Quote:
Originally Posted by the_glaive
In the interests of fairness, I did see this from Negreanu:
http://fullcontactpoker.com/thoughts-rake/
He expands on his position and concludes he doesn't believe more rake is better for the poker eco-system.
However, it still feels like he's squirming out of his earlier comments and spinning things to make it seem like not such a big deal. He's still trying to argue that in certain situations high rake will lead to amateurs having more fun because there's nobody there trying to make a solid profit, which is still nonsense.
He completely ignores the fact that there are different stakes and that generally amateurs play lower stakes or even no money games until they feel they're ready for the challenge of higher stakes and facing down some pro players. That's how the poker eco-system works and raising rake in any game doesn't really drive pros away so much as it drives all players away. It's tough enough in 2018 to make any profit at all without having to pay a huge tax on your games.
Imagine if you liked another game, like chess for example, and someone tried to argue pros are no good, let's get rid of them and then everyone can enjoy just playing for fun and not getting humiliated. Ridiculous.
Spot on. DNegs *public* position (
obviously not his real beliefs) is indefensible.
Plus, not all small stakes amateurs have resigned themselves from day 1 to never beating the game.
Also, part of Pokerstars' strategy is clearly to aggressively recruit lower skill players to poker in order to also tempt them into no/lower skill / bigger house edge games, e.g. casino games.