ummm.. I think there is a site thats still pretty much rake free dunno how popular it is though thats why im hesitant to sign up at it.

Are you referring to PayNoRake?

Pretty much dead last time I saw. Beside the very low traffic, software was absolutely terrible (I guess it would be pretty uggly even if we were back in the nineties, past century... lol).

Wonder if it got better since then...

I think it would be dificult to sostain a opker site with advertisement but i could make rake to be smaller maybe?

I think rake is a necessary evil, but I do see an opportunity for it to be substantially reduced - why charge $9 for a $100 SNG and 10 cents for a $1 SNG when they require the same amount of 'effort' from the site.

So something along the lines of capping cash games at 5% up to $1 and all SNG/MTT entry fees at $1 seems to be a major niche that could work.

I think the betraiser model of taking a cut of players withdrawals is far better.

The problem is most casual players have no idea how much the rake is costing them so they're going to play at a site that is raking the crap out of them while forcefeeding them TV adverts, big name pros, and lottery style promotions to win Lamborghinis rather than play at a no frills site that is taking little or nothing from them.

are they playing for money, though?

the solution is simple... offer rake free for cash games and charge rake for sng's and mtt's or the other way around.

This gives the site a budget to attract fish and you will get all the grinders playing the free rake. Naturally the fish are going to play in both the cash and the tournies and there will be a percentage of grinders feeding off the fish even if they have to pay rake.

Another solution:

Pokerroom creates payment solution that charges 3% as is already done by many payment providers, then only allow this one payment solution.

This gives the poker-room a budget.

I think if we ever saw a wikipedia-type project with rakefree poker (assuming it had good software), i'm pretty sure it would destroy full tilt and pokerstars. The only reason (as mentioned by others) that poker sites can charge so high rake, is because most players aren't aware of what's going on. It's a classic case of asymmetric information. But i hope a rakefree poker site will happen some day. Why did Bill Gates and Warren Buffet have to play bridge and not poker?

That is really interesting why there is not any independent online pokerroom trying to do business with lower rake than the standard 5%? Why they all are thinking the only way to operate is to have a 5% rake??? Why not 1% rake, or 2% rake, or 3% rake? 1% rake (both for cash games and tournament fees) would be really a fair share for the online pokerroom, because obv nothing is totally free. And even that way they can still make some nice profits. And that way there is not needed to have these ridiculous rakeback offers, because players are not going to pay huge sums for rake.

I can understand that live casinos need to have higher rake, something like 5% for cash games and 10% for tournament fees, as they are having much higher costs than online pokerrooms.

not any more, they shut down recently. http://www.betastic.co.uk/gambling_n...oker-sites.htm

This!

Rake is needed. (But it can and should be lower )

I want site security, I want the site to bring in fish to pay my bills, I want to be able to get hold of support if I need to.
I realise that I have to pay for this service.

I do however think that there is room for a little competition on how much I pay for this service. We do have some competition at the moment by way of rakeback, vip programs and bonuses, which if you are a pro are essentially just lowering the price of the service you are receiving; Although they are obviously at least partly designed to lure fish not give pros a discount.

I saw an idea mentioned on here a while ago that suggested a cap on the amount of rake one individual pays in a month. I liked the idea, like say you pay normal rake in a month but anything over a certain amount (say $1000 or something) you get refunded at the end of the month.

There is still room for some normal promotions including rakeback and bonuses etc.
For example you have a player who rakes $2500 a month. He would receive $1500 back at the end of the month. He has still paid $1000 to the site in rake which he could earn rakeback on or work off bonuses with etc.

It's late and I'm not sure if this has tailed off a bit so I'll stop and go to bed

Just my 2 cents of rake.

I don't think rake free is realistic because the site does need income to cover expenses. What I would love to see is a site with low rake which allows them to make a profit but at the same time isn't excessive.

I imagine a site could cap rake at $1 for cash game pots as well as sng/tournament fees and still make a profit. Obviously they could skip rakeback / point promotions.

I'm not sure this is a good option.

Fish like promotions. The only people who would want lower rake in exchange for getting rid of all promotions are players like us who know they are currently being ripped off, players for whom the main goal is to make money playing poker. Fish want entertainment and promos where they can luckbox a car and get a bonus every month etc.

But I know what you mean. Surely they could still afford to give promos with a much lower rake.
I would actually be very interested to know the sort of profit margins the big sites are getting. Are we all expecting too much?
No! Now I'm definately too tired to make sense.

Good night

So many posts saying 'they need to cover expenses' for 'security' and 'advertising' but every other business in the world seems to manage these ok without fleecing most of it's regulars for $50k+ a year.

Everyone moans about PTR, bumhunters and training sites but the poker rooms ship so much freakin money out of the community that it's eventually gonna kill the games. And the only reason the rake is so extortionate is most grinders haven't got a clue how much is raked over a year and the affiliates rake for doing all of f*** all is just grotesque.

There are so many pro poker players now that with groups and donations I can't imagine it being that difficult to start a reasonably priced site, run well and fairly, with propper security and ad campaigns. Like any other business.

+ ∞

Another alternative to rake would be time based payments, lets say for example $0.02 for every minute you are playing at a real money cash/tournament table.

Tough decision? Your call, raise, and fold buttons will resume functionality in 30 seconds after a quick message from Honda.

OP would you put time money and effort into a site that isnt going to make you money?

The economic model is called the marketplace effect. The games happen on PS and FTp (60% of the total volume) because they are there. Everyone knows to go there to play. Nobody else can generate traffic to compete.

Seriously, if the PPA got behind a site and it was player owned, it would work. It would dominate the market.

Consider rake a subsidy that you pay to convince recreational players to play against you. Poker sites require that you pay through them, likely because you are not charismatic enough to convince people to play with you (if you were, you'd be in a home game already). These sites are good at what they do, and while you might consider a $50 promotion as some percentage of rakeback, a recreational player will make it their goal to win that bonus, and will donk off hundreds of dollars in the process. They will be happy to have "won" their stellar reward or fast 50, and you will be happy that they are playing.

$50k a year good? $100k a year good? Obsene amount of money to be taking from one customer, I could get a full-time lawyer to negotiate home games for that. The fact that I PTR competant players every day and they are nearly always stuck thousands says to me rake is too high, who the f*** is gonna start playing, or continue playing, or invite friends when good, solid players (not the best of course) struggle to get close to breaking even. Just hope poker doesn't have to die on it's arse before sites will take notice

I think rake-free poker would be seen through facebook with Google running the ads on it. With facebook getting huge traffic all they have to do is allow micro transactions and man people would never leave facebook ever! Not to mention facebook already has it's own poker app might as well make it legit. Just imagine all the fish that see's on their facebook feed "John just made 300$ on Facebook poker" and they think damn I can do that too and deposits money.

Although I'll admit to not having any hard evidence, which means I'm speculating like the rest of you, I suspect that some of you are grossly underestimating what it costs to run a poker site and/or severely overestimating the revenue that advertising would bring.

FYT.

And the answer is, seeing as the last 3 or 4 have either had very mediocre results or failed altogether, probably not any time soon.

I completely agree. Poker is a very very expensive business to run, and with all the laws out there it is not easy to live only on advertising. Not to talk about the fact that if you want to make some serious advertising you most likely have to pay for it, and that means more costs.

In the end, free rake is another promotional tool just like bonuses, and the poker rooms that offer it all have incomes form other poker rooms or casinos.

With online poker players becoming more everyday I think free rake is going to disappear: if you are a poker room and don't have the need to "lure" more players in, why in the world should you settle for a business model that make you earn less money?

Is anyone here actually saying that 50k or 100k is good? I didn't.

I don't disagree with you about the amount of rake. I think it is too high, but rake free is not a good solution imo. Some rake is needed for costs.

That's why I suggested something like a rake cap per customer per month. (Not my idea originally but I liked it).

Also this is probably true. It's hard to know without having access to the books of a big site like stars though.