It seems the "ecosystem" is getting worst every year, regulations with more taxes in many countries, ringfenced or prohibited markets, and yet the profit of Amayastars keeps increasing every year while the rake gets higher and rakeback/bonus decreases. I wonder why the games are getting tougher. It must be because of the regs, or maybe its the HUDs. It must be one of those things I'm sure.

It's because of less recs, less new players, less net depositors:

The 5 reasons you listed:
Taxes, laws, prohibited --> things that are not in the site's control.
Regs and HUDs --> things the sites can change.

All 5 are reasons why there are less recs/new players/net depositors.

Ah I see, increased rake and less rewards for the players are not on the site control. Good to know.
Not every rec player is a 20-30bb loser. There are small losing and winning players that would benefit tremendously with smaller rake and/or more rewards like there was before. They would keep playing for much more time, if you guys can't see that I can't argue better, as it's so clear what happened at 888 and Pokerstars for example with the increased effective rake over the last years.

I don't think that raising the rake is the answer.

Multi table restrictions and table selection restrictions seem good. Putting money into promoting the game seems good, developing new exciting games to bring more players in (especially from non poker hobbies) also looks good.

The biggest miss I've seen people make when talking about getting rid of pros and raising the rake to make a more profitable poker site is that so many losing players are motivated by professional success. In games like Spin and Gos or MTTs you can replace some of that with jackpots, but you can't really do that in cash games or other forms of poker. You need to see success to motivate you to play, to make you feel like you have a real chance, even though most won't put the effort in to have a high chance at success.

+1000

I was drawn to poker by the success I saw was possible. Still, I was a whale for months, and a losing player for well over a year before I was good enough to beat some games. If the dream wasn't there I never would've played cash games (although I probably would've played MTT's occasionally still, just for a shot at a big cash)

I'd honestly be fine paying slightly higher rake for a jackpot fund. Doesn't necessarily have to be a bad beat jackpot. I think something like random, hourly splash pots given to 1 table out of 10 per stake, funded by the house, would be really cool.

Around 25BB is put in the middle, everyone gets 2 cards and plays from the flop. Interesting cash give aways like this draw recreational players looking to get lucky. I wish more poker sites would at least try stuff like this

I know a bunch of recs and they couldn't name a single online cash game player that was any good unless he was on the WSOP broadcast or something.

Do you know a rec that can name his favorite online cash game player? I don't see that.

My point was that rake doesn't have very much effect on rec/new players/net depositors.

It means a lot more to a reg.

Recs generally don't play for rakeback. They probably don't even know what it is or qualify for it.

+2000

Are these recs that play live games? If so, then it makes sense that they'd look up to live players.

I've seen loads of emails and posts from players that are majority losing players lifetime that admire specific online pros. 2p2 is full of those posts. How many jungleman, durrr, etc. fans have there been on this site and others? Do you really think those fans are even a majority winning players? Even a site like 2p2 is majority losing players, and 2p2 might have the best ratio of any major poker site due to the high level of public strategy content and solid community.

I love this idea. Maybe call them "social" tables, and make the premise that they exist for single-table players only, to foment a more fun and talkative game.

Also, kill HUDs with fire.

Yes, I love the optional single table idea. Would be almost free of bots and hud users by definition. If you want to relax and have fun, sit here. Perfect.

And make it app-only.

Two tables, then it is perfect. By the way, I too rake, .

This isn’t anything new, and they are great for regs multi-tabling on another site!

This . Mobile gaming is the future

The idea that recs look up pros and want to be one is ridiculous and shows regs don’t even understand their customers

Seems like this is a catch 22 to me.

The site wants to protect recs? Regs want to exploit Recs to the fullest.

At the end of the day poker is a hustlers game.

If you want to make everyone happy here is what you do.

Have Beginner tables with a fairly high rake. You can only join these tables when you are a new player and have played lets say less than 50,000 hands as an example. It'll be microstakes obviously, so it doesn't matter if Joe Blow from home game 101 wants to deposit 100 dollars or a 100,000 dollars on the site. Hes gonna be stuck play .02 and .05 cents or whatever stakes sounds good to you guys with a high rake until he completes a certain amount of hours or a certain amount of hands. Make it fun obviously. "With all the perks of anonymous screen name and no huds and blah blah blah"

This ensures new players don't get exploited by the regs off the hop, they only get exploited by the high rake that they aren't even aware of yet.

This also encourages more deposits from these players because they have a higher chance of winning against fellow amateurs.

The downside to this is for the regs. They aren't going to be getting the action they want from these noobs but to compensate, lower the rake
after the beginner phase is over. Lower it substantially. Also allow all the toys you kids use and **** like that.

Its all a matter of false confidence. At the end of the day the goal is to lure new players in and make them lifetime catalysts on the site.

Once they've played 50,000 hands against other amateurs they're already going to be hooked. And they'll keep depositing into infinity when they are finally let out of the stable to be the ultimate donkey on the ranch.



Most of us all started playing in a home game. Give new players that home game atmosphere at first. And charge a high rake for it.

Then let them loose to the rest of us and let us take their money on lower rake tables.

I feel like that would be what they call maximizing the lead.

not sure if serious or trolling

^This
We should examine why we really need a poker site in the first place. What does a poker site do in the first place? In this age of ubiquitous technology where everyone can code we have many buyers and many sellers which is key to a competitive market. However, a poker site has long been a competitive monopoly, as it is not rivalrous but is excludable. A poker site really has three responsibilities, to provide software, to provide security, and to regulate the poker economy of their site. Now what I notice is a sort of odds principal agent problem where the site has an incentive to take as much of the player's money with rake and the player, who has entrusted the site with regulating the economy for the player, who wants the game to keep the most money on the table and not take it off vis a via the ****in rake. To avoid this I think the natural progression of poker is a sort of not privatization but decentralization of responsibility. First, software is so easily made today that I see the software for a non poker site poker site being extremely cheap if not free/open source. Second, in this hypothetical lobby on cheap, perhaps subscription-based, poker software I see private third party, as there is no actual poker provider company only software providers, security/game fairness companies, who will be much better than the incompetent poker sites today at security as they specialize in this and have a real incentive to keep games fair as it is the only thing they get paid for and the job can be competitive with many security providers in contrast to traditional poker site that essentially have their own competitive monopoly. These companies will obviously charge a subscription or some sort of price for their services, which will also be likely to be more innovative than poker site's security, that will be shared by the entire player pool. Third, if sites are raking and using their powers to create and regulate games in order to money grab, as they will do according to the profit maximising rule, rather than regulate the poker environment in a way that benefits players than I see no reason we should pay for a service we are not getting. Self-regulation of games, e.g. democratically deciding on games in a mix democratically or based on what fun players want, as they do in live games, should be the norm. Just my 2 ¢

Why charge donators?

Just rake withdrawals.

Why not have only winning players pay rake? Just take a % every time someone leaves a table with more than they bought in with, and/or rake withdrawls at a flat percentage. This is simpler, promotes more hands to be played (since the money isn't take out after the flop). It's transparent and more fair imo.

Yeah HUD is the problem. MPN and many other sites that don't allow hud and allow sn changes(every 1k hands or w/e) most regs still are using them. Even on anonymous tables after 30-40 or so hands you can spot the rec and obv you don't need 2k hands sample to exploit a rec. So ban HUDs would be meaningless.

The whole "more rake is better for the games" argument and the way Dnegs presented it has really wound people up because he is being thoroughly disingenuous in the way he presents what is actually the basis of a fairly reasonable piece of logic.

The baseline of his point is that if you create an atmosphere which greatly favours recreational players then, and which restricts their loss rate, then the general ecosystem of the games will be greatly improved. He even gives an example of a recreational player having the choice of two games, 1 is a game with $1 p/hr rake full of vry good players, in which he is a significant underdog, and the other has $10 p/hr rake where the standard is much lower and his loss rate is significantly reduced. In this example he says the player would have a better time all round (financially he'd do better, which would lead to more longevity for whatever amount of money he's willing to lose) and this would equate to an overall better experience.

All this, is 100% true, there is no-one who can argue with any of it. This is effectively how successful home games operates, they engineer most decisions towards the benefits of the losers, therefore increasing their experience and (ultimately) creating longevity and more rake.

Where his arguments start to fall apart is the point where he directly correlates this argument (which we all agree is true) to a rake increase, or a decrease is rewards for winning players. There is, basically no evidence whatsoever, from either basic research or historical application that suggests increasing rake and decreasing rewards will create the changes he wishes for, in fact logically, the opposite becomes true.

Making the environment hostile for winning players (which is basically what they are doing) creates a gap where there is now less money to be won, the losers are not losing any less, so the money has gone to the operator and come from the smaller winners. The atmosphere of the games has changed to become way more predatory now as the only way to win in these conditions is to win FAST. Players who are good enough to beat up the losing players and take the money quickly will continue to win, players not able to do so will no longer be able to play. The result is a decrease is the experience for the losers as there are now fewer games to chose from.

In reality, it's obvious that Amaya's long term goals were to move traffic away from the poker games as they were when they took over, they achieve this by introducing new variants which better suit their business strategy and then slowly make the conditions for the poker games worse and worse. It's a good idea really and it seems to be working, probably they will make more money operating like this when they become a sports/casino site over a poker site.

However, don't treat us all like muppets Daniel and sit there suggesting that these changes are for the good of the games, or the good of the recreational players, the changes are for the good of Amaya, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with it either. You want cash games out, they dont make sense in your model, just own it.

As for what would aid the online poker environment, I'm not sure - as a platform it's sort of destroyed itself internally, it's not a great place to play as a recreational and if you are a losing poker player there is literally no advantage to online poker over a well run home game except for the fact you can play on your sofa. I think the way Galfond's talking about runitonce sounds interesting, it's new and he seems committed to making a go of something different so with any luck that might breathe some fresh air into the onlie poker streets!

^^^^ A very good post. +1!!!

a) If you are a pro and your WR is 3bb/100 at 100NL, then that is about $2 per hour. That means that you would want to play at least 10 tables in the same time to make semi-decent living.

b) if you are limited to 4 tables (or 1 zoom table) like in old days of Party Poker then you would need to play higher which means that there would be less pros at 100NL and lower stakes.

The solution is not to increase the rake because that hurts everyone but to limit number of regular tables to 4 and zoom tables to 1. Pros would need to move up and that would be better for better pros who already play at that level because they would have new meat at the table.

That is how we can make trickle up economy again. With multi tabling we are allowing pros to make a living by playing lower stakes and that hurts everyone.

So pros with big rolls will move up stakes(doubt that)or move to other sites i guess and no one from micro or small stakes would ever become a pro or make decent money from cash games. At least the ecosystem and the economy would be saved