Since they aren't offering rakeback, they could theoretically offer really good signup/reload bonuses. Kind of like Stars in the old pre-VPP days when they were building their player base. Or Party Poker when it was a byword for game quality.

I especially love how people are decrying "losing mass multi-tablers and bots" as being some horrible thing and "bad for the game". both of those things are good for my games. I don't believe a bot can do well in a full ring NL environment, at least not well enough to be some big disaster. um, "losing" regs?! yes, please!

id like rakeback personally, even something small like 10%.

I will say that I'm more satisfied considering the quality of the game and the cashier.

one thing: you all talk about how they have all this overhead and expenses. well, apparently not for a good client. the actual nuts and bolts software is off the charts horrid.

sure, agree with this or rb either/or.

Rakeback is essentially just a worse method of lowering rake as far as quality of games go. Rakeback encourages mass multi tabling by allowing players to calculate, to an exact dollar amount, how much they'll be guaranteed to earn on their volume of play. Where as with lowering the rake, it benefits everybody without giving them a guaranteed income. What would be even worse is if they start offering revenue sharing to affiliates. I believe the reason we aren't seeing a huge influx of regs is because affiliates don't have incentive to push them here. If all of a sudden they started offering revenue sharing deals to affiliates you'd see a huge influx of regs. You'd have coaching stables signing up their horses here and offering them all under the table rakeback. Before long global would become every other online poker site. I really believe that global's success has been a result of them not using the traditional forms of affiliate marketing.

Also, sign up / reload bonuses are heavily abused. Look at how many fake accounts you see trying to grab a free $2, let alone $200+. While these bonuses might be nice for us, there's probably a good reason why no poker sites are offering them in 2017. We also have to remember that global likely has spent a lot on marketing, plus they already cover fees on deposits and withdrawals. That means they're likely covering 3-4% fees on both deposits and withdrawals.

The only thing i see them doing wrong is charging an insane amount of rake for heads up and shorthanded games.

Careful, people here don't like it when people use logic and sound reasoning.

Historically, the best promotions for growing a site while maintaining game quality are those that encourage recs to add money to the site, and those that encourage recs to play regularly. The first are signup and reload bonuses.

For the second, there's never been anything nearly as effective as Full Tilt's old Iron Man promo, and I'd suggest just making a knockoff of that. It was a really great plan for customer retention.

I remember the Iron Man promo vaguely, what made it so good in your opinion?

It encouraged people to play every day, or every other day, with tiers for playing 15, 20, or 25 days in a month. And then it increased value with every consecutive month that you achieved one of the tiers, so once a player established any kind of streak they were highly incentivized to maintain it.

It essentially created a reward treadmill for people to show up and play a little bit every day, and kept all of those customers coming back continually for years.

rakeback is a magnet for nuttpeddler regs

i generate more rake for global than almost anyone and i cant stress this enough

do not offer rakeback

Yeah that does seem like a pretty decent reward system, and not to difficult for someone one could classify as a rec player to achieve. I like the idea personally (not that my opinion matters) but I do think it would be much better as an incentive than rake back.

You do understand, I hope, that if it's flat rakeback based on rake paid, then it's the exact same thing. There's no reason one should encourage more multi-tablers than the other.

What does encourage multi-tablers is a tiered system, where more volume means a higher RB %.

Rakeback/VIP programs can be used one of three ways. A flat rakeback system can be exactly the same as lowering the rake. A tiered rakeback system that rewards volume can be used to entice regs. And a different rakeback/VIP/rewards/bonus system could be created to encourage rec players. Lowering rake has no flexibility. So really, I think the objection shouldn't be to rakeback itself, but how it is implemented. Of course, if a site has no rakeback in the conventional sense, but is giving out a lot of money in other forms (freerolls, bonuses, etc.), then that is a targeted form of the same thing.

All of that, of course, doesn't address the issue of certain games/stakes being unbeatable. Sometimes certain formats require a different rake treatment, and changing the rake itself is the only realistic way to address this. Although I suppose it's also possible through a VIP system that gives more rewards at those games and/or formats.

I'd REALLY love it if we could get SOME kind of promotion for cash game players that doesn't involve an extra drop. Such as a bad beat, but dont take extra money.

Not a big fan of rakeback... it helps the wrong type of players.

+1000

Why would it benefit them to give cash game players an incentive? Recreational players fuel poker games and without them no games run. The more recreational players there are, the more games will run due to the opportunity for more players to make a profit. Global is doing just fine on that front. It's not in the interest of a poker site to subsidize the player pool so that more players can win. The only thing they should focus on is how to best attract and keep recreational players while maintaining a friendly and fair gaming environment.

Because it

Rakeback is, admittedly, one of the worst ways of doing this. Jackpots are good for getting recs to play more. Really, anything where low-volume players can hope to run on the high side of variance for meaningful money - Spins, milestone hands, the Sunday Million, WSOP, etc - seems to be good for game quality. Rakeback which encourages high volume and low variance is the opposite of that.

I'm really not feeling very critical of Global, I think overall they're doing a good job. But one thing I've seen in other businesses is that when customer acquisition is going really well, there's a tendency to ignore customer retention. This is exactly the time when they should be working hard at that, so that many of these new people stick around.

You make many many times more money off fish than rakeback. Do whatever attracts the fish. They have entire U.S. poker economy cornered for Christs sake.

NO GOD DAMNIT I DEMAND A BAD BEAT JACKPOT!!!!

You know what attracts fish? A 5-6 figure bad beat jackpot!

*Only winnable on .25/.50 and higher.

And where do you think the money comes from to create a 5-6 figure bad beat jackpot with no drop?

^lol, don't try to inject logic into these people

+1, I think this would make a good signature line on 2+2

The mounds of cash Global is collecting from their rake.

I wasn't aware you had such intimate knowledge of their financials. So your understanding is that they make enough money that they can continue to spend money to promote the site to recreational players while giving away 5-6 figures every month or so (because of course they'd have to continually reseed the BBJ) and still make a decent amount of money?

And you have good reason to believe that spending 5-6 figures each month on a BBJ would be the best way to invest such money?

Of course we expect that Bobo, and we also expect them to keep funding the overlays on the big weekend tournies, and when the numbers get close and it looks like we are going to not have a overlay, they better raise that GTD number.

They also need to give me a free $300 a year for sending in envelopes. And have good customer service... and cover paypal fees.... and not have lag on any server ever... and do charity tournies... and respond quickly on 2+2 even to the craziest of people... and do it on their weekends... and if they can't handle that... then they better be ready to hear my wrath on 2+2.

End sarcastic rant.

I agree with Bobo and Splayaa and I actually do not want rakeback, but it would be nice if there was a way to give some kind of reward for cash game players other than freerolls and overlays. Not everyone has the time to play MTT. Doing what you guys are doing and bringing in Rec players is enough, but I'm just saying it would be nice.