Of course it does. I don't see how anyone can argue against this. You are winning this thread btw

You seem to be suggesting that recreational players will notice that with table selection removed, and they now go bust in an average of 40 hands instead of 35 hands with table selection allowed, that the fish will notice. In reality no fish will realise this, since they are going to get annihilated no matter which table starting method is employed.

If fish are apparently this sensitive to how long it takes them to bust, then why aren't you suggesting that sites lower rake as that will allow fish to stay alive for longer too. If you wanted something that massively effected how long the fish lasted, then why aren't you suggesting that regs should be occasionally deliberately losing the odd pot to fish to keep them happier and keep them in the game longer? Or someone could even say that fish getting crushed more quickly would make them angrier, and so therefore they are more likely to redeposit in order to get those winnings back, whereas they may be more relaxed about their experience if they lost slower. Essentially all of this talk about what the recreational players think is just silly speculation most of the time.

There will always be people that lose money at poker and it's not going to feel nice no matter what the winning regs or the sites do. If an animal out in the wild kills another animal to eat it, maybe the animal feels bad that it's ended the life of another living being, but at the end of the day, the predator has got to eat and it's just something that it has to do. That is the same as what the winning regs need to do to the recreationals, that is how poker works, and that's how it will continue to work. I feel bad that some people have got to lose money, but that's how it needs to be.

All this talk about recreational player's enjoyment is just a smoke screen where weak regs are trying to take a bigger slice of the pie, and they are annoyed with the better regs that are able to win lots. You're going about it in the wrong way imo, us regs should stick together, (since reg's total winnings is pretty much related to the true health of the games), and we should lobby for rake decreases that help all regs first and foremost, (plus rake decreases will allow current -0.5bb/100 players to definitely start turning a profit in the games). Basically stop going after the better reg's share of the pie, and go after the site's take, since they are withdrawing 75/76ths of all fish deposits currently. The sites have more scope to give something up, simples.

I'm saying the fish will "go bust" much slower than that, and win more big pots than they would otherwise, giving them much more intermittent reinforcement of winning.

There's a phenomenon that occurred on the big US Anon site recently. I don't see that happening on PS in the current climate.

Because while I think the rake is a rad high (don't we all/always?), I don't think it's a massive consideration for them.

Sure. However, I will say I have a few friends who are probably SLIGHT winners/losers and are definitely into the hobby aspect of the game (read: they have a day job that pays them more then poker).

Having the sickest regs/cartels sit them when they sit down...yeah. While they may not be as proficient at poker as you, they're not stupid.

Of course that's how it needs to be. It also shouldn't be an utter annihilation. Hobbyists need to show some wins (see: intermittent reinforcement) to justify the expense.

While I think online rake is a tad ridiculous because of the overhead (lack of), I also think we should deal with the reality that we may not see rake going down anytime soon and should hope for more realistic outcomes. I think you're selling the idea of anon-poker short.

I don't believe this because a fish vs mainly good regs, (the current situation), means they get annihilated, and a fish vs a mixture of weak and good regs, (if table selection is removed), means they also get annihilated very quickly, since the skill gap between fish and weak regs is still very high, and the skill gap between weak and good regs is very small.

So they won't go bust much slower, just slightly slower and at a rate that no recreational is ever going to notice; but the poker sites will sure as hell notice as they enjoy seeing their bottom line improving.

If the games are as bad as you and others say they are, and not enough players are winning at a decent clip, then a rake decrease is almost inevitable right? In fact it should be coming just around the corner, all we need to do is be patient.

To the people who call other people short-sighted-- How many years (from today) do you think the average pro poker player expects to play?

People have been saying that for many years, and yet we're all still playing.

Eventually rake will be decreased if players are struggling to make a living though, and sites have a wide margin of rake decrease to work with.

At the end of the day, we do not owe the sites to make a living, and if they don't allow us an opportunity to make reasonable money, then we will all just quit and flip burgers for a living whilst we sit back and watch the sites go under due to a lack of volume played on their site.

Err no, you see the "we" is the self selected group that still play and still post here. Poker in the last few years has churned through literally millions of players who now no longer play online and are very reluctant to come back.

Many still play a few home games or go to casinos but they don't play online - I'm talking UK here so a full choice of any site. Most people I play poker with today don't play online any more eve though we play regularly enough and host games in our homes.

I used to post on an investment site and we had our regular monthly private tournament. Ran for three or four years then died a complete death. The rec players just stopped playing and as we actually chatted in that game I know it hung on for a year with half the field saying it was now the only game they played online.

If you can't get that burning through rec players harms online poker then pfft.

Meanwhile what on earth makes you think the sites finding it harder to get new players to try playing means they will be forced to cut the rake? There is just no logic to that at all.

Recs need to be burnt through sir, that is poker. If they get burned slower then that is good for recs, good for the site and bad for the regs. If that goes on too long then the regs can't live off poker and they quit, meaning the games die and the sites shut down.

So the recs and the sites need to ensure the regs needs are met too. The regs pay the most money to the sites and we allow the sites to survive, so the sites need to look after regs too, hence why Stars have done so well, thanks to their VIP system rewarding regs.

Instead table selecting will be time selecting... So wont be much action in morrinings.

This is nearly line for line the opposite of how site operators think.

I think doufus problem is that he thinks if pokerstars gets rid of bum hunters like all "regs" leave the site. Go look at these tables & you will find tonnes of reg only tables where these guys are mass tabling & have like zero fish & still grind it. The guys who 4-8table n put in 20-30hrs a week n make bank can all leave the site & it wouldn't miss a beat(no clue about mid stakes+).

Then you look at how popular the zoom games are & again confirms that not every " regs" bum hunts, get rid of the bum hunters n there's still plenty of regs to keep up volume/traffic on the website.

The ideal environment for a poker website is if the regs(winning players) have to put in tonnes of volume & pay tonnes of rake to make anything but it's still viable to earn a living through the means of poker while at the same time the fish loss rate is reduced & they enjoy themselves more & redeposit more.

He talks nonsense?

I've always hated huds, it's like wearing google glass at The Masters with an overlay on the grass showing you where to putt and where your ball is going to go. "But google glass is available to everyone" so then everyone uses golf huds and the game "evolves" to the next level or whatever people think is a proper outcome for changing the game from its original intended playstyle.

No, this is the opposite to how you think.

Stars are the most popular as they look after their best customers the most. One reg is more important to a site than one rec. They are probably more important than five recs since they hand way more of their cash over to the site, simples. I guarantee that sites like Stars see it this way.

This isn't how it works. You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of where the money comes.

@Doofus. Why not have a reg-only site? A site where everyone was profiting and nobody losing would be a creator of net happiness in the world.

I know exactly where the money comes from. All players pay money to the site in return for the site letting them play poker on their site. The best customers are the regs and they rightly get rewarded as such.

You are inventing something that is mathematically impossible. Well done to you.

hey 2004 is calling.

Seriously, your line of thinking isn't even close to reality in todays market.

Poker works the same today as it did in 2004, apart from slight differences in how rake contribution is allocated, (dealt method, weighted-contributed etc.)

Just stop. You're sounding dumber with every post.

You explain nothing about how you believe poker works.

People are suggesting that PokerStars apparently believes recreational players are more important than regular players, even though they reward regular players more. How does this work then? Have PokerStars been messing up this whole time on their way to this current monopoly that they have?

Also, Full Tilt under it's original owners were comfortably second for player traffic pre Black Friday, and I believe that they had a very good player reward system too which also rewarded regular players over casual recreational players, so it wasn't just the PokerStars ownership that did things this way and gained market share.

I'm sure that poker sites realise that winning and losing players are always relative labels and not absolute ones.

Different era. In the boom liquidity and game availability was all so rewarding volume worked, it helped get the new players.

Now we have player acquisition being far harder and an effective monopoly that delivers the competitive advantage of liquidity via incumbency. The business model needs to change to the new era. That change is not just the change in player acquisition but also ownership. The Stars model pre Amaya was grow volume, become the big beast, even if that meant leaving some cash on the table for grinders the model was to build the revenues and reinvest in the firm to then exit either by an IPO or a straight sale.

We got a straight sale. Now we have a business with shareholders and bondholders who want revenues to them not reinvestment. That means squeezing the grinders whilst maintaining the liquidity competitive advantage.

The 2003 Stars business model is dead.

OMG. I am going to have to dumb this down a bit for you.

Player deposits $100, gets raped, has no fun. Site gets some (but it cost more than $100 in advertising to get him to try). Reg gets some.

Result - potential player put off online poker for life.

Player deposits $100. Has some winning sessions, some losing sessions, has some fun. Loses his $100. Enjoys poker. Deposits $100 a month for say ten years.

Site says yum, regs say yum - can you not see that the $12,000 dollars in that decade is both your lunch and the site's lunch?

You - pay nothing to the site, you earn on the site and take money OUT. That 1 rec is worth 100 of you.

Fish lasting longer means the regs would not say 'yum' to the same extent because the site is getting a higher proportion of that deposit now. Of course the sites say 'YUM' even more because of that. Now the regs have to hope that that player redeposits to potentially gain more than they were getting before. If the fish doesn't redeposit then the regs have lost out. Most fish imo would not redeposit due to lasting longer. The site gets a bigger slice of cash than before regardless of whether the fish redeposits.

I pay tonnes of money to Stars. Lets explain.

If reg A wins a stack off a fish, and reg B wins a stack off a different fish, and both fish now quit and log off the client.

Now reg A and reg B play a hand of poker against each other and the hand gets raked. That rake money for that hand has been paid for by reg A and reg B. You probably think that the two fish have paid the rake, but those two had quit the game and are going on with their lives at the time the hand is taking place. How can it be their money that is being used to pay the rake? They have relinquished ownership of that money when they lost the earlier hand of poker and got stacked by another player, so that money is no longer theirs, and it belongs to someone else. If they have not relinquished ownership of the money, then is this not illegal that their money is being spent without their knowledge? This would effectively be theft right?

Clearly my initial way of explaining it makes the most sense, where the regs pay the rake out of their own pocket.

Otherwise, if we use your explanation of events, what if I lose $30 to a fish on one day, then the fish logs in the next day, then loses his entire amount of $70 to other players. You would then say that the fish has paid all the regs at that table $70, but that doesn't hold up since surely $30 of that money is still 'mine' and so the fish has paid $40 and I have paid $30 and so both the fish and myself have contributed to the rake and other player winnings. Therefore I'm still contributing from your explanation too right?

You seem to think that all deposits on a site immediately belong to a site, minus whatever is taken out by winning players. In reality, absolutely zilch of that deposited money belongs to the site YET, and the site only gets whatever they are able to eventually charge in rake for hands dealt. Therefore the site gets money IN from all of the players. Since regs contribute more $$$ out of their site balances than the recs do, from the site's point of view, regular players put more money into their coffers than recreational players put in. Hence therefore the higher contributors of rake are more important to a site, and they reward them in order to keep their loyalty to the site.

The site does not care which players win or lose money, it makes no difference to them, and they care more about the players that pay more rake to them.