I suggest they give players the option to pay a fee at the start of each month equivalent to the amount of rake you paid the last month (or averaged over last 3 months?).

In return you get 100% rakeback for that month and can play as much as you like.

It gives the site guaranteed income from that player who agrees, and they are incentivised to play more volume since it's rake free, which keeps more games going and the site earns rake from other people playing with them who haven't opted in.

And the players are happy because they have the potential to pay less rake than normal as long as they increase their volume.


What do you think?

the problem i see with that is that at first you are incentivised to play less so that you get the offer next month or whatever to pay a fee based on that. And what happens after the month when you paid the fee? Because then again you would be incentivised to play less to get a good offer the month after again.

Feel like it would have to be some kind of flat fee that you can pay any month that doesnt change

I think this would not work

Most players have no idea how much rake they are paying. If this information was available to them they'd think twice about playing in the first place

Apply your idea to any other business...restaurant, store, whatever.

If you were the owner of that business, does your idea sound like a profitable one?

There’s a difference here because by going to a restaurant many more times for free doesn’t generate any extra revenue, but playing poker more leads to more rake from the people you play with, and the operating costs of running online poker is very low no matter how much you play

Yes I thought about that, but if it was the average of several months it would be better, and sites could choose who to offer this to, with an algorithm detecting people who were playing low volume to entice the good offer.

It was just an idea because there must be an alternative to paying such high rake especially in cash games where it changes the strategy to make everyone nits

LOL - this guy!

Pokerstars 2019 Q4 operating costs were just over $2bn (billion) and ran at an operating loss of $61m (million)

So yeah - very low.....

Your bright idea would have been done if it was so great.

But they are mostly fixed costs and how long someone plays for barely affects it


I bet people told that to the inventors of all the everything great we have today

So you pay x ammount to the site to play "for free" and then life happens and you can play only for a week or two. Yeah sounds like a great idea.

You are wrong - the amount of time someone plays is absolutely relevant. It would impact total traffic, which would mean you would need more servers, more customer support, and more security people.... If people could play rake-free and therefore more hours, your costs would increase also.


No, they didn't.

In online poker, as in any business, there are marginal costs, (as opposed to fixed costs). The marginal costs of accommodating additional real money poker players online are quite low when compared to the marginal revenue realized, speaking generally. The economies of scale for offering online poker, versus say live poker, are dramatic.

To give one example, an additional server to accommodate additional traffic would cost a drop in the sea of additional marginal revenue from a hypothetical traffic increase requiring that expenditure. Literally, one additional high volume player would generate enough marginal revenue to cover that cost.

Adding that additional server, analogous to both building a playing venue and hiring a dealer for however many games are hosted, is an expenditure any online poker operator would love to have to make.

(Fwiw, the capacity of a Dell server for which an online poker operator would have paid $30K USD 25 years ago would also be blown away by a simple, off the shelf $1,500 desktop today from a Best Buy. The most cringe-worthy moment I recall from around 2001 was when a delivery guy walking into a Toronto poker operation office literally dropped a long-awaited additional Dell server onto the floor when trying to place it on a desk.)

OP, one question.

Who do you expect to pay more (if anyone) and who do you expect to pay less (overall)?

Server costs for poker are trivial.

This "one additional player" will generate winnings and rake, right? Where do the extra depositors come from that enable that extra rake? THAT is the cost of running a poker site.

I would expect the players who take up the deal to increase volume, so over time they pay more fees to the site than they previously did (but less than if they were paying full rake for that volume).

And bigger prize pools for MTTs and more cash tables running brings in secondary extra rake.


Btw if someone has other ideas to reduce the negatives of rake on poker pls share

I used to have a pretty good understanding of the costs of running a poker site, long ago.

At the risk of over-simplification, a site hypothetically dropped say 33 - 38 % from every dollar deposited. (The other 60% or so either is cashed out or retained in player accounts.) I am speaking hypothetically,but drawing from a couple of years of admittedly very, very ancient data I used to see.

To your point, as I think I understand it, you refer either to marketing costs (getting "new, extra" depositors) or the costs of processing deposits , whether from new or existing players. You've correctly identified the two big costs that a site must bear, and, along with every other cost, must pay from the 40% or less it drops in rake or fees from deposited funds.

I feel like this could be too easily abused by playing very little in the initial month as mentioned above. Unless it was promoted sporadically so players couldn't do so.

this.

this system would be way too easy to exploit. hourly pre game rake / table could may be a better idea. still if the table plays slow, you could end up having payed more rake for less hands.

what if we put ads on the table instead of rake - trupp QQ sponsored by Ritz Crackers!

Going to a poker site many more times and playing for free also doesn't generate extra revenue for the site. You individually playing more doesn't make more games somehow magically appear unless you believe there are a bunch of people sitting around with no one to play.

If people see bigger MTT prizepools they are more likely to bother reg-ing
If more people start cash tables people will see spaces and play more tables. Same with if zoom pools are running or not

Hello Mr. Lyons,
If you could please check you private messages on TwoPlusTwo when you get the chance, I would really appreciate it.