If no one could win at poker the game would die insanely fast, no one would play poker and anyone who wanted to gamble would play some casino game instead. Most of the depositors would never have made their first deposit if they know poker was a casino game, this is a fact.
This is why you're argument falls apart, you disregard why anyone signed up to pokerstars in the first place. Now with time some poker variants will die, and NLH cashgames is one of them, i don't even understand how it has survived for this long.

I say it because I believe it to be true. Yes is it probably true that if all the winning regs left Stars would simply get all the $$ in rake in "the end" (lets for now ignore the fact that new winners would emerge). However "the end" is years into the future. Stars / Amaya is a publicly traded company who have shareholders that care about the next quarter, not what could happen in 10 or more years time.

As mentioned in parenthesis new winners will emerge, unless Stars raises the rake so high everyone quits in which case there is no rake. I don't believe it to be in their interest to do so however, the optimal situation for Stars has to be deposits = rake + cashouts where the rake:cashouts ratio is as high as possible without hurting volume.

When I say grinders pay more rake I mean compared to the recreationals in their database. Say the Stars player database is 5% grinders and 95% recreationals. If the average grinder / winning player is playing 50k hands per month and the average recreational / losing player is playing 5k hands per month (this is probably too high) the grinders / winning players are making up about 1/3rd of the total rake. I can't imagine Stars not finding this valuable, they are not stupid.

Another thing to consider is lets take your average Zoom pool. I play 200plo where about half the players are playing 2+ entries and half are playing a single entry at any given time. Lets assume the 2+ entries are grinder / winning players and the 1 entry players are recreationals / losing players (approximately true based on observations). Lets also assume that the average number of entries per grinder is 3 (could be 2, 3 or 4). That leaves 3 grinder entries for every recreational entry. Think Stars wants 3/4 of their zoom pool to disappear? I don't know if it wold cut rake by 3/4 (probably not) but would certainly put a big dent in their earnings which their shareholders would hate.

Flanderz makes a good point. A big part of the appeal of poker is playing against other players with an actual / mathematical chance of winning long term. Stars may be able to get some money from recreational players with casino style "poker" games, the big deal, etc. but people open a poker account on Pokerstars to play poker.

Poker players, winning or otherwise, know how poker works, they want to play preflop and then 3 streets, that's why 100bb buy in poker is extremely popular, enough to play all streets and go all in on the river. Some high rake 15bb raise preflop then pot sized all in bet on the flop is not fun for anyone, recreational players included. If this is what recreational players wanted they would still all be playing sit and goes.

So regs are only useful because they start games?

Simple solution: just implement a 'register' button for every single game. That way you can immediately sit down with anyone who wants to play. No waiting around, you get a game immediately. Seems to work well with Spin and Go's - those games are full of recs - don't see why it wouldn't work with other formats.

I'd wager that a decent number of players regularly spend on games like league of legends and 'grind' the games there to achieve the dream of becoming a top esports player like their twitch heroes. If there was no carrot like that dangling I'd say there would be a lot less people playing those games. If the dangling carrot is removed from poker the same thing would happen.

thank you for sharing you thoughts, your expertise on subject of online poker is undeniable!

I'd never place a Sports Bet or play casino on Pokerstars.

I'd much rather give my action to another site that isn't run by Scumbags.

I hope that everyone on this thread would do the same.

Yeah it's one of the big benefits regs supply, it's why poker sites go out of their way to encourage table starting. However without a critical mass of regs to provide whatever game a recreational wants whenever they want it, the recreational players would just go get their fun elsewhere.

My opinion is that poker sites and regs both need each other and a thriving poker ecosystem should provide benefits for both. A landlord could charge very high commercial rent in order to rinse any business who used his property but without a profitable business to charge rent to, then the landlord has no income either. It's in both party's interest for the other to be able to succeed.

2 points:

1. Poker is universally thought of as a game that can be beaten. This will never change. People will understandably view the VIP cuts as a loss, but it will only motivate them to work harder to improve their skill.

2. Variance. This is what keeps people playing, whether games are beatable or unbeatable. Why do people play casino games? They are unbeatable, yet plenty of people still play them. Because of variance.

Are you going to respond to my whole post, or just cherry pick parts of it and take it out of context?

A simple solution to your problem of table starting: create a register button for every single game. 6max cash game? Simple, just hit 'register' and you will sit down with people who also hit register. 9max cash game? Same thing, just hit that register button. It works extremely well with Spin and Go's. You can get a Spin and Go game virtually immediately, without having to wait around, and frequently without a reg in the game.

there is no point - like most people offering anti-reg opinions itt, you simply have no clue what are you talking about. And rightfully so - for you it's just a hobby, no need to know mechanics behid it. Just don't fancy yourself an expert, because you are not.

If you want an actualy answer: solution you are talking about already exists, it's called "table starters" and is not popular with recs.

The reason there is a good reg:rec ratio in spins is not registering method, it's the fact that they have massive variance AND huge rake, which deters many regs from playing them.

So when I look at my HEM at the end of the month and see that I have paid $1800 in rake, I haven't actually paid that rake at all because I didn't deposit?

Stars have that already with their quick seat feature which I'm totally on board with as a way to combat seat scripts and bumhunting. Quick seat still wouldn't solve the problem of not having a large enough pool of players to ensure those tables actually fill up. I'm on board with spin n goes too and currently stars have those games in a beatable state for a reg, I'm sure that's not accidental.

This could be a reason Stars is pushing them and other high rake, high variance formats, fish play, regs don't. I don't like it, but worth pointing out.

I'm not sure I would play them if for example they were the only option. Poker players these days do have other options they can pursue (or have at least thought about it) and while I'd rather play poker for now if spin and goes were the only option I think I'd hang myself.

Confirmed spin and goes are beatable without rewards? I haven't seen any data on this.

Exactly.
I guess <10% of recreational players would wait more than a couple of minutes for a SnG to start, let alone opensit one (non HU). No regs --> nearly no games that require more players than HU or spins. Stars can't profit from deposits if ppl don't spend them for games, it's a mutual dependency between operator and regs.

in b4 "Recreational Players just want to win money as well and less regs = better chances" --> Yes, but they do so in their free time and don't want to waste hours by waiting for a game to actually start. They have limitations a regular full time player does not have.

I'm pretty sure this is correct. Unfortunately I'm too dumb to explain it, but I'm sure someone else made a really good post explaining it somewhere, will link if I can find it.

Basically though it goes something like this. When a rec who is extremely likely to ever withdraw makes a deposit to play cash games, the site effectively sees all of that deposit as theirs to take. If the rec plays in a rec-only game, with other players who also aren't ever going to withdraw, and who don't have any kind of significant edge on each other, eventually the site will take the vast majority of the deposit. Bring a pro into this game, and even though he plays hands and pays rake, overall he will take money out of the game by winning and eventually withdrawing. The money he's taking out of the game is money that the site would have taken in rake had the pro not joined the game.

Without the regs, the hands will be played anyway - between the fish - and more of the deposits of the recreational players will go to the site rather than other players. The value in having regs comes with them facilitating the games. There is huge value in being known as the biggest site, where everyone plays and everyone knows they can get a game 24/7. This is what Stars built their empire on. However with the decline in recreational deposits comes a reduction in the need to keep the regs happy, and imo this is where the recent changes have stemmed from.

(fyp i guess)

precisely, except that's a fallacy - the fallacy that is root of all this "winning players don't pay rake" crap. Sure, rake paid by regs is worth less than rake paid by net depositors, but saying it has no worth at all is simply false.

Yeah, hands will be played anyway. Just not so many of them which hurts stars the most unless all ppl invest the money in roulette, sportsbets etc. (they won't cause some ppl just like poker). Sure amaya can bake a smaller cake and eat a larger percentage of it, doubt this was the whole idea behind the aquisition tho.

The large amounts of players on stars are also the reason why such large guarantees can be offered, undeniably one of the biggest draws of pokerstars. I doubt the Sunday 10k for 215 buyin would have the same kind of ring to it as the Sunday million.

I'm not sure what your argument is. Why is it a fallacy? If a rec deposits $100, the site wants to take as much of that $100 as possible. If the rec is playing vs other recs, then the site will take the vast majority, if not all, of that deposit. If the rec plays on a table with other regs, then the regs will take the majority of the deposit. Sure the regs will pay rake on the hands they play vs the rec, and the regs will pay rake on hands they play vs other regs. At the end of the day though the site will end up with less money than if there were no regs.

Try this example.... A reg comes onto a site, deposits $10k, plays for a year, makes himself $30k in profits and pays $10k in rake, then withdraws his whole $40k. The site hasn't made $10k from this player (ie the rake he paid). The site has lost $30k worth of deposits that they otherwise could have raked for themselves.

(All assuming there are enough players to make the games run)

Number of hands is not the issue. The proportion of deposits going to the site compared to the proportion that gets withdrawn by winning players is the only thing that matters as far as I can see.


This is how I understand it, but I'm open to opposing views because it's all very confusing and I'm not 100% sure I'm correct.

This
Alot of people seem to think that recs are only people who wanna gamble some money on their free time for fun.
Alot of the recs who deposit are simply bad regs, who want to win but simply can't.

I can see a potential mini boom from the gamer world, but they have to be introduced to a good format, like plo cashgames or even a new poker variant. NLH cashgames has to die at this point, completetly die and we have to never look back, it's a horrible form of online poker and bad players simply never win enough there.

1. The day no one can make money is the day poker will die fast, the word will spread around. Aslong as people still beat high raked games that won't happend ofcourse.

2. There's millions of people who wouldn't touch a casino but burn money at poker, i think everone in this thread could name atleast 5 people.

This isn't true. The vast majority of poker play - and online poker play - is where there is literally no money at stake.

A lot of people enjoy playing the game itself even without the opportunity to win money. Some people play the game to win money. Some people play for different motivations.

People play many games when they are guaranteed to lose/spend money, and have no prospect of winning money. This includes not just poker, but golf, Candy Crush, roulette, and so on.

Sure, but the reverse is also true. Different things appeal to different people.

There's a lot of different motivations for playing the game, and ascribing the same motivations and interests to everyone isn't a good way of thinking, nor a good way of discussing the game.

The argument that rec vs rec games will never have anyone cashing out is flawed. All recs are not the same. A 35/5 player is a fish in today's games, but put that player in a line up full of 95/5 players and they will crush and cashout just the same as winning players now.