You have to see his background: he was depositing last year 50 bucks and played 6k hands on NL2, then he was broke. After a long time of investigating the reasons for his lost, he finally got it: HUDs!

Now he devoted his life the fight against HUDs

That's funny, but he was probably right.


This shows why mass tablers from Eastern Europe are a huge problem (click "hands" twice).
In the long run we'll need say Australians or Danes more than those guys. Banning HUDs and reducing the maximum amount of tables would be great for them and for the game in general.
The poker community is just not big enough to support so many Eastern European families.


They are killing poker in another way also; it is too boring to play against these -semi- bots.

You talk about making life harder for the regs to improve the balance of the game. You can never improve anything by not allowing innovation, tools, technology etc. The game is changing. Its just a fact.

Poker is such a optimal game that we simply do not need to worry about reg to fish ratios. If you can't beat these guys, its probably because they are better than you.

However it does matter when the games become unbeatable. But unbeatable does not mean there are not enough fish. There are always enough fish in the game. Effectively everyone but one player is a fish in one game, so there is enough fish. Always. The game is just perfect that way. Unsolvable.

But it still does not make sense to play poker when the game is unbeatable. Unbeatable means that even though there would normally be winners these winners won't be winners and there will only be losers. Of course this is not digital but gradual (i.e. more and more losers and less winners). This is what is happening right now.

Contrary to popular believe the reason is not because the games got tougher. Tougher games do not change the "beatability" of the game or how profitable they can be overall. The only thing it does is re-arrange the labels of who is a winner in the game.

There is only one thing that can make poker unbeatable: Rake.

Games become unbeatable when the ratio of "rake to money won" is off balance. The higher the rake in relation to winnings the more unbeatable they become. Of course the reverse is true.

This ratio can change even though the rake does not change when the absolute skill of players becomes closer. While the relative skill difference between players never really changes, due to the design of the game, the absolute skill level of players has changed tremendously in the last few years. This has create a big unbalance in this ratio of rake to winnings.


There is a simple solution to this problem: Charge rake relative to money won. Both Do It Righ and I have proposed solutions and explained why we need some structural change.

I suggest people think about this, the real reason why its getting tough. Because we need to all pull at the same string.

I suggest to read some of the post of Do It Right, he has a way of explaining this much better than anybody else.

"Poker is such a optimal game that we simply do not need to worry about reg to fish ratios. "


HAHAHAHA oh wow- yea fish to reg ratios mean nothing at all.This may be the single dumbest thing I have ever read on the internet.

Where do you even come up with crap like that or tougher games don't change the beatability of games. That's classic.

If that complete and utter nonsense was true then why is rake significantly lower than it was 5 years ago and the games are much tougher?

Great post Knirky

Banning HUD's and reducing tables is easy for regs to circumvent, massively cuts site's profits, and halts the progress of online poker.


That PTR link is amazing though, just check out top 10 vs Bottom 10 countries for just this year:





Why the f*** are we still allowing this to happen?

Poker isn't a solved game and is dependant on intelligence, logic, state of mind and even a bit of luck, thus the game will naturally have fish and gods relative to the skill of the player pool for a long, longtime. Knirky is spot on, the only thing that will prematurely kill this game is over-raking.

no he's not close to spot and the fact you don't realize it explains your illogical hypocritical viewpoints.

why don't you answer the simple question i asked him just now.


If that complete and utter nonsense was true then why is rake significantly lower than it was 5 years ago and the games are much tougher?

to add to the questions, if rake is the be all end all and only factor in game sustainabilty:

how come live games rake 5-10 times more and yet the win rates live are significantly higher?

how come despite the fact games in la and florida rake more, those games are beatable for higher win rates than games in AC and Vegas?


I swear some people on here if given the choice to play rake free vs 8 people they were very marginally better than or at a table where they were the 6th best player in a game that was raked high with 3 billionaire whales who stacked off every hand would play the rake free game.

Seriously cut the bull**** already. Just say you want the sites to give you money because you want it and you don't give a **** about the long term quality of the games you just want more money now.At least that would be honest.

The average skill levels of different player pools ie online, live, LA, Vegas, will increase and converge at different rates, the more this happens the larger affect rake has on how beatable the game is. Thus a homegame could rake 20% and be more beatable and sustainable than a 5% rake online.

A sustainable poker ecosystem needs to remain 'BEATABLE', but not necessarily 'SOFT' to survive, there is a difference.

We are clearly arguing for keeping games beatable in the interest of a sustainable poker ecosystem and it is you who is thinking of no.1 and just wants softer games, which makes you a hypercrite.

no unlike you i am not a hypocrite- you don't even know the meaning of the word.

you claim you care about the long term sustainability of the games- what a coincidence the one thing you are against that hurts the game in the long run also hurts your bottom line right now. Everything that the players have asked for and gotten from the sites that hurt the game you're fine with. You even called it "the game evolving" or some such crock of ****.

the fact you think rake is the only factor in determining whether or not games are sustainable in the long run shows how absolutely clueless you really are. I gave you 3-4 examples of why that isnt true and can give you a lot more if you like.

things like:
advertising to draw fish in
not skewing the shark to fish ratio through mass multitabling
all kinds of tracking software, table ninja etc
how much fun fish have
how easy it is to get money online


all effect the long term sustainability of the games.

if rake was the only determining factor people like you wouldnt be crying about rake being too high right now
rake is way lower online that it was a few years ago, so if that was the only factor you would be too busy printing money to waste your time making your posts.


i dont just want softer games right now- i want games to be good for a long time unlike most of the geniuses on here who thought it would be great to fleece fish, siphon off rakeback that they actually paid rake on,have software do more and more of the work and make games boring for them. i even hear this crap live "i wish i could play more tables, i would make so much money" well wtf do you think would happen to the games if that were possible? the fish wouldnt all start playing 20 tables, and 20 times more fish wouldn't show up.

ripping fish apart asap and making it boring as hell for them to play in the process does not help long term game sustainability at all

i mean the fact you want the sites to think long term,but don't think the players should is ridiculous.

i mean yea i wish the sites would spend tons of money on ads, bring in lots of awful players, only let me play more than 1 table, charge me no rake so i can print money but I live in the real world and know that's not gonna happen.

If you're gonna play the long term sustainability card do it consistently. And if you thinks sites should lower the rake give them a reason to- one that benefits them. Theyre in business and are trying to make as much money as possible. They don't give a crap about you me or anyone else.You want to live in some fantasy land where they provide you with a platform to print money and charge you next to nothing in the process and that's not being realistic. WOW charges 50 bucks a month or whatever but WOW doesnt have to draw people into their game who lose money month after month for people who drastically overvalue their value to the site.If you really want you can even play for play money chips for free! But unlike WOW the people paying thousands of dollars in rake a month are trying to make money,not have fun playing a game so don't expect the business end of things work the same way.

I mean some of these posts are funnier than Chris Rock in his prime. "derp derp I payed 4,000 dollars in rake last month, and will continue to do so in the future but they should just charge me 60 bucks a month to play as many hands as I want derp derp greedy theives."

look there are 3 ways stars will lower the rake drastically

1)you convince them they will make more money in the long run by doing so
2)enough people say "**** you stars" and stop playing there
3)another well run competitive site becomes a major player and has much lower rake than stars
this is extremely unlikely

crying about it while paying thousands a month in rake isnt going to make them do anything except maybe send you a few extra stars hoodies so you can look like a tool when you go to the casino.

Firstly, this list describes how to keep relatively very bad players in the game, which you are confusing with an answer to a sustained and growing poker industry. In theory it works but in practice it's inevitable for the worst players to leave the game because they always lose fast and hard, so lose interest.

Secondly, you somehow took Knirkys commment "There is only one thing that can make poker unbeatable: Rake" and quoted me with this absurd line "rake is the only factor in determining whether or not games are sustainable". Knirky meant that the games will still run if skills levels and ratios rise/skew because skill is relative, todays fish are yesterdays breakeven players, but ultimately rake levels determine how many players beat the game.

It's not low enough and is throttling growth, re-read OP.

Online poker is evolving into a higher skilled game and will continue to do so. As it does I think this opens a bigger market as it loses it's ties to gambling, and this opportunity will be missed by over-raking sites who are turning it into a pit game.

Borg, I think you don't want thisevolution to happen because it will mean it leaves you behind, and the only players you can beat will leave. Therefore I don't think your objective here is the longevity of the online poker industry.

borg

1) first of it would be nice if you would use this forum as a place to have a discussion, instead of insulting everyone that has a different opinion than you. There are many hear that just want to "win" instead of actually contributing. I.e. if you think someone is wrong you could explain how and why instead of insulting them.

2) Now to your statement about Profitability. You say we need more fish and less multi tabling etc. Again that changes only who wins not the fact that someone wins. Therefore that does not effect the game as a whole. Just because a certain player does not win anymore does not mean the economy as a whole is not working. It is only rake that actually can prevent that overall money is being won in the long run. So yes if the game is beatable is determined by only one single thing: rake. The higher the rake the smaller the amount of players that can have a positive win-rate.

3) You think that rake is lower today. That depends on how you look at it. Per hand and pot the rake might be lower. If you have the exacts same rake rules in PLO and NL, you are raking way more money than in NL. Reason being money gets transferred back and forth more often. The fact that skill is getting closer means we ship money back and forth more than a few years ago. Hence the effective rake is actually higher today. Of course effective means relative to the money won.

I ask you to think about these thinks logically instead of ranting and calling us idiots. That way we could have an actual nice discussion and conversation.

4) I agree the sites need money for marketing and without it we cannot attract new players to the game. I agree with you that it is important to attract new players (obviously). The amount of new players has an effect on the size of the economy and is essential to that.

Exactly.

Exactly right. The sites adjust to this by adjusting the rake. They have already adjusted the rake for different types of games (limit vs NL, normal torunaments vs turbos etc.)

I just think it would be much easier if we would rake the actual money won vs hands. That way the "rake" adjusts itself automatically.

Here is an illustration:

Two guys play each other for 3000 hands after which one guy wins $1000 in a 1KNL game.

Two guys play the same game, and one wins $3000 after 100 hands.

In HU this is actually totally possible.

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/rake/

The rake would be capped at $2 per hands, lets just assume $1 rake per hand on avg.

In the first example the two players each would have payed 1500 rake (avg) and loser would have lost $2500. And the winner would have lost $500.

The winner only loses because of the rake, otherwise he would win. If he wins more than at some point he becomes a real winner.

In the second example both players only lose 50 in rake. That almost seems unfair to pokerstars :-)


If we instead have a %-Tage extracted from the winnings than the result looks much different and much fairer in my option. The site would get lots of money for the time where there is a winner. If we win fast the sites wins fast if we win slow the site wins slow as well. BUT the rake can never make the game unprofitable, because it would only be a %-tage of the money that is won.

Rake is like tax. It has to be relative. Our rake today works like taxing revenue instead of taxing actual winnings. It would make many companies bankrupt.

In the same way Rake is making lots of poker players unprofitable (instead of less profitable).

This needs to change!

Are you suggesting a %rake of winnings when someone leaves a table? Or %fee of withdrawal. The former may actually not be as much of a slash in rake levels as the latter making it more appealing to sites and might stimulate more action between regs.


Probably mad idea - could a business not be set up that promotes poker as a skill game whilst circumventing gambling laws somehow? ie You buy online tokens, play a skill game 'poker' with these tokens, and if you accumulate 100k tokens you win prizes that are as good as money from £5 gift certificates to cars.

Some kind of business plan that can do this would have the whole world market, be far lower risk thus can undercut current pokersites, and promote poker as a skill game wuthout raking it to death.

"There is a simple solution to this problem: Charge rake relative to money won." (Both Do It Right and 'knircky' have proposed solutions and explained why we need some structural change)

"There is only one thing that can make poker unbeatable: Rake."

"Games become unbeatable when the ratio of rake to money won is off balance.... the absolute skill level of players has changed tremendously in the last few years. This has create a big unbalance in this ratio of rake to winnings."

"There is a simple solution to this problem: Charge rake relative to money won."

This steaming pile of a thread is still going on? Managed to figure out a way to persuade the poker sites to voluntarily give you all a big chunk of their profits? Thought not.

Thank you for the very constructive post :-)

From Wikipedia:

Bouvet Island, population: uninhabited

Penguins are playing poker. And they are winning.

No more money in poker, penguins are playing.

The charts showing 60k hands as a years play is about 2 weeks play or less to some people.

^lol

PTR did a wonderful job as I can see

These charts focus on averagely-skilled players and 60k/year is my estimate of the average they play. I think total fish will always dump n leave, winners will always play, so keeping bad/average-regs unaware of their comparatively poor skill level is crucial to sustaining and growing the industry.

The numbers are obviously not all reliable, but still show where the problem is.

The charts are the numbers from PP and FTP.

But sooner or later most will become aware and leave.

Changing their comparative skill level would be much more effective.
Lowering rake wouldn't have that much effect if that would only support more Eastern European families.

Two years ago we had almost no players from Eastern Europe, now they play 62% of all the hands!
They suddenly invaded our tables and all turned out to be multi table specialists.
You believe that, given they had no prior practice?

Fact is a handfull of Eastern European countries take away all the profits and drain the poker economy completely. The problem is much bigger as it seems, because this mainly happens at the lowest stakes. We are losing our fish faster than ever before.


Untill I saw these numbers I never took botting that serious, but now I realise what the effect is.
Yes, we can beat bots, but we can never beat their capacity.
What we can do though is reduce that capacity.

The numbers of PTR are total crap.

First off they can never be comprehensive, way too few hands and money lost.

This is also not for stars so useless anyway.


But the biggest problem is that you can't simply compare country across the board, as players from different countries will play very different stakes.

Someone from eastern eu makes 1/10 of what we make and thus play lower and thus win less.

Hence the Swiss lose so much and the US, CA etc.

Those numbers mean nothing. You can't just run crappy numbers and then draw conclusions from them.

knircky's posts have been spot on.

Rake makes the micro-stakes and low-stakes unbeatable for 99% of players. And it makes the mid-stakes and high-stakes basically all bum hunting. Yet there's no incentive for the sites to change. Thus there will continue to be traffic (typical gamblers don't give a **** about losing their deposits), but starting with a small bankroll and grinding up the stakes will no longer be possible.