Quote:
Originally Posted by knircky
Borg23 you don't understand the current environment. Especially when u day rake is lower today then it used to be.
It is way way higher actually. That's actually why it's a problem.
no actually other than the nano stakes its way lower by a wide margin
and if you really think most of the people playing higher a few years ago that games were built around worked their way up from nano stakes you're nuts.People cant even **** around in the 25 dollar rooms anymore without running into mass multitablers its pathetic.Then these people wonder where the fish went? Fish like action period.People keep going back to casinos year after year and they have no chance of winning in the long run. But they have fun because there is action and they occasionally win.This used to be the case online but its not any more. And its not bc of the rake.
people won money at poker and then didnt think about where it came from and why those players played. to be fair its a complete headache to get any money online from the us now so that has played a big role. but people seriously thought "i make 100 dollars an hour playing 4 tables, i can make 600 an hour playing 24 tables" without thinking it through at all.
Of course per month you pay a lot more in rake than you would have payed a few years ago because you're playing a lot more hands. For games to exist sites need to get people to deposit money and lose. Without losers there are no games. They arent going to let you just take everyone's money, kill the games and make nothing in the process.stars is a well run business not groupon.
The funniest thing is when people act like its just so easy to set up a site that charges basically nothing in rake and then we could all just makes hundreds of thousands of dollars a year without the evil sites taking their cut. Where the hell do you think the money is going to come from? And if it would be so easy for stars to just charge 50 or 100 dollars a month from everyone and still make so much money why hasnt a site come along that charges half of what stars does (which is a lot more than 50-100 dollars a month to regs) and make this easy money?
There are many factors that are killing the games. Most of them the players control.The only 2 that arent are the legal situation in the us (which neither the sites nor the players want at all- this is an entirely different situation) and the rake. They don't want to give up any of the factors they control or desire that hurt the games, but expect the sites to give up lots of money and get what in return? The games will still suck and not be sustainable and the sites will just make a lot less money.
There is no logical reason for them to do that.Why would stars given a choice between :
A)huge profit margin and a poor long term poker ecosystem
B)a much smaller profit margin and a poor long term poker ecosystem
chose b?
If you actually want the sites to start thinking long term then the players need to also.And as much as I hated playing on stars (****tiest games on the internet, have to be teathered to your computer 24/7 to get decent rakeback, dealt method which they finally changed was a disgrace) they are the best run site, most ethically run with the best customer service. Their business model is brilliant for the short term and Im not entirely sure they should be that worried about the long term since regardless of what they do the online poker industry is a very volatile one and they might be better off grabbing as much as they can for as long as they can.The online poker industry is a very interesting one for a variety of reasons. In hindsight they were clearly right not to give a crap about the long term in the US.
anyone who thinks the current state of the games is good for the long term health of the games is delusional.
rake aside the games are getting worse and worse by the day
At the pace we're going you could cut the rake by 95% and in five-ten years no casual players will want to play. The action on line sucks. If you think that the rake is the only or biggest reason why you're crazy. The rake was much higher 5 years ago and the action was exponentially better. The rake live is as much as 10 times higher per hand and the action is great. Anyone who has played in underground games in NYC knows how gross that rake is and how good the action is.If rake was the biggest determining factor in game quality this wouldnt be the case.
The current online environment insures the action sucks. Hold em while not perfectly solvable isnt exactly the most complicated game in the world. You can play extremely tight and not lose anything and even eek out an extremely tiny profit. While the profit per table hour is penuts, through sheer volume people are able to make decent money.Sure these players are exploitable to a small degree but over time the quality of the games will continue to deteriorate. Action players leave because there is no action.Rakeback grinders leave because the action players are what allowed them to sustain themselves. Marginal winners now become break even trash.Over time poker software will get better and better and allowed people to play more and more tables, and help make lesser skilled players make decisions in real time.
Basically most people in this thread are in favor of the following:
1)mass multitabling
2)huds, pt, table ninja, tableratings etc
3)dealt method of rakeback which other than the fact it is outright robbery is horrendous for the games
4)training videos
its actually funny watching some players adjust to live play
they were so used to basically following instructions, playing a cookie cutter style that was basically designed for one specific type of games (nitty online nlhe 6 max)not being able to think on their own and adapt to drastically different table conditions at each live table.
There are some also great former online players playing live now. They are all excellent quick thinking players who werent on auto pilot online.
Every single one of these things has been horrible for the long term sustainability of the games. And yet "its the rake that's killing them games, the poker sites are so greedy why can't they think long term." No actually if you got rid of all of the things poker players wanted and got that i just mentioned, stars could raise the rake to what it used to be (ie totally get rid of their vip programs except for ****ty stress balls and tshirts) and the games would be sustainable for a long time.
The players asked for and received all of these things. But amazingly nobody stopped to think "what is the effect of having all the good players playing lots of tables while the bad players play one?" "what is the effect of tracking software." etc
It was all short sighted greed.
I mean did people really think if they could play 24 tables instead of 2 or 3 12 times as many fish would come out of the woodwork? That they were in hiding all of this time and were just waiting for boring as hell nit fest games to come out and play? Or them seeing they dropped 100k online playing poker last year and that it was public knowledge would make them want to play more? Or that for 50 bucks they could buy software that right off the bat would make them a much better player and lose a lot less money (look pokertracker isnt going to turn a mediocre player into a great one, but it could very quickly turn a spewtard who hemorrhages money into a slow bleeder.)Even as far as rake goes-stars did cut the rake payed per hand by a lot. They even gave you more money back the more you played even though for the most part you were the ones taking money off the site. But did you really think they would charge you less overall rake per month while letting you play a lot more tables and make more money faster? How dumb did you think they were? They know it costs lots of money to get players to deposit and lose money.They know that without these players they have no business. They werent going to say "well bob played 20,000 hands last month and payed 1000 dollars in rake, lets let him play 200,000 hands,make even more money and still charge him that same thousand dollars making us have to work harder and spend more money to find new players to deposit."
POW is right about one thing. The game definitely has an evolution and maybe all of these things were just part of the evolution of the game.However he is way off if he thinks they don't severely hurt the long term sustainability of games.To think stars was going to know the games over time were going to get worse and worse over time, which hurts their business long term, without getting their cut in the short term has no idea how the real world works.
Stars in in business to make money, not to provide you a platform to make money.The fact we are able to make money at all off of them at all is a fortunate side effect for us. You guys got what you wanted, now you have to live with the consequences.