does it really matter what the rake is at .02/.04nl? people are not playing for a living at that stake, higher rake wont affect them as its just for fun/recreational purposes, and the fish will never run out at that stake, and win rates are massive/ good players move up for anyone playing seriously.

No, not really. We'd like it be that way, but it doesn't have to be that way.

Gambling sites seem to do pretty well out of games where literally nobody is a long term winner - not sure why they would/should view poker any differently. There is certainly no way that they are going to randomly gift a large chunk of their profit to players by reducing rake.

This is the essence of the debate.

If a winning player became a 1% entity then the industry obviously suffers because the billions churned is largely because of the multitablers therefore a middle ground sustainability is what we need to be approaching. Right now rake is probably 1% too high. Take it down a notch and we have a lot of fun and maybe the industry increases profits again? It's probably unlikely sadly...

They should definitely view poker differently because it's inherently different for obvious reasons. You NEED to churn and rollover to maximise profits. That's the point of this thread isn't it?

All the poker sites care about is profit. Reducing rake will reduce their profit - I have yet to see a good argument why this would not be the case. I don't buy the argument that reducing rake will cause a huge influx of players to that site (e.g. the zero rake sites).

And as for the sites making their profit from the mass table grinders, that simply is not true. They make their profits from the players who deposit more than they withdraw

I'm not sure there's an industry where profit is more turnover based than poker? It's quite unique in that manner.

Zero rake sites - forget them in this climate with their initial strategies and software.

What we're talking about here is whether a 1% rake on cash games and 3%? (ball park figures) tournament rake reduction might actually increase profit over a 10 year period.

Let's face it we're talking about stars/ft here.

We don't know what analysis they undertake to determine this but if we can do it here then all the better.

Ideally, the rake would be low enough that some players can be winners, but high enough so that few players can be pros with poker as their only source of income.

Perhaps the sites should eliminate all rakeback played directly to players and instead reduce the rake by the equivalent of half of the rakeback, put 25% of it into bonuses and other promotions that fish like such as a bad beat jackpot, and take the last 25% as profit.

Sorry I'm on my 2nd bottle. What a load of crap! AsianNit is correct!

The rb scenario on PS right now is just another leg for them to stand on in regards to not reducing rake. The minimal people who are SNE get 70% back making rake in itself quite negligible but its peanuts in the whole terms of things so ye i agree with AsianNit in that abolishing all rb and having much more transparency for 'PROS' would be a good thing. Fish need something to work toward tho and they are obv never getting SNE.

The numbers we have seen so far suggest most potential pokerplayers only play very few hands.
The reason is very simple in over 80% of these cases; they lost and didn't like that.

All the reward systems should be changed from top down to bottom up.
Losing players should get extra incentives to play, winning players already have their incentives, because winning is always fun.

The reason poker isn't as big as it should be -apart from governments- is because pokersites killed it. They figured as long as they manage to attract new fish their model would work. But they forgot meanwhile they lost most fish forever and now the market has matured that is a big problem as their model accelerates the decline. With the current model online poker will die rapidly.
A new model however could start a second pokerboom.
A wild guess based on the graph; twice as many winners could make the market 20 times bigger.

Why would you not want to pay more to keep him sucking at poker?
No rakeback, but fishback.
The rake change would soften competition and increase traffic dramatically.

I like the time-based rake idea, as long as it was a fair rake taken.
maybe MTTs could be .50 cents/hour and cash games somewhere in the neighborhood of $4/hour .....

Define "fair".

+1 to asiannit but also F U.

Will reply tomrrow after less wine

It should be 1bb/100 capped at 1bb a pot, simple as that

much better would be a site that took a 10% fee for withdrawals on winnings and charged no rake at all.

Can we see graphs on 10% wihtdrawals please?

"I was able to get a degree by memorizing ideas of other people and reproducing them in tests, im smarter than all you fools who try to make up their own mind"

10% on net withdrawals. So no 10% on money i have deposited and get my 10% back when i redeposit my winnings.

+1 to less rake

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiVsUGJ1elE

Have any of you played in a live poker room that switched from raked hands to a time charge?

this is a very nice and simple set up. and would be very very good for the poker economy.

i would like it.

Compared to what sites are raking today it would have to be closer to 50%.

But we could regulation to do something like that.

Lots of people also say that high one time fees like that would not work because they make the price to visible in relation to the rake that no one feels. ( I dont agree with that)

Yes

I agree.

Yea same story. They charge 10 every h. Does not affect the game. Rake or time is the same.