obvious solution: play less

I love how whenever someone makes a post like this complaining about high rake they are automatically a loser who deserves ridicule. I personally believe that the rake at most major sites could be cut by 30% or so without any major loss in revenue for the site.

Some games are worse than others in terms of rake though. I dont play cash games much anymore, but the rake is actually pretty bad if u dont have a rakebake deal or dont play enough volume to reach plat-plus at stars.

Rake on Mtt's is acceptable to me, 10% or less of your buyin gives you a whole tourneys worth of play, but still i could see it go lower.

The worst rake IMO is on STT's. The whole reason i stopped playing STT's is that my roi was only like 11% at the 27s and i just hated the idea that stars was making as much off my play as i am. STT's fee should be 5% not 10% that is a big problem.

Really the bottom line is that it costs stars less than $0.01 to run a tourney that makes them $100s. There is a lot of room for improvement in terms of the price we pay to play a game.

Remember, poker is a skill game. We are not gambling. There is no reason for the rake to be so high. Who decided that 5% was the magic number anyways? Why is there no room for discussion/negotiation here? I can go play any play money game for free so what is the rake for?

It obviously doesnt pay for the play of the game itself. It pays for your assurance that when you win you will actually get your $. So it costs $1 everytime i put in $10 just so i can be sure i will be paid when i win. Why on earth should it cost that much? Does it cost you 10% everytime you transfer $ to another player? All we are doing is playing a game and transfering $. Where is the high cost of providing us a place to play at? Advertising? Security? Customer support? I dont think so.

How did stars decide on thier rake/fee structure in the begining? It has stayed the same for as long as i can remember so obviously it is big enough for them to stay in business and make a HUGE profit. So what profit is TOO BIG?

Why does questioning the price you are getting to play make you a bad player? If you dont question the rake you are a moron.

That said, I will still play at stars as its my only source of income, but i will never be happy with the rake as it is. The rake is not unacceptable, but it is higher than optimal. I will deal with it for now as it seems there is nothing i can do about it if i wanna chase the fishes.

Stopped reading here.

You are basing how much rake you are willing to pay on how long you can play rather than how much you can make. That tells me all I need to know.

"You are basing how much rake you are willing to pay on how long you can play rather than how much you can make."

They are the same thing DUCY? Longer play means more hands means more of an edge. Of course roi is greater at MTTs.
Im sorry but i didnt think anyone here would need further expantion of that.

Actually, I did too.
Very few players make their choice of games or even sites based on the rake.
If Stars or FT or whatever other site reduced their rake by 30% their loss of revenue would be very close to that same 30%. They might attract some rake-aware and nitty players who to make up for some of that deficit though. So I guess it's possible that a 30% reduction of rake across the board at a given site would only lead to a 25% loss of revenue.

How anyone can think that a 30% cut in rake would not lead to a loss of revenue for that site is somewhat beyond me. You do realize that the site's make their revenue from the rake alone for the most part, right?

"Stopped reading here."

Why?
Oh wait, i see. A site would never grow their games 30% or more by cutting the rake 30%. That just impossible. No need to read further. You are so smart. Great post. Keep up the good work.

Hmmmm, never thought of it like that, good point.

"Very few players make their choice of games or even sites based on the rake."

So if tommorow stars became 30% cheaper you think they would not take a significant amount from the other sites?

Not to mention that the fish would still lose their $ it would just take longer.

What proof do you have that if a major site dropped its rake, they would not gain players?

And WSEX is not proof.

WSEX has no one there and even they had to raise their rake.

Pretty much every site has rakeback/rakeback equivalent, if they lowered the rake incentives would be the first thing to go, no thanks.

Why haven't you posted your PT screenshot yet?

"WSEX has no one there and even they had to raise their rake. "

wsex was not a major site that then dropped their rake. Its a completely different situation.

"Pretty much every site has rakeback/rakeback equivalent, if they lowered the rake incentives would be the first thing to go, no thanks."

I dont get y this would be a bad thing? Y do u need rakeback/fpps/ whatever if you are paying less rake to begin with? Wont they even out or better?

My whole point is everyone is accepting the current rake as at least "good enough," while no one is offering any proof that it is optimal, and anyone who questions the level of the rake is just a poor player and an idiot.

FYP

What I find very strange is that the sites do not try to compete with each other. The donks waffle on endlessly about rigged flops, but how often does anybody consider that there may actually be some kind of evil price fixing monopoly at work here? Based on the service they provide the amount they take in rake is just robbery IMO.

The statement "I personally believe that the rake at most major sites could be cut by 30% or so without any major loss in revenue for the site." may not quite be correct, but does anybody disagree with:

"I personally believe that the rake at most major sites could be cut by 90% and still leave a viable and profitable business for the site."

A simple comparison of with online MMORPG games makes it blindingly obvious the sites are making vastly more than they deserve or need. Think of all the skilled coders, artists, story developers, modelers, mods, etc, etc needed to make and run a modern MMORPG. If WOW wanted to use the same rippoff pricing model as poker sites do and considering the fact that they need to employ many times more skilled workers; I think a weekly subscription to WOW would be about $10,000!

Juk

Everybody seems to want to flame your post, but I for one think it was a good post and makes some good points.

Why the heck does everyone care so much about the profits of the sites??? Would everyone be happy to pay twice as much for petrol just to make sure we don't hurt the profits of the oil giants? WTF, who cares if the sites are forced to compete - it's WHY they are not competing that is the important thing!

Juk

I don't think anyone is anyone saying that less rake wouldn't be great. Of course we would love it if every site cut rake by 30%. Everyone is jumping on OP because of how he stated his opinion. Would he have made this post if he was better than a breakeven player? Probably not.

BTW. if fact, the rake is 10% - it's not 5%. Because if you put in 10 dollars and the fish 10 dollars then the rake is 1 dollar (what's 10% of your bet). It's even more when there's wider competition (but you get more money for your bet also).


then he should play tighter.

yes yes yes
Don't get me wrong. I would love to play rake-free. But I can (WPEX) and I don't. Why? Because they don't earn enough money to get the fish into the pond there...



profit that allows competition to gain an advantage.
As 100% of WPEX wasn't enough ... and you cannot rake less than 100% less ... I'm afraid the Stars rake structure is widely accepted. What's more: it's accepted by fish and that's what I really care. As long as I can beat the rake I don't care.


QFT

FYP.

Maybe some high-rollers could make it better but after all this could be bad for the games.

dude, they are competing. They are competing by getting the fish in. That's the deal. It's the most important part in this business and it's the core business. Not competing by price. do you chose your food by price or do you accept the price of bear and you just buy the one you like?

My belief is capitalism so I'm the last one who would protest against competition. But there are more important things that we should force the sites to compete in.

The rake will always be whatever people are prepared to pay.

I can sympathise with his point about being a 11% ROI winning player in STTs but being peeved that he had to pay the same as what he won in fees.

If the sites were to half the SNG entry fees like he suggested then perhaps this would again makes SNGs almost as profitable as cash games (for the top players). A quick peek at SharkScope shows that the high level turbo SNGs are not really profitable anymore with only a few having tiny ROIs (post-rake).

Juk

I agree with the original poster too. And, I'd like to add that I think it's ridiculous that the internet sites have a higher rake for an average sized pot then the Bellagio does. For $15-30 limit hold 'em, fulltilt takes a flat 5% up to $3 max. Bellagio has a stepped system of something like $1 at $30, $1 at $90, and so forth. Bellagio goes to $4 max, but that only happens for the large pots. On average, you're paying more on fulltilt. Also, Bellagio will cut the rake to $2 max for 5 handed play. Fulltilt still charges the $3 for 5 handed play. Finally, I'd just like to mention Borgata in AC charges a flat $10 per hour for $10-20 and they give you back $1 per hour of you have a comp card, which I believe is a better deal then the per pot rakes at Bellagio or on the internet sites...

I find it hard to believe an internet site has a higher cost of doing business than a B&M. I think WSEX never became popular because the UI was so horrible to use. I really wish a site with a decent UI would compete on rake.

agent87,

Do you realize that the Bellagio makes truckloads of money from the other games in the casino? While I don't have the books of any B&M casino on me, from my understanding, poker is essentially a loss-leader.

On the other hand, Full Tilt is only a poker room. Obviously, Full Tilt's overhead isn't what the Bellagio's is, but Full Tilt doesn't have acres of slot machines, either.

Ok first of all poker rooms in brick and mortar casinos are not "loss leaders". The profit produced is larger then the expense. Sure that space if occupied with slot machines or table games would make more money for the casino, it does not mean they are necessarily losing money by having such a venue.

There are suckers in poker just like in any game. I am sure that when these fish have losing sessions they don't hesistate to walk up to the blackjack or craps tables trying to recoup their losses. These are customers the casino would not have had the opportunity of making profit from, if it were not for the lure of a poker room.