^ Nice one!

Thanks, really like yours too.


Please, everyone join in and make avatars/pics etc. If you have an avatar you like and want me to edit something subtle in lemme know.

Thanks.

Animated the old one.

I know one, you can get 51% of the shares for roughly zero dollars, if you put up the operating money for/and are running the company. No cash games possible at the moment, only SNG and MTT.

PM me if interested, however only real interest please.

Could someone make the creepy black dude with the "you gonna get raked" msg a jpeg please?

It saves as a pnp or something on my computer so I cant use it as an avatar.
That avatar is insanely good...scary.

If any1 can I would really appreciate it...thanks.

Some new avatars.

Nice work JH1.

It saves as .png, why can't you use that?

Anyway here's the jpg.

A combination of two things will give everyone what they want.

1. The rake should be based on the amount bet. The reason that this is the proper way to do it is that it represents the house edge of whatever game a person is playing. What are the house edges of the most popular games in the casinos? Well they are usually under 2 percent. For every bet a player makes at blackjack in a casino they have an EV if playing well of about 49 percent.

So with these small edges how does a casino make money? The casino makes money because a person makes hundreds of these small bets at the appropriate disadvantage to allow them an equitable playing experience. The player just gets more play for his money. When the casino offers games with smaller edges the player experience feels more adversarial because the amount of time that the player plays is shorter. This has the direct result of those games being less popular because they don't represent a fair gamble.


Internet poker represents a very similar proposition for a losing player as playing a hand of blackjack in casino. The distinction is that the losing players faces two sources of disadvantage. You have the other players and the house rake. So for example in a sng a losing player may face a house rake of 10 percent and a disadvantage from the other players of 10 percent per dollar invested. These two sources of disadvantage make the experience for the losing player terrible and the experience for the winning player far more difficult.

2. Rakeback from the new reduced rake amount should be based on player balances. The good players and bad players both want low rake. The good player wants it so he can win more and the bad player wants it so that he has a better chance of winning. The incentive to play more for the good player is that with the reduced rake amount he can win more money. The thing is the sites don't want that profit to leave the site. This is why they are so concerned with offering really juicy games for the players. They know if that a players gets a large balance he has every incentive to cash it out. That's why they don't lower the rake. They know with low rake that the player gets his rakeback upfront and then cashes it out. With the VIP program they can delay those cashouts for as long as possible.

The way you stop the cashouts is you rake low and then base the rakeback amount on the players balances. This gives the grinder a direcent incentive to leave his money on the site as his capital.

I would structure the new system like this.

Rake

Sng Rake Micros: 3 percent of buy in
Sng Rake Medium: 2 percent of buy in
Sng Rake High: 1 percent of buy in

Cash game rake Micros: 2 percent of pot
Cash game rake Medium:1 percent pot
Cash game rake High: .50 percent of the pot

Rakeback

Balance of 500 dollars or less: 10 percent
Balance of 500-1000 dollars: 20 percent
Balance of 1000-5000: 30 percent
Balance of 5000-25000: 40 percent
Balance of 25000-100,000 60 percent
Balance of 100,000 to 300,000 80 percent
Balance above 300,000 98 percent

Quite an good idea, especially the rakeback structure. Seems like something intersting that hasn't been mentioned.

imo it's whether the rake is being reinvested.

we're effectively giving them a portion of our winnings in order to pay for their costs, but far more important for the long term, for both us and the site, is that they put this into advertising to new players.

if i rake $10k in a month and the poker site spends $500 on support costs and another $9,500 on advertising, that brings in fish who'll dump $30k, $15k of which is raked to the site and the other $15k is won by me, then that's a great ROI for me.

the concern is that the sites are just pocketing the money themselves to make a quick buck.

whether or not they do this should show based on which networks' growth over the years, or for party poker their annual report.

looking at the 2009 annual report (http://www.partygaming.com/prty/en/i...=latest_report) party raked $197m and spent $153.9m on costs (excluding depreciation of buildings, interest costs on loans), from a quick look over the report i cant see a decent breakdown of these costs but that helps to give a ballpark figure for what's happening.

those that have good business minds will re-invest that $9,500 into attracting fish, hoping that they'll make that $15k in rake mentioned above.

so i think we should more be looking out for which sites are re-investing this money into advertising etc and we can judge this based on those that have better growth rates (stripping out acqusitions) rather than those in decline, which presumably are either pocketing our rake or suck at marketing.

that's assuming though that we can get dumped money by the fish from our advertising so that it can both be a good ROI for us and the site. but so long as the human race like to gamble, then hopefully it will

just imo, maybe my thinking is a wrong

Hello, here is my contribution to the Rake problem, a comparison:

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/28...-6-max-946675/

bump

This is wrong. Take 2 zeroes off your estimate and you're closer. Operating costs for running servers are ~$12k for 60k users and the software is easy to make.

what happened with your open source software? Not seen much about it recently

Had to dump the avatar for a bit for recognition etc, as I'm doing a lot of transactions and stuff in the marketplace.

I'm still with you though and will have mine back up soon. It's kinda sick to look around the forums and see so many have them, a lot have not even posted in this thread. If I was a new player or new to the forums and came here I'd def be curious what the ruckus was about and...would learn about rake and it's affect. Might even write the site I'm playing at etc

Thanks again for making these and offering even that little bit of awareness. gl

EDIT: 8Nilor, if you can make me one with mine on top and a rake one on the bottom, like split or something, I'll run it right now. I would do it myself but honestly I spent like a half hour just trying to get my old avatar back and it's still not right. I could not get the forums to accept it for various reasons. I can donate like $5 for your time if you like. Thanks

WPEX is no longer rake free. For new players it is like any other site. For players grandfathered in from the old system you get 65% rake back. There is no longer enough traffic to bother playing there though.

I dunno..it wouldnt upload tho.

Thanks a lot for the jpeg...this avater is sick..in a few ways.

lol-edit: for some reason I am tired and read this as make it an animated gif with scrolling text.

Great thread, OP...rake is often overlooked in both live and online games. There should be a rake discount card or something for regulars.

A+ for this. I just made my own avatar, hope ya like...

wp, op.

Just been lookin at a rake-free site called betraiser poker, instead of rake they take 10% on cash-outs, this method makes so much sense.

Could do a mass move or mass advertising for/to a site like this, its in the netherlands and looks like it has some cosure licensing though only briefly looked at this

Anyway just thought this method of 10% cashout ticked all the boxes, fish would stay longer, lose slower, upswing more and pro's would be charged just 10% of their winnings, and sites could advertise with the income.

btw what hgappened to the 'community run poker room' idea after the thread was closed here? Are they still going ahead with this? And would that 10% on cashouts make more sense for advertising, security etc?

....well?