I am not all sure it is illegal to serve the Russians, as there might be some typo.

You were joking to start with though right.



IANARL but that's the reason given why they can't sign up on some sites.

IIRC, this was supposed to happen in 2017

Too bad they are so late

Virtue poker is the future, left old phil behind in the dust trying to replicate the past

New blog made by Phil two hours ago: The Discussion on Higher Rake that Nobody is Having

Endgame 1 is here soon!!

Phil's such a decent guy that he is repeatedly at pains to point out Negreanu hasn't said anything wrong in his discussions about rake but ultimately the whole point is Negreanu is being completely disingenious. Basically a poker pro, Negreanu, is promoting a site that is moving away from poker (or at least what we'd consider to be a normal beatable version of the game) to something different. He really shouldn't be comfortable with that but we know he doesn't care.

Also, the implication here is that RIO will be lower rake, but probably reg filled., which is what we suspected.

Good read tnx 4 posting, well written Phil . . .

"It’s my belief that the endgame they have in mind involves offering exclusively unbeatable games. This is a big assumption to make, and I might be dead wrong. I hope I am." - Phil

Hopefully Endgame 1 is true . . .

Bhupan for POTUS

phil

pretty sure this is exactly the conversation people have been having since 2015

I was thinking the same thing. We've all known Pokerstars has been gutting the poker economy of winning players for quite some time, and we've all been powerless to stop it.

Galfond is giving Negreanu's arguments far too much credit. Doug Polk is the only one who seems to be calling out Daniel's bull****.

EDIT: I should add that the "f*ck regs and f*ck +EV games" path taken by Pokerstars in recent years was an inevitability after the downfall of Full Tilt. With no serious competitors to keep it in line, it was rational for Stars to do what it did.

lolol

This is from November, 2015, when this topic was all that I posted about (and spoke about on the 2+2 podcast and Joey's podcast):

"...players are being filtered out of the game of poker as we know it and ushered towards unbeatable "casino-type" poker formats. They are looking to completely change the face of online poker, with an end game where there are virtually no winning players."

So Galfond is still apparently going forward with his site and he has been contemplating how to best serve the players. He broke down Negreanu's “stance” on rake. I don't like how Galfond justified the reason (but sort of disagreed with the conclusion).

He does however use the correct classification for the player archetypes “rec” and “pro”.

Dnegs gave a story in which there was a really high rake but with soft players across the street from a low rake game that has mostly pros playing. This was the story that he used to lie to the players to try to sell them the idea that higher rake is better for the games

This is why I have tried to bring awareness to the concept of effective rake. Dnegs story isn't an example of why high rake is good, its an example of how high or low rake isn't the only profitability consideration a poker player has. The narrative Daniel tells, including that poker stars has the lowest rake in the industry, (purposefully) ignores effective rake. A site can have the lowest rake % but have the highest effective rake. This is what poker stars has been for quite some time.

So now iirc in the last week or so I have hear Doug Polk, Joey Ingram, and Phil Galfond each say they regret not bringing this up a year ago, they are fed up and can no longer bite their togues.

My timestamps are from 2013 and my insights are more accurate and further reaching...

Please stay away from this thread.

Could someone please copy and paste the article

You win then, although you might want to work on your acronyms.

The Discussion on Higher Rake that Nobody is Having



Last year, Daniel Negreanu discussed the effects of higher rake in an interview. The community reacted negatively, and he felt his message was taken way out of context, so he made a blog post clarifying his point.

As a poker player and as someone building a poker site, I obviously have a lot of opinions on rake, policies, game offerings, and countless related areas. At the time, I worried that I’d seem disingenuous if I joined the discussion - that detailed criticism of future competitors would come across as opportunistic marketing for my own business - so I chose not to get involved.

I came to regret that decision. By not saying things I normally would have as a member of the poker community out of concern for how it would come off for me and for Run It Once, I think I was actually being less authentic.

For some reason, the topic has popped up once again. Doug Polk talked about it on a Podcast with Joe Ingram. Daniel discussed it briefly on his own podcast, and tweeted a link to the post during a debate with Doug, Joey, and others.

The points I would have brought up last year are points that I still haven’t seen discussed, so I’m going to take this opportunity to say what I wish I’d said almost a year ago.

I’ll mostly be talking about the blog post where Daniel clarifies and explains his thoughts. His interview comments did sound worse, but Daniel is an honest guy and I very much believe that he meant what he wrote.



His blog post is absolutely logical, and the conclusions Daniel draws are obvious and not really controversial (there is a minor argument to be had on how the economics of his real-life example truly work, but it’s complex and irrelevant to what I’d like to discuss). Many in the poker community berated Daniel for standing up for Stars and their rake increases, but not many engaged him in a real discussion.

Daniel describes two 10-20 Limit Hold'em games running across the street from one another. One rakes $100/hr and the other rakes $300/hr. The low rake game has a pro-heavy lineup, but those pros can still do better in the low rake game than in the rec-heavy high rake game.

He talks about a recreational player, Bhupan, who usually plays in the high rake game but occasionally ventures across the street into the low rake game. Daniel argues that the high rake game was better for Bhupan: he loses less and has a better experience playing with other recreational players despite the high rake.

This argument is perfectly sound, and I’m sure in this case it was true.

Skipping ahead to Daniel’s conclusion:

“In closing, NO I do not think higher rake is good for poker, but YES, I do think it makes sense to give the majority of the bonuses or rewards to recreational players.”

Whether you agree with his opinion, this is a perfectly reasonable stance to take, and Daniel is sure to make clear that he doesn’t think higher rake is good for poker.

The problem with the post is what Daniel skips over, stops short of saying, and implies.

Let’s start with implications. Many people will agree with Daniel’s (valid) arguments, but will then be led to draw inconsistent conclusions:

“For Bhupan and other players at his skill level, HIGHER RAKE WAS BETTER FOR THEM than paying a lower rake in a game against pros.”

Many will read this as implying “higher rake is better for recreational players like Bhupan,” which, if believed, is a very compelling moral argument in favor of high rake. We should all care deeply about what is best for recreational players.

The thing is, his arguments don’t lead to that conclusion (and Daniel makes sure not to say it explicitly). In actuality, all that should be taken from this is that in these two specific games, as they were described, Bhupan was better off in the one which had higher rake.

“I do not think raising the rake is good for poker. No rake is “good for poker.” But you need to understand that a game full of pros is far worse for the game than a high rake.”

Many will read this to mean “pros are worse for the game of poker than high rake.” He is once again actually talking about a specific table of players ('this game' rather than 'the game' of poker), but more importantly, he’s comparing pros to high rake (in a way that could be easily construed) as though they are mutually exclusive - pick one or the other. This shouldn’t lead to a conclusion about the real world poker economy.

Throwing in phrasing like “better for recreational players” and “worse for the game,” which are regularly used in the community to talk about poker as a whole, makes it very easy for readers to conflate the two uses and draw the wrong conclusions.

So when Daniel leads off his second paragraph with,

“Now, let’s take a deeper look at how an increased rake affects players,”

and then goes on to talk about very specific situations, it sets readers up to infer the wrong meaning.

I’ll stop now and be clear: I’m not claiming Daniel did anything unethical.

I believe he was making the best argument he could for a conclusion that he believed in. He’s very smart and persuasive, and in my opinion, he is almost always on the right side of a debate. Presenting the best argument you can for your beliefs is what I’m doing right now, so I can’t fault him for that.

Adding Context

Now, let’s talk about the example and see how it applies to the real world currently - a topic that I think the post skipped over:

In the two-game example presented, Daniel seems to be saying that if Pokerstars moves more and more towards being the high rake game with no pros, they believe that it will be better for them and better for the recreational players. This is a very good argument in favor of the path they are taking since recreational players are integral to the game.

In the real world, like in the example, there are other places that run poker games. We at Run It Once have been working very hard on offering the players a viable alternative. Party Poker has made some great and honorable moves and has aligned itself with smart players who truly care about the community.

However, as things stand currently, Pokerstars has the overwhelming majority of the traffic in online poker.

For most players, there isn’t really a “game across the street.”

So, the Bhupans of online poker are getting something more closely resembling the higher rake of that soft 10-20 LHE game combined with the toughness of the all-pro game!

Nobody is being helped in the short term besides Amaya. The analogy doesn’t mirror reality right now.

But, I concede, it will take time for the decisions and offerings to continue to roll out and to take their effect on the poker ecosystem. The 10-20 limit games didn’t reach their equilibria overnight.

I expect that Pokerstars will continue to shift towards the games and policies they truly want to offer, and the effects of those decisions - their desired result - will take a while to come to fruition. Only then will we find out whether they were “right” or “wrong.”

So let’s take a look at what will happen once the dust settles. There are only two outcomes that result from Pokerstars metaphorically becoming the soft game described in Daniel’s post:

Endgame 1:

This is the scenario where the world of Bhupan becomes a reality.

Other sites (hopefully us!) succeed in offering pros an environment they prefer playing in, and they (we!) become the game across the street.

Party Poker, RIO, and/or others will offer beatable but tough games with fair pricing. Pokerstars will offer really soft games, probably exclusively spreading lower edge variants like Beat The Clock (my opinion), but will keep rake so high that pros will stay away.

In this endgame, Pokerstars eliminates pros from their ecosystem and can offer recreational players what they and Daniel believe is a better losing experience (I’m not arguing in favor of or against that opinion today). Pokerstars grows and succeeds, and the recreational players on their site enjoy the product. This, in my opinion, is what Daniel’s post implies that he wants to happen.

Meanwhile, recreational players who care about the same things that pros do will find a home at one of the other sites.

-Pokerstars wins
-Recs on Pokerstars are happy
-Pros and Recs who don’t like those offerings have options elsewhere and can continue playing

Sounds all good, and I think it very well could be a great outcome. If the other poker sites can offer the experience and liquidity that Pokerstars currently does, things work out for everybody.

It is my position that, once we reach this endgame, Pokerstars is no longer operating a poker site, but a casino.

Now, there is nothing wrong with that. If a company wants to only offer negative EV games, operates with integrity, and provides a product people want - good for them. They can be successful and their customers can be happy.

It’s just not poker, and their customers won’t be the people who want to play true poker.

Endgame 2

In this scenario, Bhupan’s rec-filled game is the only game built for longevity. It continues to run while the low rake pro-friendly game struggles and shuts down.

Like in Endgame 1, Pokerstars becomes a high rake, rec-only “poker” site. All of the pros are driven out, and the recreational players who stick around stay because they enjoy the product Pokerstars is offering.

Unlike Endgame 1, in this world, Run It Once, Party Poker and the others all fail. The true poker enthusiasts have nowhere to go.

This is online poker’s Armageddon. Pokerstars morphs into a poker-themed casino and there is no game across the street.

-Pokerstars wins
-Recs on Pokerstars are Happy
-Pros and Recs who don’t like those offerings are out of luck. Online poker is dead.

This, in my opinion, is what Daniel’s post (along with some additional context clues) implies that Amaya wants to happen. I believe that it’s not what Daniel wants to happen, but he might think it’s the most likely outcome.

In this two minute section of Rikard Åberg’s interview with Negreanu, Daniel says (paraphrasing) that RIO starting a site is a win-win: Either it succeeds and gives players a good place to play, or it fails to attract enough players to keep games running and shows the poker community that, hey, maybe Amaya was right about the direction they’re heading in.

That’s a perfectly reasonable view, though IMHO the second result is not a win

From his tone, I can tell that he believes RIO (and probably other sites that attempt to be ‘pro-friendly’) will likely fail. There’s nothing wrong with him having that opinion, and he’s polite and doesn’t say it outright. In fact, as you may know, we’re way behind our initial development schedule here at Run It Once, so I’m certainly not proving anyone wrong yet!

We have also heard from Amaya representatives, time and time again, how their research shows (paraphrasing) that pros don’t matter.

After the community banded together for a 3 day boycott back in 2015, Amaya’s VP of Corporate Communications, Eric Hollreiser, wrote:

“...we can tell you that we did see effects from the recent boycott that give us even greater confidence that our strategy is on the right track to improve the health of the ecosystem. During the three-day boycott we recorded the healthiest consecutive three-day ecosystem results of the year with steady net gaming revenue, even though our net-depositing players lost at a much lower rate than they have all year. As we have seen with Spin & Go's, which have higher retention levels than cash games due to the increased winning experiences provided to all players, we believe this decreased loss rate will result in those players' deposits lasting longer and retention rates improving, resulting in more deposits and more money in the system because players are enjoying their time at the tables more. This is the right foundation for us to build upon.
Our commitment to poker is as strong as ever.

We believe that our actions will demonstrate this in the months and years ahead.”

This is just one example, but they’ve made statements with similar implications a number times.

My Conclusions

My biggest concern is what Daniel’s post implies to me about Amaya’s plans and core values, which Daniel stops short of discussing.

It’s my belief that the endgame they have in mind involves offering exclusively unbeatable games. This is a big assumption to make, and I might be dead wrong. I hope I am.

It’s also my belief that they don’t think there will be a game across the street. This is Endgame 2.

Of course, I could be way off. Maybe they plan for Pokerstars to have their own “game across the street,” offering half unbeatable games and half what I would consider true poker. If that’s the plan, though, why have they been increasing the rake or reducing the rewards in all games? Why do they keep telling us that we don’t matter and that recs prefer Spin N Gos and Beat The Clock?

And why is that soft 10-20 Hold'em game, the game that Daniel chose as an example of a better place for Bhupan and the recreational players that he represents, unbeatable?

I don’t disagree with (almost) anything Daniel said in that blog post almost one year ago. It’s what he didn’t say that I take issue with.

If Amaya believes their important customers want unbeatable games, and if they believe that competitors going in a different direction will fail, it's their right to focus on those games. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with them drawing conclusions from their data and making the best decision they can for their shareholders.

But if that is the case, Amaya believes in a very grim future for us, and if Daniel wants to engage the community sincerely, I’d prefer for him come out and say it.

Personally, I believe that we’re much more likely headed towards a version of Endgame 1 (aka I believe in online poker).

Blackjack, Roulette, Craps, Poker… you can call them all gambling, but you and I know that poker is fundamentally different from the rest. We fell in love with poker because of the beauty that lies in that difference.

I won’t be surprised in the slightest if Pokerstars does better and better as they introduce more fast, exciting, low edge, high rake games. But if the games are unbeatable, it’s going push out the hordes of people who love the game for the same reasons you and I do.

There will always be millions of us looking to play true, authentic, beatable poker. If Pokerstars ceases to meet that demand, somebody will.

Yeah that's a weird post. All that stuff was discussed to death on here.

As a positive, RIO may be getting close to launch if he's looking for publicity. Wading into Polk/Negreanu drama is a good way to get noticed by casual players.

Damnit, he didit give us even an release date, yet he already talks about high rake. Thats a bad sign.
Be prepared for 10% rake and no rakecaps

Pretty rare I see someone nailing it so well. They gonna call you a jealous hater put you on ignore though

I am amazed that so many supposedly smart people fail to see the endgame of online poker: All sites die because too many regs win too much money from the depositor pool to be sustainable.

Any poker site is doomed to fail unless they
1. Have sustained access to a group of net depositors (recs)
2. Actively control reg traffic

If Phil's site heavily targets the regs traffic, which it seems to me he does, it doesn't matter how much rake he charges, without net depositor access there is no chance for his site to succeed.

The poker economy does not run on regs, it runs on recs, players that deposit money and do not withdraw. Without these players, there is no poker economy. These players do not care whether the poker games are beatable or not, because they do not beat the game anyway. Recs do not care about how much rake they pay, because they do not win in the long run anyway. However, recs do care about playing a nice game without many sharks who hunt them and sit out immediately once all recs leave the table. If anything, if you remove all regs from the equation, recs will even start to win from other recs... Sometimes...Which is really all they want from playing poker.

If the effect of higher rake is fewer regs, Pokerstars' model of charging higher rake is working perfectly. Just not for the regs, but it is the desired result for Pokerstars and for the recs. After all, these recs will win more often without reg traffic around to fillet them.

As for Pokerstars needing regs traffic because they generate so much rake, it is simply incorrect. Not only will they rake about the same amount they do without the regs, they will make way more money because those regs will no longer withdraw winnings and the remaining recs are much less likely to withdraw based on their player profile.

Result: sustainable site without regs, happy recs and Pokerstars profit soars. Yes, regs are unhappy, but Pokerstars obviously prefers they move to other sites that haven't caught on to reality yet.

Reg-heavy sites can still succeed...

Recs need to enjoy losing their money. Currently Stars does this best, because IMO, they have the nicest software. An easy to navigate client, quick deposit, fast starting games, plenty of tournaments.

If a site can replicate that, even if there's tonnes of regs, it'll still succeed. Maybe not to the financial extent Stars is, but hopefully there will be enough competition in a couple of years that Amaya just thinks '**** it' and moves their focus onto Casino/Slots/Sports/DFS.

It is exactly the kind of thing I mention in my post. unfortunately, this is not a matter of opinion, any site needs recs to succeed and not regs. Too many regs and the site WILL die.