You are absolutely correct and your description is not theoretical. I lived in Italy when online poker was legalized there.

The first month all you had to do was get online and you would make good sums of money. Then a steady decline in profitability set in. It never came to the point where there was no money to be made but to make any substantial profit after rake became very difficult.

After a year the players that remained were all very good. Every once in a while a new name would pop in, remain a week or two, attract a lot of action, lose lots of money and be gone, but the money they lost was divided among so many regs that it was never enough to be significant to any one person. It became pretty bleak and remains that way.

What about a system where you are assigned 4 seats randomly and can't get new ones for 30 mins? Obviously, its another situation where site volume gets effected. They could probably increase the number to 6 or 8 or even. It still prevents pure bum hunting.

It's called Zoom/Rush

I like Lego05's arguments in this thread and I think he perfectly illustrates why the rake needs to be lowered in favour of the poker ecosystem. This would make recreational player's deposit last longer, make marginal losers winners (eg: keeping them in the games maintaining liquidity) and much more.

Yet most REGs don't see it. Or won't admit to it. But I think a new breed of operators will. Most casinos dont rape their whales in a few sessions. They do it over time. Its an art form to take someones money and have them come back for more. It takes finesse. I dont see them continuing with the current rules of play so that millions of potential customers will be disuaded from playing.

What are arguments AGAINST a seating structure where players are automatically seated by game/stake choice and doing away with lists of tables? and lets say 20 hand minimum.

RECs, especially newcomers, don't consider the long term. They see winnings (and losses) on a per session basis. If they win they see it as the result of superior play or luck. (If they lose it's because of luck -- they believe their play is always superior. ) Any long term effect of rake is going to go unnoticed.

Its amazes me that you are still not understanding despite how many people have tried to explain it for you.

Not going to get into it much .... but:

I'm pretty sure (could be wrong though) that his 50/50 approximation is BEFORE considering rake. Your 90/10 approximation is AFTER considering rake.

You both might be right ... I don't know.

That's what rake does.

Do you live in a world where there is no rake???

Do you play poker at B&M casinos?

You didn't answer my question. I didn't say anything about a significant sample size. Did Ivey show a profit and beat the game in this one event?

So you think RECs and newcomers do consider rake when they play?

no you imbecile, they consider their results which, guess what, are influenced by rake

No. There is also no point in trying to change that.

Rake is the strongest influence for the player experience. Players don't know this and thinks its something else. But in the long run rake determines how many players win and winning is still the most important factor of people having fun or not.

What I am trying to show is that if you we to want to change the player experience, I don't believe it's possible without touching the rake.

+1

In other words I have to decide what 99 other players did before I can say that I took $100 to the table and left with $150 which made me a winner?

I guess it's just a point-of-view problem then. I believe if you give players (especially RECs and newcomers) what they want they will turn out for it. Since they don't know the arcane facts about rake it isn't a consideration for them. All they know about rake is "I won this nice pot and the poker site raked 50¢ -- whoopee!"

OTOH running into MTers, HUDs and the like is a consideration for them -- every hand of every game.

But they don't know that because rake isn't a consideration for them.

The technology doesn't exist to stop HUDs. The HUD program doesn't even have to be running on the computer you're playing on. For instance you can be running your poker client in a virtual machine and then have your HUD just do screen scraping of the image from the virtual machine. There's no real way for them to detect that.

I don't think it's good to have totally anonymous players. It then makes it much easier for the site themselves to cheat the players. Players would not be able to analyze play over a long period of time to find suspicious patterns.

I can't imagine a scenario where players would want to play against more difficult opposition. I can definitely see scenarios where bad players want to play other bad players, but that's harmful to the better players who then are forced to play against better players because they aren't able to play with the bad players. I'm fine with people doing most anything as long as it doesn't hurt others. Player segregation hurts others.

I see once again, we're dealing with a vague definition of what a "REC" is. I still think it stands for recreational player, as a REC, I'll say that some of us know more about these things than you're giving us credit for. Because of that, I'd like to parse out your question a bit before answering it.

Newcomers: no
RECs: it depends

Right or wrong, for better or worse, I can honestly say that I didn't worry much about rake when I played online. I wasn't unaware of it, mind you, but I had just accepted it as the (literal) price of playing poker. When I go to my favorite watering hole, I know I'm paying twice as much for my Macallan neat than I would if I made it myself at home. I could extend this to food or coffee or oil changes, too -- to me, it's a mark-up that I was willing to pay for having the service rendered to me.

My most common online game was (and still would be) low-stakes SNGs. I won't get into why, but that's just what it was. With those games, the sites are pretty up front about rake -- even to a total beginner -- as they appear in the lobby as $10+1, $20+2 and so forth.

It didn't take long for me to notice the effects of rake, even if only qualitatively. I was fortunate enough to be mild winner in those games over the years. But looking back, given my overall ROI, I realize now that it would take me an average of 25 buy-ins worth of $20 STTs to generate $100 in net profit for myself. So the sites had pulled $50 and rubbed it on their tittays for every Benjamin that went to me.

Is that wrong? Exorbitant? Some of you seem to say yes, and looking back on it, it IS rather annoying to see what percentage of my earn went to Ray Bitar's lobster dinners. But I accepted it, for reasons I've already discussed.

Now that I'm stuck to live poker in California, I'm even more aware of rake. Tournament juice runs in the 20-25 percent range for lower buy-in events. And those who are familiar with my state's gaming laws know how ridiculous the rake is in a $1-3 NL game here. While I'll paid little mind to rake in those glorious days before the DOJ took the ball away, I am very aware of it now because its effect is more noticeable.

And again, I've been fortunate enough to come out ahead in the B&M era, both in cash and tourneys. I think about how far ahead of expectation I've had to run, or how many other "RECs" were winning players overall but came out in the red because of the rake, or how many losing players bowed out sooner than they otherwise would have had to -- well, suffice to say, I haven't set foot in one of my local card rooms in almost a full year.

So yes, some of us DO think about the rake, as it's the one thing that has kept me from playing more in the post-BF era.

Unless I misread something, you only started thinking about rake post-BF when you learned B&M rake was twice as high. During the time you were an online REC you didn't think about it which proves the point I've tried to make. RECs don't think about rake, hence, it doesn't influence their playing decisions.

some good ideas........

I tend to agree. The idea that you have a 50-50 split of winners and losers is just way off.

How would you touch the rake and how would it change the experience for the REG and REC

Anyone else on this?


I dont follow you on this. How could the site cheat you? This would be legal and regulated poker. The regulators would still be able to review suspicious play when a complaint is filed.


Well several REGs made the point that players want to move up and play better players so that they can improve and get better. And segregation would "force" them to play other bad players. And deny them this right. Now you are saying the opposite.


I think your true motivations came out in this statement and I appreciate the honesty. REGs want to make money. Its easier and more profitable to bumhunt and play inferior players.

No. It gives REC players freedom and options. REC players want the option to play players of their own skill level and move up when they are ready. You are denying them that opportunity.