Borg...whilst you might well be the smartest poster in the thread, the smartest poster on this entire forum and in real life the finest lover in the district and the finest son mater and pater could have hoped to have and a pillar of your community i think the tone of your last post is a tad abrasive and presumptuous. The poster you quote would have to be a poltroon of the highest rank to think the poker sites owe him or anyone a living. However, he, she or anyone can point out that the rake is too high at a given price point.

Loads of people start off at the cheeseburger stakes cos that's what they can afford to play. The increase in skill level across the board from Cheeseburger stakes to Double Whopper with Cheese stakes makes it harder to break even as win rates are down across the board. To raise such points does not really warrant contempt nor should it engender sympathy but i don't think anyone who has raised such points wants or expects sympathy and so it's my view that your second sentence is moot and disingenuous and bordering on the childish and i say this as your biggest fan in the whole world, excepting mater and pater and girls/boys/farmyard animals who have loved you from afar but were scared to approach you.

Instead of high rake, charge a fee on deposits on a sliding scale.

IE

$20-$100 = 5% fee
$100-$250 = 3.5% fee
$250-$500 = 2% fee
$500+ = 1% fee

Then charge a rake per hand, but maybe just 3%/hand with a 5bb cap (lower at higher stakes).

For MTTs, charge 5% fee (lower for higher stakes).

While your analogy is curt, it is not sufficient.

Playing at microstakes, or as you call them cheeseburger stakes, is what the majority of the player pool does. It is what every poker author recommends beginners to start playing to learn the games. The problem is that beginners often don't realise they are perfectly good players who simply can't beat the extortionate rake.

No one mentioned poker sites owe anyone a living. However, considering the thread title reads 'Rake pricing for a sustainable poker ecosystem', the picture is there to illustrate the problem discussed in abundantly clear terms.

Raking the lowest levels the hardest in terms of bb/100, is not only unfair, it prevents players from moving up to higher games and raking more gross rake in terms of $/bb. So actually the policy is quite clearly wrong!

Except that for any sort of sustainability, you should charge withdrawals, not deposits. The idea is to make deposits easier, not harder. Unless you make them easier, there will be no poker ecosystem.

The official press releases from Party Poker (it is a publicly traded company, therefore there has to be transparency) tell a very revealing story of vanishing player and deposit base. The site is losing money, and the loss is increasing. Player base is going down fast. It is very unlikely that they will lower the rake at this point. The reason of these losses has also been openly albeit briefly analyzed.

Contrary to what the posters here think, the people running the company are smart and they realize something has to be done. If I was analyzing the poker branch of the company as a CEO (and yes, analyzing business plans and results is something I do for work) I would give it max three years to turn to the green. Unless there was a change I would simply cut it.

Obviously they are trying everything to make the pokers profitable for the company.

IMHO based on the figures the future for the low stakes pro looks really bleak unless something gets changed fast. If the poker market is drying for the sites it is going to sure as hell dry up also for the 2+2 folks.

They should get rid of rakeback completely and instead focus way more on bringing in fresh money. Cant understand why it takes so long for some of the sites to realize this.

which sites? and if you remove rakeback people are gonna bumhunt even harder, sites wouldnt want that to happen.

also there was not a single response from anyone who is in charge of doing that, whats the point of this discussion at all?

Need a hug?

Thank you so much for sharing ! I wish more people would come out and show data like u did.

The really important thing to note is

1: u are killing it. Ur only paying 60% of rake. You are playing as well as a pro
2: at 200 NL the price is the same. While the rake will be only 6bb vs 9bb at ur stakes win rates will be lower too. Thus a pro at theses levels pays the same price u do, which is about 60%. You are probably a top10% player at these stakes and you should move up very rapidly.
3: while it is possible to win at all stakes only pro type skilled players will survive at all stakes below 200nl. This makes it smarter for everyone that is no poker pro to play other games than poker
4. Online poker is not a skill game any more, but a gambling -EV game for 90% of the population. This makes it unattractive for both recreational and pro players. If u want to gamble you can get ur fix somewhere else much easier (poker is harder to learn than playing roulette) if u want to make money it basically does not work anymore. Thus all types of players will leave the game.

Is 4+bb/100 actually killing it at 10nl?

With how much rake is at these levels probably. Any player actually winning anything is doing really well considering that 95% are losing.

He is winning 13 bb. I've never won that much online anywhere and I am a consistent winner at 2/5 1000NL LIVE.

So yea I think he is a top player. So are you winning 4bb over 90k hands and thank you for sharing.

How sick is it that u have won 25 buy ins at 10nl yet u are a loser.

A normal player with same results will think he sucks or think the site is rigged, probably depending on his personality. Either way he is likely to quit cuz it's no fun.

Alright.

No problem. I'm a bit surprised, but also slightly encouraged. Thanks.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy, but at the same time normal.

I tend to just think I just suck, perhaps slightly more then I should. For other players though I think you're right.

He's not won 25 buy ins though has he? You don't know how much rake he contributed in non show down hands and losing hands at show down.

It's not only winning pots that get raked. No?

only winning pots get raked, its just not you who pay when you lose. And non showdown pots are raked like any other pot in hm wtf are you smoking?

You still pay rake on losing hands, its the contribution method. That's how you get rake back even if you lose every hand you play.

Sure someone can even filter pt4 or hem to show this. Actually it would be good if people did this and then they could see how much of a winner they really are before rake. Sure its not as big as most think.

dean_nolan1 - TAG style players below high stakes tend to received credit for less rake than they are actually paying under weighted contributed. Their W$WSF might be well below 50%, but filter it up to pots >> xx BB and it skyrockets - those are also the pots that tend to be raked for the most.

If HEM says you paid 10bb/100 in rake it's rather likely you actually paid more in the ballpark of 11bb/100 given the unfair biases of weighted contributed. For fishy players, who tend to lose in large pots substantially more often than 'skilled' (even if losing) players, the trend is reversed.

In other words TAGish players tend to be even larger winners pre-rake than HEM/PT4 would lead people to believe.

still only the winner actually pays it?

which ones?

Well it would come out of the total pot before giving to the winner but both players will pay towards rake and that's how they would determine what rake back to give.

So say 2 players all in for $100 each and say a cap of $3 (don't know off top of head) then both players pay $1.50 in rake. The winner will get $197 but only $1.50 counts as rake.

I am not an expert on how the sites do this however, just going by my understanding of what everyone has written in this and other threads.

What I find interesting is that this thread is 62 pages long and 2/3rds of the posts want lower rake. 1/3rd saying no change (I'm sort of in this but with reduction for PLO).

Yet no one has come up with any actual numbers for what would be a rake price that is "fair" for players AND that sites would implement that is still profitable.

I'm still trying to come up with all these numbers myself for my site by having some great discussions with others but it still needs some tweaking.

The faster I get something in place the faster I can open my site to you all

Who pays rake: only the winner of the pot pays rake. He wins a smaller amount of the pot he would normally win. The loser loses same amount either way.

Who contributes: anyone who contributes to the pot. So the loser contributes to the rake but does not pay it.

What is fair? Well I think that is something you need to figure out.

I've stated my opinion in this thread before.

If you play on full tilt and some euro sites it shows you the rake of the current hand before the end, it is taken out the pot before show down, so that money was not in the pot that could be won. So the winner isn't the person who pays the rake. It is paid by all players in the hand (win or lose) while playing the hand.

Quick question, who wins the pot? The winner of the hand.

So if the money is taken out of the pot, the pot is smaller than it would be without rake.

The site thus takes the money away from the winner of the hand.

The rake comes out of the pot, the winner would have won.

The calculation of VIP points has nothing to do with the fact of who loses the rake. Hem and pt allows for different calculations of rake contribution to account for that.

Dealt gives players who don't contribute as much as other players more proportional credit for rake than they deserve.

Weighted contributed gives players who tend to lose, especially in large pots, more proportional credit for rake than they deserve.

Winner take all is the system that gives players credit on a fair scale. What you pay is what you get credit for.

OK. You are right. It's obvious that it comes off the winner as they get less money.

But the example on Tilt and Euro sites that takes the rake out of the pot on every street. It even makes your pot size bets different no? So players can see the rake while still in a hand, they both know they are paying it straight away, it's almost like a tax to stay in the hand.

Anyway, it doesn't matter. The only reason I brought it up is I was unsure on how PT4 or HEM calculate the rake you pay and thought there might be a chance that it is showing wrong figures.

If it's not then it's quite clear to see that rake is too high if that guy won 25 buy ins but is down overall.