Hi Everyone:

Off the top of my head and without giving my reasons, these are the fixes I think might work and would recommend to the poker sites:

1. Limit multi-tabling.

2. End most of the bonuses for playing lots of hands.

3. At the smallest stakes, leave the rake the same.

4. At the next tier, but still small stakes, raise the rake.

5. At the next tier and all higher games (except perhaps the biggest games), lower the rake significantly.

6. At limit games, especially limit hold 'em and seven-card stud, lower the rake even more.

All comments are welcome (and I'm not completely sure that this is the best approach).

Best wishes,
Mason

poker is saved, thanks Mason!

trickle down economics

yep raise the rake at ssnl, make it so that even sauce cant beat those games wo having a good whale at the table.

Option to change your screen name each day.

I think the best starting point for any solution would be to have the biggest online poker site run by an organization that has integrity and good intentions for the players and game.

These are all great, well thought out changes, however in order for the game to thrive again IMO this needs to be in combination with management changes whether it's ownership or structural hierarchy. There should be trustworthy people implementing these changes, with 110% transparency. Everyone can see the snakes in the grass now and that is just as big a problem IMO

A table cap would be good for the ecosystem. But raising the rake for small stakes and decreasing the rake for higher stakes makes little sense to me . The effective rake at small stakes is double to quintuple that of higher stakes.

Perhaps for higher stakes stars could re-implement rake back for 5-10+ that would be nice. However it's apparently stars along with many other of the poker sites would prefer recreational players to play as low of stakes as possible so they play more hands long-term and rake more. So I doubt they'll ever increase the rewards in any way of 5-10+. Maybe soon 3-6 and 2-4 won't have rake back at this rate.

Microgaming already has a screen name change every 1k hands or after 30 days in case you haven´t played 1k hands in that time period.

How is raising the rake at the higher small stakes possibly a good idea? That's where most people start of at. Do we not want them to move up and help feed the midstakes games. No new money comes into the midstakes games and they will die off completely therefore the site will make even less money. If anything should lower rake at all small stakes giving people a chance to move up and keep the games active.

"4. At the next tier, but still small stakes, raise the rake."


and exactly what damn stakes is this supposed to be? Because I can tell you that today the stakes which are the biggest rake traps and least beatable of all is precisely "next tier, but still small stakes"

whatever that is

omg stick it to the middle class

mason gotta be trolling

Do you have much experience of playing online, specifically at micro- and small-stakes? Or at least, do you have much of an idea how the games play, what the rake levels are, what the "bonuses" consist of, what the Amaya/Player split of depositing money is, what percentage of players turn a profit at each tier, what the upper range of that profit is, AND how each of those factors have changed over time? It would not appear so.

These (at least 2, 3, 4 and to some extent 5) are not fixes in any sense of the word. They are however the path that Amaya have been travelling down for quite some time.

Regarding your points:

2. It is advisable to stay away from terms such as "bonuses" and "rewards" because it leads to a misunderstanding of what they effectively are, and it also plays into the hands of Amaya, allowing them to misrepresent what they really are. If your intention is simply to restrict multi-tabling (a fair, but not innovative, suggestion) then your first point covers that. If your intention is to raise the rake, then your fourth point covers that.

3. At the smallest stakes, the rake is astronomically high, with only a very small percentage of players able to make a profit. Amaya's percentage take of money deposited and used to play at the micro-stakes is almost certainly in the very high 90's percentage-wise, and has steadily risen over time.

4. The rake at small stakes is already at a point where Amaya take well over 90% of money wagered, by my calculations (included in a post last year.) Your suggestion to do away with bonuses AND further increase the rake would all but kill the games, as they would almost literally (using the original definition of the word) be unbeatable. I say this as someone who has played these games for ten years, having racked up more hands than anyone else online at these stakes (not a brag ) most likely.

5. I'm not sure lowering the rake at the higher stakes games, where its impact is far less, will have too drastic an effect. It could stop a small amount of "trickle down" but no one would be playing the smaller stakes games anyway so it's probably moot.

In short, and sorry to be blunt- but you did say you welcomed all comments- the majority of these suggestions are ridiculous. If they were suggested by an unknown poster they would be ridiculed or ignored, and the one potentially credible suggestion (I'm not going to cover point (6) as I'm not best qualified) has been suggested many, many times over. I don't expect a single reputable poster to speak positively of your post.

Points 2-5 are actually what one would expect to read on Negreanu's blog, a Lee Jones' post or a Hollreiser press report in their apparent attempt to kill off online poker.

id like to hear reasoning for raising rake a ssnl. almost certian this is a troll?!?!?!


best wishes
fishfood69er

There have been some thoughts that notes are still sticky so it doesnt help much.

So the 24 tabling nits have to play actually? I dont think the bumhunters and scripters multitable that much. Could be I'm so wrong though. Nits are just as bad the fish.

Make scripting harder. Party style solution where you cant see opponents until you are in the hand. And after that you cant change the seat at the table pls.

Actual solution:

3. At the smallest stakes, leave the rake the same.

4. At the next tier, but still small stakes, lower the rake.

5. At the next tier and all higher games (and definitely the biggest games), increase the rake significantly.

Table caps that increase as a player moves up in stakes is a good idea.

4 for the lowest, 6 for the next and so on. At 100-200NL the cap could be 16 and make that the highest.

I agree with LHE being lowered in a lot of spots.

Rake should be 3% max at the lowest stakes and move up to a max of 5%.


Ultimately though the problem is that Amaya is hell bent on moving Poker players (recs) into other verticals that have a very low probability of the players been winners.

Stars argument is that these same players have even less of a chance now... and tbh I don't disagree. That's why they need to remove scripts at all costs... even if it means giving up things like HUDS/Seat selection or allowing SN changes. If these things were removed rec players would have a chance and wouldn't be switching to other game types as much as they have. Stars knows this and keeps the same horrible environment to entice rec players to try other game types..... and in increasing numbers they are just moving sites which is a gamble Stars seems willing to take to increase the margins on deposits.

Ask any player in 2012 who was hell bent on keeping his script/hud and ask him if he'd rather have that ammo in todays climate or if he would have given up his ammo but enjoy games of prior years.

Ultimately nothing will change until Amaya either sells the company or profits shrink by 20%.

So the solution is to piss off everyone? Raise the rake to make it literally impossible to profit at small stakes considering it's already something like 20bb/100+ for PLO and pretty high/crazy for NL. High stakes players here, we'll lower your rake to make up for the $100k+ in equity we swept out from under your feet with that whole SNE thing, cheers!

oh also anyone who likes playing multiple tables at a time, **** you too!


The only thing that made sense was lowering rake at limit / stud games , lowering rake at high stakes sure but don't do it as a 'justification' for them screwing over highstakes already by removing SNE / removing rakeback at high stakes. It's barely even a bandaid.

How much did Stars pay you for that post, Mason?!
If i wouldve written that OP my account would be lifetimebanned and this thread closed for "massive trolling".

You lay out 6 points of which about 3.5 are absolutely ridiculous and then you have teh audacity not even to explain WHY you want 4. for example

Wut?

Kindest regards,
Donnie

I don't know how anyone could seriously suggest raising the rake at microstakes games as a way to 'fix' what is wrong with online poker.

These suggestions are completely backwards, it should be lowered at microstakes and raised at higher stakes.

Now I'm definitely not a high stakes player and cannot attest to how the rake changes the high stakes games (say $5/$10 and above) but I struggle to see how raising the rake would change it compared to how things are currently at microstakes games.

Take the rake cap across the tables at Pokerstars.

At the lowest stakes (1c/2c) we have 3.5% rake which may be the lowest percentage but with a $0.30 cap. This is a 15BB rake.

Moving up slightly to 10c/25c we have a 4.5% rake but with 5+ people dealt into the hand the rake cap is $2 which is 8BB.

Getting into midstakes $1/$2 is a 5% rake capped $2.75 which is 1.37ishBB

At $5/$10 it is 4.5% capped at $3 which is 1/3 of a BB.

At the highest stakes $100/$200+ it is 4.5% capped at $5 which is 1/20 of a BB.

As I said previously I am not able to say how a rake change would affect the high stakes games but surely upping the rake at the higher levels so it's only 1/10 of a blind at the highest stakes or 2/3 of a blind at $5/$10 makes more sense than ramping up the rake at stakes where it is already considerably eating into people's winrates.

I suppose this is just from a 'keep the games (and the dream) alive' standpoint rather than a 'let's make the most money possible' standpoint.

https://www.pokerstars.uk/poker/room/rake/

and it's filled with bots you can't track at the lowest limit.

People that play on stars exclusively are completely oblivious. I moved to stars 30k hands ago and i don't understand any of the constant whine, other than the hatred of having 5 Russians per table, the site has extremely low rake and a large influx of whales.

If you have issues beating your limits because of the rake on stars, work on your game! There's people beating bot infested games that have very little fish with 4bb+ extra in rake paid on the other sites.

Everyone's issue with SNE was that they were promised X next year for doing Y this year. When they did Y, they didn't receive X as promised. The issue is that PokerStars blatantly lied to their customer base.

Which part of the OP addresses this issue?

And +1 to MeleaB's post.

As someone who began their poker career when the biggest question in determining the most profitable game to play was "is the 7 stud hi/lo game declare or not?", your advocacy for bringing back stud games is misplaced imo. If stud becomes the most profitable game, the next generation of internet poker playing wizards will, imo, solve and kill that game in no time. Any limit game is easier to solve and there is just too much information available in stud games.

These are good suggestions but I'm afraid the common house reg is too set in his ways of infinite-tabling small stakes poker for microprofits to understand why.