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Rake pricing for a sustainable poker ecosystem Rake pricing for a sustainable poker ecosystem

12-04-2012 , 02:22 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by knircky
way too few hands and money lost.

The average sample size per country is:
Hands Played: 68,904,034 Players: 10254 (Profit: $-4,284,352)
So in this sample 1.07 billion was lost in 17.2 billion hands.


Given this huge sample size these numbers are very meaningfull.
They are absolutes, so stakes don't matter at all.


Now let's face the problem they clearly show.
All the money going to Eastern Europe is never sustainable.
In the sample -alone- USA players lost 368M in 3.5 billion hands.
They are recently replaced by East Europeans playing even more hands and winning.
Canada, the UK, Netherlands, Denmark and a few other small countries have to make up for that.
How long do you think they can or will?

Germany by the way is not in that list, may be because botting is popular there also.
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12-04-2012 , 02:53 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubbleblower
The average sample size per country is:
Hands Played: 68,904,034 Players: 10254 (Profit: $-4,284,352)
So in this sample 1.07 billion was lost in 17.2 billion hands.
I have no idea what numbers this is.

All I know are the numbers from http://www.pokertableratings.com/top-countries-year

Those in my opinion are useless. You cant just compare CA and Russia and say because the Russians lose less per hand that means the money is going from CA to Russia. You would have to look at one level to compare and you would also have to consider rake. Obviously the entire economy has to lose (due to rake).

But even if that were so why is this a problem for the economy? There have to be winners and losers.

So what are you saying? Games are touch because we let the east EU countries participate?

Or are you talking about bots?

I know there are many in this forum thinking that we should separate every countries. I disagree and I think it has nothing to due with the topic of a sustainable poker economy.
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12-04-2012 , 03:00 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by clfst17

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.
Right. And this is what is bad for the economy. Its hard to get new players and retain them and have them become bigger players.


It is up to us to demand appropriate regulation that does not allow for rake to be above a certain %-tage of money won.

Step 1 for me is to create awareness among players.
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12-04-2012 , 05:33 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by knircky
I have no idea what numbers this is.

All I know are the numbers from http://www.pokertableratings.com/top-countries-year
Try "all time" and there you have the numbers.


Quote:
Originally Posted by knircky
You cant just compare CA and Russia and say because the Russians lose less per hand that means the money is going from CA to Russia.
You can use the $/100 number to see if a country is really losing or not.
At 50% rakeback any country with $/100 >-5 is winning and every country <-5 losing.
(At 60% RB that would be -6 or at 40% RB -4 etcetera)

As you can see all the money is going from Canada plus a few more countries to Eastern Europe.
At 50% RB Russia won 59.1M and Canada lost 64.5M in this sample alone.
Belarus won another 16.3M, the Ukraine 13.2M and the UK lost 22.9M.


Quote:
Originally Posted by knircky
Or are you talking about bots?
Yes, evidently.
East Europeans aren't any better at poker than we are and they have far less experience.
No way they are capable of outperforming us like that and playing so many tables out of the blue.
They sure have better programmers though.
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12-04-2012 , 05:50 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by knircky
I have no idea what numbers this is.

All I know are the numbers from http://www.pokertableratings.com/top-countries-year

Those in my opinion are useless. You cant just compare CA and Russia and say because the Russians lose less per hand that means the money is going from CA to Russia. You would have to look at one level to compare and you would also have to consider rake. Obviously the entire economy has to lose (due to rake).

But even if that were so why is this a problem for the economy? There have to be winners and losers.

So what are you saying? Games are touch because we let the east EU countries participate?

Or are you talking about bots?

I know there are many in this forum thinking that we should separate every countries. I disagree and I think it has nothing to due with the topic of a sustainable poker economy.
Its a fact that the western european countries bring by far the most money to this game and eastern europeans who birng nothing but more grinders withdraws it.

Playing on .it rooms TONS of fish, playing on .se room TONS of fish playing on stars.com even at nl5 u have hard time finding some fish because the tables are clogged up with romanian, belarus, russian, ukraine, moldavian mass multitabling nits.
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12-04-2012 , 11:15 AM
Eastern European Countries do better online because they have to. In Countries with disposible income people are not as motivated. In some of these Countries winning or losing 20 dollars could be the difference between your family eating or starving. With that sense of motivation it's no wonder they do well.
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12-04-2012 , 11:47 AM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sect7G
Eastern European Countries do better online because they have to. In Countries with disposible income people are not as motivated. In some of these Countries winning or losing 20 dollars could be the difference between your family eating or starving. With that sense of motivation it's no wonder they do well.
It really isn't that bad.
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12-04-2012 , 01:33 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sect7G
Eastern European Countries do better online because they have to. In Countries with disposible income people are not as motivated. In some of these Countries winning or losing 20 dollars could be the difference between your family eating or starving. With that sense of motivation it's no wonder they do well.
+1

Eastern Europeans also have a smaller bankroll and play smaller stakes thus losing less.

Most of what is described is a simple showing of how high a country is playing. To actually figure out how much a country is winning/losing you would have to show these reports per level and include rake.

Last edited by knircky; 12-04-2012 at 01:56 PM.
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12-04-2012 , 01:40 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubbleblower

You can use the $/100 number to see if a country is really losing or not.
At 50% rakeback any country with $/100 >-5 is winning and every country <-5 losing.
.....

As you can see all the money is going from Canada plus a few more countries to Eastern Europe.

I don't understand why u put rakeback into the equation.

But I do understand that what you are saying here is wrong. You cannot compare western countries to 3rd world countries because they play with different bankrolls and at different stakes.

Obv, if you play mainly 2nl than you are not going to lose as much as if you are playing 100nl.

Obv. if you play micro stakes you are going to play against more eastern eu player and on higher stakes there will be more UK, CA, Australian players etc.

Having all these countries in one pool is great for the economy as it increase the player pool.

And yes the games have gotten tougher. And they won't get easier either.

Last edited by knircky; 12-04-2012 at 01:49 PM.
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12-04-2012 , 04:00 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by TNCS
It really isn't that bad.
you can win like the minimum wage here 475€ playin nl2, better like that working @ construction (and, u dont have jobs now cos the crisis).

playing n2,5 and 10 it kinda doenst matter at all, its not big money.

but, its kinda sick paying 1k+ of rake playing 10 cents the blind lool.
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12-04-2012 , 04:47 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Salvetutti
Playing on .it rooms TONS of fish, playing on .se room TONS of fish playing on stars.com even at nl5 u have hard time finding some fish because the tables are clogged up with romanian, belarus, russian, ukraine, moldavian mass multitabling nits.
Not sure if serious You will find on every Micro-stake on Stars enough tables with fish to play 24 tables.
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12-04-2012 , 04:58 PM
These rake threads are forever getting derailed by people complaining about changing skill levels and pointing fingers at whose winning...

IT'S A SKILL GAME FOR MONEY, THE IDEA IS TO GET BETTER AND BEAT THE GAME!

Its inevitable that the juicy player type of the naughty's decade that plays 60% of hands and checks down the nuts and still comes back for more will break so fast in today's games that THEY WONT COME BACK, THEY'LL LEAVE OR IMPROVE.

Now that drooler money is drying up and poker is becoming a game of smaller edges there is a real threat that rake will devour the industry from the top down as bad deluded regs will realise that atleast 99% of them are losing by the bucket loads every year and quit, the game becomes close to unbeatable anyone who isn't a degenerate gambler loses interest and leaves.

My big concern here is that sites are being blinkered to this affect by immediate profit and will only close the door after the donkey has bolted.

If anyone gives a shred of f*** about the game they love continuing instead of being blinkered by their own immdeiate profit like the sites, then make some noise online, complain to the sites, and let them know that we don't want to see this happen to online poker.
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12-04-2012 , 06:12 PM
A couple of myths:

Lots of people have written that fish don't know/care about the rake. This isn't true. It might have been true ten years ago, but I play in a very low stakes live poker room with no rake where almost everyone is a huge fish and has played online in some regard. There are frequent conversations about how awesome it is to play with no rake. Fish might not understand the devastating effect the rake has on the game, but they do know that money is getting swept off the table.

The other myth is the idea of the "long term" for poker sites. Poker sites are a very profitable but very precarious business in this environment. Plus, the nature of business in a capitalist environment is to grab more and more until there's no more left to grab. Businesses constantly shoot their long-term viability in the foot in order to pursue growth because growth is the only thing that stockholders understand: a stagnant but profitable business is just not enough for the kings of wealth.

Beyond this, in the case of poker they are likely making a good business decision to wring as much as they can from the players in the short-term because who knows if this business will be around in the long-term. Remember Paradise Poker?

If the players want lowered rake, they are going to have to do something about in the form of a collective. There is absolutely no reason that a poker site couldn't get by on $20 a month from a ton of subscribers. True, the services would likely not be up to Pokerstars' standards, but it could easily be a massively profitable business. But it won't happen because both big business and small business (the players) are looking out only for their short-term interest in a field that may not have long-term viability.
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12-04-2012 , 11:05 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by POW
These rake threads are forever getting derailed by people complaining about changing skill levels and pointing fingers at whose winning...

IT'S A SKILL GAME FOR MONEY, THE IDEA IS TO GET BETTER AND BEAT THE GAME!

Its inevitable that the juicy player type of the naughty's decade that plays 60% of hands and checks down the nuts and still comes back for more will break so fast in today's games that THEY WONT COME BACK, THEY'LL LEAVE OR IMPROVE.

Now that drooler money is drying up and poker is becoming a game of smaller edges there is a real threat that rake will devour the industry from the top down as bad deluded regs will realise that atleast 99% of them are losing by the bucket loads every year and quit, the game becomes close to unbeatable anyone who isn't a degenerate gambler loses interest and leaves.

My big concern here is that sites are being blinkered to this affect by immediate profit and will only close the door after the donkey has bolted.

If anyone gives a shred of f*** about the game they love continuing instead of being blinkered by their own immdeiate profit like the sites, then make some noise online, complain to the sites, and let them know that we don't want to see this happen to online poker.
lol if you gave a crap about online poker ten years from now you wouldnt support fleecing fish and skewing the shark to fish ratio
the rake is a small part of the reason the games arent sustainable

the 2 reasons people play poker are to make money and to have fun
when people can't make money and the games are boring (no action) they stop playing

you also completely refuse to adress why poker has become a game of such small edges- and the main reason is not the rake


"IT'S A SKILL GAME FOR MONEY, THE IDEA IS TO GET BETTER AND BEAT THE GAME!"

so get better and beat the game. rake is a small fraction of what it was a few years ago and the games are a lot tougher. if rake was the be all end all they would be more beatable.

yea and stars is running a business whose goal is to make money not provide a method for people to sit on their ass and print money from their homes.
you think its ok for the players to do everything possible to destroy the games in the long run and then want stars to turn around and basically just give you money and only think about the long run.that's contradictory, illogical and unrealistic.

Clearly stars know what they're doing. They make tons of money with a high profit margin and yet nobody can come in and undercut them and steal their business.

Last edited by borg23; 12-04-2012 at 11:13 PM.
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12-04-2012 , 11:49 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by borg23
lol if you gave a crap about online poker ten years from now you wouldnt support fleecing fish and skewing the shark to fish ratio
the rake is a small part of the reason the games arent sustainable

the 2 reasons people play poker are to make money and to have fun
when people can't make money and the games are boring (no action) they stop playing

you also completely refuse to adress why poker has become a game of such small edges- and the main reason is not the rake


"IT'S A SKILL GAME FOR MONEY, THE IDEA IS TO GET BETTER AND BEAT THE GAME!"

so get better and beat the game. rake is a small fraction of what it was a few years ago and the games are a lot tougher. if rake was the be all end all they would be more beatable.

yea and stars is running a business whose goal is to make money not provide a method for people to sit on their ass and print money from their homes.
you think its ok for the players to do everything possible to destroy the games in the long run and then want stars to turn around and basically just give you money and only think about the long run.that's contradictory, illogical and unrealistic.

Clearly stars know what they're doing. They make tons of money with a high profit margin and yet nobody can come in and undercut them and steal their business.
You're complaining about an inevitable evolution of the game in skill and software, don't you see why it's crazy? You will never be able to enforce rules banning HUDs, multitablers etc. however it creates a totally different game which is brilliant, embrace it or play live.

From the get-go Online Poker adopted a well hidden strategy from casinos of raking money from winning pots, this means players are unaware of price and so this isnt a factor in deciding whether to play. However high-pricing DOES have a huge effect on the game and will eventually kill the games reputation as a beatable skill game

This rake method works well in casinos because there is extra atmosphere/fun, and so few hands are played that bad players can go on big heaters. Online poker barely offers either of these qualities.

Borg, you seem fascinated with talking about me so I'll get this out the way. I beat the game for $16k playing $30 SNGs for am average of 3 hours/day this year, you think I'm complaining about that? I'm complaining about the other 99% of players that got raped for billions this year to use some software and a simple banking system, and who will now spread the word to all their friends and confer in forums about how rigged and bad online poker is.

Imagine if poker was about to become the next chess or WOW in terms of popularity and reputation, but in a few years it will be just another baccarat table in a casino.
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12-05-2012 , 01:33 AM
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.
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12-05-2012 , 01:34 AM
PLO is a great example that shows why our rake system is flawed.

If we were to pay a %age of winnings that would fix it all.
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12-05-2012 , 09:17 AM
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.
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12-05-2012 , 10:23 AM
very good post
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12-05-2012 , 10:52 AM
amazing post borg.
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12-05-2012 , 12:24 PM
lol_petitions
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12-05-2012 , 03:20 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by POW
the game will naturally have fish and gods relative to the skill of the player pool.
While getting smaller and smaller and less attractive!
I know I won't be playing anymore once I become a losing player and I doubt all these East Europeans would either. Sharks will eventually become the new fish and that's when on line poker dies.

Weren't you in favor of a sustainable system?

I am in favor of lowering rake, because a small change would cause a big change in the amount of winners, which -as some graphs showed- has many long term benefits.
But only if the extra money being invested in the market doesn't end up straight in the pockets of more mass tabling nits, which would make the problems only worse.

You are referring to shark/fish ratio's but sharks aren't the problem, rakeplayers are.
It would be great for sharks also if their capacity was reduced, especially long term. In a healthy system much more of the money being lost should go to sharks, they honestly deserve that.

To make poker attractive again todays fish should have a chance to become tomorrows sharks.
Fish must be able to grow bigger and not get eaten right away by mass tabling nits.
They are using giant nets to get all the fish out of the ocean. THAT is unsustainable!
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12-05-2012 , 03:39 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bubbleblower
While getting smaller and smaller and less attractive!
I know I won't be playing anymore once I become a losing player and I doubt all these East Europeans would either. Sharks will eventually become the new fish and that's when on line poker dies.

Weren't you in favor of a sustainable system?

I am in favor of lowering rake, because a small change would cause a big change in the amount of winners, which -as some graphs showed- has many long term benefits.
But only if the extra money being invested in the market doesn't end up straight in the pockets of more mass tabling nits, which would make the problems only worse.

You are referring to shark/fish ratio's but sharks aren't the problem, rakeplayers are.
It would be great for sharks also if their capacity was reduced, especially long term. In a healthy system much more of the money being lost should go to sharks, they honestly deserve that.

To make poker attractive again todays fish should have a chance to become tomorrows sharks.
Fish must be able to grow bigger and not get eaten right away by mass tabling nits.
They are using giant nets to get all the fish out of the ocean. THAT is unsustainable!
You're confusing me with borg, I agree with you. And the fact you'll know SO quickly when you become a losing player is the crux of the problem and why I began this thread. Variance in poker IS HUGE! But everyone fricken dumps money so fast to rake when they are even a little below average skill level that they know they suck, they barely upswing ever, get fed up and leave!
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12-05-2012 , 03:58 PM
Quote:
Originally Posted by POW
You're confusing me with borg, I agree with you.
Good, then you also agree with Borg.
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