Remove rake, put in ads.

If only they would care

warmest regards

Would very much get behind #6.

Amaya definitely wont

Since you asking so nicely:

Last time i checked my script wasnt making decisions for me - the only thing it assures is a nice seat. Regarding the recreational player it doesnt matter for him if i sit on his left, or IGOR or JUAN.
The problem for the recreational player and his increasing lossrate isnt my hud or my script, it's IGOR and JUAN. When i started grinding in 2008 there was neither IGOR nor JUAN. There were Peter, Thomas, Christian etc. and they all sacrificed their careers to play poker professionally. For each of them there were 100s or even 1000s of funplayers who didnt sacrificed their career, school, uni for poker - this was a healthy ratio. Now if you bomb poker education into 3rd world countries where a doctor makes 700 a month what could go wrong?!

So im telling you once again, neither superhuds or seatingscripts are the problem. They are the symptoms of an industry that expanded into certain areas of the world w/o analysing longterm impact and therefore ultimatively and forever destroyed healthy and natural reg to funplayer ratios.

It is wat it is but blaming scripts or huds for increasing lossrates of fish is laughable at best. They lose bc regulars are too strong and too many

Any solution that get's more players playing stud 8 is a great solution!!!!!!!!!

One idea that I had that seemed pretty reasonable: Allow players to play as many tables at a time as they wish, but only award FPPs for one of those tables.

this is a good idea, but is there a way to tweak it so it marginally benefits high stakes players at the expense of many more low stakes players?

Mason trolling 2p2 right now?

Just limit the tables, poker is saved

3) Close site.

1. Fine. But I'm not sure you're aware that due to the games evolving, 20+ tabling isn't really a thing anymore

2. Not good. You could argue that offering 70% rb for small/mid stakes regs grinding millions of hands/year would make the games far too reg heavy and mechanical. But things like stellar rewards and even the thought of reaching Supernova encouraged recreational players to play more which is what everyone wants.

3. Probably fine. Doubt the health of the nano stakes will change much with with a slight rake increase or a decrease.

4. Absolutely horrible. small stakes cash players have been at the sharp end of the changes implemented by Pokerstars. Another rake increase there is so uncalled for.

5. Fine. There's no real reason for a poker player to be against a rake decrease

6. An absolute must. I'm sure there's many people taking poker seriously/semi-seriously that would love to play and learn Seven-card stud, but they don't want to start games due to rake in limit games being so high. And I'm sure there's lots of fun players that would like to play it but because there's no games running (because people who are aware of how much rake effects winnings don't play among themselves) they play something else instead.

Hi Everyone:

I wanted to see some response first before I came back with some of my reasons for the suggestions I made.

First, one of the problems we at Two Plus Two Management see, and as you'll see below, we've been around for a long time, is that these small stakes games are highly populated by strong/professional type players. So the idea is to get them to move to higher limits where if they're really good players they'll still be able to win but will now have to deal with the natural fluctuations of poker. Thus there should be incentives to get them to move up -- Points Nos. 1, 2, 4, and 5.

There's also a little history here. This idea is not original with me but is actually the way Las Vegas poker use to be (but the reasons for it were probably different but I believe it did have some of the same effect).

When I first moved to Las Vegas in 1987 the predominate game was seven-card stud and the most widely spread for of this game was $1-$4 limit. The game was played as follows. There was no ante, there was a 50 cent bring-in for the lowest upcard, and the max rake was $4. All other poker games in town had a max $2 rake. So if you wanted to play $15-$30 stud the rake was $2 and if you wanted to play any limit hold 'em game the rake was $2. Thus the $1-$4 stud game was the "tourist" game and the more regular/professional type players virtually never played it.

As for Point No. 6, I just happen to address this idea in this month's Publisher's Note in our Two Plus Two Online Poker Strategy Magazine where I talk about the "sweet spot" of poker games. You can find it here:

http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/issue141/

along with the rest of our excellent magazine.

Best wishes,
Mason

Mason with the brilliant set up to plug the 2+2 magazine ha.

let's aside, that you not really know, what a 3rd world country is, you're right with your point, that 10 lowstakes regs take away the 'job' of a 1st world poker-pro (or whatever ratio). But thinking you have the digging rights, b/c you came here first, is a bit naive, especially given the fact that we have a huge boom in countries with lower income.

while you're right, that HUDs and scripts are 'symptoms', i wouldn't rule out, that they are a part of a bigger problem. so thinking the global poker market would be better, w/o the expansion to countries like Russia or Brazil is a long stretch, since they also bring in tons of deposits.

obviously this is the key and rake and or bonuses are less relevant, if you have a good or even great ration. so limiting the numbers of tables - which i personally think will definitely be a topic for PS at some point - should fix this issue, since it would help to create a solid foundation of the money pyramid


@ Masons rescue plan .... 1 and 2 seems to be a popular and smart choice, but since those changes would drastically effect the landscape (of PS), speculations about rake are a bit naive imo.

Thank you for making online poker great again

You missed out #7 vote trump

?

Why not just let DN create some extra revenue $5 at a time and then lower the rake across the board.

You may have been around a long time, but, based off of your posts, you really don't appear to understand the current environment. As mentioned in my previous post, your suggested changes won't have your desired effect. They would simply kill the games. Traffic would rapidly diminish even further and few tables at any of the stakes would run.

Surely you are aware that these games are raked to death already? What you're proposing would mean that anything running below midstakes would be unbeatable. Amaya would take close to 100% of all deposits used to play these games, and those deposits themselves would be far smaller than they already currently are. Imagine if the Vegas games you talked about were raked so high that no one could beat them- would that be good for the health of the game? Because that's precisely what you're situation you'd be creating.

You're also basically echoing the common adage frequently used by inexperienced players on this forum whenever negative changes are made: "Get better, move up." There are some very good players at the small stakes, but everyone has a ceiling to their potential (speaking now as a maths school teacher of several years, before commencing on my poker profession.) Few would have the ability to survive higher up, and those that could typically do so anyway.

For a Pokersite to be successful in this environment, I would say two of the main areas of focus needs to be on ensuring the games remain beatable (for some, at least) and on the security/integrity of the game, including tackling the ever-worrying issues of AI software. (Incidentally, my concerns in these two specific areas are what caused me to retire from Stars and return to the US at the end of last year.)

players won't move up in stakes when they dont have a valid opportunity to rebuild the roll after an unsuccesful shot 1-2 limits down, they're not that dumb and irresponsible.

it would just cage the vest majority of the field to the smallest stakes, even if theyre somewhat competent. you dont realise how massive of a roll a player need to move up to midstakes in this system, and how hard it would be to achive that kind of roll if you increase rake on the road upwards.

this move could make more people quit poker than banning a country.

Hi enzet:

Won't the games 1-2 limits down now be easier if there are less pro type players in them? And if this is the case, even if they're not long term winners, the recreational type player should have more winning sessions which should encourage some of them to take shots at higher games. And while I don't play on the Internet, I have observed this sort of thing for over 30 years in public cardrooms for over 30 years.

I have a very good understanding of what the required bankrolls are. In fact, I'm essentially the first one to write accurately about them. See my book Gambling Theory and Other Topics which was first published in 1987.

This is your opinion, and perhaps you're correct. I don't know about a country, but do agree that any sudden change can have the potential to disrupt things. Also, this is actually a much more complicated issue than what I have presented, and consider my proposal to be at best only a starting point. That's why I originally posted it without giving any reasons.

But one thing for sure, and I think you'll agree, is that the games are now contracting, and it's my opinion that this contraction will continue and it's my suspicion you'll agree with this.

Best wishes,
Mason

What about the predatory environment caused by scripts that drove away many recs and specifically a few large whales that were keeping the ecosystem alive?

Your description of which stakes you are talking about is a bit vague so some of my assumptions about what games you are talking about might be a bit off, but for the most part I agree with what you are saying.

1. I don't agree with a table cap across the board, what should be limited is the number of full time professionals playing micro stakes games which makes it tough for new players just starting out to have any chance of beating those games, this is before factoring in the ridiculous rake. I imagine that a cap of 4 or 6 tables at .5/.10 and lower would do wonders for those games.

2. These are not bonuses, they are rebates.

3. Micro players are definitely currently getting rake raped, micro PLO players (.01/.02 - .10/.25) pay upwards of 17bb/100 in rake. I dont believe anyone at any stakes should have >3bb/100 taken out of the pot, afaik the only site/network that shares this sentiment is Microgaming. I would actually encourage anyone who is currently playing micros to shift 100% of their play to the network for the fairest environment.

4. The people who play .25/.50 - 2.5/5 are by far the players who get rake raped the most, relative to the amount of "free money" given away by recreationals, these are the stakes that should be last in line for rake increases and first in line for rake decrease.

5. If any rake increases happen, they should happen at 5/10 or higher, this is assuming player rewards have not already been entirely removed from these games... LoL

6. Agree

Also split pots in big bet games should never be raked or at the very least capped at no more than 1bb across all stakes, and severely reduced in limit games. You should never be able to make the nuts and end up losing money in the hand.

softer games with higher rake can very well be less profitable than a normal game with small rake, i dont think anyone has a formula to estimate this kind of math.

to back up my opinion, ipoker increased rake cap on the small-mid stakes from 3€ to 4€ (4.5usd - absurd!) and the games pretty much dried up in a couple of months and are still dead compared to last year.

---o---

however i do agree on limiting multitabling options could help the game, or lets say you can 3-4 tabling zoom (but not singletabling, or 2-tabling) if you have a grinder mentality and share the pool with your type of guys for lower rake.

and on regular tables you can play in 1-8(6) tables, but cannot mix them with zoom tables.

I agree that Amaya is traveling down this path, but they are not doing it in a balanced way. That is they are not attempting to find the "sweet spot" that my Publisher's Note talks about, or perhaps they just don't have a good understanding of this idea.

Would it make you feel better if we called them bananas? Also, if a suggestion is not innovative that doesn't mean it's not a good suggestion. In addition, my purpose is not to raise the overall rake. My purpose is to adjust the rake so that the idea of the "sweet spot" can be hit easier. And keep in mind that the sweet spot is determined by a number of things including the skill level of the majority of the players in the game.

Let me give you a very different example. If you talk to the typical person who plays live in both California and Nevada, he'll tell you that the rake in California is much higher than Nevada. But is it really? In California, there have always been (at least there use to be) a bunch of props playing whose salary essentially meant they played rake free. So you had a situation where some people, the customers, paid an extremely high rake, while others, the props, paid essentially no rake at all.

In poker games, if you have no new players coming in, then the rake will eventually get 100 percent of the money. Also, when you look at the history of poker, rake at the smallest games has always been very high while the skill level of the majority of the players has been low. While at the highest stakes, the skill level of the large majority of the players has been very high while the rake has been (relatively) low. What I think is different now is that the rake at essentially all games has gone up a lot over the years and in my opinion is a contributor to the contraction of poker. My proposal attempts to address some of that by lowering the rake in many games.

Even though you're repeating yourself a little, I'm sure what you're saying is essentially correct. But you have to understand that something very unexpected happened in poker and that was a great poker boom began in 2003 with a massive influx of people who were mostly interested in playing no-limit hold 'em. In my opinion, there was no way this equilibrium could last and you're seeing the contraction now. So when you say that my suggestions "would all but kill the games," isn't that happening anyway?

You may be right. But the idea is to encourage at least some of the better players to move up.

Your comments are fine. When I come out with something controversial I expect there to be vigorous debate, and that's what these forums are for.

Don't compare me to Negreanu or Jones. While 2+2 does make money through advertising revenue, I'm not on anyone's payroll and any ideas I post are strictly my own.

Best wishes,
Mason