If his friend sucks at poker and plays BJ reasonably well then despite having a negative EV it may still be higher then what it would be for him in poker. Your underestimating the time required for a new player to become profitable at poker.

It's funny that you try so hard to come across as knowledgeable and well-read when really the majority of your posts just come across as condescending.

You are obv right with this point, but at least he has a shot at becoming profitable at poker and it's up to him, at slots this options doesn't even exist.

Having scanned that thread again yes you're right. There is an assumption stated by many in that thread that they were card sharing but it isn't backed up.

My main point stands though that any poker site should be able to pull up a list of people running multiple SDs above their apparent all-in equity to investigate for potential card sharing.

Absolutely.

You have said nothing about a comparison of expectation over time. In regard to being profitable at poker, in reasonably profitable games, for example at many live casinos, playing a reasonable strategy I would expect has a positive expectation. Can we at least agree that would be better than blackjack?

How is it that this thread and community is filled with posts and posters that would argue that money is better spent playing casino games than poker? This is a poker forum, the basis of the game is that skilled players can win. In blackjack skilled players cannot win.

Noose... I am still not totally clear on what your end game is in your postings in various threads but you need to read the above again and just own what freedom said, cuz its mostly true.

What ever your goals are here, you would be more likely to achieve them if you turned down the condescending meter a few clicks

Howard G would beg to differ. Only a minority of casino patrons think of the gaming experience in terms of EV .

Right and you were challenging his implication that the ev of a rec gambler playing blackjack is higher than their ev playing poker. I'm saying yes this may be the case. Expectation over time should increase for poker and remain fairly constant for pit games.

So everyone can have a positive expectation playing poker with a reasonable strategy. Whose losing then?

I'm making no argument that money or time is better spent playing casino games over poker.

I dunno. Seems like a reasonable argument to me.

I agree that skilled players can win at poker. Obviously every player is not skilled enough to overcome the rake and better players.

If I bring my friend who rarely gambles to the casino, couldn’t the above mean he’d have a better chance of getting lucky at blackjack (with some quick strategy help) than in a poker game?

exactly

This doesn't counter or adress my point, you only think it does, and you won't consider for a moment that it doesn't.


Their counterpoint in regard to directing friends to more losing games is this:
That they should play more losing games because in poker if everyone wins then who is losing. I should be free and clear to refute what is not coherent or logical.

Are you saying this given equivalent ev's and bets per hour?

Phil!!!! Please come back and rescue this thread.

Your having a tough time following this. You seem to think anyone who plays a 'reasonable' strategy should have a positive expectation. Do you realise how this isn't possible?

To point out your confusion is not to say people should play more losing games. I'm not even sure how you connected those two things.

Not really sure how else to make it clearer for you.

The topic of the thread is Galfond's announcement which has evolved into the question of what his site policies should be in regard to the player's he means to attract. A handful of posters have declared that decreasing the profitability will give a large segment of the player pool a better poker experience.

In this context you are defending the argument that directing players towards games with a lower expectation is better for them and you are defending it with a completely non-sequitur point.

Mason said it correctly Dnegs tells a story with two games, one with many pros and low rake and one with many recs and high rake. He says everyone wants to play on the high rake table. Mason points out this is not an equilibrium; I point out it is an example of effective rake and is either in equilibrium already or will move to it given the assumptions etc.

I am speaking from solid logical ground and your assertions are harmful to the community.

You kind of de-rail then come back as you see fit while also declaring for yourself whose logic is solid and grounded. I think if you didn't have such a tough time sticking to the topic that others wouldn't rag on you as much. You still never addressed the absurdity of your claim about everyone winning at poker but that's okay, I'll take it.

Regardless you are correct that this is not the topic of the thread.

Money comes in from net depositors and money goes out to either sites or skilled players on average, and sites have ability to give rake back or to cut rake, who here would argue the players would benefit if the sites/casinos took more money rather than less?

And who would argue if the sites took more money this would result in recreational players losing less? That is the crux of what has been discussed over the last few pages by this small group.

I can't speak for the USA because I have never played there, but in the UK successful bricks and mortar poker clubs and poker rooms in casinos long term sustain the viability of their businesses and grow them by not trying to quickly wipe out players by shoving casino games under their noses.

Instead they offer great value and opportunity to small stakes cash game and MTT players to make sure that those players come back the next day or the next week. If there are casino games they are in the corner somewhere or in a separate room, so that a player would deliberately have to go out of their way to play roulette etc, the same as when Pokerstars had poker only, of course a player could play blackjack as well but would need to open a completely different web site to do so.

There is a massive difference between a vice being available if you seek it out and a vice being directly offered to you and waved in front of your face by a product or service provider whom you are a customer of for a different service.

Bricks and mortar poker rooms in the UK are not greedy, they are happy to churn players' stacks with rake (charge juice on MTTs) to retain customers and for a proportion of those customers to move up the stakes in time. And the players are happy too. "I lost £250 this week end in live cash games and MTTs, oh well, back to work on Monday and I'll try to do better next week end."

By contrast on line, the same player may have lost £500, £250 on poker and £250 on casino or other no skill games, and they are most certainly going to be angry. You might see them for the next 3 weeks but you likely won't see them after that, they won't be a player that ever moves up the stakes and therefore will never contribute to the poker eco-system in the long run.

I reassert my point that the only reason that Pokerstars can currently get away with their strategy of high raking poker and/or busting poker players' rolls with casino games is that they can repopulate the eco-system with excellent marketing to procure new players from both traditional geographical territories and emerging ones.

If Pokerstars applied the same higher rake + an abundance of casino games etc to a live bricks and mortar poker room where there are a finite number of active players in the catchment area then they would be dead in the water very quickly, because no one would play at a venue full of slot machines and gaming tables that also charges high rake as they know that they are basically doomed as a player.

Players want value. Pokerstars do offer some great value, especially in MTTs, but IMO the financial pressures of servicing such massive debt and the responsibility to shareholders has caused them to massively tarnish their own brand in respect of poker.

RIO poker do not need to do this, they can base their site on the model of a bricks and mortar poker club, offering value to players, not setting out to quickly bust them with no skill games and upselling poker related features and services.

I totally get why Stars group are doing what they do and I would do the same, in fact I would go even further and be even more ruthless if I was a hard nose business man, but unfortunately what they are doing goes against the principles of poker being a game one can win at using skill and determination and goes against the principle that the person who operates the game acts as a broker only.

As soon as Pokerstars became simultaneously both a broker for poker, and the house for non poker gaming products, it was inevitable how their business model would evolve.

What percentage of regular Poker Stars players also have accounts on casino/sports gambling sites and regularly play there as well?

Does PokerStars run a live poker room at the Hippodrome Casino in London ? Make your point by looking into how they run that room, in connection with or at least proximity to a casino ?

I've never been to the PokerStars live poker room there, although its been open for years. When will they be or are they already "dead in the water" ?

It is called Pokerstars Live at The Hippodrome but whether Pokerstars are the "owners" of the operation or the casino own it, or somewhere in between, I do not know.

The point is that they don't run it like they run their on line poker.

Yes it's based in a casino where you could gamble your house away in 5 minutes if you wanted to at the casino tables, but the cash game room is on something like the 3rd or 4th floor in its own room and about 150 feet above the casino floor and the tournament room is on the 1st floor next to a bar, again in its own room and about 50 feet above the casino floor.

I've been a member there for years and I've never had any direct or otherwise marketing to me from them for any other game apart from poker, nor have I seen any marketing or promotions within the poker area to attract or tempt poker players into playing casino games.

Now if they put a bunch of slot machines inside their cash game room on the 4th floor, plus a roulette table a blackjack table, and a sports book in the room, and crushed player rewards down to next to nothing and promoted said other games in the room with glitzy adverts on the cash game waiting list screen, using tempting casino, slot machine and blackjack promotions, how long do you think it would last as a live poker room?

Las Vegas casinos have had poker in close proximity to other casino games and often literally next to sports betting for years, so I'd think it would last for years coexisting with other gaming channels. Has worked okay in Las Vegas for at least 45+ years I can attest to.

I would guess poker survives in that environment because unlike non casino resorts, Vegas has not quite an infinite supply of players/gamblers/recreationals but still a huge number of people and fresh money supply on an ongoing basis.

Pokerstars are kind of replicating Vegas, only online, a poker room that has a casino and sportsbook.

This is their prerogative to do so, however, what is fundamentally different between the Vegas live casinos and Pokerstars, is that Pokerstars are specifically using poker as the hook to get players into the casino.

For example, when I was watching the Pokerstars Championship Cash Game from Monaco on UK Channel 4 TV last night (a mainstream TV channel, not a small "satellite" one), which was a brilliant show and fantastically produced, there was no mention at all during the show that should I (the viewer) sign up to Pokerstars on line that there would be a plethora of other gaming products on offer as well as the poker. Naturally they also ran paid for ads for Pokerstars in the ad breaks. Again no mention of what is really on their platform.

So this kind of marketing is not at all transparent, it is in fact quite devious.

I don't actually care per se. There are a multitude of things in life and society that aren't totally pure or fair
and there are so many other things that need fixing of way higher priority than a company being a bit sneaky.

But what we are discussing is RIO's new site, a site from what we hear or suspect aims to bring back the good old days of a sustainable poker eco-system where players have a fair chance to prosper and aren't in danger of being led astray by other gambling temptations or faced with games that are unbeatable due to high rake, and therefore games at higher stakes simply never happen because there is no realistic path up through the stakes.

+1 A destination like Vegas where the casino has a short amount of time to fleece someone before they catch their flight home or walk across the street to a competitor has nothing to do with building a successful business in ordinary customers' home towns based on repeat business. An online site is always available so it's much more like the home-town club than the tourist trap.

If Vegas is really the model to copy then why not start with replacing single-zero roulette with double-zero roulette in online casinos?

No, they've specifically been saying a newbie has lower ev at poker than they have a non-skill game. Hope this helps.

Live poker is better balanced to retains recs because there is no multi-tabling, meaning hourly winrates for pros are lower relative to the blind levels, and the supply of variance is better matched to its price.

Online has been optimised in such a way that the variance suppliers (pros) want a 1st world hourly rate without supplying an entertaining amount of variance (per hand, by mass gearing up at low stakes). The customers do not want to buy that product.

I don't think this is the point. Live poker provides a totally different (and imo better) experience: you can have drinks and talk with the other players (for me it's a one-outer to not get drunk when going to play live). Internet poker due to ist limitations in these regards was from the beginning set up to become the nerd-thing.

Both are true. Imagine you want to drink and talk in a 1/2 game in which it was worthwhile for 8 professionals to sit and grind out £1/hour. I don't think it would retain you.

That situation happens on line, because multi-tabling means the hourly is not £1/hour.

Globalising player pools also contributes to that effect, and you can't play full time in Leicester Square while paying the living costs of Belarus.

A successful online ecosytem needs to be designed in a way that makes it unreasonable or impossible for someone to play 100000s of hands profitably at low stakes. That does not mean banning winners, it just means removing all the leverage that has unbalanced the economics of the game, and making players choose stake levels appropriate to the type of action they intend to give.