This is completely irrelevant for the ecology of the game. Fish don't matter for the ecology of the game.

Only rake does! The game creates fish automatically.

What you are saying makes no sense.

Fish or shark is not what makes or destroys the games in our industry today.

This is exactly the point.

Rake is an excellent method to remove cash from cash game tables - ask any recreational player how much rake was taken from a cash game and they won't have a clue.

However, rake is a terrible method to value players.

If we were to start the online poker world all over again, I think the concept of assigning rake to particular players would not exist.

Instead poker sites would use all the rake collected to run hugely fun promotions and huge marketing campaigns.

Entry to such promotions would be based around simple requirements, such as 'play 50 hands the day before', or 'depositors tournament'.

The problem is today is that some of the net losing players are regfish who have been used receiving vip rewards based around being allocated rake. So if a site were to end allocating these regfish a portion of their rake, the regfish would leave. I'd love to see a site take a gamble on this by ending rake allocation to player and instead run huge promotions, but doubt it would happen due to the above regfish situation that exists.

Sigh, another thread were ppl argue for lower rake, while being completely unable of seeing the bigger picture from the sites perspective. Lower rake is just a short term fix and will only make for an "ecosystem" down the road of much worse reg/fish ratio.
Imo what the sites need to do is to remove rakeback completely and instead distribute this money for fish friendly promotions and also to promote more fish friendly games. All in all use more of the rake on things that will longterm increase the fresh money coming in and less on rewarding regs.
The rake should be low enough to enable winners on all levels. Thats the critical line for sustainability. Predator/prey simulations give a good idea for how this dynamic works.

I like Fulltilt. The rake is pretty high but it offers good rewards for microstakes players.

I see many people in this thread write that the pokersites dont do anything. Someone should start a site that revolutionized the raking system in a much better way, there has been many suggestions here that are much better alternatives to what we see today. The game could be so much better, and the site could still make money. Someone should start it, it could be a good business. Its need some start capital, but if this alternative is much better for the players, they will go there. Simple as that. The rest of sites can rake what they want but with no players whats the fun.

This! Sites are clogged with these idiots wrecking games. The few sites that are somewhat more fishy can have higher rake and the games are easier ie Pacific Poker. Either the rake needs to be much less at 50NL and lower or the table cloggers need to be reduced(or both).

It seems, you are a libtard idealist who has no clue about poker economics.

This is pretty much happening now, except the % isn't to your liking.

By the way, why do you think poker players should keep 80% of money deposited on to a poker site?

Note to some: Nobody deserves to win money at poker. If you think you deserve to win at poker, go play rake-free play money or subscription sites. Thousands will continue to play for a small edge while you sit on the sidelines whining and crying about "fairness." Fairness...lol.

@ LT22

Nobody deserves to win money at poker? LOL! Only the sites deserve to win?
Who are u, the owner of Pokerstars? Or just opposed to progress in general?

Jesus christ..

^^^ haha wtf did i just read?!? most stupid thing ever written in a thread trying to negotiate a better deal for everyone who plays poker, its not like the sites aren't going to be able to make a decent and fair profit if they decrease the rake at some of the lower stakes games by a small amount.

Usually what is unfair to one customer is totally fair to another in most instances of business, however when 99.9% of customers agree that they are not getting a "fair" deal that is usually an indication that someone is making more than a reasonable profit somewhere.

It's not even a matter of fairness, it's a matter of sustainability. People are concerned that rake this high will kill the longevity of the games, representing a loss for both the players and the sites in the long term.

I've read through most of this thread and some of it is quite ridiculous. Granted I didn't play much micro stakes when I did play online (which wasn't much), so I'm not too sure how high it really is. Personally I think what most casinos do at small stakes is fair, 10% up to $4 max. IIRC someone had an example of a micro stakes pot being $20 and the rake was $2. Same thing would have happened in my B&M game.

Ok, now I would buy into the argument of percentages regarding the bb. Say 2x the big blind and 4$ max at the higher levels. That is entirely doable and would seem fair. That's how I'd do it if I ran a site. And forget all that rakeback nonsense too.

However the one truly dumb idea is taking a percentage of my winnings. Seriously, 20-30% of my winnings? Yea I'd never return to that site. For example, I sit at a table of 1/2, wait patiently and in say two hands I profit $300. Two hands I pay $8 in rake, yet you want me to pay $60-$90? Really?

As for timed rakes, I don't care for that either. As far as I can tell casinos do it on the higher level games because having $1 chips on the table is too cumbersome (on say a 30/60LHE game). You don't have that issue online. I only played that game a couple times in Vegas and while I enjoyed the game, it cost me far more in rake than the same time at the 1/2 and 2/5NLHE tables.

I think a good suggestion would be a site that reduced the rake significantly on lower stakes, and then stopped all kinds of rewards to players, and instead used some of the money they made on attracting new players.
This has been suggested before, i think that would be a good solution.
As online poker is now, it is still worth playing, but when reading how the rake is eating up the small games, and making small losers or break even players into big losers - it does make me wonder how great online poker could be if it was run in a better way. At the end of the day, it is the players that hold all the power, we just dont use it to much..

The typical suggestion is rake on winnings in excess of deposits. You would pay 0 rake if your withdrawals do not exceed your deposits. Given your aghastness at possibly paying 30% over a 2 hand sample it's probably fair to say that you'd actually never have to pay rake again!

The exact percent is also completely up in the air. Rake on winnings in excess of deposits would massively increase the number of winning players overnight. It's incredibly difficult to predict how the dynamics would play out and what a corresponding percent would be. The extended player retention would also likely mean even if the sites rake less per day in $ given a certain percent, it's still entirely possible they would end up raking more per year in $.

I still don't understand why people do follow the nonsense that Do it Right post here on the forum. It is probably because people do belive that they would make more money that way (which is simply lol).
Guys stop day dreaming, look at what is happening in the Industry. The trend is to give regs way less and way more to ther recreational players.
We have an amazing success story in the poker industry-888, that offers almost no rakeback,very high rake,6 table cap, no rev share for affiliates and they are booming. They show amazing numbers almost every month.
The rake isn't a problem the lack of fish is. Wise and smart promos like 888 do are way better solution.
Instead of complaining on rake (that is still very beatable), we should focus with the sites how to make games more enjoyable and more fishy.
This is exactly the way all operators follow nowadays-888,bovada,Party/bwin, FTP, probably P* will soon also follow.
Lowered rake is like the most ******ed idea for sites- regs don't play each other, games run around the fish (even at stakes as low as nl25). The sites still need to provide the fish in order to get the games going.
We had the case like that with Merge network where lack of credit cards deposits caused the network to lose 40% of the traffic within like 3 months. Games run only if the fish join,period so why sites would give us more (via lowered rake) if we won't play anyway till they provide us with fish.
The service they provide us isn't only stupid software etc.-it is providing us with fish and thats up to them how much they want us to charge for.

I completely agree with borg23, don't you understand that what happened was mostly regs fault. Everyone was thinking in the short term perspective and it almost killed the game. People don't understand that the system will collapse without the fish and it doesn't matter what level of rake will be there.
No fish=no games. The more fish=the more games.
The 888 case proved exactly that you can give very little to regs and have them playing as long as you provide them with recreational players.
The less rake, the less money for sites, the less money for marketing purposes.
Lowering the rake would be suicidal from their business perspective.

There is no success story with sites offering low to no rake (I talk about com sites, not about some small lottery monopolies like svenska spell, or win2day.)
On the contrary we have more and more succesfull sites with high rake and low rewards. The trend is clear like it or not.

gargamel_fk is spot on.

Read that until you realise you were wrong.

If you still think you are right, read the previous line again.

You probably shouldn't be reading this line yet, but If you followed my instructions and learnt something, congrats.

Lol I never said things that you try to put in my mouth. It would never happen. Do you know why??? Because sites also need winners, even casinos. The same in poker there has to be winners.
There is many regs that for example play on 888 and don't complain (e.g. many of my friends). Do you know why? Because they still make more money than elswhere despite big rake, no value in rakeback etc.
I used to play on bodog back when they allowed Europeans with no rakeback at all and I loved the games. I understand companies like bodog- as long as they provide me with multiple fish due to their brand, beeting,casino I don't mind getting way less from rakeback etc.
I used to play on shaddy sites like dollaro with 5€ cap and I was beating the games with 10bb/100 due to fishy field.
Most of you here on 2+2 misinterpret the facts. You see huge decline in your profits and fewer and fewer tables and blame sites and rake.
However just stop for a minute and imagine yourself that instead of one fish at your table you have 2 on average. How big of an impact would it be??
I would say I would make way more money with one more fish at my table than with 30%-40% rake decrease.
Stop living in Wonderland. Decreasing rake wouldn't change anything. All of us regs won't play without the mark at the table. So for sites the only way to increase the profits (and traffic overall) is by increasing amount of fish in the games!!! So why would they care about decreasing rake??

There are 2 things that are the biggest factors on my profit: amount of fish and tables quality and the rake. The rake is no go simply because sites are here for the profit. Worst case scenario sites would just stop offering poker (like bodog did in European market) and only offer casino and betting cause they make there way more money. What you don't understand is that we want sites to profit from poker a lot. If sites like bwin will see that they profit a lot more from poker and there is more and more people playing they would promote it way more, so we would all make more money.
Sites like bwin/bet365/william hill focus their promotions on betting and casino games, now imagine that you decrease their profits in poker another 20-30% due to less rake. DO you think that they would still promote poker at all?? Even if they still offer it they would try to make it hardly accesible so fish would gamble sport or casino games.

We want sites to profit a lot from poker so they would still see a business in providing us with fish and no, they don't have to do this. They just might if they see profit there for them. You all act like they have to offer you all thier fish and hardly profit from this cause that would be "fair". Would it be??

gargamel_fk, gargamel_fk I don't know were to begin when you have your head so deep in pokersite owners anuses.

how can you possible beat the games if rake is 25bb/100?? you maybe are as good as the top pros in noosebleed games but the rest of us aren't. beating games for over 25bb/100 in these days is extremly difficult. you do realize that the "fish" know how to play these days so it's not like in 2007 when you could cbet and fold to a raise your way to be a big big winner. it's not that hard for a fish to do a couple of google searches and learn to be as good as all of the midstakes reguar were in 2007.

I don't think the pokerstars would go bankrupt if they were to change their rake for plo. they would still have a ton left to do marketing with so that new fish would join the games. the number of tables that are running on pokerstars that are cash plo must be a really low %. so even if they lowered for example it by 50%, it woud maybe lower thei total generation of rake by 10% max ( I'm just guessing here)??? So instead if making one billio dollars in winnigs they would make 900 million dollars. I think they can still figure a way to do commercials on tv and internet with that budget. While this is happening more people will become professional grinders due to that they are winners now in poker--> they will generate more rake.

how can you not see that gargamel_fk?? i guess it is hard to see when your head is up in the ***

I will use an analogy. It is pretty common for expensive bars,dance clubs in our Western world to give extremly good offer to hot girls (free entry, free drink/-s some even pay them) Why?? because as long as there are some hot chicks the guys will come (and pay for the expensive entries and buy heavily overpriced drinks). (this is standard for many good dj/music clubs)
You don't put the money into local owner because of your good heart. You do it with a hope that you will bang some of the hot chicks.
It also remind me a story from my local gym where the owner offered very good benefits to hot chicks in a hope that it will make his highly overpriced memberships popular among guys. Works perfect so far. Now imagine that we talk not about chicks but about fish in the poker world. DUCY?

Firstly you didn't pay the rake as long as you are winning player it was paid from net depositors money. The only money to be win is fish money. It can be win by site (rake) or you (profit). It is simple as that.

However I know that people will come complaining how skewed my perception is. So lets pretend that you do pay that rake.
The only reason you are willing to pay 25bb/100 rake is that there is someone sitting that will make up for it (recreational player). You play for the money,don't you?? It is like in my example you go to the bar and buy overpriced drink in a hope to pick up one of the girls (in our poker world to win fish money).

What is the point of all of you complaining?? The trend is clear sites offer way less to regs and I mean every sites (with the excpetion on pokerstars that still has pretty good offer for high volume players).
Like it or not it is how the reality looks like. So if I can't change that I can at least try to persuade sites to spend part of that money on players retention.
That's why it is better strategy simply because I can easily prove why it is a great businsess for them.
So there is a rake that I might complain my whole life about but it won't change anything or try to fight for something that is possible and doable. Isn't it a better strategy??

It isn't about what I want but about what is possible.

The guys who talk about fish are wrong. Fish don't matter for the sustainability. Reg to fish ratio does not matter. The game takes care of that.

On an individual level it matters. This is why there are fish that are asking to fishier fish than they are.

As to the the club analogy. It's simply wrong. What you are saying about clubs is perfectly right. However the way you draw the analogy to poker is wrong.

If you draw the analogy to poker than rake = pretty girl. We play poker to win. Rake cuts into the win rate. At the moment for every 4 girls that walk into the club 3 end up in the bed of the club owner.

A lot of you are saying to increase the rake so the games become better (by using rake for player retention)

Again you think that fish correlates to beatable games. But that is wrong. The only thing that matters is rake.

Poker has not a problem of player retention or even deposits. Poker has a problem of sustainability.

I haven't seen anyone here demanding increasing the rake. So don't pretend anyone did.
As of my analogy being wrong and you being right:
Most of you have no clue how costly it is in the egambling market to get new sign-ups. We are talking about hundreds of dollars per player. Affiliates get 200$+ per CPA or 30%+ of the rev share. Add costs of direct marketing that sites do (imagine how much bwin pay for being avertised on Real Madryt T-shirts) then add frequent promos, reload bonuses,etc. etc.

So sites spent **** ton of money to get sign-ups now you all think that they just should eat the loses and give it all to you cause the rake is unfair

The argument that the game will take care of itself is just wrong. Have you ever checked facts?? Let me tell you- we have a Merge Network. THey have had problems with credit card deposits (WU was going fine). So there were way less fish depositing. The network collapsed. The reg vs reg action is just ******ed fairy tale. It doesn't exist in real world. The bad regs if there won't be any fish will either move down or quit. If you don't understand that I just don't know what to say. I know several once huge networks that collapsed because regs crushed the fish and left because they don't play each other. It is like in nature sharks don't eat each other they compete for the fish, like we do.
The only reason we as Regs play is for the profit. We are here to make the money and we can't do this without fish. If there won't be any fish we will quit. So our pressence is heavily affected by amount of fish.
(exactly like in my club example, you have a free club with ugly girls or a club with hot chicks where you have to pay 30€ to entry, where will you go??, if there aren't any girls that you would consider hot and worthwhile you won't go there, same as in poker, fish sit out the whole table sits out or breaks as soon as fish leave).

The sites owners aren't stupid they realised that the amount of regs playing only depens on the number of recreational players. So instead of giving us better offer they can just increase amountof recreational players (hot girls in my club example) and the regs will come.

Like it or not but we have currently only one success story in the poker rooms market which is 888 that do the bussiness exactly that way. They proved that it works and we have others that follow (FTP, Party Poker,Microgaming even Ipoker changes its policy).

The main thing that matters is that fresh money is being deposited onto the site. Otherwise over time, the rake, no matter how low it is, will simply empty all the funds due to the churn (I think that is the expression)