all around bad ideas with nothing to do with SNE

totally agree!
Lower the rake at 50-200nl to make it possible for people to move up to 400+ makes more sense than increasing rake even more at small stakes. When people have reached high stakes then you can have increased rake at those stakes as the rake cap at 1knl for example is not even a SB!
It always amazed me how at 100nl a 200bb pot was raked $3 and a 10k pot at 25/50 was raked $3 also!!

If you raise the rake at smaller stakes, how can you expect people just to move up? If you can't build a roll at smaller stakes, players will never be able to move up. Also, Most people don't have enough $$$ lying around to be rolled for 500NL+.


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But your OP and follow up (where you suggest people move up?!?) doesn't follow that logic.

People aren't multi tabling lower limits because it's more $/hour than playing higher limits on less tables. They're multi tabling lower limits because they either:
- aren't profitable at higher limits
- don't have the bankroll for higher limits

You suggest, 'if they are really good players they should still be able to win'. That won't happen. If you want players to increase mobility between stakes, and have players playing higher stakes, then you have to give them the money to move up stakes. How you would do that is decreasing rake... not increasing rake.

The result of your suggestion will turn lower stake games further into casino games. And keep the higher stake games exactly as they are.

well.. many good regs are from Southern Italy so it make sense!

another truth.

embarrassing op

RIP Dreams

[ ] Old man never playing online fixes the error with the online pokerz.

With SNE OP means Super Nintendo? I don't understand what it has to do with SNE though

Correct me if I am wrong, but I dont think the point of increasing the rake is so good players can grind small limits and move up. It is to desentivize good players from playing small limits completely.

I think the argument is that bad/recreational/beginning players would actually be better off just playing eachother, even with a very high rake, and making the experience for bad players more enjoyable and them losing less $$ to good players would help the entire poker ecosystem.

I agree with all of these, the biggest being limiting the number of tables you can have open.

It's really silly to compare live and online. Unless you can only single table online across all providers, live and online and the impact of changing rake can't be similar. Yes you want good players to move up and the incentive is a lower rake at higher stakes (% wise). That's true now and things haven't changed. I'm not sure if making it even more dramatic change will really move things.

Fish aren't flocking online anyways no matter what providers are doing. I'm not sure if bankrupting the regulars is a good play by the providers--they are already basically doing that and look what's happening.

The providers don't care about sustainability of the ecosystem and know they are just going for a money grab. I can't imagine, as mentioned earlier that strats that work live also work online and applying them online is just going to fail.

has anyone actually tried to actively promote limit/stud/anything that isn't nlhe since the poker boom? or have they just cashed in on people liking to go all in a lot and 24 tabling hudbots?

you'll always get people that are just happy to play nl, but then you'll always get people that want to try something new, they may even like it

Recently there was a small Australian site (it got shut down) and the player base was largely made up of fun players. The most common game was 50PLO. If sites are of the opinion that there are too many regulars or the eco system is unbalanced I don't see why they can't remove certain countries from the player pool. Similar to what 888 did to all the regs in Playa Del Carmen

I don't necessarily disagree with some of what you're saying in this post but the fact that we have so many thousands of posts and threads on 2p2 discussing and analysing rake in online poker clearly highlights the fundamental flaws in the (online) game and I suggest that it goes back to a more simplistic view of what poker is about.

Like I said in a previous post the fact that online poker is so marginal and sensitive to minuscule rake increases just demonstrates the flaws in transferring the game of poker to an online platform.

Yes online poker works to some degree as a model and has so more successfully in the past but the fact that the game is so open to and overrun by technical interventions and sensitivities amongst other things just illustrates what a flawed model it really is.

This is why you need to look more closely at the live game for clues as to how to create a sustainable model because live poker has so much room to move before issues such as rake even become a factor.

Online poker (and all the external interventions associated with it) is vastly complex, live poker is the opposite. It is a simple game that is open and transparent where rake barely even rates a mention despite the fact that the live game is raked so much more heavily than the online game.

You can talk all you like about the problems with scripting, huds, rake, security etc killing the online game but in my opinion the main problem is far more simplistic and live poker highlights it clearly.

At the most basic level the excitement of poker comes from winning big pots. There's not much more to it. You sit there, you pick up a hand, the stars align and you stack somebody. Poker doesn't get much more exciting than this. In a live game this might happen once or twice in a 6 hour session, might not even happen at all......but this is a good thing, not a bad thing because poker needs to be slow and boring to create a highly profitable environment. Fish need to be sitting there for hours hoping their moment will come and they need to be sitting there with a 50% VPIP to create that profitable environment. You want to be going to showdown in multi-way pots with 5x opens like you do live, not grinding out 3bb pots that don't even see a flop.

People will say 'oh I'd go insane if I had to play 30 hands/hr online' but unless you're prepared to do so then enjoy the environment in which you find yourself.

I 24-tabled for years online. I know what it's like playing 1500 hands an hour. I can remember closing out sessions one table at a time, getting down to 12 tables left and just shutting them all down at once because it was just so mind-numbingly slow by that stage.

It's a simple concept, some might even see it as naive, but I firmly believe you need to look closely at the impact of what the speed of the game does to profitability and sustainability for a clue as to how the game needs to shift................and live poker has those clues.

poker rooms would much prefer people play limit.it's similar to the same reason the cap most nl games. it's better for the room if people aren't busting out quick. however almost nobody wants to play limit anymore.nobody is being forced to play nl.I'm pretty sure poker rooms have pushed it but the demand just isn't there. rooms would spread lots of limit if people wanted it.

Just rake every hand 1/10th of a blind with some cap. That way the recreational won't get punished (paying more rake) for giving more action. Average rake will the around the same, but incentives nits to loosen up somewhat. And of course you only get rewards from gamification like we've already seen, but a lot of them and much more creative. (JJ or better etc.) Once again rewarding action.

Some more creative ways of stimulating players and generate more income would be:
- Profile leveling/xp which is gained from different situations (winning with 72o etc.)
- Ability to buy cosmetics
- Trade items between players with a small transfer cost (cosmetics, rare unlocks etc.)
- Achievements which can be exchanged for rewards
- Missions/Challenges etc. which gives items (Rewards should NOT be freeroll tickets)
- Quests to promote different poker forms

Players need to sense some kind of progress even if they're losing. Then a player can feel like a winner even after losing a few deposits.
The possibilities are endless. I'm baffled by the -99 feel of poker clients in 2016. Online poker must be more fun and stimulating than windows solitaire.

Wat he doesnt understand is that no matter how much he would increase rake as long as teh game is beatable for a decent clip regs will grind it. Once regs consider it unbeatable (and regs these days are fairly smart) they wont play.
You accomplished now that you have an unbeatable game (due to absurd rake) but guess what - the recs cant win either IF the regs cant even win. So i'm not sure in what way this is helping recs or the ecosystem

At this point i strongly believe if you want a longterm sustainable site you have to restrict it to certain countries based on gdp per capita and it has to be based on nationality so that you cant just move there and play. You have to control documents heavily and make sure that player registered is really the player playing. You have to monitor reg/rec ratios per country constantly and eventually boot countries which become to reg heavy. You also can test new countries if it makes sense.
Would be good money for the site, good money for the regs and probably recs were happier than elsewhere as well.

A good example that this works is bovada and boy you could do this so much better than they do it

I should open it and call it FristWorldPoker

Hi Quick_Ben:

This is part of the argument and is consistent with my second point in this month's Publisher Note for our online magazine:

2. Low stakes recreational players shouldn’t be playing in games that are mostly populated by pros.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi )))):

I think this is a very good post. As you point out, online poker has evolved to a game that is substantially different from live poker. Now is this a bad thing?

The answer IMO should be determined by what has happened to the balance of luck and skill, and it appears to me that the proper balance of luck and skill has gone away in the online world, and I believe the result of that will be the continual contraction of online poker. Thus my OP.

In fact, you're a great example. When I first began to play poker the idea was to maximize your expectation on every hand that you played. But I question if this can be done playing 1,500 hands per hour.

Best wishes,
Mason

Hi TimStone:

I agree but what does it mean to beat a game "for a decent clip?" If it means that you also have to multitable to do this as well as collect bonuses, rebates, or whatever you want to call them from the site, then that needs to be addressed as well which is what my original proposal in the OP tries to do. Rake is only one piece of this puzzle.

I agree that if you raise the rake high enough in virtually any game it will become unbeatable. And that's why I proposed lowering the rake in games at higher stakes to encourage the pros to populate them.

There's also an important point that I think you're missing. I'm not proposing that we somehow make the recs winning players. In fact, it's fine with me it they're always playing with a negative expectation, and that's what poker is about, good players are suppose to beat bad players out of their money.

But where I think you may be a little misguided is the idea that losing players can and should still have some winning sessions. This encourages them to keep coming back and to lose more (in the long run). However, if it's very unlikely that they'll have winning sessions, will they keep coming back?

It helps the recs and ecosystem by coming closer to achieving a proper balance of luck and skill. And from my "Publisher's Note:"

Best wishes,
Mason

I would argue it takes more skill profiting and making +ev decisions at 1500 hands an hour constantly multi tasking as opposed to ~30 you might see live or ~150-200 you might see one tabling online where the biggest skill gap comes from who doesn't die of boredom and can somehow stay focused on the slow pace.

Why do people who can't play multiple tables at a time deserve to have everyone else handicapped?

Who cares if it takes more skill?

Hi TreadLightly:

And I would argue it's a different skill set, simple algorithmic strategies versus more in debt strategies. And is most of the profit coming from actual winnings or from the bonuses the site is paying for playing lots and lots of hands?

Furthermore, it's also game dependent? Without being critical of anyone, and I do realize that playing a huge number of hands per hour and being successful is not easy, I don't think you would see a seven-card stud player being able to do anything close to this.

Best wishes,
Mason