no biggie bro, in fact I kind of agree with most of your points, its not that Ive a very deep insight of the discussion and the +1k posts here, you asked my opinion and I gave it.

But if the company decisions are pushing for company profit in detriment of players profit then we can agree its bad for poker players(regs and recs) and the poker game itself right?

Can you elaborate a bit on this? I might have missed the point or didn't understood very well, it seems to me that you're saying that poker health is dependent on how winning players behave. Because the way people are winning is the available way the market created for them to. Define 'optimally sustainable'.

First of all, cheers for the civil discourse.

To your first question about company profit at the expense of players, there is not a super simple answer. With any business there is a point of diminishing returns where what you are able to provide to your customers no longer correlates with what you charge them. Not taking enough rake would not be good for players either. I work for a company that gives best in class service at prices that are not the lowest. Customers sometimes get indignant that they can get a better price elswhere without factoring in the difference in what is provided beyond the product itself and the cost associated with it. If we match the prices of our competitors with our higher equities we will not be able to provide them for long. The reverse is true too, prices out of line with reality will not sustain us either. I don't have an informed opinion on where the rake changes put amaya on that spectrum. Some of them don't make sense to me tbh, but they are hardly the death blow imo.

For the second point, as a player in the US hoping ipoker returns, I am far more turned off by the things I read about the state of the game here like multi tabling hud grinders, seat scripting, cartels, trained staked horses,bumhunting, and the contention that the game is so close to unbeatable that top pros, lately I even read that includes former online hero durrr, would have a tough time competing in low stakes than I am with rake. A player like me is important to the health of the game, new blood, disposable income, not enough time or desire to become a Grinder...I feed the site and the players. Getting players like me to want to join the game is more dependant on other factors before rake, and higher rake making games less attractive to grinders actually may make them more attractive to me. This does not mean I think raising the rake will be effective on that front or is the most efficient way to address the issue even if it is. I have read compelling arguments that it will make things worse. I am also not contending it was the motivation for it and I don't think amaya has either.

oh please without constant depositors there would be no games.

and regs are incredibly self entitled.

first there was the cry fest on here for months when stars switched to the contributed rakeback method.regs are so self entitled they were whining about no long getting rakeback on rake they never even paid.the parasites should have been greatful for all the extra rakeback they got for years that they never should have gotten. and that crap was terrible for the games.

this time some, not all people are saying crap like "stars can't do this" "we won't let them" or thinking they have a right to play poker for a living which is an absolute joke.while i want beatable games no site owes them to us.

the whole "the sites are so greedy theyre ruining the game" routine is also beyond self entitled.collectively it's a bunch of greedy pigs who've done everything possible to ruin the games crying about the stars doing the same thing.you even have some people saying that when the games drastically change bc of the reg that's online poker "evolving" Of course if they get harder to beat bc of higher rake that's not the game evolving that's the site being greedy.

Higher rake means the game is evolving now?

Next time the prices go up at your local Wal-mart, that's just the milk evolving.

what happened with the automatic skrill cashouts? Looks like there is a 5k limit per transaction and a review from support now?

if adding huds seat scripting and mass multitabling is the game evolving then so is increased rake. you can't have it both ways.

cannot speak for all games but for the game i was targeting the rake means the recs lose at the same rate if all the regs quit.

it also makes the games unbeatable. heads up hyper turbos doesnt look to awful but cannot comment as i am not a reg there. there is a difference between a minor rake hike and a huge one though.

there will always be better players then others so take away the rake and there would always be winning players. All the regs quit and some we call the fish might be known as the new sharks.

However there will not necessarily be players that beat the rake or able to win enough to live off.

if you want to protect recreational players from regs rake hikes is not the way to do it as they usually suffer more against the rake then they would have against the regs. Many sites already have a way of doing this and its called beginner tables.

could apply either new to site or total won/lost filter to decide who can and cannot play beginner tables.

I have been every type of player in poker so far from losing player to marginal winner to grinder.

I know when I was a losing player it was promos that encouraged me to play and had the games been unbeatable due to rake I would have never played.

i believe every word you're saying and if i couldnt make money from poker i would stop playing today but most people don't think like you or I.

A few people on here have said stuff along the lines of what you're saying but lots of people look at poker as an entertainment expense and keep playing as long as they're having fun.

For most recreation players the fact everyone is way better than them is a much bigger factor in them losing than the rake.

People also tend to act like the rake exists in a vacuum when it doesn't. for example they will say player x is a losing player who lost 20k last year but paid 8k in rake so without it he would only have lost 12k. which isnt nessasarily true for a few reasons. for example had rake been lower that hole time there would have been more players better than them playing who are better than they are but worse than current winning regs to take their money as well.they also stack off a lot more than regs so on average had rake been lower they would have ended up having a few extra dollars in their stacks when they got felted (which will happen more often then them winning a stack and getting a few extra dollars)

If people want to make sure poker is healthy long term they should make sure recs are enjoying themselves.and quite simply there is no way online poker in it's current state is fun for the average person at all.

sites are going in the direction of protecting their rec players.for example anonymous tables are becoming more widespread.if they wanted to take it a step further they could lower the amount of tables people are allowed to play. lots of things have to give going foward for online poker to be sustainable in the long run and there are a lot of other issues besides rake that need to be fixed.but rake is the easiest one for regs to try to correct because it involves them calling the sites greedy bastards and placing the blame on someone other than themselves while refusing to look in the mirror.

oh damn! roulette, black-jack, craps, slots, etc could be so much fun if the casinos weren't so incredibly self entitled.

also the guy that got hired and chosen among 100 other people at the job interview is incredibly self entitled too.

not to mentions those top sport stars, they really took out the chances of small athletes to perform, only incredibly self entitled people obv.

perhaps you miss the fact all player's were at least once depositors too, what you are essentially saying is that winners could never exist without the losers, well that's something even a seven year old knows.


this statement implies all regs so its obvious derogatory, same thing as saying all recs are gamblers. post above will give you an idea of what you consider self entitlement. pick a dictionary if needed.


as I said before the way people are winning is the available way the market created for them to. this generally applies to most markets/areas not just poker, its related to supply and demand, it incentives competition.

imagine you'd come up with a great legitimate business, made lots of money, and as years go by the competition came up and lowered your winnings, should those competitors call you a parasite too? or maybe the ones that hardly tried but never even achieve to be your competitors, those def have the right to call you parasite (by your reasoning). and the fact you made lots of money "was terrible for the business" ?


no, just no. if this was your first statement I wouldn't even bother to reply and explain my opinion. you see, if someone wants to make more money they are not necessarily greedy, are they? same applies for companies.

the game is being ruined by casino-like games and higher rake (not only, but obv the main reason and essentially the only reason why nobody can beat casino games) witch will consequently affect everyone (recs included).

I'm anti-HUD and anti-seat scripts, but I don't know how "mass multi-tabling" somehow makes the games worse. I'm guessing it's going to be something like "Oh these 38 tabling nit bots are terrible for the game" but there are definitely fish who play tighter and no one is angry at them.

Regardless, increased rake isn't evolution. Nothing has changed about the game except the price to play. And that affects not only the regs, but the fish too. And even with scripts/huds/etc winrates are lower across the board in all games/formats than in 2009. So if the fish are losing money faster, that money is certainly not going into regs' pockets.

+1 to that.

I like my HUD, but I also think my winrate would actually increase if no one(including myself) was allowed to use one. The games would be better for the majority of people, IMO. Although, Pokerstars banning HUDs now would be like banning firearms in the USA. Too many people would find a way to use them. TBH, if stars made all their tables anonymous, I would happily embrace that.

They are only instant if you have more deposits than cashouts.

I'm approaching this as a SNG player, but the whole "My winrate would be higher" argument isn't necessarily true. Sure, having more time to make decisions can't hurt, but those decisions might be worse without access to HUD stats. The biggest edge from more time/fewer tables would come from postflop, a part of the game that most regulars aren't great at anyway. Even with a slightly higher winrate, the fish population as a whole would lose slower.

I noticed the skrill thing a couple weeks ago.... They use to only take 5-10 mins now ive had huge wait times.... This sucks for an everyday grinder like myself.....

Note Just use fulltilt its still instant

It isn't that they play tight it is that they use so much more time than average to make a decision. Add the time taken to 3 or 4 others and you now have a casual player hating the time it take to play a hand. This lowers their experience quality and makes them less likely to redeposit.

if this is a problem which i dispute its really not an issue all you would need to do is lower the time allowed for them to make a decision.

http://www.parttimepoker.com/a-simpl...rake-increases

What do you think guys?

You sure about that? I'm not.

If so, can you answer me this: How much more time does the average reg take than the average rec?

I'm guessing you don't know. I don't know either. And so we shouldn't be parroting random things said on the forum unless we have some sort of way determine their validity. But back to the original question, How much more time does the average reg take than the average rec?

Can't be too much, as the timebanks are set for a few seconds before everyone would end up auto-folding their hands. I keep hearing stuff about how fish hate how long it takes to play a hand, but not once in my entire life have I heard that said at a live table where you get 20 hands an hour. Instead, those guys are frequently asking for a new deck, to wash the cards, end up "hollyooding" a standard fold to look cool or some other random BS that slows the game down considerably more than a player taking 3-4 extra seconds to make a decision.

Please do not compare a live game to online that is not valid as live has social interaction going on. Everytime I see zzzzzzzzzzzzz or hurry up I know that that person is not happy. I know that 30 second banks that get used up most every time annoy the crap out of a lot of players. When you see them get used 3 times per hand it bores the crap out of someone 1-2 tabling. On sites where there isnt the constant use 25 seconds to fold pre going on and the rec gets used to fast hands I make a lot more money per hand let alone hourly rate.

I don't think that the slow decisions are that big of a deal either. Good players don't usually make instant decisions unless the decision are real no-brainers because they don't want to give out any tells on the hands that they need to think about. So they often let the clock run a bit on all hands that might (or might not) require some thought so as not to telegraph the strength of their hand.

Some of the fishier players, on the other hand, make a lot of insta-clicks and start typing "zzzz" into the chatbox if anyone takes more than 3 seconds to click. That's not a good way to play poker. Good players shouldn't dummy down their game just to appease their caffeinated opponents. And it's not like players can run time-banks every hand. The time that players have to make a decision is measured in seconds. For the impatient there is always Zoom Poker.

If we're going to put stock into what recreational players say in chat, Stars/Amaya should inject all the regs with AIDS. I've seen "Get AIDS" about as much as "zzzz."

It isnt the time taken during the hand. It is about the constant using of 25 seconds before folding preflop all the time I am refering to. I can understand if you still disagree I just want to make my point clear.

Well the timebank surely isn't 25 seconds, but I'd have no problem if that was lowered. Most of the regs aren't even coming close to timing out unless something happens (i.e. internet disconnects, Stars server lags, food gets spilled on keyboard, etc).

I was telling people like 3-4 years ago that people should play more on other networks because the deal was already a lot better but sure, if you play rare games, MTTs or high stakes then stars was interesting.

Now the deal has gotten a lot worse, please start at other sites, at least supplement. That stars has 80-90% is def not good for players.