If rake was 0% the game can still be dead. Think about why.

games could run for a change and they can make money? Stars killed midstakes 9man turbos. They refused to reduce rake in 2012 (from 8% to 7.9% or whatever it was isnt a reduction, its a bit*hslap after buzzing about rake changes for 3 months)

So how much do they make from 9m turbos now? close to nothing? Imagine what would happen if rake was at 4-5% for 30-60$ turbos, well, they would make them more money then now, thats for sure.

no, it cant. all it takes is 1 weaker reg, or 1 fish here and there.

+1
While I will certainly be glad to see if PS do reduce the rake of 9man stt in the near future,
I will be even more excited if stars could effectively implement some sustained and attractive promotions to get bunch of new recreational players playing stt.

I think rake reduction is just going to be a short term benefits to most regulars but what's more important, stars must do somethings sooner rather than latter to salvage the current dying environment of stt.

Sorry but I do not agree with his at all. People say rakechanges will not have a 1 to 1 effect on winrates.

However I cannot see a possible outcome that the games can get any worse than that they are right now.

This is so incredibly short sighted.

If we take an extreme example and pretend that they changed all 9-man rake from ~9% to ~3%, there would very likely be a big increase in volume in those games across the board.

(obviously they aren't going to make such a big change, but just as an example)

Winrates would increase, regs would play more, fish would lose less quickly etc, people would move up in stakes etc etc.

Traffic could hypothetically triple so that they are making as much money as before, only with a more stable poker eco-system where they aren't raking everyone to buggery.

So if they could halve the rake, yet make traffic increase 60%, or reduce it by 20% and traffic increases by 30%, then you can see what might be in it for them...

But obv this isn't going to happen because if it was, it would have happened by now. 9-man turbos are a huge example of this. PokerStars let them die over a number of years by refusing to change the rake in them.

Now instead of people grinding $57.50+$2.50 9-mans or something reasonable/actually beatable, they're all grinding $8 180-mans.

hire this guy

:-P

How does PokerStars (and other sites) justify the rake that they charge at SNGs? It seems to me its just a "oh they are suckers and will pay this much" line of thinking because the following rake% doesn't make sense to me:

$11 MTT Slow/Regular/Turbo - Rake 10% (1/10)
$15 SNG 45/180man Turbo - Rake 9% (1.23/13.77)
$15 SNG 9/18man Turbo - Rake 8% (1.11/13.89)

Also, how the hell did we let them get away with increasing rake (while decreasing buy-in) at the $15 level for 9 and 18mans?

I'm sure the rake they lost from 9man turbos is more than made up at the hypers.

This whole idea about a calender year VIP program being sacred is asinine to me. My suggestion would be to switch to a rolling year based on a calender month (or even daily) immediately. Beneficial changes should not have to wait 6+ months just because it will mess up plans for SNE pursuers. Half of them tend not to make it anyways.

I dont think so, turbo and hyper people are mostly two different people.

I do not think hypers will lose traffic of any significance when there are more better raked turbos. I think lowraked turbos which are not in pokerstars interest, as fish lose money the fastest and regs win the most a game, like 45 en 180mans will lose traffic because the socalled regfish is forced to move to those games

funny that walmsey can react very fast about micro limit omaha8 hypers but cannot say anything about why the rake at the news 60s is so high, or one of the many other issues that is being discussed itt

BTW, thanks for getting the lobby fully cleaned up this way. Not big of a grinder issue, but for the majority of players who use an unfiltered lobby, it looks much, much better than it did at the start of those changes.

Why is the rake so much higher on cashhyper sngs than sattelite hypers? Doesn't make sense.

You are moving the goal post. My post that you were replying to was specifically talking about hypers. For turbos it is completely different.

As for 0% rake that is not true. Just to make it obvious, if PS offered 0.1% rake backgammon how many people do you think would play? Games are formed around fish. Maybe when a game runs it is profitable, but I consider a game dead if almost noone is playing.

Worse for who? For you? Because stars is doing well. I agree they could do better but you are missing the point. The rake isn't the sole reason winrates are down. The reason is, poker is competitive.

There are players that make $120+/h in EV playing sngs legit. (No stars pro or whatever). What do you have to say to that? Are the games "the worst they could possibly be" for those players?

Again my post was taken out of context. I said nothing about normal and turbo rake and infact I agree with you that other rake is out of line. 9% in todays game is basically a joke. The post I was replying to (the one for which my reply you deemed "shortsighted") specifically mentioned hypers and I in continuation was only talking about hypers.

No need to get so defensive!

Fair enough, but the same theory still applies to hypers.

What theory? Again I hate being rude but you are trying to push the idea that going from 3.x% rake to 1% rake in hypers is somehow going to be a win for Stars net bottom-line. Now this could be true but I just straight up don't believe it. In fact I think it is almost impossible for it to be true. And if it isn't a win for Stars then they probably aren't going to do it. Even just the fact that they haven't done it already is pretty strong evidence that it isn't true.

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Below is the reason I think it doesn't work out:

Fish generally play regardless of what the rake is. If they want to gamble, they will. They play based on what game attracts them. So eg. even if a pass line bet in craps, or a bet on banker in bacarrat, or whatever has less rake than a bet on red in roulette, they might bet red because they like the wheel and dislike the dice -- even if they know that banker has "the best odds in the house."

Now, some indirect factors could hurt this. For example if rake was extremely high, fish would lose faster and maybe indirectly steer towards other games where they notice they win more. But overall, fish do not actually play much volume. This is because their winrates are abysmal so their money leaves their account quickly. This is very important: changing rake does not directly impact the sustainability of a fish, because they are already losing so much. *(It can indirectly, but that is more nuanced)

As kind of an oversimplification, suppose 2 fish want to play a $100 6max tournament. They come 1st 15.5% and 2nd 15.5%, resulting in a rakeless roi of -7%. If there was no rake, those players represent a profit of $14 to be split between the players -- $3.5 per player.

However, Stars needs their cut too. So what happens is they rake it, say at 3.5%. So lets say now it was a $103.50 tournament. The four regs that sit end up paying $3.5 rake and getting about $2.1 back, paying $1.4 in true rake. In exchange, they make $3.5 from the two spots sitting at the table -- in total they make $2.10, which is quite good -- it works out to about $10 for every 100 hands played, even though they are "0% roi players." The spots lose $7 plus $3.5, but they get $0.50 back from rake back. They end up losing $10 per game, or maybe even $9 or $8.5 depending on if their rakeback is a bit better.

In my opinion (and mine only), from Stars's POV, the optimal rake is the amount that keeps the games liquid. If the rake is too high, then players won't start games so easily and it will regress into bumhunting -- regs only sit if fish sit, instead of open sitting. There is no reason to lower the rake if regs are willing to open sit. The reason is because fish are the reason the games run and once they get sheared they leave. If the rake is lowered, it just means more of a % of their money goes to winners hands instead of Stars. Keep in mind Stars is the one paying absurd amounts of money to try to get losing players to deposit.

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Now, I am in favor of rake reduction COMBINED with changes to VIP club. Hell, I am even in favor of rolling SNE. But straight up rake changes PS will never do, so why not try to be realistic? For normal games you have a strong argument (noone is starting games), but for hypers you don't have as strong of a case.

Ok I guess I was a bit vague. I wasn't suggesting a reduction that major in hypers would be beneficial to PokerStars.

But if they were to rake them at a slightly more reasonable rate, there could be benefits you aren't considering.

The achievable winrate becomes higher. This encourages regs to play. They are somewhat likely to put in more volume. Regs might move over from games that PokerStars make less rake from (cos not much rakes more than hypers), because there is a higher hourly available in hypers, and perhaps now they aren't faced with a 0% ROI and insano swings because PokerStars lowered the rake somewhat.

Also, what about the reg who starts playing $3 SNGs, winning, and moves up. This happens quicker the more beatable the games are. The higher stakes they play, the more they rake. If they get raped to hell playing $3 games then they never get the chance.

"changing rake does not directly impact the sustainability of a fish, because they are already losing so much."

Whilst I see where you coming from, I don't agree you can say it has no impact. It must have some impact. You are categorising all fish as big losers, which isn't necessarily the case. This is especially true in hypers, where a fish's ROI will be the closest to a reg's ROI of all SNG types.

There will be a sweet point somewhere in the rake PokerStars charges per game where they earn the most money, (rake charged * #games played). It's not something you can really project, as there is no way of knowing the differences rake makes to the traffic, which is probably why PokerStars are reluctant to change things, as they make plenty of money how it is now. But it doesn't mean rake is the optimal amount.

But if I was a betting man, I would be willing to wager that if PokerStars were to lower their rake in places, they could rake more in the long term, and it would be beneficial to the longevity of poker. Every year the games get tougher, and somewhere down the line something will have to give.

there was some talk before in this thread about stars wanting to change structures and stuff to the sngs, so ill just put my 2 cents out there.

Ill say before, that i think the structure for the hypers is ok as it is right now, but if they are looking to make changes for whatever reason as mentioned earlier in the thread, how would stars/players feel if they added a 25/50 level so the structure is more smooth?

This will prob make the games run for a minute or 2 longer, so if stars or the players dont want that, there are ways around it like taking out the 10/20 level or lowering the blind level time from 2 mins, etc..

Again ill say that the structure is ok/good as it is now, but if stars are looking to make any changes i figured id throw out my idea out there and see what you guys think.

Oh and something has to be done soon regarding the BOP and promotions in general for sngs as alot of people have recommended earlier so it gives more incentive for people to play.

i think it is a joke that 9man hypers don't have a $15 level! What is the point of running 30s and 100s if there is no feeder system for people to move up. Not enough people are able to play in the 20s even if there was enough of them running. It is a vicious circle which is all caused by a lack of fluidity in the 9man arena.

Anyone wanting to increase their hourly is forced to move over to 6max, which in itself is a raketrap!

Sort it out Stars before you crush another format

^what he said

...because satellite winnings are autoraked again?

There are more hypers available for registration at some buy-in levels because hypers are more popular than turbos at those buy-in levels. To answer a possible follow-up question, that isn't due to a self-fulfilling prophecy where 6-max hypers are more popular because there are more available for registration. I have experimented with different numbers of registrations at certain buy-ins to try to increase volume and beyond a certain point it makes no difference. Ideally, I am trying to find a sweet spot that ensures players can play as many SNG as they wish without unduly cluttering the lobby.

We don't have any plans for 9-max $200s. The $100 6-max hypers are very popular so adding a $200 was a reasonable next step. The $100 9-max hyper is far less popular.

In all our single-table SNGs the rake at the $30 and the $60 buy-in levels is the same.