lol ok call what u wanna call it, i really dont mind tbh


dont understand what point you are trying to make here. At 10bb you would basically be printing money with almost no swings. A couple of bb per 100 counts as a winning player in my book, but not really sure what this is got to do with it...
What I was trying to say was that if you cant win in poker today then you just arent very good or you just arent working hard enough. Nothing to be ashamed off though. Poker is tough to profit from these days and rather few are actually winning on a regular basis. My point is that "this" is sustainable. Poker anno 2005 NOT sustainable. It was a boom, like a good old goldrush.

Now i am curious what you suggest the sites should do. Cutting rake by more than 10-20% would clearly result in less for advertising.

And sites with no rake have popped up several times in the past, and I have played a couple of them. They sucked majorly, and games died completely pretty fast because it just didnt attract fresh money (fish / casual players)

Even if I had access to every single piece of Stars' internal data it would be incredibly difficult to really even ballpark the figure. Having a game where a large percent of players are winners would be completely revolutionary and it's just not really realistic to try to predict exactly what would happen.

Eventually it's going to just require a major company to try to carve themselves a place out in the market - which in turn is going to require an open market. In a way it's somewhat analogous to what happened with online computer games. It wasn't terribly long ago that if you wanted to play an online multipler RPG, similar in concept to World of Warcraft today, you'd be paying per minute. And extremely similarly to the poker economy today, there were a lot of players who'd play very casually and pay a modest fee per month and a tiny percent of extremely high volume players who were routinely racking up 4 figure a month bills. The high volume players were upset but continued play largely because they were addicted or somehow profiting from the game, and the casual players didn't really care too much since at most they'd spend a couple hundred a month and usually much less.

It took an incredibly long time for new upstart companies to come around and start experimenting with different payment models. It ultimately culminated in World of Warcraft, a game that now dwarfs all of the previous online games by leaps and bounds in userbase, technology, scale and most every metric - well besides price. It's available to be played for some odd $15/month or even for free with some limitations on your character.

I don't really see these threads as being directed at Stars or Party Poker or what not. Stars is happy to sit on their monopoly and try to turn **** into diamonds - maybe it might just happen if they squeeze hard enough, right!?!? Party and their ilk - well they're having a hard enough time just keeping their servers operational let alone actually trying to innovate. These threads I see as mostly being directed at who will ever be the market leader in 10 years, I expect at a time when the name Poker Stars or Party Poker will be about as well known as Gemstone or Planet Poker.

no with the current rake at 10bb you would basically be breakeven and those couple bb winners will be moneybleeding losers.
what i was trying to say is that due to rake no matter how hard you are working, with 10bb/100 winrate you would be a breakeven player just because of the rake alone, which forces people to bumhunt. Im not talking about nl200+ if thats not clear yet.
less rake = more action = more rake. As i've already said, bumhunters should pay more rake and that rake should go into reducing the rake of losing players and regs who play with regs and create action= healthy food chain. Dream on tho..
And if stars need new money to make profit from rake, then they got no interest in having bumhunters who only bust fish and withdraw money and generate low rake, right?

wow, what kind of games is this with 10bb of rake??
That is definitely too high no matter what so i agree with you there if such games actually exist.
However I thought this thread was about decreasing rake in general across the board for all games. Although i dont have a super clear idea about every type of game and every stake i think anyway from experience that there exists winning players for pretty close to all stakes, on a site like PS f.ex anyway. I know there are some eurosites with insane and probably unbeatable rake for low-micro stake games.

that equation (keeping all other things equal) is almost certainly not right. If this was the case you would have seen this happening and being implemented by pokersites long ago.
Agree with everything else tho.

true, and you already see these days that some sites are realizing this and changing their rakeback/reward structure.

holdem nl10-50 and nl100 might not be that much different i guess.

At PLO6max 25$ rake is around 15bb/100

If you don't wanna get slaughtered by rake, there's only one solution. You must play poker as it has always been played. You must play in private live unraked game. Home games and shady bar games basically. Btw if you're good enough to beat today's online rake you would destroy a rake free game. Of course, private live play has its own perils. If you stack the angry drunk across the table for the 3rd time right now he might stab you. Marked decks, collusion, and other forms of cheating become a real danger. Overall though I feel this is the most profitable way to play by far.

you can also play high stakes where rake is pretty much irrelevant because it is about 10 % of money won in the game.

rakeback pros are the example kind? They got low rake because of their status thats why they can play 24 table and still able to show profit while also generating tonns of value for the site.

For guys that think that rake is a problem and not lack of fish. Take a look at pokerstars high stakes lobby. Games don't run without mark. A bunch of tables with 2 people (one sitting out) waiting for the fish to come.
The rake at high stakes is almost irrelevant (it is like 2bb/100 max) yet the games don't run.
The reason that nl400+ is almost dead is the lack of fish. The same disease is widespreading across small stakes now.

We need sites to put as much efford as possible to bring the fish on board. The rake is only secondary factor.

I don't think Pokerstars has actually run any math on this. The fact that they use the exact same rake structure for PLO and NLH makes this very obvious. They are 2 different games with wildly different bb/100 effect for the same rake structure. If they had run any simulations or whatever on which rake structure provides the most long-term profit, they would obviously end up with different rake structures for these 2 different games.

There's a reason slot machines return like 90% while lottery returns around 40%. If slot machines returned 40% per spin, people would be losing money so consistently you would have no returning players. I'm not making a comparison to NLH and PLO, just pointing out how unoptimized it must be to use the same rake structure for both games.

How can there be fish at nl400+, when the rake at lower stakes make it impossible for them to climb up? Lower the rake -> more people will win at low stakes and climb up. These regs that manage to climb up should be fish for the regs at nl400+. You will have these "fish" deposit new money when they bust because; why wouldn't they deposit again so that they can climb up again from plo25 to midstakes.

+1

I don't get it why people think that lowering the rake will result in no good. Someone even did a comparison of 888poker.

The equation is so simple, yet there are people on 2+2 that don't seem to get it. I fully understand why pokersite owners aren't getting it when people here that are actual players, don't seem to get it.

If the cost of playing goes down, then it will atract new players in. Same idea as in business. If Ferrari started to sell their cars at $60.000, their customer pool would go up. That was a bad example, but whatever. In order for a new player to play poker, he has to deposit money, right ( we don't count in here the super geniuses that will build their roll from freerolls to millions)? So there is no problem in this area. I think that many people here don't think most of the fishes do care about how high the rake is. But they absolute do care about it.

Here is an example. If one deposits $50 and he is to be expected to play with it for lets say 3 hours. This time includes his loosing rate to the poker players and loosing rate to pokersite. So he's loosing to the player pool in average -6bb/100 and loosing to the pokersites -15bb/100. So in total he's loosing 21bb/100. So at plo25 he is loosing $10,5/100 hands. With that $50 he is loosing $10,5 every 100 hands! Sure there are times when he will run it up to $200 and maybe continue to play or cashout and times when he looses it in 2 hands. So if he is two tabling with that $50, he won't be playing for long.
This man over here can't be that happy that he deposits $50 and every time looses it in 3hours. Don't you think he or the pool of people that are as bad as him ( lets say 50 000 people) would play more if they now with that $50 could play for 5hours? AND also the fish would win more often due to good luck because if your loosing rate becomes smaller then your expected value will not be as straight line any more. I will try to paint a picture for yuo. Ok so a player with a high win rate rarely goes into downswings. Same applies for a player with a high loosing rate, he rarely goes into a big uppswing. This is just basic math, if you don't understand this concept, go and read other threads about variance.
So that would lead to that the player pool of bad players (50 000), would start to deposit more often to pokersites because they are now getting much more woth their money. They used to get 3hours of entertainement and very rarely win--> now they are getting for the same price 5 hours of entertainement and they are winning more often ( due to positive variance).
Wouldn't this start somekind of blooming in the poker economy and generate more profits to pokersite?
So lets calculate how much this player who is loosing at -6bb/100 to poker players can now play with a $50 dollar deposit. Ok, so PokerStars have come to their sences and will lower their rake with 50%. -6bb+ -15bb*50%/100= -13,5bb/10= $6,75/100.
They are now loosing $6,75/100 hands instead of $10,5/100 hands. They are also winning more freequent due to the varience. This will increase thir sadisfaction EV or whatever you want to call it buy so much, that I wouldn't be surprised if a guy who used to deposit 4 times a year, starts to deposit every mont or more often the $50.
And what about deposits. 50 000 people depoist 4 times a year $50, that equals to $10 million. After the chan. 50 000 people deposit every month $50, that equals to $30 million. More people will also join that player pool of 50 000 people. It could very easilly double up to 100 000 when these people will start to tell stories to their friends about how fun it is to play poker online (free marketing there by 100 000 people).

Hope some of you, especially Pokerstars, understands what I'm trying to tell here.

Losing at 21bb/100 at 0.10/0.25 is -$5.25/100. Losing at -13.5bb/100 is -$3.375/100.

Do you all not realize as soon as the rake decreases (and if more fish join), that a bunch of inactive regs now have incentive to play, thus driving down winrates and negating much of the effect of the rake decrease? Poker is an economy. Every example in here is always absolute; meaning if rake decreases well then these fish will play more often. Regs will also play more often and the games will get more difficult. In the early stages of poker, there wasn't a big supply of grinders, but now you have a bunch of players who are very small losers to very small winners in the current environment. These grinders have quit poker b/c they don't currently win enough to make it worth their time. Decrease the rake and they'll flock back and thus you end up with very little difference.

I dont know anything bout rake and all that but lets assume you could play at a site by the hour.
Lets say...60 min of ps equals 1 dollar.
Would this attract fish?
What if it would cost 10 dollar?

What do sites charge at this moment by stake?

What im saying is this:
rake is like a fee thats very much camouflaged.

Like in this:
im sure no fish would love to PAY upfront 1 dollar an hour or more to play micros...but now they are paying tenfold happily.

in short:
the system of rake itself sucks.
it comes from the casinos who actually make costs.
sites dont have these costs.


my point:
many people (fish or not) would have a bad feeling about it to have to pay 100 upfront to play 10h 1/2 while nobody cares to pay more than double in the rake structure.


just saying...oh and ive been drinking so dont mind me saying...gl

Oh and...just out of curiousity:
does somebody have the numbers of what the cost would be like at this moment if sites would charge by the hour?

tnx

I personally don't think a lot of fish would pay to play. You could give them a huge discount to current actual rake and they still wouldn't pay to play. They would view it as an extra charge whereas now they just view it as a loss.

sites have costs, obviously

Ai meant BB/100, allways mix them. But the point is still the same. Fish loose at slower pace when you reduce rake, hence the poker community gains more fish.

Your point does not make any sence since you imply that fish cannot beat regs. Surely it will increase on the amount of regs, but the expected loose rate of a fish can't go that much down because of that. You have forgotten one important point here. Nobody can win pokersites rake, but anybody can beat a bad regular/grinder at plo25. You say that when lowering rake, the loose rate for the fish will go back to what it used to be. NO sir, you are very wrong.

Your thinking works in the normal economy. For example gas prices and tax. If the government lowers the tax, the gas suppliers will raise the price of gas so that in the end the consumer will pay the same price. This doesn't apply here.

Inactive/breakeven regs start playing again...

Good regs profit from breakeven regs.
Fish lose their money slower, since breakeven regs dont win as fast.
More hands are played, as breakeven regs throw money around to other breakeven regs.
More money is raked.

Do you seriously believe that having a bunch of players who currently can't beat the games, deposit money and start playing.. is a bad thing?

this is a very old idea and it sucks in a number of different ways. Random fish who luckboxes a big win from a small deposit doesnt want to pay a huge tax on his once in a life time winnings. And i am saying huge because this tax on winnings would have to be really really huge to compensate for the rake lost by not doing it the normal way.

If u somehow tweak it into becoming a tax only for big volume and winning players then it would horrible for those as well, and would take away a huge chunk of their winnings. So they would quit the site pretty quickly im sure. All in all it would suck for everyone expekt that group who are happy playing poker for a tiny tiny profit each month.

You guys are also exaggerating how much rake matters for a very bad player. The vast vast majority of these guys money goes to the other players, not to the site via rake at all. Rake or no rake will probably not make a noticable difference for the playing experience of these players.

+1

Very bad players are easily capable of losing 1 buyin every 30 minutes.

Does anyone really think they stop playing because the rake is 10BB/100 rather than 6BB/100?

The reasons they leave are:
- they get bad beats and think it's rigged
- they get constantly isolated preflop
- nobody speaks with them
- they have no chance of recouping their losses (like they do with mtts)
- it becomes an expensive hobby very quickly

Now, maybe if they got paid a some cash every week, and got a token to some fun tournaments, then maybe they'd come back, deposit and play.

But between 2004 - 2011, this rake has gone back to the regs instead (something that has been changing in 2012 and will continue to change in 2013, fortunately for everyone)

new idea, low stake players also should have possibility to have supernova and supernova elite. One Sne can rake 1kk a year( or w/e the number is) and gets more than 50% of that back. Now there can be 500 low stake players who generate 20k rake/year in summ they generate the same amount of rake, but they get only 15-25% back each, they may grind the same amount of hands per year, create lots of action to fish and maybe put the same amount of effort and in summ they rake the same 1kk per year, but the rewards are unfair to them for some reason.
So the suggestion is - give statuses not by amount of rake someone made, but by the amount of hands they played.
Fish dont care about the rake.
Bumhunters will still bumhunt even with lower rake, it will just increase their bumhunt income for a bit, but they are less likely to get that status if it would depend on hands played amount, so they would pay more rake.
But regular grinders should not be punished by rake just because they play lower stake and should get adequate rewards for their effort.

tldr Make status achievement be based on hands played, not rake amount generated, up to SNE.
Leave milestones depend on amount of rake generated, so higher stake players still get some bigger rewards.

Thank you for posting ITT. The only thing a reduction in rake does is help saturate the games with more tight/reggy players that you have little edge on. Fish don't play b/c there's no multi-way action. They're donkey tendencies get exploited so quickly when it's 5 vs 1 instead of 4v2 3v3 etc.

I'm not sure if I mentioned this earlier, but I intended to...the sustainability of poker is poor b/c people remember when fish were willing to lose thousands at $1/2+ cash games. These people basically don't exist anymore. They were always going to disappear regardless of rake.

I've said it before, I'll say it again. Poker is an economy with ebb and flow. If you eliminate or reduce rake, you will find a whole new economy, but that economy will still have tiny edges. There's always going to be some small minimum winrate that will keep regs playing. If that winrate happens to be 2bb/100, then the games will converge to the point where 2bb/100 is a solid winrate. There weren't enough good players to create this effect in 2005, but now there's an oversupply of regs just waiting to win money.

Well I have to repeat myself. Fish don't have any impact on weather or not the game is beatable.

Fish are great and all, but we don't have a problem of not enough fish when it comes to the sustainability of the game.

I have to say two things:

1. Bad players and fish. Again are not the problem.
2. I agree with you that having to pay 80% on your winnings would suck. The problem is how can you like rake when it does just that?! Rake takes away the same 80% yet in a way that we don't realize and because of that its ok?


We are not saying rake matters to anyone. We are saying it should. People do not understand how much rake they are paying and that it makes the game unsustainable. That's exactly the problem. Rake is killing us, but no one notices.