its kinda 10k hands of each nl5,10,16,25.

I can't speak for anyone else but if they just raked every player before the hand is dealt, charging an ante rather than rake the winning pot, I would play more, and I think it is more sustainable because the fish would pay the same rake as the sharks. As it stands now, the fish pay a lot more.

And even good players at low levels suffer. I don't like the rake bottleneck created by players not being able to move up. Fish paying equal rake and good players having an opportunity to move up and build a fortune from nothing is part of a sustainable model.

Obviously PokerStars has a monopoly and loves the rake system because it hides the amount they charge for it, but they make about double what the live casino's make per table per hour, and have less overhead, and if there were more options we would see the $ we pay in rake cut in half.

Right now the system favors multi-tabling nits, to the point where it's not playable for a lot of people and downright boring for me.

JB262 I really like your post and I think what you said at the end is so true in general.

However fish do play less hands and win less pots. So they pay very much less rake overall. In fact the the regs pay all rake (like 70-80%), because they play so many hands. But its only cuz they play so many hands.

You can see charts of how much winners pay vs how much losers pay on my blog.



This is the crux. However even though stars dominates there are tons of sites out there. The problem is they all use the same rake system. They don't really do anything different then stars.

Take another industry like cars. Take Toyota and BMW. Toyota competes against BMW by building cheaper cars. Party competes against Stars by having the same price structure than Stars. What do you think happened if Toyota would try to compete against BMW in their same price and vehicle class?

I really like the ante-rake idea. Very cool.

0.5c per hand at NL4
0.5c per hand at NL10
1c per hand at NL20
2.5c per hand at NL50
5c per hand at NL100
10c per hand at NL200
30c per hand at NL400+;

approx. 5bb/100 for every game, all types of players pay the same rake, which is fair cause the site's expences are the same for all, no matter who takes the hand. Games are WAY more sustainable, rake is more "fair" for every type of player and type of game, breakeven fish like me suddenly win. Sites get about 75% of the rake they currently do (most of the rake is generated at midstakes, correct? So they take a little more rake there and a lot less at NL50 and lower), while getting very very good micro stakes games and basically the same rake model.

Please, if any poker room manager happens to read this, pls at least consider it.

They are not going to reduce the rake. The sites want to increase their profits year after year. Reducing the rake does not fit into that equation.

I'm more positive for an aggressive rakeback scheme, especially for micro and small stakes players. There's nothing that leaves fish more interested in playing than receiving a couple bucks in the end of the week, it really looks like "hey, this site is giving me money! I'm freerolling right now, I should take a shot at NL100". The ante idea is nice but the fish will notice money is leaving his account every hand and so will feel robbed.

Rake reduction won't happen unless someone like Party or 888 drastically cut theirs and force PS/FTP to do so.

do people really think that even fish is so ******ed that they don't know about the rake? I mean majority of them must have played live someday, and it's impossible to not notice it there...

Most Fish have no idea about the rake, because they dont use tracker.

this is incredibly wrong statement period

Live the rake is quite huge, which is really impossible to notice. Online the rake was far more explicit (it was stated right there in the main lobby like $10+1), now it's hidden in the individual tournament lobbies. The general fish will look and say "Oh, I'll pay $2, the mincash is $3.50 and 1st place gets $1k, that's fine" without ever noticing he's paying rake. Same goes for cash games where rake is taken subtly - there's no rake taking animation (like the animation when chips are added to the pot after a round) and people also don't make the calculations, so yes - quite a lot of fish don't know about the rake.

I would go even further. There are even a lot of (fish-)regulars, who have never done the math about rake.

They don't have any idea of the extent of the rake lost, but trust me they know about rake unless its a rookie super fish type who will tap his mini roll in a day or so.

I recall a few sites showing the rake sitting on the side waiting to be dropped. But obviously no site wants people to understand how much is lost to rake. Ps. I guess you mean it's impossible to not notice the rake live? I remember seeing the security guards gathering the rake boxes filled with white and red chips, then you notice how much is being squeezed out of the games.

Yes this is the only way it happens, I think if a big non gambling site got into the industry and had half rake ie 1.50 capped rake for 100NL + and maybe .75 capped for 50NL and 25NL then maybe the major sites would drop their rake. But as we have seen over the years sites are looking to take back what they gave grinders in rake rebates and bonuses as the online market has slowly dried up.

You're right, I forgot the *not*. My bad.

fish might not notice the extent of the rake they pay, but they notice when they find it impossible to experience a winning session

the effect of the rake and the rake system in place now serves to raise the variance of the winning players, and as the graphs that led to this thread show, lower the variance for the losing player

that means a losing player will lose a little less during losing sessions and win a little less during winning sessions

variance is your friend when you are a losing player, and if you lower the variance you lower the amount of winning sessions for the losing player, and if you don't have winning sessions, you will lose interest

I think giving spot bonuses to people who deposit a lot is fine, I know personally that I played a lot more when Party used to give me $75 free money from time to time

With a 43% reduction in rake, theres a huge increase in the number of average-skilled players now profiting, >10%, and winners have more desirable variance over 1 year sample


By the way, it shouldn't suprise anyone that lowering the rake by half produces 10x as many winning players. We've seen how rich the owners of the poker sites got during the boom. Even if they lower it by less than half it would be a completely different game.

When people state that somebody doesn't really understand rake it's not to say that they don't understand the basic concept that money is being taken out of each pot by the house, but rather the actual impact and magnitude of that rake over any meaningful sample. 5% to $3 or 4.5% to $2.50 (+fine print) doesn't seem like a ton of money. You win a $100 pot and the house takes $3. Hahah, who cares!

If you ask a player what percent of a top player's winning at various stake goes to rake, most would be incredibly far off. At low stakes the vast majority of even the best players' earnings ends up getting raked away. Even at midstakes now a days as earn rates lower, the top players are starting to pay increasingly large percentages of their earnings to the house. If somebody understands that, I would say they understand rake - the vast majority of 'fish' do not.

I would argue that almost no players understand this. I have asked my poker coach. He is a professional poker player, his income comes from online poker, live poker and coaching. His job is to analyze poker data in HEM. He had no clue whatsoever.

I have never met any player that understood this. The genius of rake is that it allows to rake all of your winnings away without anyone noticing.

Even in this thread only very few folks seem to understand. Most comments show that the poster has no idea about the implication of the rake for the poker economy and every individual including themselves.

HEM tells you how much rake you pay.

Yes :-)

And still people don't know how much rake they pay.

That is genius

I so want to implement a once a month slow roll feature on my site that does this.

I've read every post in here and other threads and I believe people like borg23, john_kane, gargamel_fk and pechkin have the right idea.

As some of you know I am about to launch my own site.

My main goals are:

• Make the games enjoyable / friendly for recreational players
• Reduce bumhunting as much as possible
• Cut down on mass multi tabling rake back pros
• Make the games more sustainable over the long term

As a new start up with less to lose I can afford to take more risks than established sites and have been totally open to 2+2 for suggestions on features and ways to help the above.

So the two main points of interest to you guys will be the rake price and how I plan to achieve the points on the list above.

Rake:
First off, I believe the rake is too high especially at micros and PLO.
Yet a site needs to make money to continue to run and cover the costs of:

• software development
• marketing / promotion costs (attracting new players, repeat depositors)
• Design of images, ads etc
• Salaries for good customer support staff
• License fees
• Lawyer fees
• all the little jobs behind the scenes that are vital to a business success etc etc

So it is clear for a site to provide a great service to all players they need to make money.

I am going to start out with 4.5% rake. But with a much lower cap and the cap will be different depending on game and stake. So Micros the cap will be low and PLO lower than NLHE. Different still for Open Face Chinese etc.

I have not finalised any of the cap numbers and would be open to suggestions but I will try and have an average of 5-7bb/100 across the whole selection of stakes/games.

This is a clear reduction.

Rake Back:
There will be no such super nova or mass multi table grinding encouraged and so rake back will mostly be rewarded to:

• Losing players (100% rake back for large losers below 50NL)
• Table starters
• Action players (higher vpip/larger pots)

Most of the rake that would have been rewarded back will go into promoting and attracting new players/ repeat deposits.

I'm also thinking of rewarding losing players who have been absent from the site a while (maybe they tried poker once and got a bad experience) and giving them a welcome back bonus.

I have spoke to a few people and it looks like when the software is "done" the exciting part is going to be coming up with creative promotions.

A quick side note: termod recommended running with ads. As webmogul pointed out and me doing software for > 10 years it is not as profitable as you would think. However saying that. I think maybe small ads on the table, say where my logo would normally go, just an image of say a sports drink or whatever, nothing unobtrusive could maybe generate some extra money that could go 100% into promotional marketing.

This has gotten really long so I will come back tomorrow and explain how the software of the site itself will take care of most of the things that were on the list at the start of this post. You can find out more in my thread in the software forum. I already have the max tables as 9 but I'm thinking of limiting it further below 50nl and having a max of 12 at mid-high stakes.

Obviously what I have outlined above can't please everyone and I know I will get some back lash here but I will be still open to ideas and suggestions.

I'm hoping to start testing the site with these rake prices at the start of March.

All the best. Remember to have fun at the tables

Good luck man. It sound like you have some really interesting ideas and the right attitude.

EPIC