The biggest leak in the poker ecology falls into the hands of the often unnecessary middle-man, the affiliate. The amount of money taken out of the poker ecology every day by affiliates, whilst difficult to estimate, is an astonishing figure.

Affiliates of course have their use, both for the players and for the sites. However, there are arguably many situations where their use is very limited.

Rakeback is not a secret any more. Players know sites give it, sites know players need it. Does there need to be a middleman to sort out "deals," rather than sites just being more realistic and giving a flat rakeback to either pros who apply to the site, or indeed, to everyone. In fact, at the point that every reg, and many amateurs, know what the deal is, is there even any need for rakeback at all? Can the site not then simplify by having lower rake? Yes, the site would lose in the specific case of players who were not previously accessing rakeback through an affiliate, but that category of player is surely rare in 2021. The poker ecology loses a whole lot more to the middleman who does very little, to gain very much.

Any site is worth examining, but let's take the case of GG. GG has a model which values marketing, which is the reason that they give a very large fraction of a very large rake to affiliates. Even when the affiliates inevitably strike a deal with players to split that comission, this still leaves them with needlessly large amounts of money for very little work.

If affiliating tomorrow became worth only 25% of what it is today, the poker world would not find itself without affiliates. Even if some of the bigger affiliates decided it wasn't worth their while (though I suspect that even 25% of the massive sums they earn is very much worth their while), then those spots would be filled quite willingly.

There is a worry whether the poker ecology can be sustained in the long run, and so surely the right move for the poker ecology right now would be to plug its biggest leak, the affiliate.

Your affiliate wouldnt give a **** about you if they wasnt getting paid off your gameplay.


All affiliates are cancer to the game


in before affiliates call me a hater

Sooooooo cut marketing, lower rake, and somehow that will mean more money for players? Pretty sure the purpose of marketing is to attract new customers/clients/players. Cutting it would mean fewer players. Cutting rake on fewer players would mean possibly going out of business. Gee, I just can’t figure out why poker sites wouldn’t support this!

Keep the same system, just lower the unecessary, often sickening, amounts of money that affiliates recieve.

I don’t think it’s “sickening” amounts but even if it is, it comes out of the marketing budget of the business. You want to make an omelette? You have to break a few eggs. But you sound like you want an omelette and a full carton of eggs still.

look at it this way, gg poker is taking over right now despite having the highest rake in the land

it's because they do better marketing than other places, pure and simple

affiliates are risk free marketing and that's why it's always going to exist

Affiliates aren't as much as thing as they used to be. If they didn't add value, they wouldn't be used. If RIO wants to grab players from other sites, they need to get in front of those players, and affiliates can assist with this.

You might ask the same question "why do any marketing, everybody who plays poker will find their way to their preferred site"... this is ... not the case either.

My 10-foot pole will not be in use for this topic .. but I am going to call Nationwide and use my 15 minutes to tell them to drop Peyton Manning so we can all save $15 on our car insurance. (Did I get that right?) GL

The same can be said about stables. They take out a huge amount of money. They also add players to the game that would otherwise never really started playing poker. Especially in micro-low stakes its a huge issue. Lowering rake would have no impact on that.

Yeah, probably not. It's not even available in countries where Stars can be played on.

What stables are bringing new players, who never really started playing poker, into the game?

Smart Spin and all the other big spin stables
Dont know much about MTTs but arent there stables that offer a monthly wage for playing aswell?

lol a 9/7 guy trying to grind $4 an hour in bulgaria isnt exactly good for the poker economy, no way are those big stables giving stakes to "new players"

If rake was lowered (as you suggest), the games would just move back to the same equilibrium they are at currently. It's a race to the bottom of who's prepared to put in the most work to grind for the lowest hourly.

Right now, there are plenty of people who seem happy to grind out $1/hr and clearly put in loads of studying time off the tables as well.

Kahntrutahn is a affiliate and he also has some, let's hear him weigh in

2010 called, and wants its thread back.

Seriously, though, the timing on this seems very odd, given how much smaller the affiliate business is these days. But it seems you're mostly talking about one site.

How much do they make, and what do they do?

No more true as a blanket statement now than it was every other time you posted it. There are plenty of shitty affiliates, no doubt, and I'm sorry you seem to have been burned by many of them, but that doesn't mean they're all the same.

didn't bother to read 'just another great idea' thread, but did someone already say 'if the room is good, ppl will stream and tell their friends, and we don't need any marketing at all'?

anyhow ... we have a great rigged debate thread, why can't we collect all 'how to run a poker room' threads in one place too?

Poker is dying, less because of affiliates and more because of the game it is. It's a card game and not your fun type of interactive game where you play with your friends. It's a cutthroat game where you're searching for weaknesses in someone's ability to maximize your gains.

It will always have an expiration date.

It's the old zoomers vs boomers debate. Card games are a thing of my grandparents. Youth is not interested in cards the same way as my youth.

I am nicer than you as nearly all of the posts in threads like this make me think of the time when Obama got re-elected, so they are only 8-9 years out of date from my perspective. That is other than the guy posting about 9/7 grinders making money - that would be more around when Obama was first elected!

We may as well add that we need to get rid of coaching sites, and HUDs and database programs, because those kill the games. Bring back the drink icons at the table like Paradise Poker had!

There have been some very insightful points made in this thread:
1. "It's a race to the bottom of who's prepared to put in the most work to grind for the lowest hourly." Nailed it. And some of those people have a very low cost of living.
2. "GG has a model which values marketing." Exactly. And they've done something in three years that everyone thought impossible.
3. "It's a card game and not your fun type of interactive game where you play with your friends." Nailed it. Right through my heart (as a poker lover) but... nailed it. Fortnite and Hearthstone are free, folks.

They are indeed free, just as play money poker is kind of free. Some people will play real money poker that are not interested in winning play chips, and while the industry matured (though it certainly got a Covid bump) - the gambling appeal is still there for a lot of people. If you doubt that then open up the Stars casino and watch some live games at times, and as you see $10,000-50,000 (100+ players playing at the same table) bet on Baccarat each hand, you can ask how many of those people would rather be playing fortnite for free.

I though you can vpn gg and they just allow it? It was mentioned in the gg thread. Majority of the players vpn to be exact.

Love it when a former badreg keeps saying sheet like this. They can't make any money from it so they decide to start a campaign yeah poker is dead DEAD I SAY. It's been dead like ten years now am I right? And the mtts are running bigger and bigger prizepools constantly. Weird.

So, propose how you believe the game continues to have a life shelf life in the coming years.

If you're talking short term in places like the USA, ok.

The game will dry quicker than you suspect.

The only thing poker has going for it is the perception of gambling. Your view seems to be up in the clouds.

It is in the operators interest to figure out a way for them to update their product to keep it relatively current. Ten years ago (when people were making posts just like yours) there were no games played on mobile devices, there was no Zoom Poker or Spins. There were barely any PKOs. There were a lot more pure rakeback/SNE style grinders (which I would say was a bigger drain than affiliates and other things). There were no re-entries or late entry.

The games and how they are played changed in ways that nobody in 2010 would have easily predicted, and likewise that will happen in the future. Thing is, posts like yours are time stamped hard in today just as the ones made about poker dying after Black Friday were time stamped in that era.

re: vpning, any site that cares in the slightest about that can detect it, there are far more nefarious methods to spoof location though but it's still possible to get caught

#RememberTheVayo