. Now for the mind blowing part......you have to multiply that number by 52. If you stayed with me through all of that, I'll give you a hint. The right answer is a number that is bigger than $500,000.

Its about 3 5star generals or 50 generals worth of rake.

Just simple math.

eckfreak, have you considered the fact that maybe the beast brings new and existing players to deposit on the site? i am hardly a hard core grinder but if i chose to put in a bigger effort it would be because the beast would encourage me to. Like myself many people are driven by the sense of competition and the beast (along with sit and crush) provide that. Right now my focus is on other things BUT if i wanted to grind, seeing my name on a leaderboard is a huge motivating fact so why could this not apply to new players?

it doesnt work like that

Is the site actually growing? Not asserting it is or isn't, it seems like its about the same size as it was the last couple years.

Good job being a dick to someone who wants you to actually prove something. I was referring to the part about more players would play if given $10 tokens/medals. I'm not 100% that is true. Bovada doesn't give you crap 70% of the time and they still do pretty well for themselves.

Don't waste your time. He didn't even consider the amount the top five contributed themselves and they are recouping what they put into the beast. He also didn't even consider the fact that anyone who doesn't cash in the beast only loses a percentage of what they put in and not the whole amount. His math is so far off it is actually laughable.

Maybe that was a little douche 'ish (not sure how to add something to that word). Sorry for that. I'm just a little miffed that some people keep saying that it doesn't cost anyone any value when it clearly costs almost everyone a great deal of value. You can't argue that. The almost $650K in rake distributed to even the top 10 of the beast every year. costs everyone else hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits. That $650K in rake surely isn't being donked off. Its getting withdrawn. Distributed to the smaller players that actually earned it in the games (by the rules of the VIP system) has a far greater chance of being put back in play in one form or another.

Also saying that some people (me included) like full ring cash and not 6 max. You cant even spread 8 tables of full ring NL through 10NL - 50NL. This has got to be because of the beast. You get twice as many hands playing 6 max so you are forced to multi-table 6 max in order to compete in the beast so as not to give all of the VIP points you lose to 4-5 guys.

Eckfreak you do understand the top 10 are the ones who contribute the most and are just recouping what they put in right? That drops your estimated 650k down quite a bit. You also need to remember the players aren't losing out on the full beast rake, only a percentage of it. If everyone was on the rakeback program they would only be missing 27% of the beast rake in return not the whole amount. I am completely fine with you saying there should be a different promos or whatever but at least come up with some calculations that somewhat make sense.

pyramid schemes work out for certain people as well

The poker economy as a pyramid isn't an idea that I came up with. That concept has been out there for a long time. The pryamid doesn't have anything to do with rake or rakeback, it is about players putting money into the poker economy. The base of the pyramid are depositing players. Without those players there is no pyramid; there is no poker.

I think that a promotion like the Beast brings in players who might not be used to depositing. If they can win money on Bovada and Carbon but come here and find themselves breaking even or losing, they might not stick around for long. And I'm not so sure if those are the players that we really need to begin with. So yes the Beast does draw in new players; but are those the players upon which we can build our base?