So, Daniel, how was the meeting?

Having been in a couple similar meetings last year I'm not feeling very optimistic, but I do appreciate you bringing this up with Stars again on behalf of the player community.

It all comes down to how healthy the games seem to Stars, not how fair the rake structure is compared to other formats.

Did the PLO ecosystem on Stars seem healthy to you?

I PM'd a bit with Daniel the other day and he will be back on the issue after EPT Monte Carlo, just as FYI for everyone.

i dont even understand why the rake is higher at PLO

so bad for future business and greedy.

It's not like someone sat down and said "let's make rake higher in plo!", it's that they just used the same rake structure as in NLHE for simplicity's sake. It's the same in live games after all.

the average pot is bigger so the average raked is larger

Shouldnt the sites know the implications well enough that in fact they are actually saying 'lets have / keep rake higher in plo' when they never changed it? Why are they able to have different rake structure for limit games then?

Sites realized fixed limit is a different game then no limit rake wise, why is the same argument not valid for pot limit (another structural different game, especially in another format, Omaha).

$0.25/$0.5 2 player cap is $0.5, 5+ player cap = $2.5 --> NL and PL games

VS

$0.25/$0.5 2 player cap is $0.16, 5+ player cap = $0.16 --> FL games

-----------------

$0.5/$1 2 player cap is $0.5, 5+ player cap = $2.8 --> NL and PL games

VS

$0.5/$1 2 player cap is $0.4, 5+ player cap = $0.4 --> FL games

-----------------

Point is they realize difference between other structural different game types, where they especially seem to be willing to lower the 5+ rake. So Im sure they can see the same problems for PL vs NL as FL vs NL just on a lesser scale.

A closer look at the PokerStars rake https://www.pokerstars.com/poker/room/rake/ make me believe they realized some of the same issues (to late) for FL and made some quite big adjustments on stakes $2/$4 and lower. FL also got 1% instead of 4.5% on highstakes, 2% instead of 4.5% on midstakes.

Look how step the rake increases are from $0.02/$0.05--> $0.5-$1 on 5+ players on NL/PLO games compared to the sliding scale in FL.

The live plo rake is often lower than live nlh rake. Online plo has generally had the same per 100 win rate so no need to lower the online plo rake but in zoom and maybe plo100 and 200. This is stars, other sites having higher rake especially in micros and should be lowered.

Simplicity and profitability's sake too id imagine.

Maybe they should have, but if you set something in 2001 you tend not to want to change it in 2015 - it may have deep coding implications for example.

As for why sites changed FLHE rake and not PLO, it was probably because they saw FLHE declining rapidly while PLO hasn't.

I don't mean to defend them, just give a possible explanation. As has already been mentioned in this thread, we have much lower rake than the rest of the industry at PLO4, PLO10 and PLO25.

Where are you getting your info? Most PLO games, especially live, have more players to the flop and much bigger pots per hand. Hence PLO is almost always going to have a higher rake. Also, most PLO, 5/5+, are timed games anyway, so there is no rake. The cost of the time, usually $5 to $7 depending on the limits, are fairly similar to cost of time for $5/$10+ NLHE games. However, you are seeing less hands per half hour/hour in PLO than NLHE, so essentially the cost of the 'time' is still more expensive on a per hand basis than nlholdem.

I thought someone might be thinking like that. But it is about the percentage and the cap on rake tables in places where that is the case, like in romania it can be, the rake speed there often though no way always and in every limit being less, like half, the cap sometimes half also, possibly even less in nlh50, plo50. Relatively cheap countries.

Many countries in some casinos or and limits rake time instead. That is more likely good for plo, maybe depending on limit but it is generally the best deal. The rake, and wins, in plo is more but if it is just time it is not raked more per hour, but as less hands per hour, but more action per hour.

I appriciate your answers.

Re coding implications / 2015 updates: PokerStars have changed the rake structure in small ways over the years, example changing the super micro rake, changing some games rewards etc, changed rake type, so I dont buy that this is something thats hard to do at all relative speaking.

Pokerstars needs to reward the lower levels more, the money trickles up n e way. Sadly for the machine SNE grinders its bad news but the games have to be 'beatable' if not we are no longer looking at poker as a skill game for the vast majority of casuals and small grinders.

Would it be possible and worthwhile for stars to put some kind of analysis together to see how many small stakes plo players bust their accounts and stop playing on the site compared to holdem?

Surely, pokerstars goal must be to set the rake at a level where good recreational players and solid regulars have a chance of making a profit in the medium-term let alone the long-term. The word in the poker community is small stakes plo is virtually unbeatable due to the high rake. This means that plo is not growing in popularity as it should be. It is probably the most exciting format of the game to play and has the potential to be huge.

Also don't forget that the hand equities run much closer in PLO than in NL.

Time rake would be an interesting concept for online poker for sure. Has any site attempted this in any form?

been 2 weeks since that meeting, not even a response?

There won't be anything positive and although I've been a critic of DN the PLO situation is not his fault.

yes I think the key thing in plo is that money is shoved back and forth even more than in NL.

Think about the claudico competition where the team won 700k over 80k hands but wagered 170M. If you take 1% of every wager the rake would have been 1.7M turning this nice profit into a huge loss.

So in PLO there will be even more money being send back and forth or wagered per amount won (or lost) or wagered.

This just shown how wrong the current rake model is. But given that this model is set in stone we need to have a much more reduced rake per hand in plo than in NL.

However the key thing to me is that rake per hand is just not ideal. It should be a % age of what players win in order to keep the game beatable and the economy sustainable.

Good post knircky.

Never been tried on-line afaik. Would it ever make for some crazy action. You might see regs and recs playing 99% vpip .

http://www.pocketfives.com/articles/...o-rake-590829/

someone being able to purchase a stress ball from the ps store quicker isn't going to help the poker economy.

****ty little items and cash bonuses should be eliminated from the store and replaced with ring game tickets, sng tickets and mtt tickets of varying levels. keeps the $ circulating in the poker economy and makes no difference to +ev players as they would have positive roi using the tickets. even the rb grinders could drop levels to run through their tickets at a +ev pre rb buy in level.

not his fault but he pretended he was going to a meeting and was going to address what was an important issue for the players. the reality is he probably did neither.

Why are you guys so rude? What happened to this place?

The reality is he has far less influence with Stars on matters such as these than people think he does. If I were Stars, I'd be like "That rake pays your salary. Let us handle that part of the biz, kthx." Since when has Daniel been an advocate for players rather than a tool to obtain/retain players?