So stupid to see everybody complain..

and not one person here will design a website/ a union so people can group together for lost cost rakes?

Is everybody just going to complain but do nothing.

I Have made a website already myself where people who want lower cost rakes can group together and show support.. pm me

Lol at everyone comparing pokersiters with other game-sites, and claiming that the rake is to much.

Hint: You pay a few bucks to play WoW. You play zero dollars to play poker - just play on the play money tables.

The rake is the cost you then pay to be able to run your business, i.e play poker for real money. But you can also play it for free, just like the game.sites you are referring to.

Is happening at the Entraction network, works good.

Fail

Entraction are lowerig their rake?

I've been doing my part by playing at betraiser.com

they take 10% of winnings but that is way cheaper than all the other sites in the world.

so far am up 150 bucks there.

everybody support all the lower cost sites like betraiser.com , paynorake, and we can in the long run do something.

Hey Bubba, the kiddies no longer think you're cool. You didn't think this day would never come did you? Nah, you're smart enough to know it would. Enjoy our millions you turd.

This is an amazing idea.


The no rake but 10% of cashouts at betraiser seems really good for cash games, I'll have to check that out soon.

I think the rake is fair for smaller sites. There are base expenses to get started up and establish the infrastructure. Once that is done, the extra operating expense for each additional player (in addition to the main minimum player base) is miniscule relative to the rake they pay. This is where the big two sites are just snowballing in profit. I pay 5-10k in rake in a month but I know they don't hire any new customer service staff just because one more player signed up. Live poker is much different (which is why I just shook my head at all the posts in this thread comparing the rake to live games). For every 6-10 new players live casinos must pay a full salary to a new dealer, more floor space for the physically real table with associated cameras/security must be used, ect, ect.

So should FT/Stars lower their rake because now they have a massive monopoly on the online poker scene? I don't think so, they took a risk when they got started in the first place (like any business), they made it and now they deserve to get filthy rich.

To me the clear scam in the online poker industry is with respect to high volume players. Look anywhere else and high volume equates to high savings. Simplest example would be Costco. If you buy a 4L jar of mayonnaise......you get a much better price..But at least in this case the supplier must actually give you 8X more mayonnaise for an even better price. Now look at online poker, a supernova elite plays 10X more than the next level supernova, but you really think it costs Stars 10X more to support these players? They don't have to supply 10X more service.

This leads me to my main peeve, which is how insanely Stars (for example) rapes their high volume regs. Their supernova elite program seems like a total joke to me. I lurk enough on 2+2 to know what these guys go through to get through those millions of hands in one year....and for what? 16% extra rakeback (and bragging rights)...are you kidding me They turn dedicated disciplined grinders with a ton of potential into total whores.

Think of it this way. How many supernova elite are there every year (39 in 2008 I know)? You got 39 of these guys playing 10X more than the 2nd highest level and they get a max of 16% more rakeback than supernova...Yet the effect on Stars operational cost for these 39 players is nearly negligible. I'd even hazard to guess that if every one of those 39 players left, Stars would still require the same security staff, the same number of support staff, ect, ect. Now consider the huge publicity these players bring to the site.

The fact that these guys pay over $220,000 in rake every year, but only get 45% back really is extortionate! How can stars justify profiting over 100K off each of these 39 supernova elite players?

I've used an extreme example to more clearly emphasize my point, but this manipulation of high volume players is rampant in the online poker industry in general and over a wide spectrum of various levels of what could be considered relatively "high volume". Single high volume players are generating more rake than literally hundreds or even thousands of casual players who play a couple hours per week and deposit $25-$200 at a time. This is where I agree with the guys on here suggesting capped rake amounts on a weekly or monthly basis.

Lets say player A is high volume and pays $10,000 in rake per month. It costs the poker site x dollars to provide him with customer support, financial transactions, ect.

Now player B is an average casual player and pays $100 in rake during the same period. It costs the poker site y dollars to provide this player with support, ect.

So is y really different from x at all. It can't be a huge difference, definitely nowhere near $9,900. If anything y>x.

So back to the extreme example: Supernova Elite really only get 45% back?? WOW. Stars could give these guys 90% rakeback and still profit far more off each of these players than any average recreational player.

Plenty of Supernova Elies are masstabling nits.

So theyre real rakeback is much higher.

Like 50% higher.

If you look up your total MGR, total hands and Average Players stat you can find out what your real rakeback is.

Do this:

1.Go to Sessions tab

2.see what Rake it shows - thats avg MGR

3. select in Filters -> More Filters -> Won Hand = True, Saw Flop = True -- this should select hands where you paid rake

4. now what Rake shows multiplied by "Avg Number of players" (also shown on sessions tab) should show your true MGR


If you play nitty you will probably get 40% true rakeback @ FullTilt instead of 27%.

Now if you only play as little as possible but still make Ironman every month you have 50%+ true rakeback @ FullTilt.

Interesting. That would work for Cake network too, but not Cereus/ipoker/ect that use the contributed model. Personally I think the shared model/calculation used by Cake/FT...(and stars?) is unfair. The contributed model makes much more sense.

But still this doesn't change the point of my original post that high volume players contribute way more than their fair share towards the net profit of the poker sites.