+1

Do it right,
I honestly didnt think the rest of your post added much discussion-worthy except speculating about different scenarios and defending you main arguments. So i left it out for the purpose of making this thread more easy to read and make it more "to the point".

So sorry if u felt misquoted, that honestly wasnt my intention! I just wanted to address an issue that i have seen being brought up so many times here but that i think a lot of ppl are still forgetting about. So i could have quoted someone else and probably should have but your post was right there at the bottom and easy to find.

That's not true. We had even the case like that lately. The Merge network, they weren't able to provide players with credit card deposits (WU and monegram still was avaliable easily). The network lost like 40% of the traffic within 3 months. The reg vs reg action is just some sort of ******ed myth. IT doesn't exist in real world. Current 1-2bb/100 regs will quit if they stop winning. You are delusional that they will start deposit the money and play.
They play for the money, no money no play.

Current weak regs won't become the new fish they will quit so the less the real fish is there the fewer table run. That's the fact.
It is the case even now for nl200+ games where lack of fish cause the number of avaliable tables to collapse.

The regs will move down or quit which the case now they won't be the new fish. You have no clue what you are taking about. The former nl400 regs didn't become a fish they moved down, forced the nl200-nl100 bad regs to move to microstakes. The regs that couldn't make solid money anymore-quit. So stop stating some bul**** that has nothing to do with the reality.
Stop spreading misinformation.

To those advocating lower rake:

Do you think that as an poker industry we stand no chance of being able to run tailored promotions giving part of the rake to those that will be incentivised to deposit more (recreational players)? And therefore instead the poker industry simply runs a permanent promotion of lowering rake for every player?

For example, would you rather $30 rake was given to a player who had lost $100 in their first session and at risk of never coming back, or was split across all players equally?

For me, the issue is not so much the level of rake taken by the poker site, but instead what happens with this rake.

If for every $1 taken in rake is re-invested in attracting and retaining recreational players and achieves an increase in net deposits of more than $1, then we can start to grow again.

yep that can healp i guess, but instead of that, stars give rake back not to the fish, but to the regs. And what fishes get is bronze status, because they dont pay enough rake.

they no play = fish survives and return. Seriously who gives a **** if regs stop playing and stop withdrawing money from the system.

Regs do.

My impression from reading this thread is that everyone mostly just wants to get rid of all the players who are better than they are while getting more bonuses for themselves.

I was reffering to knircky post when he is trying to state as truth that the game will take care of itself. Basically he thinks that with less fish the bad regs will become new fish so the game will still be healthy. The problem is that it is bull**** which has been proven many times lately. Bad regs will either move down or quit, they wont turn into fish as soon as the real fish stop playing. They won't become new net depositors cause they play for the money as soon as they start loosing they will quit (unlike the real fish)

There is a huge and simple corelation between number of fish and number of tables that run. The games won't run without the mark.

oh one more suggestion, rake more those who use huds and such.( i do use it just think it would be better for the game and give less edge for regs vs fish)
Or just allow hud to be displayed on yourself, but not on the others.

with less rake bad regs still wont lose even with less fish, that was his point i guess. And if they play only with fish, then there will just be less regs who take fish money.

Isn't the biggest problem with this rake discussion that PLO is raked unfairly compared to other cash games and tournaments?
And maybe also nlhe HU games?
The % of all the games that are HU or PLO can't be that big?

SO what is your problem PokerStars? Why can't you stop being so proud of what you have accomplished and agree with us that you have made a bad decision in raking PLO games?

PokerStars employee (shayeme, or what's his name) said here or in another thread that the raking system and whatever have been here for over 14 years and everything works great in the casino industry. We cannot change the laws set up by our grandparents and other kinds of excuses. That seems like o a lot of bull**** to me!
PLO is a fairly new game to online industry and gaining growth all the time. It seems to me that PokerStars ( and every other site) is making the same mistake that every grinder has made in their life when transitioning over from nlhe to PLO! They think it's the same game. One usually notices that they are completely different when the PLO geniuses run over nlhe players, but poker sites can't understand this as they have never lost in PLO.

How do you make a dumb guy understand that he's dumb? I guess the same applies to poker sites....

@termod: Why shouldn't PLO be raked?

LOL that would be awsome! Read this

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/15...games-1289667/

I think people are starting to realize not only are the games dying, but the sites are as well. While I think going to a rake-alternative system is the way forward, if dumping money into promotions/advertising/etc actually started to stabilize the games then I think it would be at least a reasonable choice.

But one major problem with that solution is, even assuming we can get a million new fish deposit - which is not a given by any stretch of the imagination, it's just a band aid. Poker is a skill based game. Those casual players that eventually 'get it' will tend to stick around and eventually become you and I. Of those that don't get it most will probably either eventually find the hobby too expensive or realize their buck goes a whole lot further playing video poker or blackjack. The point is that poker filters out 'fish' over time while leaving the players that become good players. You need an accelerating supply of fish because of this. Even millions of fish would just be a bandaid. Ultimately you end up where we are today.

I think in the end there's no way around the issue that you need for skilled players to be able to compete against one another with the expectation of somebody actually being able to come out on top - instead of just the house.

You are wrong. Under the old Full Tilt Poker rakeback model, less than a third of players received rakeback. Obviously, recreational players are far less likely to sign up using special rakeback affiliates than high volume players, and thus, received on average even less back.

The various VIP systems that provide rewards to all players give back more rewards to recreational players than systems that require special affiliates and sign up procedures.

are games really dying tho, or did they just naturally dry up because of no americans in the game? I mean they are so important to any entertainment busines that they cant be left unnoticed. Like in movie they make good half of worldwide revenue.

Thanks for the link, didn't now all that.

You shouldn't try to throw misleading numbers at me.

30%. That sounds small, right? Let's see. How many players did Full Tilt have? It was catching up to Stars and we know Stars has tens of millions of users. That puts that 30% at meaning millions upon millions of players. There weren't even remotely near that many high volume regs. The vast majority of people stripped of rakeback were casual players.

And I like how you completely ignore Iron Man + loyalty rewards. That alone offered vastly more than the new FTP does to casual players. To say nothing of the constant stream of promotions FTP ran - which now are apparently gone as well.

Oh yes and we haven't even got into the fact that though rakeback did initially require an affiliate, Full Tilt was trialing out giving it to people who did not sign up under an affiliate. There was also the 'rakeback equivalent' free/huge bonuses they were trialing as well. Again, unsurprisingly all gone once Stars took over.

I doubt Isai really cares about FTP now that he paid a billion bucks to ensure that his next room-mate won't be a loving 6'5, 280lb gent named Bubba nick named 'Tiny'. However, on the off chance he does care at all about FTP he may want to consider that his world view of online poker is either incorrect or dated. In today's games players of all types care about value - and he's done a great job of stripping effectively 100% of FTP's perceived value.

I witnessed this in 09' on Stars. 50NL was an easy game where I could stack off donks nearly every session. After the 100NL games starting drying up badly in the summer many regs in that game flooded the 50NL games and all of a sudden the games became as dead as the 100NL games.

online poker is one of the only business models where the transition was mirrored. This simply did not happen in the vast majority of other cases. How about we eradicate rake and have adverts on-screen, with optional buyout. I would imagine this initiative would get huge support and finally provide a contender to stars/tilt (which, lets be frank, was incredibly lucky to get past the mergers and monopolies commission).

Whilst we can all applaud star's effort and willingness to pay back players who were basically robbed; lets not confuse this with outright altruism. They now have a vice-like grip on the industry. Their only meaningful competition should have gone bust years ago and would have within a competitive market. Time to change the rules.

+1

it's wierd they don't have ads? they could make a buttload of money doing it. they could have tables with ads that have lower the rake or something.

+1million for ads on their site



sadly they wouldn't reduce rake hahah

have you ever tried to run a web product with advertising? I'm thinking not. It isn't as lucrative as you might expect.

First you could probably only really get big name advertisers who do branding type of advertising (think Coke, Budweiser, etc.) as the ROI on regular web advertising is pretty low for platforms like this. In other words, the advertiser isn't likely to get much traffic from a poker game.

Second, for those big name companies, you then have to get past the stigma of being associated with a "gambling" product.

Third it would cost quite a bit to manage. You'd have to hire sales staff to acquire those kinds of accounts. You then might also have to segregate advertising by country or region as well.

Fourth, With the US out of the picture for the foreseeable future that is a big audience being missed.

And certainly not last, you get those who would complain about advertising flashing around during their game. Hell people can't stand seeing ads during TV programming, imagine the backlash for their poker game.

On the flip side, assuming you (the site) could get past 1-4, if you added advertising to the free versions of the game, that would offset the cost of running those free games. However I doubt they'd lower the rake because of that. It would just be more revenue

What you are claiming here is the complete opposite of what I am saying.

1. I never said the game takes care of itself. I said the game takes care of who wins and loses and thus who is a fish.

2. I would never say that less players is good for the game, no matter if fish or reg.

I am saying that the rake distorting the game is the key reason of why we have less and less players even though the popularity of the game is strong.

I also believe that we do not have a problem of money coming into the economy, even though it would be great to have more deposits, but I think the key reason is the way the money is taken out of the economy because the ratio of money that is won by players and rake is unsustainable.

I would actually guess that today's deposits are higher than a few years ago, but the effective rake is very much higher.( obv not us)

who on earth wouldnt want to post their ads on a platform where everyone got some free money to spend on entertainment?
Ads would be annoying tho, and can turn some customers out of playing poker thats true.

Red Bull ads or someother energy drink wouldn't turn customers from playing poker. If they had an ad about a local strip club, that for sure would turn away people from tables.