PLO is a different game from no-limit hold 'em and I agree that the rake in your example should be lower.

Well, in some ways yes. Poker is a game that has a "sweet spot." This means that an expert player should expect to do well over a moderately long period of time but will certainly fluctuate in the short run. But when you allow that expert to play a very large number of hands at smaller stakes where he can now essentially expect to make the same amount of money but with essentially no fluctuations, the sweet spot will be missed. (See my Publisher's Note in this month Two Plus Two Online Poker Strategy Magazine for more discussion.

I expected to have responses like this and I also respect this opinion. But the problem is that poker is contracting and in time I believe much of it will go away. So something needs to be done now.

As for the limit games, it's easier to hit the sweet spot so encouraging more play there should help with solving the contraction problem. Of course, these are different games with different skill sets, so some of you who make the switch may find the going a little tough at first. But expert players can do quite well at them.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi krcmdc:

No part does. But I have addressed this in other places and agree that PokerStars was wrong in their actions. What I'm trying to do is to address the general contraction of poker and it would have happened regardless of whether you're happy with PokerStars or not.

If you think this, your understanding of seven-card stud is way off. For example, with the right upcards out, the UTG player in a full ring game could have a raising range that approaches 100 percent. With a different set of upcards his raising range could be very narrow.

You think so. Here's a quote from page 86 of Philip Newal's book Further Limit Hold 'em:

And of course there are many more multiway pots at limit hold 'em than no-limit hold 'em, especially six max.

Best wishes,
Mason

1. MeleaB for us president

+1 This post wins the thread so far.

If sites care about the survival of mid to high stakes, which is debatable, they should take steps to improve the player experience suggested in category #1 at the micro stakes. This would hopefully feed more players into category #4 the midstakes and so forth up to #5 the high stakes.

SeaKing is right about #4, the midstakes are being raked the most right now relative to the amount of "free money" being donated by the weaker players and a large part of that problem is not enough players are moving up from the micros.

Mason, your suggestions are to tax this group even more which is not the way to go. You can incentivize them to move up by decreasing the rake at the higher stakes(supernova elite sort of did this in some formats and we saw what happened with higher stake hypers) but overall you also need to find a way to incentivize weaker regs and recreationals from the lowest stakes to run up bankrolls and take shots at the midstakes. The best way to go about that has to be imo starting with a table cap at those stakes.

while you have some good points, i think you just don't want to accept a few simple things. mainly "how much poker-pros 'deserve' to win" or "how the winrate is influence by skilled players".

lets imagine, if you remove all the net winners from the site. the result would be, that we have new winners and most of the players' BB/100 would go up. depending on the amount of 'winners' and their winrates, it's even possible to raise the rake and deposits still would last longer.

so blaming the operator to kill the game, is a bit egocentric since there's no absolute. on the other hand you shouldn't ignore, that some/many games have too many regs. so someone could also argue, that these regs kill the game (which would be another very narrow pov)

what you didn't include in your 'oh my gosh, they take way our jobs' calculation is, that you have almost no relevant infos about the percentage, the rooms took pre BF (or i just missed it :/). you also didn't include the fact, that poker room nowadays have way more costs to cover.

and if you keep it simple

- poker room provides the tables
- net losers deposit the money

i don't see why any reg 'deserves' to be a winner, b/c they don't contribute anything. and pls don't start with 'word to mouth propaganda' or the 'dream of becoming a poker pro'. the audience most grinders reach is limited and even we would get rid of all winners, pros and even the break even guys. there will be new winners. so all the talk about rooms need regs, so the games run, isn't true.

don't get me wrong, if you can make a living, then that's great for you/this grinder. but i just don't understand this entitlement, some players show. deposits are smaller these days, so i think it's pretty obvious, that with 'less fish', there are 'less fisherman'.


finally i want to say something about the 'sweet spot' conversation ... while i've no doubt, that lowering the rake would be helpful, i think setting a table limit would be more effective, to stabilise the 'ecosystem'.

however, given the fact that amaya has some big short-term payment to make (is everyone really ignoring that the scheinbergs not only had more deposits, but no debt), so thinking, 'cash grabbing' is bad, is again only one pov


tl;dr: MMs rake speculations are wild guesses, but limiting tables and getting rid of traditional RB won't "kill the games" but could be an effective way, to improve the system


don't know much about his ambitions, but giving the weak opponents in 2016 i chime in with a "+1"

please dont misunderstand me i by no means claim any digging rights. I just describe what i think is the main reason for the current environment we have




Its poker. Its predatory. The more regs, the thinner edges, the more predatory. I think players quit mainly bc they losing too much and this isnt caused by scripts. 95% fish 1table and chances they get aware of a script are minimal due to tis. But i dont want to turn that into pro script anti script debate i just wanted to point out that scripts are a mere symptom

but in the italian segregated market we have exaclty the same bad ratio just after 2-3 years of cash game, so I think your assumption it's not so true.

this imo , also raising the rake at small stakes nl100-nl200 its the WORST suggestion i have ever seen , TODAY they rake a lot at those games for example at nl100 the cap is $2.5 (2.5bbs) and for example at nl500 its $3 (0.6bbs)~ and you want to raise our rake ??? , i think small stakes rake should be lowered and high stakes games rake should increase

basically raising rake at those games will kill the dream of building a roll and climbing stakes because those games will become unbeatable and will make the games dry 10x faster than now , mason i think everyone here respects you but i believe you dont understand how much rake affects regs at small stakes, i think regs who play small stakes or high stakes and log millions of hands in a year have a better view of the online situation ...

why do all the ideas to save online poker involve making it more like live games? live games are horrible

ITT Mason takes his deep knowledge and understanding of live poker scene and attempts to apply it to online poker. Where his knowledge and understanding is less deep.

@MeleaB ?? were you the person behind the "anonymous" video that came out after the original VIP/SNE changes? that was brilliant on many levels.

zero sum game

no deposits, no game

during the poker boom, deposit were taken for granted, grinders were rewarded for grinding the rake

today, grinders must be taken for granted, depositors need be rewarded

no deposits, no game

I know nothing about live poker but there's a glaring flaw in Masons plan to get players to move up to higher stakes by restructuring the rake - games only run around fish. There are already far too many regs competing for each seat whenever a fish sits - hence scripts/camping/extreme predatory behaviour. All encouraging players to move up would do is add some extra regs competing for each seat - no extra games would run.

Even at micros ($5nl/$10nl) nowadays you see regs sitting out/sitting in along with the fish. It's simply a matter of education - it's become common knowledge just how high the rake is and even micro regs know they can't beat a table full of other regs. With Stars intent on funnelling deposits into Casino/Spins it'll only get worse.

Scrap microstakes altogether.

Will obviously never happen though.

The Southern half of Italy is probably more poverty stricken than most ex soviet nations.

@NerdSuperfly

Nowhere do I mention or imply that regs have an "Entitlement." I not sure where you got that idea from or why you are focussing on it. (And speaking from a personal viewpoint, I'm happy to move on from playing full-time to other opportunities.) It's also a little insulting that you'd preempt my response to include a ramble about offering a dream to become a pro! (Give me some credit please )

What I do say is that for there to be a sustainable poker environment the games must at least be beatable. You say the site provides the tables, the fish provide the money, and the regs provide nothing. Where does the liquidity come from, if not from the regs? Without them far fewer tables would run, and once you drop below a critical mass, many games would stop running. Take Zoom, for example, the 200NL FR player pool used to be healthy, regs stopped playing and it died. The same followed with the 100NL pool. I orchestrated a move to try and kick start those pools by synchronising start times for regs to join the pool, and for a while we had a little success: If we managed to reach a certain (critical) size then others would join too, and fish would then jump in and it would then sustain itself for a period.

If you believe regs offer nothing, then you'd be surprised what will happen if/when they virtually all leave: Fewer and fewer tables will run during peak hours, but the action during off-peek hours is what decides when the games all but die. When off-peak traffic gets low enough that games are no longer running 24/7 then it will have implications on traffic at other times- and what was already low traffic will take another significant hit. I believe Amaya' traffic will continue to drop, not because of any so-called unsustainable environment but precisely because of their short-sightedness and greed. I said at the end of last year that Amaya's traffic would drop due to their poorly thought through vision and their eventual "suffocation" of the player pool, and I see no reason to alter that prediction now.


Indeed, sir.

I am an American, living in America, what PokerStars does is pretty irrelevant to me personally. You're addressing the PokerStars invented "poker ecosystem" issue, not everyone's issue with SNE.



With all due respect, and you do have my utmost respect, you seem to be completely out of touch with what happens in modern online poker games. Do you really think the combination of solution software, brilliant poker minds, and brilliant poker minds with enough money to hire anyone they need to solve a problem for them, can't handle your examples? Or any examples you can come up with?

And do you not understand that there are many "professional online poker players" who play at the lowest of stakes? They live in countries with economies that differ greatly from yours, they don't make anywhere near the hourly that you would need to earn a living in your country. But in their country, even less than $5 per hour might be an excellent wage.

Just like at every poker stake, even at the lowest of stakes, the players are improving every day. Except in the modern games, they're not moving up as quickly as in days past. Because the next level is brutally difficult, there is a much larger skill gap than most people seem to realize. At the next level, those players are also improving every day as well. Combine this with the fact that the rake seems to be on a never ending escalator, moving up becomes very difficult, if not nearly impossible. You don't seem to understand how difficult it is now.

I played in the stud games of 1987, I wish I were able to stake some of today's $10nl professional online players in those $20/$40 stud games of 1987. Even though they've likely never played stud in their lives, they're simply that much better at fundamental poker theory than most anyone sitting at those stud games back then.

You can raise the rake, make the games more difficult, to the point where even these people can not beat the games, but then the games simply die. You can lower the rake, making the games softer so that a few of these people move up and make an even better living for themselves. But as they move up, others move in. There is no way to maintain beatable games with a high ratio of bad players. There just aren't enough bad players anymore.

It isn't Las Vegas circa 1987, it's the internet, the secret is out and it's gone global.

As a recreational player I really like #1
Limit players to 4 or 6 tables.

To remove a lot of PokerStars financial burden I would rake the mid to high stakes games like a live card room would.

NL 10-20 and above
Limit 30-60 and above

Rake 5 Dollars each hand.

Games with $1200 pots can afford to have $5 raked from them. And raking 50 cents from $120,000 pot is ridiculous. The 5 dollar rake would take a lot of pressure off rake concerns in the lower games.

Amaya stars wants all the money, as players we want some of the money. Long term the only solution will be not to play on stars.

Wouldn't just flat barring "good" players from playing a below a certain limit address many of the problems?

Get rid of player to player transfers.

Limit 7CS is much higher variance and slower than NLHE. Losing players have a much better chance of winning over an extended period of time in this game. Also, as Mason points out, in limit games with multiway pots the bad players protect Eachothher, again making it more likely some of them will win for a while.

Is there any purpose of this thread?

I think the point of the article is that in the current ecosystem where good players have a very high edge and low variance agains their competition (which is the case when multitabling low stakes NLHE) and are encouraged to play low stakes (thru multitabling and rewards) is not sustainable.

So disruption is necessary, and MM gave us his blueprint for accomplishing this.

I will deposit 500$ on Pokerstars. Come get me. Problem solved

bitter much? is it too much to just be a reasonable human being?