add to this that allowing mass multitabling fosters one group of players you really don't like to meet at the tables: bots.

not shure if the answer to the question why play has become so much tougher is ..training sites found a way to effectively educate humans. last time i checked there was pretty strong evidence that the micros at iPoker and Party are full of bots. stars could be different though. but chances are that 2012 is the year the micros where finally taken over by our new bit twiddeling overlords.

Glad to see my post provoked some discussion. To pick up various points:

(1) The table limit for beginners You probably introduce this gradually. I plucked NL50 out of thin air, mainly as that's the level where I understand that pros start to crop up. So make it NL200 first. See what happens. If I'm a pokersite, I'm not that concerned if there are fewer NL200+ tables running as long as the players have moved down to NL100. Or, if you're really worried about the 'Chinese businessman effect', then say that a beginner who wants to play NL100+ must have deposited at least $2k in their initial roll. You're still preventing a lightning quick blow-off of the roll, while genuine high rollers can load $50k onto the site from their Amex Centurion card and immediately be able to buy in to NL1000. Actually, that's a better idea, so do that instead of a flat cap for all players at NL50. You can relax the limits once people have played enough poker. May even encourage larger initial deposit sizes from some players.

(2) On the withdrawal charge, I'm not sure it's that impractical, particularly if set at a low rate to start with (let's go with 10%). Say a beginner deposits $200, then has a deep run in a MiniFTOPs for $800. They spend $150 on buy-ins, and then think "great, I'll cash out half my roll, leave the rest to play with". Their roll is $850, they cash out $400. The charge is 10% of the net cash out ($200), so $20 is paid. I think that this is workable. Yeah, the charge will be big if they take down SCOOP or the FTOPS high-roller, but realistically the structure of these tournaments means that they're very unlikely to do so. But start with this charge being low, and look to see what the effects are on recreational players (and ignore the howls of protest from pro and semi-pro players: they're meant to be paying more).

(3) Taxing externalities is better than just banning them (see Pigouvian tax on wikipedia). You ideally want to just tweak the ecosystem rather than destroying it. Plus, players are less likely to move elsewhere if they can still mass-multitable but just have to pay a charge to do so. It also raises extra revenue for pokersites to do other stuff with, helping bring recs in without raising rake to fund it. It more precisely targets multitablers. And if Stars and FTP introduce it, then realistically there's nowhere else for 24 tablers to go en masse. Just gets them to pay more; use that money to engage in a fish breeding programme.

(4) Capping rakeback. I guess we'll see if this works; that's how Edge is set up at FTP. If Full Tilt is full of tumbleweed in a year's time, we'll know that it's not a good idea. It's also worth noting, though, that 888 is still ranked #5 by Pokerscout, and offers nothing like the levels of RB which are available on Stars. Would be tough for Stars Supernova+ players to go many other sites and get anything like the same level of RB, or indeed find enough liquidity to play.

DC.

I was with you until 7), which I think is a terrible idea and counterproductive.

But ignoring that point I think there's some interesting ideas, particularly charging for mass multitabling, although I'm not sure how keen sites would be to encourage their highest rakers to play less.

just a thought ..introducing some barriers may be helpful in the poker vs skill debate.

@MilkFi5h- you'll see I've now amended #7 in my later post to something I think is better...

This concept doesn work really. If "big winners" pay extra 4bb/100 in rake, they will likely end up with the same net-profit as a small winner after rake,

cant differentiate winners from losers let alone big winners from small winners since how can you even determine that? over how many hands? over what period of time?

i do not see any good option other than an x% of rake being reduced

The problem here is that then everyone at NL100+ simply moves to another site. PS saw this with their invite only highstakes games - players moved to FTP (albeit with other reasons too). It's one of those things that only works if the entire industry did it. Anyway, the withdrawing point is moot - whatever the highest non-restricted level is will become the level that most cash is withdrawn at.

I don't. I think they will leave and never come back. Look at Dollaro's reputation. Most players don't understand rake, to them you are introducing a new way of getting their money: "the site is rigged and even if I win they take my money".

That's a type of tax surely, not for situations where you also have the option of removing the externality entirely. It doesn't destroy an ecosystem to limit players to 8 tables, it makes life better for everyone who doesn't. Yes you could theoretically set a tax and reimburse players who were losing out because of it but all you do is return to where you would be if you banned it entirely. To calculate that tax you need to be able to calculate a lot of things very finely that are not amenable to calculation - e.g, the impact to a player from playing against opponents 1% better than they were before.

I assume this isn't addressed at me as I didn't mention capping rakeback. Everyone caps rakeback. 888 is doing so well because they are very recreational player friendly and because they advertise heavily in the UK.

Anyway, I think we're now getting into the level of detail that means I should stop posting in this thread.

Ah yes, your amendment is certainly an improvement on the original.

My main objection was/is that if someone who happens to have lots of money wants to deposit and play higher stakes straight away, they should be able to. Preventing them from doing so (for some proportion at least) will not make them play lower stakes it will just make them play on another site where they can play the games they want.

It is much more beneficial for a site to individually adjust a Time Charge to encourage desirable players or deposits than it is to concoct draconian rakeback schemes, that are blunt instruments.

One method can be used to maintain a healthy poker ecosystem, and the other rewards something else entirely.

Things that should be encouraged include:

• New players
• Initial deposits
• Redeposits

Does rakeback encourage these?

I've often thought a rake cap as a function of big blinds rather than a flat $ amount would benefit the ecosystem. As an example, microstakes games rake capped at 3bb's, small stakes games 2bb's, mid stakes 1bb, high stakes 0.5bb's.

Whilst this will shift the overall rake burden more to the bigger games, those games should in turn become softer as the system becomes unblocked and small stakes players start to move up to bigger games, which will in turn allow the micro stakes games to be populated mostly by new or recreational players, who should have a much more enjoyable experience as they won't be constantly playing against players who have a far higher skill and experience level to themselves.

just checked this thread again after a while. yes, obviously my numbers are way off; what i posted was a just a means to generate discussion. get off your high horse.

edit: for example, maybe we keep the current rake system in addition to a structured system, but drastically slash/eliminate rake rates at the micros, enabling micro winners to move up and midstake regs to increase their winrates

I'd like to remind everyone that "creating a sustainable poker ecosystem" is not the same thing as "preventing good players from winning money". If you implement all of these ideas (higher rake based on winrate, withdrawal charges, skill-based stake limits, etc.) you're going to make it impossible for all but the most elite players to make any real money from poker. I would assume that, this being 2+2, most people here are either winners or aspiring winners, and so would understand that the whole reason we want a sustainable poker economy is so we can win more money long-term. Shifting more and more rake burdens onto winning players to keep the fish happy is just shooting ourselves in the foot after a certain point.

In other words, what's the point of keeping the fish around if nobody can make any money off of them?

grunch.

is there a way to design pokersite software that is similar to an open source project? online there are many software packages developed as a community for free that rival commercial software. why can't the same thing be done to facilitate poker play online? i don't know if it's realistic or not, but if you can eliminate the greed of the site owners you can create situations where players can just play.

The software could theoretically be open-sourced, but you'd still need a company to handle the actual operations of a site.

Surely the Bitcoin guys could help with open source poker site?

They are open source and they have the infrastructure to do payment processing?

Oh and charging for withdrawals is a bad idea. The best point to charge rake is when the play is going on. Think consumption taxes instead of capital gains taxes.

and the way to keep fish in the game is to give them rake back through deposit bonuses and cash bonuses when they go broke. I.e like 70% effective rake back or something.

Also, the mass multitablers provide liquidity in the games....

Just my thoughts...

If you make a free site you will not be able to advertise and so you will not get new players and so the site will die. See WPEX.

This high stakes rake nothing and with the state of the games its hard to get there and the pyramid crashes down on itself from the top. But I dont think Stars would ever give up its profits (micro rake) to try and stimulate the economy. I think what could be most effective (that they would be willing) is to cut all rakeback and use that money to lower rake at nl50/11$sngs+. At least that way recs will last longer in those harder games and the money would be more evenly distributed to weaker regs allowing them to move up. While it skips the micros I doubt many recs in the developed world want to play with less then there avg hourly wage (25$) Which is where most of the money should be coming from in a good ecosystem. Micros dont matter as much now its like a deadzone of russians and guys who dick around with crack change so let stars milk it if it means the low stakes are better and the guys who deposit real cash dont get crushed so hard and redeposit.

Been thinking on and off about this for some time and will add a fiddy of thoughts.

Assume it's a complex system that I do not understand necessarily and don't possess clairvoyance that changes will produced the perceived expected results and not result in unintended consequences. Therefore I would suggest any changes to the ecology are:

(1) Perturbations i.e. "small" changes. More tinkering less grandiose wholesale changes. Since there's no way a priori to know if changes will have overall positive or negative effects so minimise the potential damage. Admittedly small can have a disproportionately big impact - but bigger could be even worse.

More precisely when I mean small I mean 'relatively' - in cash games where the characteristic length scale is likely a function of the blinds posted 1.5bb every orbit. More applies to existing ecologies - a wholesale different non-existing rake model is only practical for a new site trying a disruptive technology/business model.

(2) reversible if once passed it appears that after sufficient time whatever metrics to measure success suggest a change having a overly negative impact. Yes that means if rake/rewards e.t.c are reduced then they can return shortly back to their previous level. Although there would obviously player resistance to this. However coupled with (1) it will be small and IF the lower rake has unintended negative effects and is within short time frame I think is practical to reverse.

(3) Ideally choose changes that have limited downside and potentially massive upside -optionality. Given the assumptions it may be difficult to know the effect of any changes on the ecology so these are the hardest to find. What do I mean by optionality? Example from football e.g. red themed teams like Liverpool or Man United do better in the larger Asian markets and have limited downside in ROW than say a blue coloured Chelsea

As a practical suggestion related to player retention - how nice a gesture would it be if you received a birthday card on your birthday from a site?

Depending on say VIP level (or not) you could get an email to IMHO better a physical card; or even a cookie basket or site gift certificate. Most people are around home with some family and friends and if someone asks who sent you that you've just marketed to a bunch more people than just the recipient - for what the price of a card.

So IMHO lots of little changes are better. Like in poker how all the little edges add up to a win rate so do they in making a sustainable online poker ecology. I also think evolution >>> playing like Zeus and thinking you know what is best.


True. Gambling and videogames are pretty resilient. I bet in these times there are less businessmen sitting in @ MSNL than say in the equity tech boom. My point was for the few posters that appeared to consider the 'ecosystem' as an isolated entity -it isn't there exist inflows and outflows in the world where it's part of much bigger one.

Maybe (i'm not sure ) even a genius of poker like you would win more with a lower rake.

lol, try playing live in la and paying the drop & mtt entry fees we're subjected to here.


it's only a matter of time before the live rake catches up & busts everyone's roll. low internet rake and rakeback is like a fairy tale to those of us who've had to make the shift over to lolivepro in the last 1.5 years.

*i have a current legal obligation to stay in so cal so moving isn't an option.

Two things here.

1. Small changes will necessarily decrease the sites' revenue. That massively decreases the chances of the sites even considering them. For instance, some people may believe that lowering rake by 5% could increase the sites' revenue. This would make sense if you view rake similar to tax and thus following a sort of Laffer Curve. But I don't think anybody in their right mind thinks a solution would be, for instance, to increase the rake by 5%. One change I've been advocating is to start to phase away from per-hand rake and switch to profit models that don't necessitate manipulating the score of the game as it's being played. That could be designed in a way such that it's actually revenue-neutral for the sites which is huge for its feasibility, but such changes are also anything but small.

2. The impact of small changes may not necessarily be able to be properly discerned from variance or outside forces. Right now for instance the sites ostensibly don't feel they're doing anything wrong. This even though Stars, after years of growth, is dropping players at about 10% year over year. Party/iPoker are pushing near a 40% drop year over year. If you read Party's financial reports it's comical. They honestly don't think they're doing anything wrong. They point the blame everywhere but themselves, with a lot of finger pointing in Star's direction. Stars, for their part, presumably blames a "tough regulatory environment and a global stagnation in poker's popularity" - the apologist phrasing Poker Scout likes to use.

If all these sites are willing to blame such huge losses on factors outside their control, it seems they will only see a causative relationship between their actions and results if it's basically smacking them in the face. Looking for small change that goes against the grain of the sites' natural inclination of very first level 'more for me, more for me, more for meeee!!!' is probably not going to be fruitful regardless of what happens! If, for instance, they did start to see their growth/revenue stabilize it would be completely unsurprising to see them suddenly decide it was due to an improving world economy, or a miraculous resurgence in the interest of poker or something else outside their control - all reasons for them to do away with those pesky previous changes that 'negatively' impacted their revenue.

fmp

Im not a fan of making winners pay more than losers. It seems as if that would lead to many sour grapes among grinders, feeling as if they are being punished for winning.